Racism is one of the most controversial topics in recent history. It has plagued all of the world for centuries and continues to do so today. One thing that I never really comprehended was the scale of racism in America and just how impactful it has been especially in the early days of the civil rights movement.

I don’t think that I really saw the scale until recently when my class started our work on looking at the civil rights movement. The project requires a good understanding of the movement and it’s history so we have been learning about the various major events, a lot of which I hadn’t heard about until now.

In my head the racism of the 20s 30s etc was never quite on the same scale as what was shown to me in the films and articles we discussed. There was some really horrifying at how normal it all seemed to the people committing these acts. Its really hard to put yourself in their shoes and to justify why some things took so long to change.

A specific thing that stuck out to me was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I had heard about this before I watched a movie on it and read about it in detail, this event in particular interested with how much effort it took to get the law passed. Something as simple as where you can sit on a bus was controlled by white people and it took boycotts and protests with thousands of people to eventually end the law. In retrospect the rules seem so nonsensical and meaningless, what is there to gain by separating where people sit based off of skin color. Thats why I still have a hard time understanding why all of this needed to happen. It seems like the government clung to these laws for no reason at all fighting against it’s own people to retain something as trivial as seating.

What I hope to get out of this project out of my own curiosity is an understanding of why?

Why was segregation used in the first place?

Why was it so important to white people of the time?

How do we compare in the modern era?

I truly didn’t know as much about this as I originally thought and with whats going on in modern times there has never been a greater moment to learn about the civil rights movement.