The American Civil Rights Movement

A few months ago I read through several books for kids about the Space Race. Now I’m reading about the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, preparing for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day next January.

It is fascinating to me that all of this happened but fifty to sixty years ago. Only sixty years ago, African Americans like Rosa Parks would get on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, pay at the front, and then have to leave the bus to enter at the back – they weren’t even allowed down the aisle. Then they’d have to sit in their own rows… unless the bus started to fill up with white people, in which case they were not requested, but required to give up their seats to those people.

I know that there is still a lot of racial unrest today, and in fact, it’s been steadily making the news. But I am still amazed at how far human rights have come in the past several decades, and just how quick it has been. Especially today, changes happen lightning-fast. When you think of how old civilization is, and how little things changed from year to year and decade to decade in centuries previous, it is truly something to marvel at.