The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long, primarily nonviolent series of actions to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society – in its tactics, the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights, and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
Two US Supreme Court decisions in particular serve as bookends of the movement: the 1896 ruling of Plessy v Ferguson, which upheld "separate but equal" racial segregation as constitutional doctrine; and 1954's Brown v Board of Education, which overturned Plessy. This was an era of new beginnings, in which some movements, such as Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association, were very successful but left little lasting legacy; while others, such as the NAACP's legal assault on state-sponsored segregation, achieved modest results in its early years, as in, Buchanan v. Warley (1917) (zoning), making some progress but also suffering setbacks, as in Corrigan v. Buckley (1926) (housing), gradually building to key victories, including in Smith v. Allwright (1944) (voting), Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) (housing), Sweatt v. Painter (1950) (schooling) and Brown. In addition, the Scottsboro Boys cases led to a pair of 1935 rulings in Powell v. Alabama, and Norris v. Alabama, that served to make anti-racism jurisprudence more prominent in the context of criminal justice.
Following the civil war, the United States expanded the legal rights of African Americans. Congress passed, and enough states ratified, an amendment ending slavery in 1865 — the 13th amendment to the US constitution. This amendment only outlawed slavery; it provided neither citizenship nor equal rights. In 1868, the 14th amendment was ratified by the states, granting African Americans citizenship, whereby all persons born in the US were extended equal protection under the laws of the constitution. The 15th amendment (ratified in 1870) stated that race could not be used as a condition to deprive men of the ability to vote. During Reconstruction (1865–1877), northern troops occupied the South. Together with the Freedmen's Bureau, they tried to administer and enforce the new constitutional amendments. Many Black leaders were elected to local and state offices, and many others organized community groups, especially to support education.
Reconstruction ended following the Compromise of 1877 between northern and southern White elites. In exchange for deciding the contentious presidential election in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes, supported by northern states, over his opponent, Samuel J. Tilden, the compromise called for the withdrawal of northern troops from the South. This followed violence and fraud in southern elections from 1868 to 1876, which had reduced Black voter turnout and enabled southern White Democrats to regain power in state legislatures across the South. The compromise and withdrawal of federal troops meant that such Democrats had more freedom to impose and enforce discriminatory practices. Many African Americans responded to the withdrawal of federal troops by leaving the South in the Kansas Exodus of 1879.
The Radical Republicans, who spearheaded Reconstruction, had attempted to eliminate both governmental and private discrimination by legislation. Such effort was largely ended by the Supreme Court's decision in the civil rights cases, in which the court held that the 14th Amendment did not give Congress power to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals or businesses.
Key events
Although reconstruction was shut down by the rise of white supremacy around 1877, most blacks were still allowed to vote and a few were elected to office.See Sharon Harley, The timetables of African-American history : a chronology of the most important people and events in African-American history Simon & Schuster, 1995) pp. 192–270.online. For a narrative history, see Steven Tuck, We Ain't What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama (Harvard UP, 2010).
Disfranchisement (1888–1908). Each Southern state legislature passed voting laws that systematically removed over 95% of the Black voters. The key device was the poll tax, whereby everyone either paid a $2 tax and was allowed to vote in the general election or saved the money and did not vote. The Democratic Party controlled all major offices, and it set up primary elections for white voters only. Many poor whites also stopped voting in the general election and primaries.Michael Perman, Struggle for mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908 (2001), and J. Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910 (1974).Sor state by state rules see Barbara Donald, "The Poll Tax as an Instrument of Disfranchisement in the South" (PhD dissertation, American University, 1948) required for voting in primaries in all states. .online
Segregation wins approval of Supreme Court (1896–1915)
This period began with a disastrous setback for equal rights. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson established the doctrine of "separate but equal". As a result, the federal courts approved legally sanctioned racial segregation across the country. This ruling provided the legal foundation for Jim Crow laws throughout the South, mandating separate public facilities for Black and white Americans, including schools, restrooms, and transportation.Ayers, Promise of the New South, pp. 144-145.James C. Cobb, "Segregating the New South: The Origins and Legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson." Georgia State University Law Review 12 (1995): 1017-1036. online In 1897 the Supreme Court in Williams v. Mississippi upheld the voting restrictions established by a poll tax in Mississippi in 1890.Alton Hornsby Jr., Chronology of African American History: From 1492 to the Present (2nd ed., 1997), p. 108.
