Such sacred changes nullified subjugation and set up the citizenship status of blacks.The initial phase of the black protest activity in the post-Brown period began on December 1, 1955.The boycott lasted more than a year, demonstrating the unity and determination of black residents and inspiring blacks elsewhere.
While many of the civil rights movement's most memorable and important moments, such as the sit-ins …show more content…
freedom rides and especially the March on Washington, occurred in the 1960s, the 1950s were a significant decade in the once in a while tragic, sometimes-triumphant march of civil rights in the United States.
For young black men and women soon to propel the civil rights movement, the Till case was an indelible lesson.The boycott not only crushed segregation in Montgomery's public transportation, it energized the entire civil rights movement and established the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. Motivated by the success of the Montgomery boycott, King and other African American leaders looked to continue the fight.
In 1957, King helped create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to coordinate civil rights groups across the South and buoy their efforts organizing and sustaining boycotts, protests, and other assaults against southern Jim Crow laws.A year into the Montgomery bus boycott, angry white southerners bombed four African American churches as well as the homes of King and fellow civil rights leader E. D. Nixon.
Such unremitting hostility and violence left the outcome of the burgeoning civil rights movement in doubt.While the bus boycott, Supreme Court rulings and other civil rights activities signaled progress, church bombings, death threats, and stubborn legislators demonstrated the distance that still needed to be traveled.
The Albany Movement included elements of a Christian commitment to social justice in its platform, with activists stating that all people were "Of equal worth" in God's family and that "No man may discriminate against or exploit another." In many instances in the 1960s, black Christianity propelled civil rights advocates to action and demonstrated the significance of religion to the broader civil rights movement.
The moral thrust of the movement strengthened African American activists while also confronting white society by framing segregation as a moral evil. As the civil rights movement garnered more followers and more attention, white resistance stiffened.
Wallace's vocal stance on segregation was immortalized in his 1963 inaugural address as Alabama governor with the phrase: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" Just as the civil rights movement began to gain unprecedented strength, Wallace became the champion of the many white southerners opposed to the
movement.
On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, an internationally renowned call for civil rights that raised the movement's profile to new heights and put unprecedented pressure on politicians to pass meaningful civil rights legislation.
The following summer he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964