The Civil Rights Movement
1954–1965
Brown, Montgomery, and Non-
Violent Direct Action
(1954-1960)
•In the 1950s African Americans began to
attack the laws in the South that discriminated
against blacks and limited their rights.
•Fed up with segregation, limits on voting, and
racial violence, African Americans began to
protest and put pressure on the federal
government to end discrimination in the
South.
What were the goals of the Movement
•Get rid of local laws preventing blacks from
voting –literacy tests, the Grandfather Clause,
and poll taxes.
•End segregation by making southern Jim Crow
laws illegal.
Brown vs Board of Education
•The beginning of the Civil Rights movement was
the Brown v Board of Education Case.
•The Brown family brought a case to the Supreme
Court arguing that segregated schooling violated
the rights of black children in the South.
•They said that black children received lower
quality education and were hurt by being
educated in segregated schools.
•The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) provided legal
representation to the Brown family.
•In 1954 the Supreme Court agreed with the
Brown family.
•They ruled that black children’s 14th Amendment
rights (providing all citizens of this country equal
protection under the law) were violated by
segregated school.
•Kenneth Clarke’s Doll Test provided convincing
evidence.
•The court said that southern public schools had
to be integrated.
•This overturned the Plessy v Furgeson decision
from 1896 and said separate but equal was not
equal.
•This decision by the Supreme Court set a new
legal precedent used in future court cases
attacking segregation in other public areas.
•Whites reacted violently to the decision.
•In 1955 a 14 year old boy named Emmett Till
