American civil rights movement | Key Facts (2024)

The American civil rights movement that came to prominence in the 1950s had its roots in the 19th-century struggle to abolish slavery.

Basic civil rights were granted to emancipated African Americans during the Reconstruction era (1865–77) that followed the Civil War. But almost as soon as Reconstruction ended, white supremacy was reinstitutionalized in the South, primarily through the system of Jim Crow segregation that was legitimized by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Plessy Ferguson case (1896), which established the constitutionality of “separate but equal” facilities for Black and white people.

Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955 sparked a sustained bus boycott that inspired mass protests elsewhere to speed the pace of civil rights reform.

Martin Luther King, Jr., a local pastor who successfully led the Montgomery bus boycott, became the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement by advocating the principles of civil disobedience and nonviolent protest pioneered by Indian activist Mahatma Gandhi.

The principal organizations that coordinated and assisted local organizations working for the full equality of African Americans during the 1950s and ’60s were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and National Urban League.

Two of the so-called Reconstruction Amendments—the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship and equal rights to formerly enslaved people, and the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude”—were the cornerstones of legal challenges to racial discrimination during the civil rights movement.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown Board of Education of Topeka (1954) that public school segregation was unconstitutional is a landmark of the civil rights movement. While the ruling applied only to public schools, it implied that segregation in other public facilities was unconstitutional as well.

The Greensboro sit-in (1960) marked a new phase of the Southern civil rights movement by sparking similar protests in some 60 communities.

The Freedom Rides of 1961 signaled the beginning of a period when civil rights protest activity grew in scale and intensity as nonviolent activists confronted Southern segregation at its strongest points so as to pressure the federal government to intervene to protect the constitutional rights of African Americans.

Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington in 1963 linked Black civil rights aspirations with traditional American political values.

Television broadcasts showing the hyper-violent response to demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama (1963), and on the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the Selma March (1965) played a major role in increasing Northern support for the civil rights movement.

By the late 1960s new militant organizations, such as the Black Panther Party, dismissed nonviolent principles and argued that civil rights reforms did not fully address the problems of Black Americans.

Black Power, a revolutionary movement of the 1960s and ’70s, emphasized racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions.

In the aftermath of civil disorder in Watts (1965), Cleveland (1966), Detroit (1967), and Newark (1967) and throughout the United States following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson created the Kerner Commission to identify the causes of the unrest. It cited racism, discrimination, and poverty and warned that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

Beginning in the 1960s, increased African American participation in the electoral system led to the election of Black mayors of major cities and to the increasing presence of Black senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress.

Civil rights legislation became the basis for affirmative action—programs that increased opportunities for many Black students and workers as well as for women, disabled people, and other targets of discrimination.

As African Americans made social, political, and economic gains, some white Americans began, in the 1970s, to claim that they were victims of “reverse discrimination.” Since then, such claims have been used, sometimes effectively, to argue against affirmative action policies and to block civil rights initiatives.

In 2009 Barack Obama, the fourth African American to serve in the U.S. Senate, became the first Black president of the United States.

During Obama’s presidency the issue of police brutality against Black Americans was increasingly in the headlines, and a series of high-profile incidents that resulted in the deaths of African Americans at the hands of police or while in police custody prompted widespread protests.

The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, in Sanford, Florida, in February 2012, by a neighbourhood watch volunteer and the shooter’s subsequent acquittal on charges of second-degree murder sparked the founding in 2013 of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, a decentralized grassroots movement that sought to change the many ways in which Black people continued to be treated unfairly in society and the ways in which laws, policies, and institutions perpetrated that unfairness.

Voting rights remained a central concern for the civil rights movement, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Shelby County Holder (2013) to declare unconstitutional Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had established a formula for determining which jurisdictions were required to seek federal approval (“preclearance”) of any proposed change to their electoral procedures or laws.

