Challenging Jim Crow
For decades, African Americans faced legally enforced segregation and voter suppression. Activists organized direct action despite arrests, violence, and intimidation. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, which lasted a year before the Supreme Court ordered desegregation.
Mass Mobilization
The movement expanded through the Birmingham campaign, the 1963 March on Washington, and the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march. Activists exposed the gap between American democratic ideals and Southern law.
Law as a Turning Point
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and Fair Housing Act of 1968 attacked segregation, disenfranchisement, and housing discrimination. Earlier, Brown v. Board of Education had declared public-school segregation unconstitutional.
The movement did not end racial inequality, and frustration helped fuel Black Power and later struggles over policing and institutional racism. But it changed the federal government’s stated duty: protecting constitutional rights became an explicit national responsibility.