Civil Rights Movement In The 1960's

The Civil Rights Movement is clearly one of the most influential times during the 1950’s and 1960’s. The fight for equality and desegregation for African American people was a long and hard fight. During this time, the economy was booming with inventions, 60% of whites were living in the middle class, jobs were increasing due to new construction of homes and roads. The opposite was happening for the African American community. In the 1950’s more than half of the African American community lived in poverty.

Voting was one of the many inequalities the African Americans along with other minorities had to suffer. In the 1950’s African Americans ran the risk of being lynched if they registered to vote. During the Civil Rights Movement is the 1960’s Martin Luther organized a rally of unregistered African Americans in the South to overcome the discrimination. Congress was pressured to ratify a voting rights bill. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 eventually was established and was one of the most significant legislative

Although, segregation was still a law in the South, but not in the North, some areas in the North still practiced this. The NAACP began to challenge the “separate but equal” doctrine that maintained racial segregation. Segregation was fought in court with several cases that were taken to the Supreme Court. Sweat v. Painter ruled on the quality of education from a law school in Texas that was being taught to the African Americans compared to the states white-only schools. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas was also a Supreme Court case that fought against racial segregation in public schools. The Supreme Court ruled that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” Only two percent of blacks were integrated in the South by the end of the 1960’s. California, Orange County is where desegregation