The Civil Rights Movement from 1954 to 1968

866 Words2 Pages

It was a hard time, and for many black persons, it seemed as if all the broken promises of Reconstruction were epitomized in the actions of the Supreme Court of the United States. Ever since the 1870's, the Court had been eviscerating the congressional legislation and constitutional amendments that had been established at the height of Reconstruction to protect some of the basic citizenship rights of black people.

1954 was a new time and more than tears and words were needed. Just about everyone that was black and alive at the time realized that the long, hard struggles, led by the NAACP, had forced the Supreme Court to take a major stand on the side of justice in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision. "We conclude, unanimously, that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." A salvation of freedom was in the making, but the making proved difficult indeed. The next decade brought racial war to the South. The eleven years between the Brown decision in 1954 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 appeared to be a prolonged series of bloody conflicts and irrational white pig-headedness, with fiery protestations that the white south would never cave in.

In December 1955, a mass movement that would change the system of segregation is sparked by Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama. Rosa Parks, tired after a long day's work and tired of a lifetime of discrimination, was resting in her seat on the way home when several white men loaded on the bus, more than the existing white section could hold. The bus driver then yelled to the blacks, "Niggers, move back." Rosa Parks refused to budge. The bus driver stopped the bus ...

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...us boycott, a sophisticated and determined civil rights leadership holds fast to nonviolent tactics to gain voting rights for all Americans. The commitment to the nonviolent approach almost wavers when marchers are beaten and tear-gassed. National attention puts pressure on white Alabama's resistance to the voting rights movement. A solid victory results when President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The rise of the black power movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in March 1968, and President Johnson announcing that he would not run for reelection, made the election year of 1968 chaotic. The 1968 election was close, with Wallace winning 40 percent of the southern white vote overall, but less than a third in the surrounding South, where Nixon received 45 percent of the white vote. Nixon squeaked through to win the presidency.

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