8.6 Early Steps in the Civil Rights Movement (1940s and 1950s)

After World War II, African Americans began making important progress in their fight for equal rights. Black veterans returned from fighting for democracy overseas only to face discrimination at home, which didn't seem fair. Between 1945 and 1960, people fighting for civil rights used court cases, political pressure, and peaceful protests to challenge segregation. Their hard work set the stage for the bigger civil rights victories that would come in the 1960s.

Image Courtesy of Library of Congress

Presidential Leadership on Civil Rights

The federal government began taking more active steps toward racial equality after World War II. Having presidents who supported civil rights helped challenge discrimination that had existed for a long time.

Truman and Civil Rights

President Harry Truman was the first modern president to use his powers to directly challenge racial discrimination. Even though he grew up in Missouri where segregation was common, Truman believed racial inequality went against American ideals.

In 1946, Truman created the Committee on Civil Rights to look into discrimination and suggest solutions. The committee's 1947 report called for several important changes, including:

• Getting rid of poll taxes that stopped many Black citizens from voting
• Creating federal laws against lynching
• Ending segregation in the military and federal government

Truman followed through on these recommendations by:

• Ordering the military to desegregate in 1948
• Making the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department stronger
• Supporting efforts to end school segregation

Truman also wanted to create a Fair Employment Practice Commission to prevent racial discrimination in hiring, but Southern Democrats in Congress blocked this idea. Despite this setback, Truman's actions marked an important shift in the federal government's approach to civil rights.

Legal Challenges to Segregation

African American civil rights organizations used the courts to fight segregation laws. They worked to make the 14th Amendment's promise of equal protection under the law a reality for Black Americans.

The NAACP's Legal Strategy

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, became the leading organization fighting for civil rights through the legal system. Led by talented lawyers including Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP carefully planned how to challenge segregation laws in court.

The NAACP's approach included:

• Picking strong cases with people the public could sympathize with
• Building legal arguments based on the Constitution
• Gathering evidence showing how segregation harmed Black people
• Working through lower courts to eventually reach the Supreme Court

For decades, the NAACP worked to overturn the Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which had allowed "separate but equal" facilities for different races. The organization won several important victories in cases involving graduate schools before taking on the much bigger challenge of public school segregation.

Brown v. Board of Education

The NAACP's biggest victory came in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The case was about Linda Brown, an African American student who had to travel far from her home to attend a segregated Black school when a white school was much closer.

Image Courtesy of Harvard University

Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP legal team made several strong arguments:

• Segregated schools violated the 14th Amendment's promise of equal protection
• "Separate but equal" facilities were never really equal
• Segregation hurt Black children psychologically

To support this last point, the NAACP presented research showing that segregation made Black children feel inferior. In one study, Black children consistently chose white dolls as "nice" and Black dolls as "bad," showing how segregation damaged their self-image.

In May 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Brown. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and violated the Constitution. The following year, in Brown II, the Court ordered schools to desegregate "with all deliberate speed."

Southern Resistance to Brown

Many white Southerners strongly opposed the Brown decision and worked to delay or prevent school integration. Their resistance took several forms:

• 101 members of Congress signed the "Southern Manifesto," a document opposing the Court's decision and promising to resist integration through legal means
• Some school districts temporarily closed public schools rather than integrate
• Others created private "segregation academies" for white students
• Many school boards used "pupil placement laws" to assign students to schools based on factors they could manipulate to maintain segregation
• Some communities used threats and violence to keep Black students from attending white schools

This massive resistance slowed down school desegregation considerably. Ten years after the Brown decision, less than 2% of Black students in the Deep South attended integrated schools.

Grassroots Activism

While legal challenges made their way through the courts, African Americans also began organizing at the community level to fight discrimination in daily life. These local efforts would help build the bigger movements of the 1960s.

Racism on the Road

African Americans faced many dangers and humiliations when traveling, especially in the South. They were often refused service at restaurants, hotels, and gas stations, and could face violence if they entered the wrong establishment.

Victor Green, a postal worker from New York City, created The Negro Motorist Green Book to help Black travelers stay safe. This guidebook listed:

• Hotels and motels that would accept Black guests
• Restaurants that would serve Black customers
• Gas stations where Black motorists could buy gas and use restrooms
• Other businesses that were "friendly" to African American travelers

The Green Book became essential for Black families planning trips, especially through the South. It showed both how bad Jim Crow segregation was and how creative the Black community was in finding solutions.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

One of the most successful early mass protests against segregation began in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955. Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old seamstress and NAACP member, refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger as required by local segregation laws. Her arrest sparked a community-wide boycott of the city's buses.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott:

• Lasted 385 days, from December 1955 to December 1956
• Was organized by local Black leaders including E.D. Nixon and Jo Ann Robinson
• Involved thousands of African Americans walking to work or arranging carpools
• Created major financial pressure on the bus company
• Ended when the Supreme Court ruled Montgomery's bus segregation laws unconstitutional

The boycott showed the power of economic pressure and community organization. It also introduced the nation to a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr., who emerged as the boycott's most inspiring leader.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Nonviolent Resistance

As the Montgomery Bus Boycott brought national attention to civil rights issues, Martin Luther King Jr. became the movement's most powerful and influential leader. King's leadership style was characterized by:

• Powerful speeches that appealed to American ideals of freedom and equality
• A philosophy of nonviolent resistance inspired by Mahatma Gandhi
• Religious language that connected civil rights to Christian principles
• A vision of races coming together rather than remaining divided

King taught protesters to respond to hatred and violence with dignity and self-control. He instructed them, "If cursed, do not curse back. If struck, do not strike back, but evidence love and goodwill at all times." This approach helped win public sympathy for the movement, especially as television began showing images of peaceful protesters facing violent opposition.

Early Protest Organizations

Following the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, civil rights leaders created new organizations to coordinate their efforts:

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded by King in 1957, organized Black churches and ministers to support civil rights work. The SCLC recognized that churches played a central role in Black communities and used their moral authority and organizational resources to promote civil rights.

In 1960, a new wave of activism began when four Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat down at a whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth's and asked to be served. Though they were denied service, they returned day after day with growing numbers of supporters. This sparked similar "sit-ins" across the South, as students peacefully demanded service at segregated establishments.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed shortly after the Greensboro sit-ins to coordinate these student protests. SNCC organized sit-ins to integrate restaurants, hotels, libraries, swimming pools, and transportation facilities throughout the South.

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The early Civil Rights Movement made important progress between 1945 and 1960. Through presidential actions, court cases, and peaceful protests, African Americans and their allies challenged deeply rooted systems of segregation. While full equality was still far off, these early efforts paved the way for the bigger civil rights victories that would come in the 1960s. The movement's early leaders showed that determined citizens could use the Constitution, the courts, economic pressure, and moral appeals to help America live up to its promise of equal rights for all.