african americans Essay -- essays research papers

African Americans continued to live as second class citizens in the 1950’s and 1960’s, especially in the South, despite the Fourteenth Amendment and the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited states from denying anyone the right to vote due to race. States passed laws directed at separating the races and keeping blacks from the polls. During these times, African Americans and other Americans led an organized and strong movement to fight for racial equality. The movement often met with strong opposition, such as in Birmingham, Alabama, where police sprayed protestors with high pressure fire hoses.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the early 1900’s W.E.B. Du Bois established the NAACP, (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) which fought to end segregation, the separation of people on the basis of race. In the case of Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme Court struck down segregation as unconstitutional.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and an NAACP officer, took a seat in the front row of the â€Å"colored† section of a Montgomery bus. As the bus filled up, the driver ordered Parks and three other African American passengers to empty the row they were occupying so that a white man could sit down without having to sit next to any African Americans. The leaders of the African American community, including many ministers, formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize a boycott. They elected the pastor o...