Civil Rights

The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968) refers to the reform movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring Suffrage in Southern states. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the South. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power Movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from oppression by whites.
Many of those who were active in the Civil Rights Movement, with organizations such as NAACP, SNCC, CORE and SCLC, prefer the term "Southern Freedom Movement" because the struggle was about far more than just civil rights under law; it was also about fundamental issues of freedom, respect, dignity, and economic and social equality.

The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation within the court system that typified the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the 20th Century shifted after Brown to a strategy of "direct action"—primarily boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, marches and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. This mass action strategy typified the movement from 1960 to 1968.Churches, the centers of their communities, and local grassroots organizations 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.The Montgomery Improvement Association—created to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott managed to keep the boycott going for over a year until a federal court order required Montgomery to desegregate its buses. The success in Montgomery made its leader Dr. Martin Luther King a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the highly successful Tallahassee, Florida, boycott of 1956–1957.