The 1960s was a decade that forever changed the culture and society of America. The1960s were widely known as the decade of peace and love when in reality, minorities werestruggling to gain freedom from segregation. The war to gain freedom for all minorites was agreat obstacle to overcome.On February 20, 1960 four black college freshmen from the Negro Agricultural andTechnical College in Greensboro, North Carolina quietly walked into a restaurant and sat down atthe lunch counter. They were protesting the Jim Crow custom that blacks could be served whilestanding up but not while they were sitting at the lunch counter. The students quietly sat therepolitely asking for service until closing time. The next morning they showed up againaccompanied by twenty five fellow students. By the next week their sit down had been repeated infourteen cities in five deep south states. In the weeks to follow many new protests arose. After ablack woman was beaten with a baseball bat in Montgomery, Alabama, 1,000 blacks silentlymarched into the first capital of the Confederate states to sing and pray. Six hundred studentsfrom two colleges walked through the streets of Orangeburg, South Carolina with placards thatexhibited phrases like We Want Liberty and Segregation is Dead. By late June some kind ofpublic place in over one hundred and fifty different cities across America had been desegregated.John F. Kennedy was never able to gain enough support to pass a civil rights bill duringhis short time in office, but Lyndon Johnson drawing on the Kennedy legacy and the support ofthe nation succeeded in passing the bill. The bill passed 71 to 19, four more votes than required. By early 1965 a new black leader had arose, whose name was Malcolm X. His gospel washatred and his motto was; If ballots wont work, bullets will. Malcolm X was a former pimp,cocaine addict, and thief. He started a militant, all black group called the Black Panthers. On abright Sunday in a b...
