The civil rights movement is an extremely pivotal and important time in our society's modern history. It brought African Americans and minorities to an equal point according to our law books as white people. The law now sets African Americans and minorities to the same equality as whites because of the civil rights movement. There were many great civil rights leaders and heroes at this time. The most well-known and most celebrated leader and hero is Martin Luther King Jr. He led the March on Washington in 1963. He made the "I Have a Dream" speech on the same day. These are the two most notable specific actions Martin Luther King Jr. did. However, he is perceived by the public eye to be the most influential leader and the reason why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. His ideas of civil obedience and peaceful protest was not original. The origin of civil obedience of which he based the civil rights movement on was from Gandhi. The leader in India who is accredited with leading India to independence all through a non violent approach, which was coined as civil disobedience. Martin Luther King did the same thing right here in America. You can see the parallels he drew from Gandhi. Gandhi walked two hundred and forty miles to the ocean to make salt. While Martin Luther King did not walk quite as far he walked to create a mass civil disobedience just as Gandhi did. In Martin Luther King's book, a chapter called "The World House" he explains that the problems with equality in race, sex, and sexuality in American society are not just Americas problem. The whole world has these issues, and to resolve the issues we must band together as a global force and attack them together. He says as long as there are people living in this world who think less of someone there will always be inequality. This chapter was the reaction to the many events throughout the history of the of the oppressive culture we live in.

To begin, there were many racist and awful events that lead of to the civil rights movement. The clear and obvious beginning of the racism in America was the slave trade that arrived here at the very beginning, the colonies. At this point it was not a race oppression it was an economical one. The people who could afford travelling to the colonies brought the poor class over if they worked as the rich people's slaves for a certain amount of time. Eventually the African slave trade made its way over to America and the race discrimination started. African Americans were not seen as people they were seen as animals, as cattle, as workers, and never as human beings. They were used to make white people's lives easier and make them money. They were essentially free labor and the white owners prospered from the slave's struggles. This was the most notable start to the black oppression in the United States. The first event to lead up to the civil rights movement.

Additionally, after slavery was abolished following the end of the civil war in America African Americans continued to be oppressed especially in the Southern states with the emergence of the Black Codes. The main and only purpose of these laws were to restrict the freedoms and rights of African Americans. A main portion of these codes was that a local law men were now allowed to arrest black people and as punish force them to involuntary labor. This was a solution to the no slavery allowed policy that was now enforced after the Civil War. The codes also restricted freed black men to basic fundamental rights of our nation. Such as, owning land and just simply moving freely around the country. Immediately after slavery was abolished whites found a new way of oppressing African Americans, and this was yet another event to lead to the civil rights movement that occurred in the 1900s.

Also, another large event that lead to the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr.'s commendable acts as a hero was the death of Emmitt Till. Emmitt Till was a fourteen-year-old black boy who was living in Mississippi. During this period racism in the south was still very rampant and prevalent in the United States. The young boy was in the town square of sorts when one of two things happened. The facts are still disputed. One story is he whistled at a married white woman. The other story is he was simply talking to her in a polite manner. Either way it happened the ending was horrific. Nights later two white men came to where Emmitt Till was sleeping. They took him to an empty barn where they brutally abused him. They said they were punishing him for looking at a white woman. After they were done torturing the fourteen-year-old boy the shot him through the head. They then threw his body in to a nearby river with a brick to weigh him down to the bottom. Eventually, his body was discovered and sent to his mother who had raised him. She held an open casket funeral that was so widely publicized it sparked a fire underneath the civil rights movement. The whole world saw the abuse this teenager went through because he was black and it caused outrage in many communities and cultures. The call for change was rising faster then ever all thanks to the death of a young black boy's horrendous death. This was another event that led to Martin Luther King Jr.'s actions in the civil rights movement.

A third event that led to Martin Luther King Jr.'s movements to help the civil rights movement was the enactment of Jim Crow Laws. They were enacted after the black laws and lasted all the way up until 1965. The main point of the law was to keep African Americans and white separate. The phrase that was created through these laws was "Separate but Equal". The people in power, white men, wanted African Americans to stay away from whites. They said that they were separate but equal. However, this was tremendously false. The white's world in the United States was not comparable to the world in which the African Americans lived in in the United States. The African American life in the United States was significantly worse then the white life. African Americans had worse education. The money that went in to white schools was prominently greater then that of which went in to African American schools. Another difference was voting. Now that African Americans had the right to vote many white people tried as hard as they could to stop them from happening. They invoked literacy tests you needed to pass to vote. Of course they were easy enough for white people to pass, but because African Americans did not have any where near the same education as them many of them could not vote. Another restriction on voting was the poll tax that was invoked along with the literacy test in the Jim Crow laws. The poll tax is exactly what it sounds like. A person had to pay a certain amount of money before they could place a valid vote. At the time the majority of African Americans were holding low paying jobs because of racism in the bosses, poor education, and inequality in pay. So, many African Americans could not afford to pay this poll tax to vote. These Jim Crow laws are another event that led to the peaceful protests led by Martin Luther King Jr. and everyone who participated in the civil rights movement. 

In conclusion, many events and experiences effected Martin Luther King Jr. in to participating and creating a huge impact of the civil rights movement. These are only a select few oppressive actions enforced on African Americans by white people. The civil rights movement would not be anywhere near as successful as it was without the aide of Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil disobedience and peaceful protests.

