The Civil Rights Movement: 14 Years of Struggle Against Institutionalized Racial Segregation
The American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968) was one of history's most significant social upheavals, with African Americans dismantling legalised racial segregation that had been woven into American law, custom, and institutions for generations. The movement came together around the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, which determined that "separate but equal" educational facilities were intrinsically unequal, overturning the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine that had constitutionalised segregation. While the Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional, its implementation was met with fierce opposition throughout the South, where Jim Crow laws legally enforced racial segregation in schools, buses, restaurants, bathrooms, water fountains, and public spaces via explicit signage and police enforcement.
The Civil Rights Movement was marked by its organised, peaceful resistance to institutional racism. The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956), which began after Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, lasted 381 days and successfully persuaded Montgomery, Alabama to desegregate buses, proving the power of organised economic activity. The Freedom Riders (1961) challenged segregation in interstate transportation by riding integrated buses through the Deep South, despite violent attacks and arrests, and their tenacity persuaded the Interstate Commerce Commission to impose desegregation orders. The March on Washington (1963) brought together approximately 250,000 people to hear Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, which provided a watershed moment of moral clarity concerning racial inequality.
However, underlying these wonderful moments were crushing daily hardships. African Americans who attempted to register to vote faced literacy tests designed to fail even educated people, economic reprisals (blacklisting from employment), eviction from housing, and violent intimidation. The movement won legislative victories—the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination in public places, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited literacy tests and authorised federal election oversight—but implementation required constant legal fights and federal enforcement. By 1968, with the passing of the Fair Housing Act and King's assassination sparking renewed engagement, the movement had significantly altered American law and consciousness, yet systematic racial inequalities persisted in employment, housing, wealth accumulation, and criminal justice.