Segregation
The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v Ferguson (1896) upheld state-mandated discrimination in public transportation under the "separate but equal" doctrine. As Justice Harlan, the only member of the Court to dissent from the decision, predicted: If a state can prescribe, as a rule of civil conduct, that whites and blacks shall not travel as passengers in the same railroad coach, why may it not so regulate the use of the streets of its cities and towns as to compel white citizens to keep on one side of a street, and black citizens to keep on the other? Why may it not, upon like grounds, punish whites and blacks who ride together in street cars or in open vehicles on a public road or street? The Plessy decision did not address an earlier Supreme Court case, Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), involving discrimination against Chinese immigrants, that held that a law that is race-neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. While in the 20th century, the Supreme Court began to overturn state statutes that disenfranchised African Americans, as in Guinn v. United States (1915), with Plessy, it upheld segregation that Southern states enforced in nearly every other sphere of public and private life. The Court soon extended Plessy to uphold segregated schools. In Berea College v. Kentucky, the Court upheld a Kentucky statute that barred Berea College, a private institution, from teaching both black and white students in an integrated setting. Many states, particularly in the South, took Plessy and Berea as blanket approval for restrictive laws, generally known as Jim Crow laws, that created second-class status for African Americans.
In many cities and towns, African Americans were not allowed to share a taxi with whites or enter a building through the same entrance. They had to drink from separate water fountains, use separate restrooms, attend separate schools, be buried in separate cemeteries and swear on separate Bibles. They were excluded from restaurants and public libraries. Many parks barred them with signs that read "Negroes and dogs not allowed." One municipal zoo listed separate visiting hours.
The etiquette of racial segregation was harsher, particularly in the South. African Americans were expected to step aside to let a white person pass, and black men dared not look any white woman in the eye. Black men and women were addressed as "Tom" or "Jane," but rarely as "Mr." or "Miss" or "Mrs.," titles then widely in use for adults. Whites referred to black men of any age as "boy" and a black woman as "girl;" both often were called by labels such as "nigger" or "colored."
Less formal social segregation in the North began to yield to change. In 1941, however, the United States Naval Academy, based in segregated Maryland, refused to play a lacrosse game against Harvard University because Harvard's team included a black player.
Jackie Robinson's Major League Baseball debut, 1947 Jackie Robinson was a sports pioneer of the civil rights movement, best known for becoming the first African American to play professional sports in the major leagues. Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers of Major League Baseball on April 15, 1947. His first major league game came one year before the US Army was integrated, seven years before Brown v. Board of Education, eight years before Rosa Parks, and before Martin Luther King Jr. was leading the movement.Joseph Dorinson, and Joram Warmund, Jackie Robinson: Race, Sports and the American Dream (2015).
Political opposition
Lily-white movement
Following the Civil War, black leaders made substantial progress in establishing representation in the Republican Party.
Among the most prominent was Norris Wright Cuney, the Republican Party chairman in the late 19th century Texas. These gains led to substantial discomfort among many white voters, who generally supported the Democrats. During the 1888 Texas Republican Convention, Cuney coined the term lily-white movement to describe efforts by white conservatives to oust black people from positions of party leadership and incite riots to divide the party. Increasingly organized efforts by this movement gradually eliminated black leaders from the party. The writer Michael Fauntroy contends that the effort was coordinated with Democrats as part of a larger movement toward disenfranchisement of black people in the South at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century by increasing restrictions in voter registration rules.
Following biracial victories by a Populist-Republican slates in several states, by the late 19th century the Democratic Party had regained control of most state legislatures in the South. From 1890 to 1908, they accomplished disenfranchisement of blacks and, in some states, many poor whites. Despite repeated legal challenges and some successes by the NAACP, the Democrats continued to devise new ways to limit black electoral participation, such as white primaries, through the 1960s.