Background of the situation
In late September of 1962 the fever of civil war was being felt yet again. A young negro, James Meredith, was to be the first black man to attend Ole Miss ever. The whole state was in uproar, but no place quite as bad Oxford, Mississippi which was the campus site of Ole Miss. Governor Ross Barnett had been doing everything within his power to cancel the enrollment of Meredith. Barnett denounced the federal government for deploying troops illegally into the state and trying to admit and under qualified applicant. Barnett also questioned why the federal government would assist a felon (Meredith had received charges for participating in a protest). All of Mississippi was caught in the fever and the Confederate States of America flag flew everywhere. Football games, store fronts, and people's houses. Bobby Kennedy and his brother John F. Kennedy were being fed information as it happened. JFK often spoke with the governor and Bobby did as well. The Kennedy's had opposed sending a military force into Oxford and decided to send 500 US marshals to force the governor to comply. The decision to send troops in was made once protest turned into riots. 30,000 soldiers were sent in to defend the Marshals and many more army personnel to tend wounded protestors and soldiers alike. Many were wounded on both sides but only two would be killed. A French Journalist and a beatbox repair men. Both were executed apparently with single-shot wounds to the head. While this would be a victory for the Civil RIghts Movement many more years of blood and death would pass before all would be considered equal and even to this day not all are treated equal. With so many lessons in the Movement little has been learned
Race Riots were nothing new as seen in this picture from a Chicago Race riot (right). Race riots had been happening in America for already a century as blacks continually felt inequality everywhere or the white oppressors would attack out of anger upon those considered lesser than them. The attacks were not just on negroes either. Italians, Catholics, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and many other groups were mistreated and attacked. Lynchings were common and the riots were merciless. Even orphan asylums of the targeted would be attacked and burned down. The disgust of man was plain to see for all the world. America ,however, never considered its rights of the citizens in danger. The US spent more time on its attacks on another group, the Indians of the Plains and drove them westward and hunted them down. Even the government was guilty of racism. They escaped guilt by professing it as Manifest Destiny. Still injustice swirled. The riots were everywhere not just in the South but in Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan. Northern states that had seemed as a haven to the ex-slaves were committing atrocities against them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation
Finally in 1955 blacks began to grow frustrated with the sessile state of the black man within society. This would spar a decade long struggle for civil rights. This would come to be known as the Civil RIghts Movement. Many would die in this endeavor for equality. A second civil war within America. However, it was not fought by soldiers. It was fought by citizens, young and old. Black and White. Leaders would emerge such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, and opened the eyes of the public to murder victims such as Emmett Till. The injustice done to the black community were being shed to the light. From all backgrounds they came to support this movement for equality. No man in America would avoid this movement. There was no dodging it. There was only its reality. From this decade we see the greatest struggle of the American people for the civil rights of its citizens since the Revolutionary War.
While differed in policies that they practiced, no two men did more for there people than that of Martin Luther King Jr (Left) and Malcolm X (right). While they only met once, they were the two figure heads for the entire movement before and after their assassinations. Even today they are sources of inspiration for young people.