Swimming Against The Stream

The civil rights movement that started in the 1950's in the USA, fought for the economic and political equality of African Americans, especially in the Southern States. There the discrimination was legal and institutionalised. This changed in the 1960's. The Congress, the legislative body of the USA, passed legislation that outlawed formal discrimination. But in truth it still continued. The reforms that the civil rights movement had achieved were undermined in the 1970's and, especially under the presidency of Ronald Reagans, to a large extent clawed back. Today African Americans are economically and socially even more disadvantaged than they were 25 years ago. Before they harvested (in the Southern States) cotton, today they have to work to get their food stamps (a form of social welfare).

The high point of the civil rights movement remains the march on Washington on August 28 1963, which, with 250.000 participants, was the biggest demonstration ever held in the country up to then. During it, Martin Luther King, made his famous 'I I Have A Dream' speech. One of the actions of the Movement were the freedom rides. To break down discrimination in the busses and bus stations, in 1961 a group of black and white demonstrators (mostly from the north) drove together from Washington to New Orleans in a Greyhound bus. The attacks from the opponents of equality culminated in Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, where only the National Guard protected the freedom riders from the violent mob.

In March 1965, in Selma, also in Alabama, a black female demonstrator was murdered by three members of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1987 in Howard's Beach, New York State, a group of young black's suffered a car break down. A gang of white youths chased one of the occupants on to a busy street, where he was hit by a car and killed. This incident was regarded as proof that even in the North racism is still as widespread as before.