Crmb

Civil Rights

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks left her job as a seamstress and boarded a bus to go home. Soon, all of the seats on the bus were filled. When the driver noticed a white man standing, he told Parks and the other three blacks in her row to get up and let the white man sit down. The others rose, but Rosa didn't. The driver called the police, who took Rosa into custody. This sparked the Civil RIghts Movement when E. D. Nixon heard of the arrest, and started the Montgomery Boycott. Mass protests soon began around the nation, many African Americans had decided it was time to demand equal rights.

On May 17, 1984, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling told many blacks that it was time to challenge segregation, and many white southerners that they needed to defend it.



Meanwhile, the Montgomery bus boycott had been a success, and the leaders decided to form the Montgomery Improvement Association to negotiate for an end to segregation. They elected Martin Luther King Jr. to lead them. King used the philosophy and techniques of Mohandas Ghandi. After the success of the initial boycott, Martin established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In the fall of 1959, four young freshmen from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College started a sit-in, a new form of non-violent protest. As their protests became more popular, they created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

On July 2, 1964, Presedent Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, giving federal government power to prevent racial discrimination and made segregation illegal.