Early Steps in the Civil Rights Movement (1940s and 1950s) in two minutes
- In Mendez v. Westminster in 1946 a federal court ruled against segregating Mexican American children in California schools, and in 1948 Truman ordered equal treatment in the armed forces.
- NAACP lawyers led by Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall attacked segregation in graduate schools first, winning Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma in 1950, before challenging separate public schools.
- In Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, a unanimous Court under Earl Warren ruled that separate schools were inherently unequal, and in 1955 it ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed."
- Southern leaders resisted: the Southern Manifesto of 1956 denounced Brown, and by 1964 only about 1.2 percent of Black students in the eleven former Confederate states attended school with white students.
- The Montgomery bus boycott began after Rosa Parks's arrest in 1955, lasted 381 days, made Martin Luther King Jr. a national leader and ended with court rulings against bus segregation.
- In 1957 Eisenhower signed the first civil rights act since 1875, which created the Civil Rights Commission, and sent the Army to enforce integration at Little Rock's Central High School.
- On the exam: Questions ask you to contrast legal strategies with direct action, explain how the Cold War and federal power shaped change, and judge how far Brown changed schools.
Topic 8.6 key terms
- Mendez v. Westminster (1946)
A 1946 federal ruling that four Orange County, California, school districts could not send Mexican American children to separate schools. The Ninth Circuit upheld it in 1947. It came eight years before Brown v. Board of Education.
- Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
The Supreme Court decision that let states require "separate but equal" public facilities. It protected segregation, schools included, until Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
- Amicus curiae brief
Latin for "friend of the court." A brief filed by someone who is not a party to the case but has a stake in the outcome. Several civil rights groups, including the NAACP, filed them in the Mendez appeal.
- Equal Protection Clause (1868)
Part of the Fourteenth Amendment: no state may "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The cases that follow argue about what it requires.
- President's Committee on Civil Rights (1946)
Truman created it by executive order on December 5, 1946, bypassing Southern Democrats who controlled key committees in Congress. Its fifteen members studied discrimination and recommended federal action. Its 1947 report was To Secure These Rights.
- To Secure These Rights (1947)
The President's Committee on Civil Rights' 1947 report. It called for a federal anti-lynching law, an end to poll taxes, and desegregation of the armed forces, and it argued that discrimination at home hurt the United States in the Cold War. The Justice Department made the same argument in its 1952 brief in Brown.
- Jackie Robinson
Broke Major League Baseball's color line on April 15, 1947, playing first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Showed that an integrated team could win and sell tickets, more than a year before Truman ordered the armed forces desegregated.
- Executive Order 9981 (1948)
Truman's July 26, 1948 order declaring equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services. He issued it without Congress, and it set up a committee to carry it out. The Army resisted until the Korean War.
- desegregation of the armed forces
Ending separate Black and white units in the U.S. military. Ordered in 1948, but achieved in practice mostly during the Korean War (1950–53), when the Army needed replacements. One of the first federal steps against Jim Crow.
- Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
Supreme Court ruling that Texas's separate law school for Black students was not equal, because it lacked the reputation, alumni and tradition of the white school. Decided the same day as McLaurin.
- Thurgood Marshall
NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer who argued Sweatt, Briggs and Brown. A student of Charles Hamilton Houston, he became the first Black Supreme Court justice in 1967.
- Briggs v. Elliott
South Carolina school case brought by twenty Black parents. In 1951 a federal court ruled 2–1 to equalize the schools but keep them separate. It became one of the five Brown cases.
- NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909. Its lawyers planned and argued the school desegregation cases.
- Hernandez v. Texas (1954)
A unanimous Supreme Court decision, two weeks before Brown. Chief Justice Warren wrote that equal protection covers Mexican Americans as a class, even though Texas called them white. The Court reversed a conviction from a jury that had excluded them.
- Earl Warren
Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969 and, before that, governor of California. He wrote the unanimous opinions in Hernandez v. Texas and Brown v. Board of Education.
- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
A unanimous Supreme Court decision holding that state-required segregation in public schools violates the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, because separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. It rejected 'separate but equal' in public education.
- Bolling v. Sharpe (1954)
Decided the same day as Brown. The District of Columbia is federal and the Fourteenth Amendment applies to states, so the Court held that segregated D.C. schools violated the Fifth Amendment's due process clause.
- Brown v. Board of Education II (1955)
The Court's follow-up to Brown. It sent the school cases back to local federal judges and ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed," with no deadline.
