The Right To Protest

https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2020-09-09/stand-firm-right-protest

The First Amendment allowed ordinary individuals the rights of the freedoms we have today. Including freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and petition. This played a big part in the civil rights era because this gave individuals the right to protest the racial injustice that was happening during this time. Without a lot of these occurrences that the first amendment brought to the table; we wouldn’t have had a lot of the landmark cases that turned American around. The United States Supreme Court made these amendments stronger by the court cases that came out of the civil rights movement. 

To start it off, the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896, this case was the outcome of a black man known as Homer Plessy, who performed his right to protest by sitting in an unassigned seat in a segregated train car. The outcome of this case was the justification of racial segregation where the supreme court made the decision to constitutionalize racial segregation under the Sepearte but equal doctrine. Making it okay for discrimination as long as the separation is considered equal; for example public accommodations, including public schools, public

transportation, and even the public use of bathrooms and water fountains. While the whole court deemed this doctrine lawful, one politician who served as an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court wrote a famous dissent on how the decision of this case was absurd. John Marshall Harlan disagreed with the court’s decisions, and wrote his dissenting opinion that “The Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens". 

While this dissent is considered Harlan’s most famous dissent; it wasn't until 58 years later in 1954, where the Brown v. The Board of Education came to the surface where the Separate but Equal Doctrine was brought back to the conversation. This is the case that outlawed the separate accommodations solely on the basis of race; proving that the Separate but Equal doctrine is unconstitutional by violating the 14th Amendment. This case started the Civil Rights era. 

                                                     https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/courage-at-the-greensboro-lunch-counter-4507661/

Though the United States started the civil rights era off with the outlawing of the Separate but Equal doctrine; the United States still existed with segregation and a lot of racism. There were still many segregated restaurants that refused service to African Americans. This brings me to the Greensboro lunch sit-ins in North Carolina; in 1960, four young black men formed a group to exercise their first amendment right to protest by sitting down at the counter of a segregated restaurant and refusing to leave until they received to be treated as customers. While this protest did not change segregation in the blink of an eye; the outcome of this protest sparked the inspiration for all young African Americans to use the same form of protest in restaurants near them; which played a role in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964; where Congress made segregation in public places illegal, allowing African Americans freedom to eat where they want. 

                                                                            https://www.theplayerstribune.com/articles/bill-russell-nba-racial-injustice

The Civil Rights Era was built on racism, Jim Crow laws, and segregation that has happened in our country. This era went on for decades attempting to end the legalization of all racial segregation in the United States. While the idea of this era was to do good, many unjustifiable acts came alongside this era as well. For example in 1965 “Bloody Sunday”, where peaceful protesters put together a march that was intended to go from Selma Alabama to Montgomery Alabama to protest that they had a constitutional right to vote; but ended up being an act of violence towards the marchers where many were hurt in the act even though they were simply exercising their right to protest. While this was a negative occurrence, fortunately, the voting rights act of 1965 came out of it, prohibiting racial voting regulations giving African Americans their constitutional right to vote. 

It is a person's right to protest thanks to the First Amendment; without it, there would be a big change in history and how America works if this amendment didn't exist.