There were other Supreme Court rulings which upheld black civil rights and promoted them such as Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of education (1971). This case dealt with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. This was done to ensure the schools would be "properly" integrated and that all students would receive equal educational opportunities regardless of their race. However this case was not as important in my opinion and was not as significant as the earlier case in 1954. This is partly due to the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court at this time. Chief Justice Earl Warren was a liberal Republican and during Warren’s period as Chief Justice witnessed strong support by the Court for civil rights reforms. Warren burger who succeeded Earl Warren in 1969 was a conservative and for that reason I believe the decisions which came about during his period were not as significant.
On the other hand the Supreme Court did not just help the civil rights movement for African Americans. As I have briefly touched on, the Plessy v Ferguson case of 1896 hindered rather than helped the civil rights movement.
You can however argue that the appearance of Martin Luther King was a turning point. Moreover, a great black leader emerged, Martin Luther King. Ironically chosen because he was seen as cautious, King proved to be a great motivator. Organizing frequent night time rallies and his and other local churches, he re-charged the batteries of the civil rights movement. By articulating the feelings and frustrations of the black community in a clear, intelligent and persuasive way, he created a close link between the black civil rights leadership and the less educated African American man and woman that the NAACP in general, and men like Du Bois in particular, had often failed to achieve. In addition, within a year King had setup a new civil rights organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Ralph Abernathy as his deputy. His contributions to the African American civil rights movement included the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1956 which put financial pressure on the authorities who initially unwisely refused the slightest concessions. It ruled segregation on buses to be unconstitutional with similar reasoning to the Linda Brown case.
On the other hand, King might not have had so much success without the foundations which were laid in the Brown v Topeka case and that it would have been much more difficult to get further legislations passed such as the Voting Rights Act (1965) and the Civil Rights Act (1964).
The pressure brought about by the different civil rights organisations and the growing realisation that equality was needed for African Americans. Organisations such as CORE, SNCC, NAACP and the SCLC helped mobilise not only the black community but the white as well. The vigour of all the protests which took place in the 1950’s and 60’s and the commitment and courage of the sit-in demonstrators and Freedom Riders, again succeeded in mobilising important elements of the black community. This time it was not so much the older members, tired of the injustices of segregation, but the younger ones, who became involved. Their expectations were beginning to be raised, but they still found their race a bar to their progress in US society. Again, CORE was to be prominent in this development along with the SNCC, which had also organised some of the Freedom Rides. On the whole though the pressure from the civil rights movement cannot be seen as a turning point however you can see a pattern to emerge from the Brown v Topeka case through to the late 1960’s in the progress made for the civil rights movement.
The role of two liberal Presidents, John F Kennedy and his successor Lyndon B Johnson can in fact be seen as a turning point and a change in the continuity of Presidents role in the African American civil rights movement. The assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963 as he was preparing a Civil Rights Bill seemed to be a setback for the movement. However the new president, Johnson, needed little persuasion to act. He skilfully exploited the shocked mood of the American people after the death of Kennedy to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made universal what was already happening in many areas of the US but not in the Deep South. It was a major achievement and the southern resistance had been largely affected. In addition to this Johnson also passed the Voting Rights Bill in 1965 which was a great success and can indeed be seen as a turning point. However I do not believe that Presidents role in the African American civil rights movement was as important over the period 1865-1992 as the Supreme Court Rulings, namely Brown v Topeka.
