Civil rights movement in the united states (1954-1965)

Background: After the civil war the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were added to the US constitution. The amendments were intended to provide legal and political equality of African-Americans. Additional laws were added to guarantee the rights further, regardless of race. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 added equal rights in contracts and employment to ensure economic equality. White supremacists such as KKK saw to that all the rights that was gained after the war disappeared after the president B. Hayes withdrawal of federal troops in 1877. The end of the Reconstruction meant that the legal, economic and political equality in the south disappeared and were replaced with the Jim Crow laws. The Jim Crow laws deigned every area as ”white” or ”colored”. In the time period 1888 to 1923 more than 2500 African Americans were lynched by white mobs. Following the end of the Second World War the U.S African American soldiers came back to a Jim Crow south, but having fought for the country the now expected to be treated as equals. In the 1940’s the US saw some progress as Harry Truman desegregated the army and supported the civil rights legislation.

1952

• The U.S supreme court agrees to hear school segregation cases from the NAACP

•Malcolm X joins Nation of Islam

1954

•The Plessy vs. Ferguson’s is overturned in the U.S supreme court case Brown vs. Boarder of Education triggering the massive resistance.

•The White Citizens Council is formed in Mississippi

1955

•The U.S supreme court declares that the schools should desegregate with ”All deliberate speed”

•Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

•Emmett Till was lynched.

1956

•Virginia declares the state policy of Massive Resistance to school desegregation. The southern manifesto is issued, opposing desegregation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott successfully desegregates busses in Montgomery, Alabama.

1957

•The SCLC is formed with Martin Luther King Jr. as its leader. The desegregation of Little Rock High School triggers the Little Rock Crisis.

1959

•The leader of the Massive Resistance in Virginia is forced to desegregate schools following a federal court ruling.

1960

•The Woolworth’s lunch sit-in, Greensboro, North Carolina followed by sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee. The SNCC is formed.

1961

•Freedom Riders begin and the SNCC begins its voter registration project in Mississippi under the lead of Robert Moses

1963

•The SCLC starts project C in Birmingham which brings a lot of national and international attention. The March on Washington with MLK’s ”I have a dream” speech. Assassination of Kennedy.

1964

•Freedom summer and the murders of Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner. Malcolm X forms the Organisation of Afro American Unity. (”The ballot or the bullet”). The MDFP tries to get seated in the Democratic National Convention instead of the all-white Democratic Party. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed by Lyndon B. Johnson. 24th amendment prohibiting poll taxes.

1965

• State troops attack cilil right marches at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, later known as ”Bloody Sunday”. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is signed