American Civil Rights Icons: Profile Format
The American civil rights movement "encompasses more than three centuries of struggle against racial discrimination" (Arsenault 126). The movement culminated in the organized protests and civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s, and some authorities argue that a seminal event in this struggle occurred in 1955, when an African-American woman named Rosa Parks refused "to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus as required by city ordinance" leading to a boycott after which "the bus segregation ordinance was declared unconstitutional" ("The Civil Rights Movement" 1).
A number of heroes of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States can easily be identified. This list includes Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and the group known as the Little Rock Nine, "the first black teenagers to attend all white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957" ("Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement" 2).
To construct a profile of these and other iconic members of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement, this brief essay presents a template for such an exercise. It should be noted, according to Eric Foner (276), that in addition to the well known figures of the movement, there were literally thousands of African-Americans, whites, and others from all regions of the country and all socioeconomic backgrounds who were truly heroic in their pursuit of justice and equality.
Any effective profile of a heroic or iconic figure should begin with a discussion of the historical context in which the individual lived and functioned. A background description of the civil rights movement in the United States with an emphasis on the 1950s and 1960s is therefore necessary. Historians such as Eric Foner (275-276) offer comprehensive reviews of key events in this era while entries in te
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