Civil rights movement

== Background ==
{{main|African-American history|Timeline of African-American history}}

=== American Civil War and Reconstruction era ===
{{Further|Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution}}

[[File:13th Amendment Pg1of1 AC.jpg|190px|thumb|13th Amendment in the [[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]], bearing the signature of Abraham Lincoln]]

Before the [[American Civil War]], [[List of presidents of the United States who owned slaves|eight serving presidents had owned slaves]], almost four million black people remained [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved in the South]], generally only white men with property could vote, and the [[Naturalization Act of 1790]] limited U.S. citizenship to [[White people|whites]].<ref>{{cite news |title=How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war |work=The Guardian |date=August 30, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Schultz |first=Jeffrey D. |title=Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WDV40aK1T-sC&pg=PA284 |page=284 |year=2002 |publisher=Oryx Press |access-date=March 25, 2010 |isbn=978-1-57356-148-8}}</ref><ref>Leland T. Saito (1998). ''Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb''. p. 154. University of Illinois Press</ref> Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]] (1865) that ended slavery; the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|14th Amendment]] (1869) that gave black people citizenship, adding their total for [[United States congressional apportionment|Congressional apportionment]]; and the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|15th Amendment]] (1870) that gave black males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time).<ref>{{cite news |title=Black voting rights, 15th Amendment still challenged after 150 years |url=https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/03/black-voting-rights-15th-amendment-still-challenged-after-150-years/4587160002/ |access-date=December 3, 2020|first=Rick|last=Jervis|date=February 3, 2020 |newspaper=USA Today}}</ref> From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent [[Reconstruction era]] during which the federal government tried to establish free labor and the [[civil rights]] of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to the formation of insurgent movements such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]] (KKK), whose members attacked black and white [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] in order to maintain [[white supremacy]]. In 1871, President [[Ulysses S. Grant]], the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General [[Amos T. Akerman]], initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the [[Enforcement Acts]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Jean Edward |title=Grant |date=2001 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-7432-1701-9 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/grant00smit/page/244 244]–247 |url=https://archive.org/details/grant00smit|url-access=registration }}</ref> Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent [[paramilitary]] groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage, intimidating and suppressing black voters, and assassinating Republican officeholders.<ref>{{cite web |last=Wormser |first=Richard |title=The Enforcement Acts (1870–71) |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |publisher=PBS: Jim Crow Stories |access-date=May 12, 2012}}</ref><ref name="States afraid to take action">[http://baic.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-state.html Black-American Representatives and Senators by Congress, 1870–Present] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090101092449/http://baic.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-state.html |date=January 1, 2009 }}—U.S. House of Representatives</ref> However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the [[U.S. Federal Government|Federal Government]] to get involved.<ref name="States afraid to take action" /> Many Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of war.<ref name="States afraid to take action" />

===Disenfranchisement after Reconstruction===
{{Main|Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era}}
{{Further|Jim Crow laws|Civil rights movement (1865–1896)|Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
}}
After the [[1876 United States presidential election|disputed election]] of 1876, which resulted in the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops, whites in the South regained political control of the region's state legislatures. They continued to intimidate and violently attack blacks before and during elections to suppress their voting, but the last African Americans were elected to Congress from the South before disenfranchisement of blacks by states throughout the region, as described below.

[[File:Lynching-of-will-james.jpg|thumb|left|The mob-style [[Lynching in the United States|lynching]] of [[William "Froggie" James|Will James]], [[Cairo, Illinois]], 1909]]

From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchise]] African Americans and many [[Poor White]]s by creating barriers to voter registration; voting rolls were dramatically reduced as blacks and poor whites were forced out of electoral politics. After the landmark [[United States Supreme Court|Supreme Court]] case of ''[[Smith v. Allwright]]'' (1944), which prohibited [[white primaries]], progress was made in increasing black political participation in the Rim South and [[Acadiana]] – although almost entirely in urban areas<ref>Klarman, Michael J.; 'The White Primary Rulings: A Case Study in the Consequences of Supreme Court Decisionmaking'; ''Florida State University Law Review'', vol. 29, issue 55, pp. 55–107</ref> and a few rural localities where most blacks worked outside plantations.<ref>Walton, Hanes (junior); Puckett, Sherman and Deskins Donald R. (junior); ''The African American Electorate: A Statistical History'', p. 539 {{ISBN|0872895084}}</ref> The ''status quo ante'' of excluding African Americans from the political system lasted in the remainder of the South, especially [[North Louisiana]], Mississippi and Alabama, until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s to provide federal enforcement of constitutional voting rights. For more than sixty years, blacks in the South were essentially excluded from politics, unable to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.<ref name="States afraid to take action" /> Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries.

