Civil Rights

The Civil Rights Movement
When did the Civil Rights movement start to surface? What were the foundations of the
Civil Rights movement? What were the successes and failures of a movement attempting to
affect social change in the 1950's and 1960's America. The intent of this research is to describe
the principal tenants of the Civil Rights movement, its success and failures, and to provide the
foundation it was built upon.
The war brought many changes during the 1940's, especially for the African-American
population. Although the military remained segregated for 1 million blacks in uniform, Blacks
made up 16 percent of the total armed forces, higher than their proportion (10 percent) of the
population as a whole (Boyer 13). As black population grew, so did the social tensions that
ended in protests and violence. Riots had broken out in Detroit, when rumors had it; whites had pushed a black woman and her baby into a lake in a city park. The result left twenty-five blacks and nine whites dead (Boyer 14). Resentment set in among the black community after the war. It was thought by the African-American community, that their race had shed just as much blood
during the war as any other race, so why shouldn't they share in the same equal rights. In 1944, Civil Rights demonstrators entered into a segregated Washington D.C. restaurant, while others marched outside with signs bearing the slogan: "We Die Together. Let's eat Together (Boyer 14)." The Roosevelt administration issued an executive order, which prevented racial discrimination in defense plants and to investigate discrimination in the work places. This early foundation paved the way for the Civil Rights movement that would eventually sweep America in the decades to come.
In the 1950's segregation in education was widely accepted throughout the U.S. It
was law in some southern states. In the early 1950's the U.S. supreme court had heard several
school-segregation cases brought on by the... [continues]

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