09 The Civil Rights Movement

A broad struggle for equal citizenship

The postwar civil rights movement was a broad struggle to end racial segregation and discrimination and secure equal citizenship. African Americans were its central force, using local organizing, national organizations, legal challenges, boycotts, demonstrations, voter-registration drives, and lobbying. The movement built on a much longer history of Black activism and depended on countless local people, including students and women, as well as prominent leaders.

Court rulings and grassroots protest

The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education held that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. The ruling rejected “separate but equal” in public education, but implementation faced fierce resistance.

In 1957, Arkansas officials obstructed the enrollment of nine Black students at Little Rock’s Central High School. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to protect the students and enforce a federal court order. The crisis demonstrated that court rulings might require federal enforcement when state officials resisted.

Grassroots protest also brought national attention to segregation. After Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955, Montgomery activists organized a year-long bus boycott. The Supreme Court ruled against bus segregation, helping make the boycott a landmark victory and bringing Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence.

Direct action builds national pressure

In 1960, Black college students began sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. The protests spread across the South and helped spur the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The following year, interracial Freedom Riders challenged segregation in interstate bus travel. Violent attacks on the riders prompted federal authorities to enforce desegregation rules for interstate transportation.

In 1963, campaigns in Birmingham, Alabama, combined marches, sit-ins, and boycotts to challenge segregation. Images of police using dogs and high-pressure fire hoses against demonstrators, including young people, intensified national pressure for federal action. That August, more than 200,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, calling for civil rights and economic opportunity.

Federal action and the Civil Rights Act

Federal involvement developed in stages. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981 ordered equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces. The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 established federal civil-rights bodies and strengthened federal authority to address voting-rights violations, although their protections were limited. The intervention at Little Rock demonstrated another federal role: enforcing court-ordered school desegregation.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy called for comprehensive civil-rights legislation. After Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson pressed Congress to pass the proposal. The resulting Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited segregation in many public accommodations, barred discrimination in federally assisted programs, strengthened federal authority to address school desegregation, and prohibited employment discrimination. Its Title VII established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce workplace protections. The act was a major legal victory, but it did not by itself end discrimination or remove all barriers to voting.

Voting rights and fair housing

Voting rights remained a central focus. In Selma, Alabama, peaceful marchers seeking voting rights were attacked by state troopers on March 7, 1965, in an event widely known as “Bloody Sunday.” The brutality drew national attention and helped spur federal action.

Signed on August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act prohibited racial discrimination in voting, suspended literacy tests in covered jurisdictions, and authorized federal examiners and federal review of certain changes to voting rules. The act enabled a sharp rise in Black voter registration.

Civil-rights campaigns also addressed discrimination beyond segregation in schools and public facilities. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 included the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

Achievements and unfinished struggles

The laws of the 1960s dismantled important legal foundations of segregation and gave the federal government stronger tools to protect civil rights. However, legal change did not immediately produce equality in housing, education, employment, income, or treatment by public institutions. Discrimination, unequal opportunity, and resistance to integration persisted.

By the late 1960s, some activists debated whether nonviolent protest and legal reform alone could achieve economic and social equality. The era demonstrated that sustained organizing made constitutional rights more meaningful, while the passage of a law was a beginning—not the end—of enforcing equality.