During this period, the white-dominated [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] maintained political control of the South. With whites controlling all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful [[voting bloc]] in Congress. The [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]]{{mdash}}the "party of Lincoln" and the party to which most blacks had belonged{{mdash}}shrank to insignificance except in remote [[Southern Unionist|Unionist]] areas of [[Appalachia]] and the [[Ozarks]] as black voter registration was suppressed. The Republican [[lily-white movement]] also gained strength by excluding blacks. Until 1965, the "[[Solid South]]" was a one-party system under the white Democrats. Excepting the previously noted historic Unionist strongholds the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Otis H Stephens, Jr |author2=John M Scheb, II |title=American Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFcwj2yrLcwC&pg=PA528 |year=2007 |publisher=Cengage Learning |page=528 |isbn=978-0-495-09705-1}}</ref> In 1901, President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] invited [[Booker T. Washington]], president of the [[Tuskegee Institute]], to dine at the [[White House]], making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers."<ref name="finkelman"/> Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African-American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, these actions were resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics.<ref name="finkelman">{{cite book |editor=Paul Finkelman |title=Encyclopedia of African American History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6gbQHxb_P0QC&pg=RA3-PA199 |year=2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=199–200 of vol 4 |isbn=978-0-19-516779-5}}</ref>

[[File:Omaha courthouse lynching.jpg|thumb|[[Lynching]] victim Will Brown, who was mutilated and burned during the [[Omaha race riot of 1919|Omaha, Nebraska race riot of 1919]]. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the U.S.<ref>Moyers, Bill. [https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html "Legacy of Lynching"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170829121124/https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html |date=August 29, 2017 }}. PBS. Retrieved July 28, 2016</ref>]]

During the same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white southerners imposed [[Racial segregation in the United States|racial segregation]] by law. Violence against blacks increased, with numerous [[lynchings]] through the turn of the century. The system of ''[[de jure]]'' state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged from the post-Reconstruction South became known as the "[[Jim Crow]]" system. The United States Supreme Court made up almost entirely of Northerners, upheld the constitutionality of those state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities in its 1896 decision ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'', legitimizing them through the "[[separate but equal]]" doctrine.<ref>[[Rayford Logan]],''The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson'', pp. 97–98. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.</ref> Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat.<ref name="Leon Litwack 2004">Leon Litwack, ''Jim Crow Blues'', Magazine of History (OAH Publications, 2004)</ref> For those places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were served first.<ref name="Leon Litwack 2004" /> Elected in 1912, President [[Woodrow Wilson]] gave in to demands by Southern members of his cabinet and ordered segregation of workplaces throughout the federal government.<ref>Michael Kazin, Rebecca Edwards, Adam Rothman (2009). ''The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History''. p. 245. Princeton University Press</ref>

The early 20th century is a period often referred to as the "[[nadir of American race relations]]", when the number of lynchings was highest. While tensions and [[civil rights]] violations were most intense in the South, social discrimination affected African Americans in other regions as well.<ref>C. Vann Woodward, ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow'', 3rd rev. ed. (Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 67–109.</ref> At the national level, the Southern bloc controlled important committees in Congress, defeated passage of federal laws against lynching, and exercised considerable power beyond the number of whites in the South.

Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period:
* [[Racial segregation]]. By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/info/seglaws.htm Birmingham Segregation Laws] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110204031120/http://www.crmvet.org/info/seglaws.htm |date=February 4, 2011 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.
* [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|Disenfranchisement]]. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more restrictive, essentially forcing black voters off the voting rolls. The number of African-American voters dropped dramatically, and they were no longer able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans, and U.S. states such as Alabama disenfranchised poor whites as well.
* [[Exploitation of labour|Exploitation]]. Increased economic oppression of blacks through the [[convict lease]] system, [[Hispanic and Latino Americans|Latinos]], and [[Asian Pacific American|Asians]],{{Clarify|date=May 2023|reason=Should "through the convict lease system" follow "Latinos, and Asians"?}} denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination.
* Violence. Individual, police, paramilitary, organizational, and [[Mass racial violence in the United States|mob racial violence against blacks]] (and Latinos in the [[Southwestern United States|Southwest]], and Asians in the [[West Coast of the United States|West Coast]]).

