He promised to see the fight through to the end, and he
said that it was the obligation of all good men to see that the
battle was fought in the courts and through the legislative
process rather than forcing it into the streets. He ended his
speech by quoting the lead line from the popular civil rights
hymn, "We Shall Overcome."
By 1965, the Federal Government had enacted legislation
guaranteeing almost all the citizenship rights of America to
Negroes and had also provided mechanisms with which to enforce
this legislation. Nevertheless, the passage of a bill in
Washington did not immediately secure the same right in Selma,
Montgomery, or in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Each right, so it
seemed, had to be fought for and won over and over again in
almost each locality. Although discrimination continued and even
seemed to intensify at times, it no longer carried with it the
force of law. The Civil Rights Movement had, no matter what its
critics said of it, accomplished one sweeping victory--the
destruction of legal segregation in the United States.
CHAPTER 12
The Black Revolt
Civil Disorders
The smoldering tensions and frustrations which lay just below the
surface in the Afro-American community exploded into a racial
holocaust on August 11, 1965, in Watts--a black ghetto just outside of
Los Angeles.
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