The first amendment in our Bill of Rights claims that congress cannot make a law that prohibits American citizens to assemble peacefully (“First Amendment”). People protest a variety of different things. Some protests make change and others don’t; that’s a fact. The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s led to the Civil Rights Act, but the Vietnam war protests did nothing (Collins). History can teach us a lot about this topic. They say “learn from your mistakes”, so as Americans, if we want to protest, we must take a look back in history and compare successful protests to unsuccessful protests. As previously mentioned, the Civil Rights movement led to the creation of the Civil Rights Act. Men and women died for this cause, because it meant a lot to everyone involved. The Brown decision of 1954, to stop the segregation in public schools, sparked the beginning of the repealing process of the Jim Crow laws. Now, schools are no longer segregated, along with most other aspects of equality according to race (“Virginia Historical”). We can count that protest as …show more content…
Black Lives Matter was created in 2012 after the death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old who was placed on trial for his own murder after George Zimmerman, the shooter, claimed that the shot was self defence. Black Lives Matter is an organization protesting the validity of black life. Black Lives Matter claims that “black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity” (“About the Black”). Since 2012, there have been over 1,500 protests done by one person to thousands, and there are still demonstrations going on today. But, the BLM has not accomplished anything so far, and one of the reasons is because they do not have a clear message. John Blake, writer for CNN, says that BLM is a movement “without a clear meaning for many Americans”. He states that BLM won’t speak white America’s language and is not going to change their approach. Blake also poses this question, a moment that potentially all protests might face: “what happens when your enemies and unexpected events do a better job of defining your movement than you do?” Blake mentions three other protests in history that this happened to and eventually led to the end and failure of the protests (Blake). So, three things we can take away from protests in history are: no matter how big the protest, change still may never happen, leaders and the people involved in the protest must be ready for anything, and the people involved must be willing to lay everything on the