[[File:KKK night rally in Chicago c1920 cph.3b12355.jpg|thumb|[[Ku Klux Klan|KKK]] night rally near [[Chicago]], in the 1920s]]

African Americans and other ethnic minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the [[Civil rights movement (1896–1954)]]). The [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through [[litigation]], education, and [[lobbying]] efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' (1954), when the [[Warren Court]] ruled that segregation of public schools in the US was unconstitutional and, by implication, overturned the "[[separate but equal]]" doctrine established in ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' of 1896.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> Following the unanimous Supreme Court ruling, many states began to gradually integrate their schools, but some areas of the South resisted by closing public schools altogether.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />

The integration of Southern public libraries followed demonstrations and protests that used techniques seen in other elements of the larger civil rights movement.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006">Fultz, M. (2006). "Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation", ''Libraries & The Cultural Record'', 41(3), 338–346.</ref> This included sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006" /> For example, in 1963 in the city of [[Anniston, Alabama]], two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006" /> Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries was generally quicker than the integration of other public institutions.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006" />

===National issues===
[[File:ColoredSailersRoomWWINOLA.jpg|thumb|left|Colored Sailors room in World War I]]

The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). In 1900 Reverend Matthew Anderson, speaking at the annual [[Hampton Negro Conference]] in Virginia, said that "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage-earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South. There seems to be an apparent effort throughout the North, especially in the cities to debar the colored worker from all the avenues of higher remunerative labor, which makes it more difficult to improve his economic condition even than in the South."<ref>{{cite book|title=Annual Report of the Hampton Negro Conference|chapter=The Economic Aspect of the Negro Problem|first=Anderson|last=Matthew|series=Hampton bulletinno. 9–10, 12–16|editor1-last=Browne |editor1-first=Hugh |editor2-last=Kruse |editor2-first=Edwina |editor4-last=Moton |editor3-last=Walker |editor3-first=Thomas C. |editor4-first=Robert Russa |editor4-link=Robert Russa Moton |editor5-last=Wheelock |editor5-first=Frederick D. |publisher=Hampton Institute Press|location=[[Hampton, Virginia]]|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkQ9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39|hdl=2027/chi.14025588?urlappend=%3Bseq=43|volume=4|year=1900|page=39}}</ref> From 1910 to 1970, blacks sought better lives by migrating north and west out of the South. A total of nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]], most during and after World War II. So many people migrated that the demographics of some previously black-majority states changed to a white majority (in combination with other developments). The rapid influx of blacks altered the demographics of Northern and Western cities; happening at a period of expanded European, Hispanic, and Asian immigration, it added to social competition and tensions, with the new migrants and immigrants battling for a place in jobs and housing.

[[Image:chicago-race-riot.jpg|thumb|right|A white gang looking for blacks during the [[Chicago race riot of 1919]]]]
Reflecting social tensions after World War I, as veterans struggled to return to the workforce and labor unions were organizing, the [[Red Summer|Red Summer of 1919]] was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.S. as a result of white race riots against blacks that took place in more than three dozen cities, such as the [[Chicago race riot of 1919]] and the [[Omaha race riot of 1919]]. Urban problems such as crime and disease were blamed on the large influx of Southern blacks to cities in the north and west, based on stereotypes of rural southern African-Americans. Overall, blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced [[Racism in the United States|systemic discrimination]] in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for blacks were routed to the lowest status and restrictive in potential mobility. Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, [[restrictive covenants]], [[redlining]] and [[racial steering]]".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Tolnay |first=Stewart |s2cid=145520215 |title=The African American 'Great Migration' and Beyond |journal=Annual Review of Sociology |year=2003 |volume=29 |pages=218–221 |doi=10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100009 |jstor=30036966}}</ref> The Great Migration resulted in many African Americans becoming urbanized, and they began to realign from the Republican to the Democratic Party, especially because of opportunities under the [[New Deal]] of the [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] administration during the Great Depression in the 1930s.<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Party-Realignment--New-Deal/ |title=Party Realignment and the New Deal |agency=US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives |access-date=May 31, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180530121202/http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Party-Realignment--New-Deal/ |archive-date=May 30, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> Substantially under pressure from African-American supporters who began the [[March on Washington Movement]], President Roosevelt issued the first federal order banning discrimination and created the [[Fair Employment Practice Committee]]. After both World Wars, black veterans of the military pressed for full civil rights and often led activist movements. In 1948, President [[Harry Truman]] issued [[Executive Order 9981]], which ended [[Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces|segregation in the military]].<ref name=trumanlibrary>{{cite web|title=Executive Order 9981|url=http://www.trumanlibrary.org/9981.htm|publisher=Harry S. Truman Library and Museum|access-date=May 18, 2019|archive-date=January 22, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190122055428/https://www.trumanlibrary.org/9981.htm}}</ref>

