Freedom Highway in the USA: The Afro-American Civil Rights Movement and Its Characteristics

Abstract

The history of slavery, which started with commercial interests and imperial rivalries in the newly discovered American continent, became a discrimination system in the American system in the American society in the 20th century and continued to make its prsence felt with racist policies in the post-colonial order. Western white researchers wrote the history of enslaved blacks from their own perspectives within the framework of political and constitutional boundaries until the 1950s. Despite this, African-Amrican history which went through life struggles and social travmas, started with the arrival of Africans in the North America in the 16th and 17th centuries, and started to be rewritten by blacks with the intensifying civil right movements between 1955 and 1968. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the black discrimination and the resistance movement, which continue to be the most important issue in the historical process of racism in the history of the USA. Focusing especially on the 12 years of the Civil Rights Movement, which started in 1955, the main features, leaders, the main tools used to mobilize the masses, important turning points and their national and global reflection and effects will be analysed. © 2023, Osman Kose. All rights reserved.