The civil rights movement was the campaign, chiefly by African Americans and their allies, to end legalized racial segregation, disenfranchisement and discrimination in the United States between 1954 and 1968. It confronted the Jim Crow system the Supreme Court had upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, and gathered force after Rosa Parks's arrest touched off the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 and 1956, whose success made the boycott's spokesman, Martin Luther King Jr., a national figure. The Supreme Court had already ruled school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, and organizers built toward the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, where roughly 250,000 people gathered to press for federal legislation. That pressure produced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin in public accommodations, employment and federally assisted programs, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting laws and authorized federal oversight of elections in areas with a history of voter suppression.
Facts
Founded YearSourced to the subject's own account Founding ContextSourced to the subject's own accountGrew out of decades of Black American organizing against Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement in the South, gaining national momentum after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and the 1955 to 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, and secured its major legislative victories in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 1 Learn More
A Seat, a Boycott, a Name
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
By the time Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, the legal foundation of segregation had already cracked. The Supreme Court had ruled school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, overturning the separate-but-equal doctrine it had upheld since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Parks's arrest, and the boycott of the Montgomery bus system that followed through 1955 and 1956, turned that legal opening into a sustained campaign that ordinary residents could join simply by refusing to ride. The boycott succeeded, and its success did something the legal victory alone had not: it made the boycott's spokesman, a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr., a nationally known figure almost overnight. What Montgomery demonstrated, and what the movement kept demonstrating over the following decade, was that a legal ruling and a mass campaign reinforced each other, the court supplying the principle and the boycott supplying the proof that ordinary people would act on it.
A Quarter Million on the Mall
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
On August 28, 1963, roughly 250,000 people gathered on the National Mall for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a coalition effort by civil rights, labor and religious organizations pressing for legislation that speeches and lawsuits alone had not produced. The march is remembered chiefly for Martin Luther King Jr.'s address from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but its scale mattered as much as its rhetoric; a demonstration that large and that disciplined was itself an argument that the movement's demands carried the weight of genuine popular support, not just moral appeal. The following year, that pressure translated into law: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin in public accommodations, employment and federally assisted programs. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 went further, outlawing discriminatory voting laws outright and authorizing federal oversight of elections in areas with a documented history of suppressing the vote. Between the march and the two acts, the movement had converted a decade of organizing into the two pieces of legislation most identified with its success.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Her arrest touched off the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the movement's opening mass action.
This source names United States directly: "and discrimination in the United States between 1954 and 1968."
Culminated In
Led By
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.