Maya Angelous work has been heavily affected by the era in which she began to write. The fifties and sixties was a tumultuous time for most African-Americans in the US. The civil-rights movement, led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others, was instrumental in securing legislation, notably the civil-rights acts of 1964 and 1968 and the voting rights act of 1965, prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations, schools, employment, and voting for reasons of color, race, religion, or national origin. But all this was gained at a great price, and it was payed with the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., the freedom of many saints who sacrificed for the greater cause, and many years of hard work. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and others pushed for desegregation and equal rights in the face of strong white opposition, and it sometimes became violent. Many whites protested integration.In 1951, Florida NAACP state secretary Harry T. Moore and his wife Harriet were killed Christmas night in a bombing of their house. No arrests were ever made. In 1953, black political leader Lamar D. Smith, 63, was shot to death in front of the Lincoln County Courthouse at Brookhaven, Mississippi, after seeking to qualify blacks to vote. More than 20 people witnessed the shooting, including several blacks, but nobody admitted to having seen anything and no witnesses testified against the three white men charged with the murder. In 1954, black minister George W. Lee was killed gangl style at Belzoni, Mississippi, after a week of terror during which whites have vandalized blacks property. The blacks had refused to send their children to racially segregated schools, the whites had retaliated by refusing credit to blacks at local stores, and Lee had campaigned for black voting rights. In 1956, Southern congressmen issue a manifesto March 11 pledging...