[[File:We want white tenants.jpg|thumb|White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the [[Public housing in Detroit|housing project]] erected this sign, [[Detroit]], 1942]]

[[Housing segregation]] became a nationwide problem following the Great Migration of black people out of the South. [[Covenant (law)#Exclusionary covenants|Racial covenants]] were employed by many [[real estate development|real estate developers]] to "protect" entire [[subdivision (land)|subdivisions]], with the primary intent to keep "[[white people|white]]" neighborhoods "white". Ninety percent of the housing projects built in the years following World War II were racially restricted by such covenants.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kennedy|first=Stetson|url=http://www.stetsonkennedy.com/jim_crow_guide/index.html|title=Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was|year=1959|chapter=Who May Live Where|chapter-url=http://www.stetsonkennedy.com/jim_crow_guide/chapter6.htm}}</ref> Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include [[Chicago]], [[Baltimore]], [[Detroit]], [[Milwaukee]],<ref>{{cite web|author1=Michelle Maternowski |author2= Joy Powers|date=March 3, 2017|title=How Did Metro Milwaukee Become So Segregated?|url=https://www.wuwm.com/post/how-did-metro-milwaukee-become-so-segregated|website=WUWM.com|ref=WUWM 89.7 Milwaukee NPR}}</ref> [[Los Angeles]], [[Seattle]], and [[St. Louis]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Racial Restrictive Covenants: Enforcing Neighborhood Segregation in Seattle – Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project |url=https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants_report.htm |access-date=December 5, 2020 |agency=University of Washington}}</ref>

{{blockquote|Said premises shall not be rented, leased, or conveyed to, or occupied by, any person other than of the white or Caucasian race.|Racial covenant for a home in Beverly Hills, California.<ref>{{cite news |title=Racist language is still woven into home deeds across America. Erasing it isn't easy, and some don't want to |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/15/us/racist-deeds-covenants/index.html|date=February 15, 2020|first=Nick|last=Watt |author2=Jack Hannah |access-date=January 26, 2021 |agency=CNN}}</ref>}}

While many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward black people, many other whites migrated to more racially homogeneous [[suburban]] or [[exurban]] regions, a process known as [[white flight]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Seligman|first=Amanda|title=Block by block: neighborhoods and public policy on Chicago's West Side|year=2005|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0-226-74663-0|pages=213–14}}</ref> From the 1930s to the 1960s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor "should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood." The result was the development of all-black [[ghettos]] in the North and West, where much housing was older, as well as South.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/fairhousing/historical.html |title=Future of Fair Housing: How We Got Here |access-date=July 29, 2016  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160707035121/http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/fairhousing/historical.html |archive-date=July 7, 2016 }}</ref>

The first [[anti-miscegenation law]] was passed by the [[Maryland General Assembly]] in 1691, criminalizing [[interracial marriage]].<ref name="Anti-miscegenation"/> In a speech in [[Charleston, Illinois]] in 1858, [[Abraham Lincoln]] stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people".<ref>{{cite book |first=Stephen A. |last=Douglas|title=The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 |date=1991 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |page=235}}</ref> By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes.<ref name="Anti-miscegenation"/> By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states.<ref name="Anti-miscegenation"/> While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor [[Sammy Davis Jr.]] faced a backlash for his involvement with white actress [[Kim Novak]].<ref name="Smithsonian" /> Davis briefly married a black dancer in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence.<ref name="Smithsonian">Lanzendorfer, Joy (August 9, 2017) [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/hollywood-loved-sammy-davis-jr-until-he-dated-white-movie-star-180964395/ "Hollywood Loved Sammy Davis Jr. Until He Dated a White Movie Star"], ''[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]]'' Retrieved February 23, 2021.</ref> In 1958, officers in [[Virginia]] entered the home of [[Loving v. Virginia#Plaintiffs|Mildred and Richard Loving]] and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years.<ref name="Anti-miscegenation">{{cite news |title=Eugenics, Race, and Marriage |url=https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/eugenics-race-and-marriage |access-date=February 23, 2021 |website=Facing History.org}}</ref>

Invigorated by the victory of ''Brown'' and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]]. They were faced with "[[massive resistance]]" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and [[disfranchisement|voter suppression]]. In defiance, African-American activists adopted a combined strategy of [[direct action]], [[nonviolence]], [[nonviolent resistance]], and many events described as [[civil disobedience]], giving rise to the civil rights movement of 1954 to 1968.

