The Civil Rights Movement

It was after WWII and people were coming out of the war starting
families, getting jobs, and the technology was improving in many different
ways. The African- Americans were free, but not treated equal. They were
treated in better conditions than they used to be, but were still being
segregated. Colored people were fighting for proper rights against whites,
and they were following the first amendment; freedom of speech. Some
colored people took it farther than needed, but they believed that violence
was the way to get their point across. There were people who both protested
peacefully and violently. Some of the issues of the civil rights movement are
still happening today

Violence is behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage or

to kill someone or something. The opposite of violence is peace; peace has
about three over all definitions. 1) A state at which there is no war or
fighting. 2) Agreement to end war. 3) A period of time when there is no war
or fighting. Violence and peace were two different things that came head-tohead in the time period of the Civil Rights Movement. Some protest can start
out as peaceful then could turn violent, but it is not always the protesters.
For example, the Tougaloo Nine and Jackson State Protest. Tougaloo College
is a private black organization that in the 1960s, sat right outside of Jackson,
Mississippi city limits. One day nine members of the NAACP Youth Council,

attempted to use the white only Jackson public library on March 27th. Not all
sitting together; separated at different tables, reading books that are not
allowed to be used by colored. They were asked to leave, but they refused,
and were later arrested for Disturbing the Peace and that is how the
Tougaloo Nine got their name.
An example of a peaceful protester is Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), who
was a Baptist minister and social activist who was important in the American
civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. He
was inspired by other people who believed in nonviolence such as Mahatma
Gandhi. Martin fought equality for African- Americans, and the economically
disadvantaged, along with victims of injustice through peaceful protesting.
Later in the year of 1957, he worked with many civil rights and religious
groups to organize the March on Washington for jobs and freedom, a
peaceful rally made to show the injustices of colored that kept spreading
across the country. This march was held on August 28th, 200,000
300,000showed up and took part in this march.

An example of violent protest is Malcolm X, he is an outspoken voice of the

Black Muslim faith, challenged the main points of the civil rights movement,
and the nonviolent pursuit of integration by Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm
was once a slave. His actual name is Malcolm Little, but his slave name

wasX. He believed that violence was the way to prove your point, or make
people change their mind.

In all of this, there were activist who worked with movements like this.
They were known as Civil Rights Activist or leaders. There are many of them,
but two of them are Gene Patterson and Joseph Lowery.

Gene Patterson was born in Valdosta on October 15, 1923. Patterson

grew up on a farm with his sister, brother, Mother, and Father. He wrote tears
later that with his family we milked cows, butchered hogs and steers, hoed
peanuts, pulled corn, picked cotton, and cropped tobacco. School and the
college offered the only escape. Patterson went to North Georgia College in
Dahlonega, where he trained as an army cadet and edited the campus
newspaper. After graduating North Georgia College, Gene went to University
of Georgia in Athens, then later graduating in 1943 with a degree in
journalism. Later on he entered the army straight away, then was made a
lieutenant. When he was 21 he was a tank platoon leader with the 10th
Armored Division of General George S. Pattons Third Army. He was awarded
with a Silver Star and Bronze Star with Oak-Leaf Cluster for his actions in
Pattons counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge, and in the race across
Europe during WWII(1941-1945).With the war being over Gene was given a

commission in the army, finished fighting training =, and became a piolet to

the army. He backed down from the position of captain and received a job on
the Temple( Texas) Daily Telegram, which was the closest newspaper to his
army post. He later worked for the Macon Telegraph, and the United Press
news service in Atlanta. In 1950 Patterson married Mary Sue Carter, then had
one daughter; Mary. Six years after Mary being born he was hired by the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He became the editor of the morning
Constitution, he job was to write a column every day of the week from 1960
to 1968. He showed me by example in his daily column that you could tell
the truth about civil rights in a Deep South newspaper in the mid-twentieth
century, and get away with it-f you were tough enough to brush off the
threats and hate of maybe a majority of your outraged readers Gene
Patterson said his in 2002 in a commencement speech. Knowing Gene, intent
of his editorial writing, and that of other southern editors who campaigned
against segregation, was to start a dispute with whites in the South. In 1977
oral history of the civil rights era, Patterson described that time as being
frozen in silence.