How did the Civil Rights Movement begin in the 1950s?

Answer 1

The beginnings can be traced to the following two events: The Brown vs the Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court and Ms Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott (for a very moving film about the latter, see "The Long Walk Home." (see the 2nd link below, please)

"But in the mid-1950s, two historic events heralded the beginning of the modern civil rights struggle: the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The 1954 Brown ruling occurred at the height of the McCarthy’s witch-hunt and the Cold War. Nevertheless, led by Republican Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional and ordered segregated school districts to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.”

Martin Luther King Jr. declared, “This decision brought hope to millions of disinherited Negroes who had formerly dared only to dream of freedom.”

The Brown ruling is still one of the most misunderstood by opponents of racism--a classic example of reform from above. Why did the Supreme Court destroy the legal basis of Jim Crow when there was no significant mass movement pressuring the federal government or the courts to do so?

Much of it had to do with the fact that Jim Crow racism had become an impediment to competing with the former USSR for influence in the newly emerging countries of the former colonial world, particularly in Africa.

While this wasn’t stated in the Brown ruling itself, it was the political background to a series of legal rulings made from the late 1940s onward--and the decision of President Harry Truman, a long-time supporter of Jim Crow from Missouri, to order the desegregation of all branches of the U.S. military in 1948.

Yet the Supreme Court ordering schools to be desegregated and local school boards actually desegregating them were two very different things. Accomplishing the reality would take a powerful mass movement.

It took a year and a half after the Brown ruling for the ramifications of the need for building the struggle on the ground to become clear.

In early December 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American woman with a long history of political activity in Montgomery, Ala., refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white person. She was arrested, and soon after, the most famous boycott in U.S. history was organized--the Montgomery bus boycott.

It was led by a group of Black ministers calling themselves the Montgomery Improvement Association. A young minister, newly arrived in Montgomery from Atlanta--Martin Luther King Jr.--became their leader. During the course of the yearlong boycott, virtually the entire Black population of Montgomery walked or car-pooled to work and other activities, rather than ride the public buses.

Despite threats, bombings and government harassment, Black residents emerged victorious after 13 months of boycotting--the segregation of Blacks and whites on Montgomery’s buses was abolished. “The Montgomery bus boycott was a crucial turning point in the black struggle of the ’50s--the crucial turning point where Blacks scored an important an unequivocal victory over whites,” wrote sociologist Jack Bloom."

Answer 2

Certainly with black churches fighting against the poll tax and Jim Crow laws, it took a big step forward with the Montgomery Bus Boycott