The Civil Rights Movement 1954-1965

The Civil Rights Movement 1954-1965

The civil rights movement was the struggle by African Americans to achieve equal rights and end racial segregation and discrimination. Although Black Americans had been free from slavery since 1865, by the mid-20th century they still faced systematic oppression, particularly in the Southern states, where Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation in schools, transport, restaurants, and public facilities.

Segregation and Inequality

In the early 1950s, African Americans in the South faced:

• Segregated schools, hospitals, buses, restaurants, drinking fountains, and toilets
• Voting restrictions — literacy tests, poll taxes, and intimidation kept most Black Southerners from voting. In Mississippi, only 5% of eligible Black citizens were registered to vote in 1960.
• Violence and intimidation — The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used terror, beatings, bombings, and lynchings. Between 1882 and 1968, nearly 5,000 lynchings were recorded, most in the South.
• Economic inequality — Black workers earned, on average, half the income of white workers.

Key Events

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

• Oliver Brown sued the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, because his daughter Linda had to travel miles to a segregated Black school when a white school was nearby.
• The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, ruled unanimously that segregated schools were unconstitutional: "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
• This overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had allowed "separate but equal" facilities.
• However, implementation was slow — many Southern states resisted. By 1957, only 3% of Black children in the South attended integrated schools.

Little Rock, Arkansas (1957)

• Nine Black students (the Little Rock Nine) attempted to attend the all-white Central High School in September 1957.
• Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to block them.
• President Eisenhower sent 1,000 federal troops (101st Airborne Division) to escort the students into school — the first time a president had used federal troops to enforce civil rights since Reconstruction.
• The students faced abuse, spitting, and threats throughout the year. Ernest Green became the first Black student to graduate from Central High in 1958.

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956)

• On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested.
• The Black community, led by the young pastor Dr Martin Luther King Jr, organised a boycott of the city's buses. 40,000 Black residents walked, carpooled, or cycled for 381 days.
• The boycott caused severe financial losses for the bus company (Black riders were 75% of passengers).
• In November 1956, the Supreme Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional. The boycott ended on 20 December 1956.
• The boycott made Martin Luther King Jr a national figure and demonstrated the power of non-violent direct action.

Sit-ins and Freedom Rides (1960-1961)

• 1 February 1960 — Four Black college students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They sat quietly and refused to leave. Within weeks, sit-ins spread to 54 cities in 9 states.
• Freedom Rides (1961) — Organised by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), mixed groups of Black and white activists rode buses through the South to test desegregation of interstate transport. Riders were attacked and beaten, and a bus was firebombed in Anniston, Alabama. The violence forced the federal government to enforce desegregation of interstate travel.

March on Washington (1963)

• On 28 August 1963, over 250,000 people marched to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.
• Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, calling for racial equality and an end to discrimination.
• The march was a major factor in persuading President Kennedy (and later Johnson) to push for civil rights legislation.

Key Legislation

Law	Date	What It Did
Civil Rights Act	1964	Outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin. Banned segregation in public places and employment discrimination
Voting Rights Act	1965	Banned literacy tests and other measures used to prevent Black Americans from voting. Federal examiners could register voters in states with low registration
24th Amendment	1964	Abolished the poll tax in federal elections

Key Exam Points

• Know the chronology of key events and be able to explain their significance.
• Be prepared to evaluate the role of individuals (King, Parks, the Little Rock Nine) versus organisations (NAACP, CORE, SCLC) and government action.
• Questions often ask you to assess the most important turning point in the civil rights movement.