A survey for College Report about Civil Rights Movement?

Question

Why did the Civil Rights Movement occur when it did? What important events (pre 1950 and during 50's) "created" the movement?

Thanks

Answer 1

During World War II, progress was made in outlawing discrimination in defense industries (1941) and after the war in desegregating the armed forces (1948). During the late 1940s and early 1950s, lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) pressed a series of important cases before the Supreme Court in which they argued that segregation meant inherently unequal (and inadequate) educational and other public facilities for blacks. These cases culminated in the Court's landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan. (May 17, 1954), in which it declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. This historic decision was to stimulate a mass movement on the part of blacks and white sympathizers to try to end the segregationist practices and racial inequalities that were firmly entrenched across the nation and particularly in the South. The movement was strongly resisted by many whites in the South and elsewhere.

Answer 2

The experience of WWII and the Holocaust had an effect on global perspective of human rights. After the League of Nations dissolved and the United Nations formed, many countries took more seriously the problem of discrimination and denying citizens their rights.

Different countries also have different histories. Canada and the US, for example, had the issue of slavery to contend with. The US also had issues like the Suffrage movement that began to see the world as more than a white man's paradise.