Black America: equality, crime and education

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said in 1988: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfilment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die - the dream of freedom and peace."

Rosa Parks made her stand in Alabama on 1 December 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white man and sparked the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott and the beginning of the US civil rights movement. The rebellious act, at the time, could have meant a jail sentence or even the risk of death by vigilantes. She was arrested and fined 14 dollars.

The boycott was organized by a then little-known Baptist minister called Martin Luther King Junior. A year later, in March 1956 Dr. King was found guilty of conspiracy to boycott the buses in Montgomery, but a judge suspended his 500 dollar fine, pending an appeal. The boycott came a year after the US Supreme Court outlawed deliberate racial segregation in public schools in 1954. Clinton High School became the first state-supported school in Tennessee to integrate in August 1956.

More boycotts, sit-ins and protest marches resulted in the 1960s legislation which outlawed racial discrimination and the establishment of the emancipation of black people in the United States of America.

African-Americans are freer, wealthier and more influential forty years after the Voting Rights Act, but while the achievements of those who struggled to get emancipation and equality are celebrated, many African-Americans are still questioning how far they have really come.

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