American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to primarily African American citizens of United States. There have been many movements on behalf of other groups in the U.S. over time, but the term is often used to refer to the struggles between 1955 and 1968 to end discrimination against African-Americans and to end racial segregation, especially in the U.S. South. See African American for information on how various terms have been used at that time period for African Americans.

Mass action replaces litigation

Up through 1955 the civil rights movement in the South had largely been fought in courtrooms: while the NAACP had chapters throughout the South that attempted to register voters and protested discrimination, those efforts were often uncoordinated, while local authorities regularly harassed those organizations and the activists in them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That strategy shifted after Brown, however, to "direct action"—primarily bus boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience—from 1955 to 1965. In part this was the unintended result of the local authorities' attempt to outlaw and harass the mainstream civil rights organizations throughout the Deep South. The State of Alabama had effectively barred the NAACP from operating in Alabama in 1956 by requiring it to give the state a list of its members, then enjoining it from operating within the state when it failed to do so. While the United States Supreme Court ultimately reversed the order, for a few years in the mid-1950s the NAACP was unable to operate above-ground in Alabama.

Related Topics:
Boycott - Sit-in - Freedom rides - 1955 - 1965 - Deep South - NAACP - 1956

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Churches and local grassroots organizations stepped in to fill the gap, and brought with them a much more energetic and broad-based style than the more legalistic approach of groups such as the NAACP.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The most important step forward was in Montgomery, Alabama, where longtime NAACP activists Rosa Parks and Edgar Nixon prevailed on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-1956. Activists and church leaders in other communities, such as Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had used the boycott in recent years, although those efforts often withered away after a few days. In Montgomery, on the other hand, the Montgomery Improvement Association created to lead the boycott managed to keep the boycott going for a year until a federal court order required Montgomery to desegregate its buses. The success in Montgomery made King a nationally known figure and triggered other bus boycotts, such as the highly successful Tallahassee, Florida boycott of 1956-1957.

Related Topics:
Montgomery, Alabama - Rosa Parks - Edgar Nixon - Martin Luther King, Jr. - Montgomery bus boycott - Baton Rouge, Louisiana - Tallahassee, Florida

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, and other activists, such as Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. The SCLC, with its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, did not attempt to create a network of chapters, the way the NAACP did, but offered training and other assistance for local efforts to fight segregation, while raising funds, mostly from northern sources, to support these campaigns. It made non-violence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism.

Related Topics:
Ralph Abernathy - T. J. Jemison - Fred Shuttlesworth - Ella Baker - A. Philip Randolph - Bayard Rustin - Stanley Levison - Southern Christian Leadership Conference - 1957 - Atlanta, Georgia - Non-violence

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In 1957, Septima Clarke, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins, with the help of the Highlander Folk School began the first Citizenship Schools in South Carolina's Sea Islands, to teach literacy to allow blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success, tripling the number of black voters on St. John Island. The program was taken over by the SCLC and copied in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama.

Related Topics:
Septima Clarke - Bernice Robinson - Esau Jenkins - Highlander Folk School - Citizenship Schools - South Carolina - Sea Islands - St. John Island

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~