The Black civil rights movement.

During the 1950s there were major events and decisions to enforce the end of separate but equal.  One of these major decisions was Brown vs. The Topeka Board of Education.  In this case the NAACP challenged the right of the local school boards, to run segregated schools and on the 17th May 1954, the Supreme Court decided that segregation in schools was illegal under the constitution as “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” because it “generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may effect their hearts and minds in a way never to be undone.”  This decision led to another period of lynchings and other violence which had declined since the 1920s and in 1955 Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy, was brutally murdered, yet those charged with his murder were acquitted by an all-white jury.  The impact of this decision was enormous and showed the injustice and violence that black Americans in the south had to face and a wave of public sympathy spread in more liberal areas of America.  

Also in 1955 was the Montgomery bus boycott.  It was started by a black woman (Rosa Parks) refusing to give up her seat for a white man.  She was promptly arrested and fined $10 but within forty eight hours there was a twenty four hour bus boycott which was so successful that they decided to continue it until bus companies agreed to end segregation.  Since black passengers accounted for 75% of passengers, the boycott was extremely damaging.  But with segregation under attack, the company – backed by the Mayor and most of the white community, refused to yield.  This boycott was led predominantly by Martin Luther King who became a major leader of the civil rights movement through the organisation of the M.I.A. (N.A.A.C.P. and church together).  Tension increased as the boycott continued and leading blacks were attacked.  Klu Klux Klan members walked the streets, wearing their robes, hoping to intimidate blacks into ending the boycott but these demonstrations was no longer as effective and in 1956 the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was illegal and on 20 December, over a year from the beginning of the boycott, the bus company gave in.  The bus boycott was a psychological turning point and Topeka was yet another legal backing showing that black Americans were not receiving there constitutional rights.

During the 1950s and onwards the media played a critical part in the civil rights movement.  They highlighted the white backlash and showed the injustices that blacks lived with as well as displaying pictures of racist behaviour and assaults.  It encouraged popular support for the civil rights movement and negative P.R. for white racism; it also drew massive global attention to Little Rock and Montgomery and forced the U.S government to act and support the civil rights movement.  This gave a speaking platform for the M.I.A. and Martin Luther King, a young black minister, King’s charisma made him a leading spokesman for the civil right movement and he was incredibly media friendly.  King believed in non-violent direct action and tried not to break the law in anyway.  He was often criticised for this by more militant black leaders but he probably did more for black civil rights that any other black leader of his time.

        Martin Luther King was a major part of the civil rights movement he organised rallies, sit-ins and protests all absent of black aggression even when assaulted by White Americans, this gained the civil rights movement the moral high ground and shamed racism of white Americans through the media, this was seen in the Birmingham protests where Blacks were locked jailed for protesting and the use of fire hoses and dogs were used on protesting crowds, this forced President Kennedy to intervene and he ordered more jobs be made available for the Black Americans. Birmingham was targeted because the city had not desegregated after the Montgomery decision and the police had a history of racism and had links with the Klu Klux Klan. The civil rights movement deliberately targeted areas of high racist tension to provoke White Americans into violence, but some leaders of factions of the civil rights movement believed that change would come through black violence these were people like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and they led groups such as the Nation of Islam, the S.N.C.C. and the Black Panthers and they were highly critical of Kings peaceful protests.

The civil rights movement had been fighting for seventy to eighty years with groups like the N.A.A.C.P. leading the way and figures such as Marcus Garvey restoring black pride.  And by the 1950s the law finally agreed that separate but equal was not giving blacks the rights guaranteed to them under the 14th and 15th amendments.  The civil rights movement no longer needed to prove segregation was unconstitutional but now needed to fight to have it enforced.  The Cold War also showed America that although they claimed theirs was the land of the free, in fact almost every black in America had been racially persecuted; this realisation meant that the civil rights movement gained more support from whites as well as blacks.  Now leaders like King, and Malcolm X in the later years of his life, needed to apply pressure to ensure blacks gained their rights and both lost their lives for this fight.