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Protests against segregation grew during World War II (1939–1945).
African Americans fought bravely in segregated military units abroad. Yet they came home to find only the lowest paying jobs. Membership in the NAACP went way up. And labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to head a march on Washington to protest discrimination in the military and in jobs. After the war, African Americans kept asking the government to ensure their constitutional rights. The civil rights movement was born.
▲ In 1947, the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson to play for them. He was the first African American since 1889 to play major league baseball. Robinson was no stranger to civil rights protests. As a soldier during World War II, he refused to accept the segregated seating on a military bus. He was court-martialed for disobedience. The charges were dismissed, and Robinson got an honorable discharge from the army.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled against segregation in schools. That was the case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. “Brown” was the family of Linda Brown, pictured below in her segregated classroom. The court ruled that separate schools for African Americans were by their nature unequal. In its words, to separate African American students from white students “generates a feeling of inferiority ... that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” It would take years for this ruling to be put into practice. ▼
◀ After the Brown ruling, White Citizen Councils formed to fight desegregation. Senator Harry Byrd of Virginia called for “massive resistance” to the ruling. Some school systems even closed so they wouldn’t have to desegregate.
The U.S. government was slow to end segregation. President Harry Truman was embarrassed by criticism from around the world. People asked how the U.S. could call itself a democracy if African Americans were treated as second-class citizens. In 1948, he ordered an end to segregation in the military. ▶
▲ Rosa Parks was a devoted member of the NAACP chapter in Montgomery, Alabama. She challenged the public library’s segregation rule. On December 1, 1955, tired after a long day of work, she got on a crowded city bus and sat down. When the driver told her to give her seat to a white man, Parks refused and was arrested. Within a few days, the African Americans of Montgomery had rallied to her support by refusing to ride the buses. For over a year, young and old walked or carpooled to and from their jobs. In December 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Montgomery buses had to desegregate. The African Americans of Montgomery went back to riding the buses. Their year of protest had shown that they were well organized and willing to face hardships to fight segregation. Parks died in October 2005 and was the first woman to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol building.
When the head of the Montgomery NAACP chapter needed someone to organize the bus boycott, a new minister in town agreed to do it. His name was Martin Luther King Jr. It was his first civil rights protest but far from his last. African American churches quickly became the backbone of the movement. In 1957, King and others formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to fight segregation. ▼
Check It Out!
Who was Marian Anderson and how was she discriminated against?
Marian Anderson was a well-known African American singer. In 1939, she was not allowed to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. It was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization in protest. She helped arrange for Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial instead.
