Modern Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War
United States of America's struggle for civil rights by the blacks is called more accurately as the modern civil rights movement. This is also termed as African American Southern Freedom movement. This is distinguished fight for citizen ship, self-determination, sovereignty, fair treatment as well as the full exercise of the rights. People rallied during this time for the sake of legal, political and cultural changes and worked for the prohibition of discrimination and for ending the segregation. Several generations of agony faced by blacks in America in the form of slavery and in the form of unbounded labour, suppressed their freedom and human spirits and finally during the times of the 1950s and 60s the suffering escalated into the civil rights movement with the evolutions of the some of the great inspiring leaders to the struggle like MLK (King, 2017). The original civil rights movement has started in the late 1940s however it ended later in the 1960s.
However the land mark incident of the modern civil rights movement has started in the year 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African-American Woman was arrested for refusing to move back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Modern civil rights movement became highly organized and with the support from the blacks from all over the nation, the troops joined in the movement against the generations of the suppression and finally with the aide and leadership of some of the great influencers of all time like Martin Luther king, the civil rights movement gained great momentum and also played vital role in the formulation of some legislations like segregation of the racial disparities in the schooling and college education. However still, the assassination of MLK in 1968, put an end of the movement. Inspite of pressures put before by Klu klax Klan, the movement survived but still was ended prematurely due to the death of the great leader. It is often considered America's second civil war due to the participation by millions of blacks who worked for economic boycott as well non-violent civil disobedience, which is of unprecedented dimensions except in the times of the civil war times. The World War II and the global social changes are some of the key factors responsible for shaping and formation of the civil rights movement. Major achievement of the same can be said like constitutional recognition of the African American equality(Levy,2019).
Vietnam War:
Vietnam War was created with the fear of United States that the Southern Vietnam will go communist creating instability to the US capitalist supremacy. In 1949, China went into communism and the North Vietnam is under the control of communists. In this context, USA supported the southern Vietnamese with the money, arms and with military advisers. The tensions of the cold war era, made US to believe that if the communism prevails here and spreads the rest of the counties of South Asia will take it up. Right from the times of US support to the southern Vietnam to protect its from the spread of communistic forces, the war between the two parts of the Vietnam continued till the death of about 3 million people as a whole in Vietnam. Finally the USA withdraw its forces from Vietnam in early seventies, however the war ended only after northern Vietnam seized the total Vietnam and claimed that it is unified under communism. 1968 is also a significant year in the Vietnam war history, it is the time when decisive, " Tet offensive" (Ber Geuered,2018) is launched creating surprise attack over several 100s of cities and towns of Vietnamese. In the same year, the role of television is instrumental in leading to call back of the troops from Vietnam, television broadcasted in the early times the war brutalities over the civilians and also created first hand access to the corrupt polices of the emperor in the country.
Civilians rebutted the US participation in Vietnam war and there were several serious demonstrations against the US decision to participate in the war. However still in the later times, the same television is employed by president Nixon to cover the atrocities and tried to draw support for vietnamization strategies and control delegation to the southern Vietnamese(Page,2016). His appeal to the silent American majority failed and finally the nation moved back its troops to USA. 1968 is a decisive year both for the modern civil rights movement in USA in the form of ending the movement as well in the form decisive control of the southern parts of Vietnam by Northern Vietnam. Both these incidents are key milestones in US history(Herzog,2017).