The Civil Rights movement was less a struggle about race and more of a struggle about forcing decency between fellow human beings. The civil rights movement was taking shape for years, but it really came to the fore front during the year 1955. This is the year that both Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, as well as Emmitt Till being hung in the south for whistling at a white woman. The outrage and fury of these two separate incidents led to boycotts and also led to the civil rights movement being brought to view nationwide by the power of television.

The movement was important because for the United States of America to be able to proclaim itself a great nation and a truly free nation, all of it’s citizens had to have equal rights. The experiment known as separate but equal proved to be a failure. To truly have equal rights that were supposed to be afforded to all Americans, a person had to have equal access to all privileges. There was no way that there was enough money and resources to build everything truly equal, but used for only one race of human beings. To fix this error a new set of leaders emerged from both the church and the political body. From Martin Luther King Jr to President Lyndon B. Johnson who signed the Civil Rights act of 1968, them plus many more heroes led the way to fight against the injustice that had stood for too long and needed to be knocked down.

Civil Rights are a group of rights that protect individual’s freedom from unprovoked encroachment from other individuals, organizations, and governments. These basic rights are essential rights for an individual to truly pursue happiness as the Declaration of Independence States. These rights are most known when we think of the “black civil rights movement” even though they have always been around throughout history. The purpose of that movement was for blacks and other minorities to have equal rights with the rest of Americans. These rights can include; freedom of speech, right to assemble, freedom of religion, and other procedural rights to fair trials and impartial taxation.

The purpose of Civil Rights was to end discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin, age, sexual orientation and any other natural distinction. Civil Rights are important to protect the individual from the tyranny and injustice of the majority. You guarantee peace and stability if you protect the minorities in a country. The more protected we are as an individual the more we can pursue what is written in the second sentence of the declaration of independence. It reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. If we were not protected by civil rights than we could be discriminated against and would not be able to exercise are rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This would cause chaos and oppression for those that may not fall into the correct class or ethnicity. These rights allow you to become whomever you want without fear or reproach. These rights have made the United States a beacon to the rest of the world.