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The Modern Civil Rights Movement General. The modern civil rights movement is said to have begun in 1954-55 with the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The Montgomery bus boycott also saw the emergence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as the leader of the civil rights struggle in the South and later nationwide. In fact the struggle for civil rights for all Americans has been going on since before the American Revolution, and is what that revolution was really about. While it is true that the first American Revolution of 1776 left a lot of people out—women, slaves, native Americans—it nevertheless set the stage for the expansion of rights to all Americans. The Reconstruction era, which has been covered earlier, was the focal point of much civil rights progress, including the 13th through 15th Amendments, the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 and the Ku Klux Klan Acts of the 1870s. Much of the progress made at that time was lost, as we have seen, but the struggle went on with the founding of the N.A.A.C.P. and the gradual erosion of the doctrine of separate but equal laid down in Plessy v. Ferguson. By 1954 a number of Supreme Court cases had whittled away at white supremacy laws and had shown the untenable nature of such doctrines. The Texas primary cases over the decades from 1927-1953 required that all citizens be permitted to vote in primary elections, especially in places where a virtual one-party system existed. In other cases attempts to legally restrict African Americans from professional schools were voided as violations of the 14th Amendment. In the 1940s the federal government had also made moves to end discriminatory practices. In 1946 President Truman created a presidential Committee on Civil Rights, and at the justice Department a Civil rights Division was established, as was a Fair Employment Practices Commission. In 1946 the courts disallowed discrimination on Interstate buses and in 1948 restrictive covenants in real estate transactions were challenged. Also in 1948 President Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the military and the Civil Service. In the early 1950s several court cases struck down various discriminatory provisions in higher education institutions, further demonstrating that "separate but equal" was becoming harder and harder to maintain, even though the courts rejected explicit invitations to address the broader issue of separate but equal. The first great landmark event of the modem movement was the 1954 Browndecision, which reversed Plessy v. Ferguson. The Court declared unanimously that segregation in public education did not constitute equal protection under the law. The initial decision did not explain how desegregation was to be achieved, and the case was heard again in 1955 (Brown II.) Here the Supreme Court directed state courts to resolve the issues locally on an equitable, and required "good faith" implementation with a "prompt and reasonable start.., on racially non-discriminatory bases.., with all deliberate speed." The Court also extended the principle to all public facilities. The reaction to the brown decisions was swift and often violent. Ninety-six Southern Congressmen and Senators issued a "Southern manifesto" swearing to oppose the decision through all legal means. Various states passed nullification or interposition resolutions, and one county in Virginia closed all public schools an reopened them as "private" institutions. Two years after the first Brown ruling there were no blacks in schools anywhere in the South. In December, 1955 Rosa Parks was arrested by Montgomery, Alabama, police for refusing to give up seat to white man. She was member of N.A.A.C.P., and her actions may have been sponsored by that organization. A massive bus boycott followed, and eventually the city was obliged to change its laws. The modem civil rights movement was underway, and Martin Luther King, Jr., emerged as its leader. He was at the time the Pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, just a couple of blocks from the Alabama capitol, where Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederate States of America in 1861. In 1957 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed. Also in that year a Civil Rights Act proposed by President Eisenhower was passed, the first such act since Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Commission and The Civil rights Division in the Justice Department were also established. Under the new law the Attorney General was authorized to enforce the right to vote, and the act also reinforced laws that said interfering with voting was illegal. Senator J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina filibustered agaisnt the act in the Senate and set a filibustering record of 24 hours, 18 minutes. In 1958 the Supreme Court heard the case of the N.A.A.C.P.v. Alabama. Alabama had attempted to inhibit the activities of the N.A.A.C.P., and ordered them to produce various records. The Alabama chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. refused to submit its membership lists to the state on Constitutional grounds and was fined $100,000. The Supreme Court disallowed the Alabama action. Justice Harlan wrote that "immunity from state scrutiny.. · [comes] within the protection of the 14th Amendment." The N.A.A.C.P. therefore did not have to disclose list of members and had a constitutional right to protect its membership. Also in 1958 in the case of Cooper v. Aaron the Arkansas plan for desegregation was challenged. On the day before a desegregation plan was to go into effect, Governor Faubus activated the Arkansas National Guard and placed Central High School off limits to Blacks. The Little Rock School Board obtained an injunction to continue their plan, and Black students entered school under police protection. President Eisenhower, who had followed a "hands-off’ policy in integration, was obliged to send federal troops Little Rock to protect the black children attending school. After further disputes and attempts to stop integration, the Supreme Court ruled that the violence was "directly traceable" to the governor of Arkansas and federal laws could not be nullified, directly or indirectly. In 1960 a new Civil Rights Act strengthened the 1957 Act, and in that year sit-ins began at various public places in the South, the first begin at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. A year later freedom rides to test restrictions on interstate travel began, and violent reaction were the result, as riders were attacked and buses burned. Many different cases made their way through state and federal courts as the straggle to find the exact meanings of the new laws went on. Questions such as jurisdiction, the extent to which states were required to be aggressive in enforcing laws and other relate issues were up in the air for years. In 1962 James Meredith integrated the University of Mississippi, and in the following year massive demonstrations across the South culminated in August with Dr. King’s "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the Mall in Washington. Under President Lyndon Johnson additional Civil rights legislation was passed, and new, more militant Black voices were heard. In New York City in 1965 Malcolm X was assassinated, and Martin Luther King led the famous Selma to Montgomery freedom march. Additional civil rights cases invoked not only new civil rights laws, but one case went back to the 1866 Act and the 13th Amendment to declare that refusing to sell real estate to Blacks constituted a "badge of slavery," which Congress had the power to define. By the late 1960s various states were still struggling with integration, and the courts became less and less sympathetic to explanation of why it was not proceeding faster. By the 1970s the courts were demanding "extreme measures" in that remedial period, which the court saw as a "necessary evil" when all other things were not equal. The extreme measures included such actions as forcing cities to build new schools or to raise taxes to but buses for integration. At the same time the Courts began to recognize that not all segregation was forced or created by law, and some rulings were sympathetic to cities where good faith efforts to integrate had not been able to keep pace with voluntary migration. Some all black, all white schools does not necessarily indicate enforced segregation. Additional Civil Rights links: Civil Rights Home |