The 50s civil rights movment
Returning from WWII, black Americans, just as those three decades prior, expected to find America a land of equality for all people and specifically a land endowed with increased black civil rights. Although the late 1940's and 1950's are not generally considered a period of social advancement for blacks, the decade and a half after World War II ultimately proved to be a very significant chapter in the history of black civil rights and a pivotal stepping stone for the drastic social uproar of the next decade. In 1950, America counted fifteen million black citizens, two thirds of whom still lived lives in the segregated south. Bound by rigid Jim Crow laws, the black view of life appeared bleak. Nonetheless, a period of increasing black civil rights was already underway. Paving the way for the entire revolution was Jack Roosevelt (Jackie) Robinson, the first black American to play major league baseball. Blacks had crept in America's national past time; more radical social changes were soon to come. Disenfranchised blacks finally found a leader dedicated to their cause in Harry S. Truman. After hearing of a lynching of black war veterans, Truman was suddenly tuned in to the heated crisis in the
At the end of the decade, southern black students formed the Student Non- Violent Coordinating Committee to give more focus to these efforts. Ferguson ruling that "separate but equal" educational institutions were allowable under the constitution. The ruling was quickly tested in September 1957 when Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas called in the national guard to prevent nine black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School. In 1957, King established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. and the landmark legislation enacted by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Although the late 1940's and 1950's are usually considered fairly insignificant compared to revolutionary 1960's, the root of the black civil rights movement lies in the effective leadership of men like Martin Luther King, Jr. King's rise to prominence was catapulted by the Montgomery bus boycotts. Most important of the civil rights advancements of blacks were the landmark supreme court's rulings enacted to tear down the institutions of segregation in place for nearly three quarters of a century after the fall of slavery. That same year Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since the Reconstruction. The 1950's provided the spark that started the civil rights fire in the heart of America. The first such case came in 1944 when, after years of prodding by the NAACP, the supreme court ruled all-white primaries unconstitutional. Clearing the way for the civil rights movement was Chief Justice Earl Warren. As these bodies of social justice grew in power and prestige, they possessed an undeniable role in the civil rights movement to flourish in the 60's.
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Acceptance Essays
