Civil Rights
The civil rights movement was a struggle by black Americans to gain full citizenship rights and to achieve racial equality. It seems to many people that the movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and ended with the Voting rights Act of 1965. Some people believe that it hasn't ended yet.
Segregation is what separated the blacks from the whites and what made it impossible for the blacks to be treated fairly. Reconstruction governments passed laws opening up economic and political opportunities for blacks.

In 1877, the Democratic Party had control over the south and wanted to reverse black advances made during Reconstruction. Then the Demotic Party began to pass local and state laws that specified certain places "For Whites Only" and others for "Colored".  Blacks even had separate schools, transportation, restaurants, and parks that were poorly funded. Also they were not allowed to vote, known as disfranchisement.  1890 to 1910 all Southern states passed laws imposing requirements for voting that were used to prevent blacks from voting, in spite of the 15th Amendment.

The North was less segregated than the south. In the North blacks were allowed to vote, except there were very few blacks that lived there. Black people were still denied entrance to the best hotels and restaurants though. Blacks created national organizations like the National Afro-American League, the Niagara Movement, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to protest segregation.

In 1935, Charles H. Houston who is the NAACP's chief legal counsel won the first Supreme Court case argued exclusively by black counsel representing the NAACP, which invigorated the NAACP's legal efforts. Then, Thurgood Marshall, Houston's chief aide, began to challenge segregation as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Fund.

When World War I began, blacks enlisted to fight for their country, although they were denied the opportunity to be leaders because of segregation.  From 1916 to 1917 hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks migrated northward during the war to take advantage of job openings.  The jobs were opened up by the war.  It continued into the 1950's. About 85% of them became urbanized during the 20th century.

In the 1930's during the Great Depression black protests increased against discrimination.  They protested the refusal of white-owned businesses in all-black neighborhoods to hire black salespersons.  Their slogan was "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work."

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was administered, the federal government created federal programs, like Social Security that ensured the welfare of individual citizens. His wife Eleanor was and open advocate for fairness to blacks, even though her husband wasn't an outspoken supporter of black rights. The Roosevelt Administration opened federal jobs to blacks and protected their rights. In 1938, the courts displayed a new attitude towards blacks rights. That year the Supreme Court ruled that Missouri was obligated to provide access to public law school for blacks, just has it provided one for whites.

When World War II began, blacks demanded better treatment than they experienced in World War I. During World War II, about one-eighth of the U.S. armed forces were black. Blacks were trained by the Army Air Corps as pilots in a segregated arrangement in Tuskegee, Alabama. During 1939 and 1940 black newspaper editors insisted that black support for this war effort would depend on fair treatment. They demanded that black soldiers be trained in all military roles and that black civilians have equal opportunities to work in war industries at home.

After the war the Supreme Court decided that the University of Texas had to integrate its law school. In May of 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark that racially segregated education was unconstitutional. Protesters that were for segregation had tactics that included firing school employees who showed willingness to seek integration, closing public schools rather than desegregating, and boycotting all public education that was integrated.
The Ku Klux Klan increased in members as the desegregation progressed. The KKK was against desegregation and black civil rights, they used violence and threats of anyone who was for it. In 1955, they murdered Emmett Till, who was slain because they thought he had flirted with a white woman. He was only 14.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was told to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white person and she refused. Because of this she was arrested. Back then black people also had to sit at the back of the bus and the whites sat up front. White drivers were often rude and abusive which made Montgomery's black community mad.  They decided to boycott riding the buses, which was an immediate success. Martin Luther King helped to organize the boycott because he was the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association that directed the boycott.  The protest made him a national figure. His support for nonviolence attracted peace activists.  50,000 blacks participated in the bus boycott and it lasted more than a year. In November 1956, a federal court ordered the buses desegregated.

In the spring of 1963, the SCLC persuaded teenagers and school children to join in their anti-segregation marches.  A police commissioner named Eugene Conor ordered police to attack demonstrators with dogs and firefighters to turn high pressure water hoses on them.  These scenes of violence were shown throughout the nation and world in newspapers, magazines, and on television. The world was shocked by the events in Birmingham and increased the support for black civil rights.  And in Birmingham white leaders promised to negotiate and end to some segregation practices.

The national civil rights leadership decided to keep pressure on the Kennedy administration and the Congress to pass a civil rights legislation so they planned a March on Washington for August 1963.  Martin Luther King delivered his famous speech, "I Have a Dream" in front of the giant sculpture of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.