Did the civil rights movement happen 100 years after slavery?

Answer 1

Yes, it could be said that the Civil Rights Movement (as embodied in the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., for example) started roughly 100 years after the civil war. The Civil War was fought from 1861 to 1865 and Rosa Parks confrontation on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama occurred in 1955 which precipitated a boycott by African Americans of busses that practiced Jim Crow segregation. It is important, however not to discount many actions and events that pre-dated Dr. King's involvement. You have people such as Dr. Vernon Johns who was a civil rights activist at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church just before Dr. King became the minister there and there are many other events that promoted civil rights even though they wouldn't be considered part of "the civil rights movement" such as the service of the Tuskeegee airmen in WWII and the desegregation of the military in 1948 by then President Harry Truman. And Thurgood Marshall's arguing Brown vs. the Topeka Board of education before the Supreme court in 1954 (Marshall eventually was appointed to the Supreme court in 1967) which struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine that was the basis of Jim Crow laws in the south. But the "Freedom Riders" and the protest marches that swept across America along with the rise of militant groups such as the Black Panthers and Malcolm X (involved with the Nation of Islam), all happened in the late 1950's and on into the 1960's