- All deliberate speed
The Brown II phrase for how fast schools had to desegregate. It set no date, so local judges could allow delay, and many Southern officials read it as permission to wait.
- White Citizens' Councils
Local groups of white business and civic leaders, begun in Mississippi in 1954, that fought desegregation with economic pressure: firing, evicting, and refusing credit to Black parents and NAACP members.
- Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956)
A protest in which Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, refused to ride the city buses from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, to end segregated seating. It ended after the Supreme Court upheld Browder v. Gayle.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A Baptist minister who became the best-known leader of the civil rights movement. At 26 he was chosen to head the Montgomery Improvement Association, and he led the boycott.
- Nonviolent movement
A strategy of protest that refuses to answer force with force. Its tools were boycotts, marches, sit-ins and other acts of civil disobedience. King drew on Christian teaching and on Gandhi’s example.
- Browder v. Gayle (1956)
A federal case brought by four Black women that struck down bus segregation in Montgomery. The Supreme Court upheld the ruling in November 1956. It applied the reasoning of Brown v. Board of Education beyond schools.
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
A civil rights organization of Black ministers and churches, formed in 1957 to coordinate nonviolent protest across the South. King was its first president.
- Southern Manifesto (1956)
A March 1956 statement by Southern members of Congress calling Brown “a clear abuse of judicial power” and urging resistance by lawful means. It had no force of law.
- Filibuster
A Senate tactic of unlimited debate used to delay or block a vote. Thurmond’s speech did not stop the 1957 bill; it passed 60 to 15.
- Civil Rights Act of 1957
The first federal civil rights law since Reconstruction. It created the Civil Rights Commission and let the Justice Department sue to protect voting. A jury-trial compromise weakened enforcement.
- Civil Rights Commission
A bipartisan federal body created by the 1957 Act to investigate voting-rights complaints and report. It could investigate; it could not enforce.
- Little Rock crisis (1957)
Governor Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to block nine Black students from Central High. After a federal court order, Eisenhower issued Proclamation 3204 (Sept. 23) and Executive Order 10730 (Sept. 24), federalized the Guard and sent the 101st Airborne.
- Massive resistance
The Southern white campaign to defeat Brown by every available means: state laws, cut-off funds, private schools for white students, and closed public schools. Virginia's Senator Harry F. Byrd is usually credited with the phrase.
- Second Reconstruction
A name many historians give to the civil rights era. Like the first Reconstruction, it fought to make the Fourteenth Amendment's promise of equal protection real. Like the first, it met years of resistance.
- Sit-in movement (1960)
A tactic of nonviolent direct action: Black students sat at whites-only lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served. It began in Greensboro, North Carolina, and spread across the South within weeks.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Five Children
mid-1940s–1947
Key terms: Mendez v. Westminster (1946), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Amicus curiae brief, Equal Protection Clause (1868)
In Westminster, California, school started with a sorting.
Soledad Vidaurri brought five children to enroll. Two were her daughters. Three were her brother Gonzalo's.
The school would take the two lighter girls. It sent the other three to the Mexican school. Soledad walked all five out.
The district called Hoover School an English program. At the trial, no one produced a test. Children were sorted by name and by look.
In March 1945, the Mendezes and four other families sued. A federal judge agreed.
Judge Paul J. McCormick
A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality.
Judge Paul J. McCormick
It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage.
The appeals court upheld it in 1947 but left Plessy standing. No California law, it said, authorized these schools. That June, Governor Earl Warren signed a repeal of California's school-segregation laws.
The Fourteenth Amendment promised equal protection in 1868. Who would make the country keep that promise, and how fast?
Same Uniform
1946–1948
Key terms: President's Committee on Civil Rights (1946), To Secure These Rights (1947), Jackie Robinson, Executive Order 9981 (1948), desegregation of the armed forces
The war was over. Soldiers were coming home.
Sergeant Isaac Woodard was hours out of the Army, still in uniform. The Batesburg police chief beat him and blinded him.
The NAACP pushed, and Truman ordered a federal trial. An all-white jury acquitted the chief. The judge was J. Waties Waring. Hold the name.
Congress would not act on civil rights. So on December 5, 1946, Truman appointed a committee.
The report gave three reasons: moral, economic, and international. The third was the Cold War. The world was watching.
Jackie Robinson played first base for Brooklyn. He was the first Black major leaguer since the 1880s.
In 1944 he had refused to move to the back of an Army bus. A court-martial acquitted him.
In July 1948, Democrats adopted a civil-rights plank. Southern delegates walked out and ran Strom Thurmond against Truman. Thurmond carried four states. Truman won anyway.
