hey there and welcome back to hundler's history now we've been going through unit 8 of the ap u.s history curriculum and a few videos ago i started talking about the foundations of the civil rights movement during the 1940s and the 1950s and in this video it's time to talk about the fruition of that movement in the 1960s so buckle up and get them brain cows ready for milking let's get to it so in this video we're going to try to do two things and they are as follows number one explain how and why various groups responded to calls for the expansion of civil rights from 1960 to 1980 and second we're going to try to explain the various ways in which the federal government responded to the calls for the expansion of civil rights so the civil rights movement itself and how the government responded to it so let's start with the civil rights movement recall in the 1940s and the 1950s that the civil rights movement began in earnest with a few victories implemented by the federal government including the integration of the armed forces and the landmark supreme court case brown versus the board of education which ruled that school segregation by race was unconstitutional but also recall that there was significant resistance to the integration of schools by southern states and the process went excruciatingly slow and so now in the 1960s the civil rights devotees engaged in a fresh movement to claim the rights that have been promised to them one of the first major engagements was the montgomery bus boycott in 1955. so in montgomery alabama public transportation was segregated by state law and company policy and what sparked the movement was a refusal of a woman named rosa parks to give up her seat to a white customer she was subsequently arrested and that led to a city-wide bus boycott which lasted for about a year and due to the financial pressure of the boycott the bus company ended the policy of requiring black passengers to yield their seats to white passengers and maybe even more significant than this victory was the personality it produced martin luther king jr who was a preacher from atlanta joined the montgomery bus boycott and soon ascended to prominence as one of the most powerful voices for a non-violent movement to secure civil rights to king the best way to force change on the corrupt system was by means of civil disobedience to unjust laws and he learned that from gandhi's campaigns of civil disobedience in india now by the 1960s a younger generation of activists was joining the movement as well they staged the sit-in movement in which their members would enter restaurants and sit at lunch counters which were for white customers only and demand service for their efforts they were met with mass arrests and this reaction ended up being on the front pages of many national newspapers and the increasing pressure and eventually led restaurants to change their policies now by 1963 martin luther king and the southern christian leadership conference launched another major campaign in montgomery alabama to end racial discrimination to this end the civil rights devotees gathered for peaceful protests in the city but the public safety commissioner by the name of bull connor would not tolerate such demonstrations under conor's direction city police used high-pressure fire hoses to disperse the crowd along with police dogs and other manifestations of brutal force and this was carried out not only against adult protesters but against the children who are participating in the children's crusade as well it was truly an awful thing to behold and that was actually the point as footage from these brutal tactics was consumed by the american public the civil rights protesters found themselves in their sympathy and this went a long way in getting legislation passed in their favor over the next couple years and then the crowning moment in the civil rights protest came in 1963 with the march on washington on that day more than 200 000 civil rights activists gathered on the lawn of the washington monument in front of the lincoln memorial it was here that king delivered the speech we all know as the i have a dream speech in which king expressed his desire for a society defined by equality with great pathos and some of the most moving phraseology in american history however just like everything in history the civil rights movement was more complicated than just that there was also a more militant branch of the movement and the name to associate with that is malcolm x he also was a magnificent and fiery orator and he tried to persuade black americans that integration with white society like king rhapsodized about was not the way to freedom instead the way to freedom involved separatism and militarism malcolm x threw non-violent resistance to the side and said that the only way to equality was to counter white violence with black violence and in the same vein we also saw the rise of black militant groups like the black panthers which formed to secure black rights through violence if necessary now even with this complication in the civil rights movement the government did respond with significant legislation for which the civil rights activists had been fighting for years first was the civil rights act of 1964 which made discrimination on the basis of race religion or sex illegal in the next year came the voting rights act of 1965 which prohibited racial discrimination in the voting booth by outlawing literacy tests and poll taxes additionally the voting rights act authorized the federal government to oversee voting in counties which had historically low black voter turnout and even the supreme court jumped in on all of this with a few cases that expanded civil rights including loving versus virginia in 1967 which struck down state laws that made interracial marriage illegal so this era of the civil rights movement basically came to an end in 1968 when in memphis tennessee martin luther king the most beloved leader of the non-violent branch of the movement was assassinated it was certainly a time of national mourning but in the years following despite the legislative and judicial victories won by the civil rights movement racial tension endured and as the 1960s came to a close race riots erupted in many cities across the nation which made plain that the movement was not yet over okay thanks for watching if you need more videos on unit 8 then click this playlist right here and if you need help getting an a in your class and a 5 on your exam in may then right here view packet which will make all your dreams come true additionally if this video helped you you want me to keep making them to subscribe and i shall oblige heimler out