[[A. Philip Randolph]] had planned a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to support demands for elimination of [[employment discrimination]] in the [[Defence industry|defense industry]]; he called off the march when the [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] administration met the demand by issuing [[Executive Order 8802]], which barred racial discrimination and created an [[Fair Employment Practice Committee|agency]] to oversee compliance with the order.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Clawson|first1=Laura|title=A. Philip Randolph, the union leader who led the March on Washington|url=http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/28/1234481/-A-Philip-Randolph-the-union-leader-who-led-the-March-on-Washington#|date=August 28, 2013|access-date=May 6, 2015|website=Daily Kos|publisher=Daily Kos Group}}</ref>

=== Protests begin ===
The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation that had typified the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century broadened after ''Brown'' to a strategy that emphasized "[[direct action]]": boycotts, [[sit-in]]s, [[Freedom Rides]], marches or walks, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, standing in line, and, at times, civil disobedience.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Carter|first=April|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OqJMHf438OEC&q=direct+action+in+united+states&pg=PR7|title=Direct Action and Democracy Today|date=January 14, 2005|publisher=Polity|isbn=978-0-7456-2936-0|page=x|language=en}}</ref>

Churches, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges used by the NAACP and others.

In 1952, the [[Regional Council of Negro Leadership]] (RCNL), led by [[T. R. M. Howard]], a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned Tri-State Bank of [[Nashville]] which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the [[White Citizens' Councils]].<ref name="Beito and Beito">David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, ''Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power'', Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp. 81, 99–100.</ref>

After [[Claudette Colvin]] was arrested for not giving up her seat on a [[Montgomery, Alabama]] bus in March 1955, a bus boycott was considered and rejected. But when [[Rosa Parks]] was arrested in December, [[Jo Ann Robinson|Jo Ann Gibson Robinson]] of the Montgomery Women's Political Council put the bus boycott protest in motion. Late that night, she, John Cannon (chairman of the Business Department at [[Alabama State University]]) and others mimeographed and distributed thousands of leaflets calling for a boycott.<ref>{{cite web |title=Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson |url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/robinson-jo-ann-gibson |website=The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute |date=June 22, 2017 |publisher=Stanford University |access-date=December 3, 2019 }}</ref><ref name="Robinson 1986">Robinson, Jo Ann & Garrow, David J. (foreword by Coretta Scott King) ''The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It'' (1986) {{ISBN|0-394-75623-1}} Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press</ref> The eventual success of the boycott made its spokesman [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the successful [[Tallahassee, Florida]] boycott of 1956–57.<ref>[http://www.tallahassee.com/special/boycott/reader-smith.html "The Tallahassee Bus Boycott—Fifty Years Later]," ''The Tallahassee Democrat'', May 21, 2006 {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071210094329/http://www.tallahassee.com/special/boycott/reader-smith.html |date=December 10, 2007 }}</ref> This movement also sparked the [[1956 Sugar Bowl]] riots in Atlanta which later became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr.<ref name=fcflu>{{cite news |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Cs9RAAAAIBAJ&pg=4796%2C5131560 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |last=Sell |first=Jack |title=Panthers defeat flu; face Ga. Tech next |date=December 30, 1955 |page=1}}</ref><ref name="kruse">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c5763Zgu4_oC&pg=PP1|title=White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism|author=Kevin Michael Kruse|publisher=Princeton University Press|date=February 1, 2008|isbn=978-0-691-09260-7}}</ref>

In 1957, King and [[Ralph Abernathy]], the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as [[C.&nbsp;K. Steele]] of Tallahassee and [[T.&nbsp;J. Jemison]] of Baton Rouge, and other activists such as [[Fred Shuttlesworth]], [[Ella Baker]], [[A. Philip Randolph]], [[Bayard Rustin]] and [[Stanley Levison]], to form the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] (SCLC). The SCLC, with its headquarters in [[Atlanta]], [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made nonviolence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism.

In 1959, [[Septima Clarke]], Bernice Robinson, and [[Esau Jenkins]], with the help of [[Myles Horton]]'s [[Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School]] in [[Tennessee]], began the first Citizenship Schools in [[South Carolina]]'s [[Sea Islands]]. They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on [[Johns Island, South Carolina|Johns Island]]. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere.