Coming of Age in Mississippi – Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights movement is one of the most historic movements in not only the history of the United States, but in the history of the world. It was filled with violence and death as the majority of white American’s disapproved of the movement toward equality and integration. There were several different leaders in the Civil Rights movement such as, Martin Luther King Jr., Thurgood Marshall, and Malcolm X. Each one of these leaders had different views and interpretations of the Civil Rights movement. King was a Christian leader that preached non-violence in protests for civil rights and against injustice. Protests, sit-in’s, and marches were common in King’s tactics to achieve equality and freedom for all black people in the United States. Marshall was a leader that believed in change through the legal system where he would take thirty cases to the Supreme Court and win twenty-nine of them. Malcolm X, however, was far different from these two leaders. X believed in violence as the answer to the movement. Violence would be used to demonstrate the frustration with inequality in the United States by Malcolm X and his followers. Organizations, such as the NAACP, SNCC, and CORE, had a huge impact on the direction of the movement and organization of protests. Anne Moody, a female African American and Civil rights activist, describes her experiences of the movement in the rural south in her book, Coming of Age in Mississippi. Through the leaders of the movement, involvement in civil rights organizations, her experiences as a participant in the movement, and living in Mississippi, Anne Moody develops an interesting yet controversial view of the Civil rights movement.
The March on Washington was one of the most important and historical events in the Civil Rights movement. Many different influential leaders of the Civil Rights movement presented their speeches to thousands of people. Martin Luther King Jr....