To what extent was television responsible for the success of the civil rights movement?

The television played a major role in providing success for the civil rights movement. With the television airing all of the marches and court hearings nationally, it helped the civil rights movement progress tremendously. The NAACP’s 1954 court case, Brown vs. Board of Education, along with the murder of Emmet Till and the two white men being acquitted of all charges marked the beginning on the Civil Rights Movement aired nationally. Emmet Till was beaten so badly that you couldn’t even recognize him, and reporters showed that on air nationally. The media coverage of the Till case help expanded the membership of civil right’s organizations nation wide. Civil right’s organizations put together mass boycotts and campaigns to end segregation and inequality, and white supremacist acted violently towards them while the blacks remained nonviolent. The fact that all of this was caught on camera and aired all around the world is what helped the civil rights movement succeed. In Montgomery, Alabama the police arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. When organizations heard about this, they organized a bus boycott in which all black Americans refused to ride the bus for almost a year. While the civil rights organizations were in Birmingham, Alabama, they were abused a lot. The television aired the blacks getting beaten by police, bus loads full of blacks getting thrown in jail, police getting dogs on them, and firefighters shooting them with over a hundred pounds of water. The water was so strong it would knock the bark off of trees, and of course it was knocking blacks down in which most of them were children. Martin Luther King Jr. also went to jail here and it received a lot of media attention. In 1963, African American students requested service at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Mississippi in which only whites were allowed. Here the whites threw students on the floor, poured drink, ketchup, and mustard on them. Also, when nine students were allowed to attend Little Rock, Arkansas, Governor Faubus mobilized units of troops to turn them away. He did remove them, and the whites harassed the black children. Eisenhower had to send in federal troops to protect them, however, they could not go with them everywhere. Last, but definitely not least, was the bombing of the church in Alabama that killed four black little girls. All of these incidents were transmitted all around the world helping lead the civil rights movement to success.