African American Civil Rights Movement In The 1950s And 1960s

In the 1950s and 1960s, American culture, society, and politics underwent the largest transformation since the Civil War. Unpopular wars in Indochina sparked widespread protest and gave rise to the counterculture movement. Polarization in politics grew as trust in the government plummeted, and Americans lived in fear of a communist threat to national security. However, these decades also gave rise to an energized movement for civil rights. Groups which had been suppressed in the past, especially African Americans, began to publicize their cause through the new mass media provided by television. As their national leaders worked with the federal government for sweeping reform, these minorities grew more significant. All of these groups relied on their constituents to hold nonviolent protests, and as a result, the government passed influential federal legislation to grant African Americans and other disadvantaged minorities their rights as American citizens. Although most Americans have concluded that the African American civil rights movement was successful in changing American morals in the long term, some historians have criticized the movement, and have insisted that it was short-sighted. Others have argued that the movement was a failure, since it did not aid African Americans after the

Board of Education. Chief Justice Earl Warren passed the landmark ruling, partially overturning the “separate but equal” mandate issued in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. As the decision read, “We [the United States Supreme Court] conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (U.S. Supreme Court). After 1954, the federal government became more receptive to African American concerns, and the decision in Brown v. Board of Education motivated African Americans to continue pushing for a more comprehensive Congressional