Concerns about potential voter suppression were amplified after lawmakers in nearly every state introduced legislation that sought to restrict access to voting; many lawmakers made baseless claims of voter fraud and election irregularities in the 2020 U.S. presidential election to justify their actions.

American civil rights movement | Key Facts (2024)

FAQs

American civil rights movement | Key Facts? ›

Examples of civil rights include the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to government services, the right to a public education, and the right to use public facilities.

What are 5 facts about civil rights? ›

Examples of civil rights include the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to government services, the right to a public education, and the right to use public facilities.

What were the three 3 most important goals of the civil rights movement? ›

The movement helped spawn a national crisis that forced intervention by the federal government to overturn segregation laws in southern states, restore voting rights for African-Americans, and end legal discrimination in housing, education and employment.

What was the key moment in the civil rights movement? ›

In June 1956, a federal court ruled that the laws in place to keep buses segregated were unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually agreed. The Montgomery bus boycott was one of the first major movements that initiated social change during the civil rights movement.

What was the big five of the civil rights movement? ›

The organization quickly moved to the forefront of the civil rights movement alongside several other major civil rights groups collectively known as the "Big Five:" the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League (NUL), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( ...

What was the most famous civil rights movement? ›

The March on Washington On August 28, 1963, hundreds of thousands of people arrived in Washington, D.C., for the largest non-violent civil rights demonstration that the nation had ever seen: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

What led to the civil rights movement? ›

In the mid-1950s, the modern civil rights movement arose out of the desire of African Americans to win the equality and freedom from discrimination that continued to elude them nearly a century after slavery was abolished in the United States.

Who are the top 5 black activists? ›

Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, and Frederick Douglass might be the first names that come to mind when the subject of African American activism comes up.

What are the big four of the Civil Rights Movement? ›

1942 – Founded the Congress of Racial Equality, also known as CORE. 1960s – Established as one of the “Big Four” of the Civil Rights Movement along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins.

What were 3 positive results of the Civil Rights Movement? ›

There were many major achievements of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960's. These included desegregation of interstate travel, the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What are 3 effects of the Civil Rights Movement? ›

There were many specific legal reforms that were consequences of the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

What are the five civil rights? ›

Examples of civil rights include the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to government services, the right to a public education, and the right to use public facilities.

What was the most important issue during the civil rights movement? ›

The landmark 1964 act barred discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in public facilities — such as restaurants, theaters, or hotels. Discrimination in hiring practices was also outlawed, and the act established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to help enforce the law.

When did blacks get rights? ›

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 marked a milestone in the long struggle to extend civil, political, and legal rights and protections to African Americans, including former slaves and their descendants, and to end segregation in public and private facilities.

What are the 5 main civil rights? ›

Our country's Constitution and federal laws contain critical protections that form the foundation of our inclusive society – the right to be free from discrimination, the freedom to worship as we choose, the right to vote for our elected representatives, the protections of due process, the right to privacy.

What are 5 of the main highlights of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? ›

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing.

What is the title 5 of the civil rights? ›

Title V expanded responsibilities of the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights (USCCR), an entity created through the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Among other operational matters, Title V also addressed USCCR hearings and witness subpoenas. Congress continues to fund the USCCR through the appropriations process.

What are 3 causes of the civil rights? ›

It cited racism, discrimination, and poverty and warned that “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Article information

Author: Nathanial Hackett

Last Updated:

Views: 5729

Rating: 4.1 / 5 (52 voted)

Reviews: 91% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Nathanial Hackett

Birthday: 1997-10-09

Address: Apt. 935 264 Abshire Canyon, South Nerissachester, NM 01800

Phone: +9752624861224

Job: Forward Technology Assistant

Hobby: Listening to music, Shopping, Vacation, Baton twirling, Flower arranging, Blacksmithing, Do it yourself

Introduction: My name is Nathanial Hackett, I am a lovely, curious, smiling, lively, thoughtful, courageous, lively person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.