Question

From the Voices of Freedom readings, Chapter 24, Martin Luther King’s speech at Montgomery, Alabama, and The Southern Manifesto: How do these documents illustrate contrasting understandings of freedom in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement?

Answer 1

In 1954, the Supreme Court declared that separate schools for Black and White are unconstitutional. In 1956, 101 congressmen all from the South opposed the decision of school integration and same school for Black and White.

In 1965 Martin Luther King’s March explains that the segregation was still present in the country. He put both the poor white people and Negroes in the same plate where he told the gathering that only the rich white people enjoy the most freedom and they also deny freedom to other people. So, fighting for the rights becomes the primary motto and this could be achieved through non-violence movements.

American elite were not ready to become civilized thus giving people what is rightfully theirs. They wanted to keep the Blacks separate. Civil rights movements helped the judges give historical and landmark decisions and judgments that shook the fundamentalist and barbaric views of the elite white during that time. Martin Luther King’s non-violence movement played a very important role in reinstating that they won’t give up until freedom is achieved in all spheres of life.