The Civil Rights Movement: Brown V. Board Of Education

In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education decision ushered in a new understanding of civil rights by declaring segregation unconstitutional. At the same time, the Brown v. Board of Education decision’s careful wording made an impact on how quickly states were going to comply with the Supreme Court’s call for integration. Because the legal language permitted southern states to slowly integrate and even not comply in some cases, the Civil Rights Movement called for the immediate end of segregation and for equal rights for blacks. As time went on, a distinct difference emerged between the legal language used in Brown v. Board of Education and that of which was used in the civil rights legislation that is passed in the 1960s. The legal language
In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. created the Chicago Freedom Movement to improve the quality of living in Chicago for blacks. To King’s dismay, his movement faced heavy opposition from Chicago politicians and residences alike, thus draining King of his optimism that he had early in the 1960s (F283). Foner argues that while the first phase of the Civil Rights Movement was successful, the second phase “witnessed ideological and organizational fragmentation and few significant victories” (F283). Foner’s argument is correct regarding the amount of legislation that managed to pass during the second phase of the movement. For Johnson, he hoped the crowning achievement of his Presidency was going to be the Great Society. The Great Society was aimed to be a “War on Poverty”; a means to eradicate poverty in America and to empower the poor and working-class of all races and both sexes economically (F285). While Johnson’s Great Society was the boldest welfare initiative since the New Deal and some successes such establishing Medicare and Medicaid, Johnson’s brainchild ultimately failed. Johnson and other politicians were against the government providing a direct income or welfare for those in need, while over one-half of Americans believed that the government should play a role in ensuring every citizen had
Board of Education made segregation unconstitutional by finding that “separate but equal” deprived blacks their equal rights protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Brown v. Board of Education faced vast opposition in the South because decision overturned nearly sixty years of legal precedent, and allowed for states to take “deliberate speed” to comply with the decision. This lead to the Civil Rights Movement to grow in strength and for the movement’s opposition to grow more violent. In response, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations took a stronger stance on civil rights and passed legislation that outright banned discrimination. Despite major victories, the growing opposition to integrate lead to decline of the Civil Rights Movement. The Vietnam War’s further escalation prevented any resource to be spent on accomplishing the goals of Johnson’s Great Society. What had impacted the sequence of events following Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the legal language used in both the court decision and the law. More so, the sequence of the events following Brown v. Board of Education impacted the legal language used in Kennedy’s affirmative action executive order and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Civil Rights Movement had declined by the end of the 1960s, it is hard to ignore the significance and the impact of the civil rights legislation that had passed during that time. The civil rights legislation that