The Race Issue in America 1929-90
5. Civil Rights Movement
While there had been some changes in the lives of black Americans since 1929, legally enforced
segregation in the twenty states with the highest black populations, kept them apart and worse off
than white Americans. Schools, restaurants, theatres, even drinking fountains were separate. In this
episode we will explore the origins, events and results of the Civil Rights movement, as the 1950s
saw a massive change in action and opinion in the US
While it is tempting to think of one, unified ‘Civil Rights Movement’, in fact it developed from a
series of separate events that took place from 1954 onwards.
Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka
The first of those was the legal challenge that the NAACP launched to legally segregated schools. If
you remember from episode 2, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People
had been using public enquiries and legal challenges as a means of both challenging segregation and
raising awareness of its impact. This particular challenge was to the legal right of the school board
in Topeka in Kansas to run segregated schools. The case was knows as ‘Brown vs Board of
Education of Topeka’ and became important because of the verdict, in which the Supreme Court,
the highest court in America, declared segregation in schools to be illegal. This had massive
implications, as 20 states, and Washington DC ran a segregated school system.
While on the one hand this was a clear victory for Civil Rights campaigners, it also showed the
extent to which segregation was ingrained in the Southern States. Two years after the ruling, six
states still had fully segregated schools, and the rest had made only small steps towards integration.
The power of the Ku Klux Klan meant that those who did push for change were threatened,
beaten or in some cases killed. With judges, politicians and police in the Klan, there was little
chance that any changes in the law would be enforced in many Southern States,
Emmett Till
The second key event was to draw this fact to the attention of the rest of America, and it was the
murder of the 15 year old Emmett Till in 1955. Emmett was from Chicago in the North, and when
he was visiting relatives in Mississippi in the south he was dared by some friends to talk to a white
woman, something perfectly acceptable in the North, but unthinkable in the South. As the boys left
the shop he was aleged to have said ‘Bye Baby’ and wolf whistled to a married white woman.
Three days later he was kidnapped, beaten and murdered by the woman’s husband and half
brother. When his mutilated body was found, his mother insisted on leaving his coffin open for his
funeral, and pictures of his badly beaten face made it to pages of newspapers and magazines. Under
the media spotlight, the all-white jury acquitted (cleared) the men accused of his murder and a
sense of outrage began to spread through much of the America.
The Race Issue in America 1929-90
The Bus Boycott
In the same year as Emmett Till’s murder, the Bus Boycott took place in Montgomery, Alabama
showed the growing power of black people.
After Rosa Parks had been arrested and fined for failing to give up her seat to a white man on the
bus, her friends and family decided to stage a 24 hour boycott. This was so popular that it quickly
grew into a boycott by blacks of the bus system, until the company introduced a first come-first
serve system. The bus company and the mayor refused to back down, but neither did the
campaigners, and by sticking together, the black Americans, who accounted for around 75% of the
bus companies customers started to get noticed.
Despite violence against the campaigners, including the bombing of one of the leaders homes, the
campaign lasted until December 1956 when, following a ruling from the Supreme Court that
segregation on busses was illegal, the company backed down. Black Americans were able to
celebrate a real victory, and one of the leaders who had maintained that non-violent protest was
the best way to get change began to get more attention. His name was Martin Luther King.
Little Rock
The fourth key event takes us back to education, and the ruling by the Supreme Court that
segregated schools were illegal. In Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas the governor used state
troops to prevent nine black pupils from enrolling at Little Rock High School in September 1959.
President Eisenhower ordered the troops back to barracks, and sent paratroopers in to protect
the students from the spitting, jeering white students. While black people were now protected by
the law, this showed that there was still a long way to go before attitudes toward them changed in
many southern states.
The pace of protest began to increase as the 1950’s gave way to the 1960s. Sit-in’s were organised
in segregated restaurants, libraries and theatres, and freedom riders travelled into the deep south
on busses, deliberately breaking local laws that still enforced segregation. This was dangerous, and
many ended up beaten and in prison, where they were treated extremely badly. However, public
support was on their side and increasingly, pressure was put on politicians, including the new
president, John F Kennedy to intervene. When the Chief of Police of Birmingham, Alabama ordered
his men to attack protesters organised by Martin Luther King, including children, with fire hoses,
dogs, tear gas and even electric cattle prods, the images were printed in newspapers and broadcast
on television across the country. Opinion, especially in the northern states, was that something had
to be done.
March on Washington
In 1963, a march was planned which brought together all the various Civil Rights groups from
across the US, and various other campaigners. The March on Washington on 28th August 1963 saw
over 1/4 million people, including 60,000 whites march through the capital, to a rally on the steps
The Race Issue in America 1929-90
of the Lincoln Memorial where one of the Leaders, Martin Luther King gave his now legendary ‘I
have a dream speech’. The success of the march, coupled with growing fear of violence in the South
led Kennedy to finally propose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed racial discrimination in
employment, hotels, restaurants, amusement areas and any body receiving government money,
including schools. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was set up to investigate
complaints and take action as necessary. The law was passed after his death and was followed by
laws banning discrimination in voting, housing and the repeal of laws preventing inter-racial
marriages.
In many respects the Civil Rights movement were a massive success. Ten years after Brown vs
Board of Education of Topeka, segregation was largely illegal and laws now offered protection to
blacks. Martin Luther King and other like him had demonstrated that black Americans were just as
responsible and capable as white Americans and their non-violent approach, even in the face of
extreme provocation had won them many admirers, not just in northern states but across the
world. In the longer term, once black people had access to better education, and had voting rights,
an increasing number of black American were able to get themselves good jobs, and get themselves
voted into local and national political office. However, the Civil Rights movement had focussed
many on legal segregation in the South, even in the North where blacks were theoretically equal,
most lived in slum housing in city ghettos, faced high unemployment and poor schools. By the mid
1960’s a new movement was beginning, a movement that called for ‘Black Power’
For your exam.
Make sure you know about the key events of the Civil Rights movement - Brown vs Board of
Education of Topeka, Emmett Till, The Bus Boycott, Little Rock, and the March on Washington.
You also need to be able to give both sides of the argument to the question of whether the Civil
Rights movement was successful.