AFRICAN-AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

At the midpoint of the twentieth century, African Americans once again answered the call to transform the
world. The social and economic ravages of Jim Crow era racism were all-encompassing and deep-rooted.
Yet like a phoenix rising from the lynch mobs, debt peonage and labour discrimination, and rape, the black
freedom movement raised a collective call of "No More"! From direct-action protests and boycotts to armed
self-defence, from court cases to popular culture, freedom was in the air in ways that challenged white
authority and even contested established black ways of doing things in moments of crisis.

Further, African Americans did not have the freedom to choose where and how to live due to the effects of
state sponsored restrictive covenants— legally binding contracts making it illegal to rent, sell, or lease
housing to black people (in some regions it included other "non-whites"). These restrictions were placed on
both private real estate sales and public housing provisions. Ultimately, the absence of a "free" housing
market found black residents earning the lowest wages and paying the highest prices for the worst housing
stock. At the same time, neighbourhood school districts were redrawn in unorthodox ways so that white
students could have the best facilities and keep them all white.

As African Americans' place in American society has changed over the centuries, so has the focus of
African-American literature. Before the American Civil War, the literature primarily consisted of
autobiographies by people who had escaped from slavery; the genre of slave narratives included accounts of
life under slavery and the path of justice and redemption to freedom.
Native Son (1940) is a novel written by African-American author Richard Wright. The power of this book
lies in its gritty, straightforward, and controversial depiction of the results of institutionalized racism and
bigotry in the United States. There is racially charged language, two murders, a rape, other sexual activity,
and capital punishment.The book native son depicts an African American male who faces the troubles and
trials of living in a white society being discriminated, looked at different, and viewed worse than others.

The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African-American youth living in utter poverty
in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s. While not apologizing for Bigger's crimes, Wright
portrays a systemic inevitability behind them. Bigger's lawyer makes the case that there is no escape from
this destiny for his client or any other black American since they are the necessary product of the society
that formed them and told them since birth who exactly they were supposed to be. "No American Negro
exists", James Baldwin once wrote, "who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in his skull."

It is also worth noting that a number of important essays and books about human rights were written by the
leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. One of the leading examples of these is Martin Luther King, Jr's
"Letter from Birmingham Jail".
The day after W. E. B. Du Bois died in Ghana, 250,000 people descended on the nation's capital, where
King's "I Have a Dream" speech took on mythic proportions. Not a month later, white supremacists bombed
the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, leaving four little girls dead. Central Intelligence
Agency director J. Edgar Hoover identified the attackers but disliked the Civil Rights movement, so he did
nothing.
The link between race and class, however, could not be severed, especially during a Vietnam War that sent
largely poor people of color to its bloody front lines. Even Martin Luther King began to see the links
between unfettered funding for the war machine and the sea of poverty washing over America's domestic
landscape. These insights set the stage for King's infamous "Time to Break Silence" speech of 1967 and his
bridging of the gap between civil rights and economic justice.

The battle waged in "Bloody Lowndes" was lost, but the efforts of a grassroots southern movement for
Black Power speak to the full range of experiences that encompassed the fight for freedom. The movement
fought southern Jim Crow and northern ghetto formation. Led by charismatic individuals and grassroots
collectivises, its members turned to nonviolent action and armed self-defence, waging battle in courtrooms
and on the streets. Understood in their full depth and scope, visions of the black freedom movement have yet
to be fully realized.