That month, Truman signed Executive Order 9981: equal treatment and opportunity in the armed services. Order 9980, the same day, covered federal civilian jobs.
The order and the barracks were years apart. The Army resisted. The Korean War did much of the integrating.
While presidents ordered, lawyers were building a road. Charles Hamilton Houston drew it. He died in 1950, before he saw where it led.
The road began where a state could not pretend: graduate school. A separate law school is an expensive lie.
Ask for a Bus
1947–1951
Key terms: Sweatt v. Painter (1950), Thurgood Marshall, Briggs v. Elliott, NAACP, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
The lawyers began with graduate schools. The parents began with a bus.
In 1938, the Court told Missouri: admit Lloyd Gaines, or build an equal law school. Oklahoma followed in 1948, for Ada Lois Sipuel.
On June 5, 1950, the Court ruled Texas's makeshift law school for Heman Sweatt unequal. Thurgood Marshall argued it: reputation, alumni and tradition count.
The same day came Oklahoma's idea of equality. George McLaurin's desk stood in an anteroom.
The opinion adds a library mezzanine and a cafeteria table at a different hour. The Court said those rules cut him off from other students.
So the lawyers went where the children were: Clarendon County, South Carolina.
The county ran more than thirty buses for white students. None for Black students.
In 1947, Levi Pearson asked for one bus. His farm touched two districts, so a court threw out his suit.
Twenty parents signed the next petition. Harry Briggs's name led the list. The case became Briggs v. Elliott.
Harry Briggs lost his job. So did Eliza Briggs. Someone burned the Reverend J. A. De Laine's house. In time, he left the state.
In June 1951, two judges ordered equal schools, but kept them separate. Judge Waring dissented.
Segregation is per se inequality.
Judge J. Waties Waring
Segregation is per se inequality.
He had urged the lawyers to attack segregation itself.
In Farmville, Virginia, sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns walked Moton High out. Some classes met in tar-paper shacks.
The NAACP took the case once the students agreed to challenge segregation itself.
In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment promised equal protection. In 1896, Plessy said separate could be equal. Feeling insulted was a choice.
One justice dissented.
Justice John Marshall Harlan
Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.
The country followed the other seven for fifty-eight years. Five cases. Four states and the capital. One question.
What They Put on the Table
1952–1954
Key terms: Hernandez v. Texas (1954), Earl Warren, amicus curiae brief, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), Bolling v. Sharpe (1954)
May 3, 1954. Pete Hernández had been convicted of murder. The Court took up something else. Over six thousand jurors were called there in twenty-five years. None was Mexican American.
Texas said Mexican Americans were legally white. One courthouse toilet, marked 'Colored Men' and 'Hombres Aqui,' disagreed. Warren, for a unanimous Court: equal protection covers Mexican Americans.
The 1952 argument settled nothing. Chief Justice Vinson died, and Eisenhower named Earl Warren. Warren wanted one opinion. In conference he said segregation meant calling Black people inferior.
Stanley Reed was the last to agree. Robert Jackson was back after a heart attack. Hugo Black, who once joined the Klan and left it, voted to end segregation.
In 1952 the Justice Department told the Court that segregation was handing the Soviet Union propaganda.
Chief Justice Earl Warren
We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place.
Chief Justice Earl Warren
Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
The Court said separating children by race could leave a mark 'unlikely ever to be undone.' Footnote 11 listed the studies. You have already met the dolls.
The law had moved. The schools had not. Keep an eye on this dial.
Linda Brown went back to the same school, Monroe. The order to go slowly had not been written yet. It would be.
The Second Decision
1955
Key terms: Brown v. Board of Education II (1955), All deliberate speed, White Citizens' Councils
The Court had said what. Now it had to say when.
May 31, 1955. The Court sent the cases back to local judges.
Chief Justice Earl Warren
…to admit to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed…
The phrase isn't in the 1954 opinion. Holmes used it in 1911, borrowed from English chancery courts. Frankfurter admired those words and pressed for them. They can mean: move, and be careful.
Across the South, careful ate move. Marshall heard a license to wait. The dial counts Black students in eleven former Confederate states in school with white students. The needle stays put.
White Citizens' Councils, begun in Mississippi in 1954, got Black parents fired and cut off their credit. The Klan was reviving too.
August 1955 Money, Mississippi
Emmett Till was fourteen, visiting from Chicago. He was taken from his great-uncle's house at night and killed. What happened in a store that week is still disputed. What happened after is not.
His mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on an open casket so the country would have to look. An all-white jury acquitted both men. They later sold their story to a magazine, and could not be tried again.
In Montgomery, Rosa Parks wrote about him, in a manuscript from around 1956. She was secretary of the local NAACP.
Monday
1955–1957
Key terms: Montgomery bus boycott (1955–1956), Martin Luther King Jr., Nonviolent movement, Browder v. Gayle (1956), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
The short version: one tired woman, one minister. It leaves out almost everyone.
On December 1, 1955, a Montgomery bus driver ordered a row of Black riders to stand. Three moved. Rosa Parks did not.
In 1892, Homer Plessy sat in a whites-only train car. Sixty-three years later, the fight was still about a seat.
E. D. Nixon and the Durrs bailed her out. She agreed to be the test case.
Monday, December 5, before daylight. Listen.
The morning worked. Almost no Black riders boarded. It was planned for one day. It lasted three hundred and eighty-one days.
That afternoon, the new Montgomery Improvement Association elected Martin Luther King Jr. president. He had not started the morning. That night, thousands at Holt Street voted to keep going.
The first demands were modest: courtesy, first-come seating, Black drivers on Black routes. The city gave no ground.
The city stopped Black cabbies from charging a dime. So churches built a carpool. Georgia Gilmore’s food club helped pay for it.
On January 26, 1956, police arrested King for driving thirty in a twenty-five zone.
Four days later, someone bombed his house. His wife and baby were inside. Neither was hurt. He asked the crowd to go home, and not to answer violence with violence.
Browder v. Gayle ended the bus law. Four women sued. Rosa Parks was not one. The courts ruled for them. On December 21, they rode again.
January 1957 Atlanta
In 1957, ministers in Atlanta formed what became the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The Steps
1956–1957
Key terms: Southern Manifesto (1956), Filibuster, Civil Rights Act of 1957, Civil Rights Commission, Little Rock crisis (1957)
While Montgomery walked, Southern members of Congress called Brown “a clear abuse of judicial power.” The Congressional Record counts nineteen senators, seventy-seven representatives. Later lists run higher.
Three Southern senators did not sign: Tennessee’s Gore and Kefauver, and the majority leader, Lyndon Johnson.
Strom Thurmond sat in a steam room first, so he could stay on the floor. Then he talked for twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes.
The bill passed about two hours later, sixty to fifteen. The Southern bloc had not joined him. On September 9, Eisenhower signed the first civil rights law since 1875.
It created a Civil Rights Commission and let the Justice Department sue over voting. A jury-trial compromise weakened it. Poll taxes, literacy tests and fear kept most Black Southerners off the rolls.
Eighty-two years between the law and the law.
Little Rock had a plan: a handful of Black students at Central High in September. Superintendent Virgil Blossom picked them. Daisy Bates, of the state NAACP, stood with their families.
On September 2, Governor Orval Faubus went on television. He said he was calling out the National Guard to prevent violence. The soldiers turned the students away.
On September 4, Elizabeth Eckford, fifteen, walked toward the school alone. Daisy Bates had told the others to meet at her house. The Eckfords had no telephone.
Faubus withdrew the Guard after a federal judge’s order. On September 23 the students entered by a side door. The mob grew, and by noon police took them out.
Eisenhower had never endorsed Brown. He did not think law could change a heart.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.
He did think a governor could not block a federal court. That night, he sent the Army.
Nine students. The law of the United States, in boots, on either side of them.
The needle comes off the peg. It does not come far. They finished the year under guard. In May 1958, Ernest Green, the one senior, graduated.
The Dial
1957–1964
Key terms: Massive resistance, Second Reconstruction, Civil Rights Act of 1957, Sit-in movement (1960)
Count it.
By 1963–64, the dial reads 1.2 percent. About one Black student in a hundred. Eleven former Confederate states. The border states moved faster, and are not on this dial.
Rather than integrate, Arkansas closed Little Rock's high schools for a year. Prince Edward County, Virginia, Barbara Johns's county, closed every public school for five years.
The promise was Reconstruction's. In the 1950s, people made the government look at it again. The government moved when they pushed. Then it moved slowly.
President Eisenhower had asked Black leaders for patience. Jackie Robinson wrote back.
“17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change.”
One cost came due later. When the two systems merged, many Black teachers and principals lost their jobs. Estimates vary. The loss is not in question.
They walked. The dial barely did.
On February 1, 1960, four freshmen in Greensboro bought a few things at Woolworth’s, kept the receipts, and sat down. What happened next is another story.
Who made the country keep the promise? They did. The dial says how fast.