Forest Gump. Дроздова И.В. - 6 стр.

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                                     Follow Up
I In what way does Forest Gump’s life pattern resemble the start of Elvis Presley’s
   career ?
II What do the terms «segregation» and «desegregation» mean?

                                The Rise of Segregation.

   The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments – added to the U.S.
 Constitution between 1865 and 1870 – ended slavery, made black citizens, and gave
 black Americans the right to vote. During the reconstruction, a period after the war
 when the Southern states were under military rule, blacks voted and were elected to
 office. It seemed as though the former slaves might be incorporated into American life
 on an equal basis with other citizens. But this didn’t happen. One reason was that there
 was no real land reform. Plantations were not broken up, and most blacks still owned
 no property. Another reason was racism. Upset by black freedom, many Southern
 whites argued for segregation – for the separation of blacks and whites. Whites used
 violence against blacks. Lynching, or hangings committed by mobs, became common.
 Southern states passed laws to keep blacks from voting – for example, by imposing
 taxes and literacy requirements. By the early twentieth century, every Southern state
 also had laws enforcing segregation – blacks and whites were separated in schools,
 parks, trains, hospitals and other public places.

                               The Civil Rights Movement.

    The civil rights movement gained strength in the 1950 s. Blacks had fought in World
  War II, and after the war many blacks had migrated from farms to cities. They were
  less willing to put up with unequal conditions.
    The Montgomery bus boycott, in 1955, was an important event in black’s struggle
  for equal treatment. Buses in Montgomery, Alabama were segregated. Whites sat in
  the front of the bus; blacks had to sit in the back. One day Rosa Parks, a black
  seamstress, was on her way home from work. The bus became crowded, and she was
  told to give her sit to a white man. This, too, was the law. Rosa Parks refused to give
  up her seat. She was arrested and fined. This incident angered Montgomery’s black
  community. It was time to change the law, community leaders decided. And they
  thought of a strategy: they would boycott – refuse to use – the buses. Since many bus
  riders were blacks, this strategy was effective – and was fiercely fought by the white
  community. The boycott lasted for over a year. In 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
  that bus segregation was against the law of the United States.
     One of the civil rights movement’s great leaders emerged from the Montgomery
boycott. The boycott had been partly organized by the then – unknown minister of
Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a man named Dr. Martin Luther King,
Dr.Jr., who advocated nonviolent protest. In the early 1960s there were many sit-ins, in
which protestors would, for example, sit at segregated lunch counters. There were also
voter registration drives, in which volunteers registered people to vote. Although these
civil rights efforts were nonviolent, they often met with violent responses on the part of