payment page
Early Steps in the Civil Rights Movement
The fight for racial equality was pushed forward due to the demands of World War II. The need for additional soldiers and labor opened opportunities for marginalized groups. During the war, Executive Order 8802 ended racial discrimination in war-related industrial work. After the end of the war, President Truman also passed Executive Order 9981 that ended the segregation of the military. As the federal government sought to address racial equality, so did organizations such as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), which sought to combat institutional discrimination using the courts. It was the NAACP and its chief lawyer and later Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, who helped win the famous Brown v. Board of Education case, overturning the “separate but equal” ruling issued in Plessy v. Ferguson, and mandated the end of segregation in public schools. Met with resistance in many communities, school desegregation was an arduous process, requiring the bravery of activists and the resolve of the federal government to make it a reality.
MLK and SCLC
Other organizations fought for civil rights, particularly in the South, using nonviolent civil disobedience. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), used these tactics successfully to combat Jim Crow-era segregation across the South. Their Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955-1956 resulted in the desegregation of public buses in Montgomery, Alabama. King’s role during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom with his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, and his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” helped rouse the conscience of Northern liberals and government officials alike, contributing to the passage of civil rights legislation soon after.
New Civil Rights Laws
Following a wave of activism from organizations such as SCLC, CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), the NAACP, and others, legislation was passed by the federal government to help address the institution of discrimination in American life. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 expanded the desegregation effort started by Brown v. Board of Education and prohibited discrimination in “public accommodations,” meaning that Jim Crow segregation of washrooms, libraries, parks, restaurants, and theaters was made illegal everywhere. The following year, the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests and allowed federal examiners to observe local elections to ensure their fairness. This vastly increased voter turnout for African Americans in Southern states.
Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party
Not all members of the movement for Black equality agreed with the incremental, nonviolent approach embraced by King and the SCLC, however. Vibrant speakers like Malcolm X urged Black Americans to push for Black Nationalism—local control over communities, economies, and culture. They saw that their goal of separating themselves from the discrimination of a white society would never successfully reform itself. While Malcolm X’s message of armed resistance softened before his assassination in 1965, Stokely Carmichael’s emphasis on the rallying cry of “Black Power” helped the separation movement continue to grow. The Black Panther Party, a militant civil rights group that advocated for armed defense of Black communities, sought economic self-sufficiency, full employment, and Black exemption from military service.
The Women’s Rights Movement and LGBTQ+ Rights
The movement for racial equality spurred the development of similar movements for a variety of groups, including women. With the conformist culture of the 1950s driving many women back into the domestic bubble of the home, writers like Betty Friedan in her The Feminine Mystique argued that social equality demanded more opportunities outside the home. Friedan founded and led NOW (National Organization for Women), which fought for expanded childcare support and against discrimination in hiring and encouraged Congress to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment, specifying that rights could not be limited on the basis of gender. On the opposing side, Phyllis Schlafly represented the conservative view that opposed the ERA, arguing that women’s rights were already protected and that the ERA would actually hurt the family. LGBTQ+ activists similarly formed groups like the Mattachine Society and Gay Activist Alliance to push for equal rights. The Stonewall Riots of 1969 signified a turning point in their movement, with national attention brought to the discrimination against LGBTQ+ Americans during a five-day riot-turned-demonstration. The first Gay Pride Parade was held a year later, becoming an annual commemoration of Stonewall that spread from New York City to communities across the country.
American Indian, Latino, and Asian American Rights Movements
Waves of civil rights groups followed the patterns put forth by the Black fight for equality. The Latino leader Cesar Chavez formed the United Farm Workers union along with Dolores Huerta. Their goal was to fight for fair labor contracts for migrant farm workers, many of them Mexican immigrants. The American Indian Movement protested for government compensation for broken treaties and to regain lost land using a mixture of nonviolent and sometimes violent methods, gaining national attention when a subgroup temporarily took over the federal prison on Alcatraz Island. The Asian American Political Alliance was founded with similar goals and especially pushed the federal government to disengage from interventions in developing nations around the world, not just in Asia.
