Question

1960’s: Civil Rights Movement

Does this time period demonstrate tolerance or intolerance of the diversity of the nation? In what ways?

Answer 1

Personally, I believe both as you can look at it either way.

If you look at it as tolerance, you can see the shift coming from high power figures in the US that showed citizens that segregation was unequal. For example, several landmark cases including Board of Education of Topeka Kansas v Brown, which outlawed the segregation in public schools. Unfortunately, when the Supreme Court ruled that schools must integrate "with all deliberate speed", the South did not integrate till several years later. MLK was on the rise in the early 60's as well as other powerful civil rights activist. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is considered by many to be one of the biggest civil rights movements as Rosa Parks brought up the bus segregation problem in the South. (the bus boycott was actually in the mid 50's though). In 1968, MLK was assassinated on April 4 and the civil rights movement never really caught up after.

If you see this as intolerance, you might want to point out how there was thought to be a silent majority of white racist citizens in the US. In fact, Nixon ran his domestic policy as this at one point. He tried to slow down the integration of schools until finally, Alexander v Holmes pointed out that it was not legal. Not to mention Governer Wallace and other political figures purposely targeted segregation as a way to make a name for themselves. Governor Wallace stopped the entry of the first black students from entering the University of Arkansas. JFK actually had to order troops to escort them inside.

As you can see, the nation was split at this time but by the end of the 1960's we had made enormous progress in the civil rights movement from the days with cases like Emmit Till's.





haha hope this is enough to help you good luck:)

Answer 2

Thanks