INTRODUCTION

The African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) refers to the reform movements in the United States aimed at abolishing racial discrimination of African Americans. The aim of these articles is to highlight several important moments and persons involved in the movement and its fight against segregation.

The beginnings

When the American Civil War ended in 1865, the US federal government instigated a program aimed at protecting the civil rights of the newly freed slaves. This period, known as Reconstruction abruptly ended when in 1877 white supremacists once again took control of each southern state. In the years that followed not only in the southern states but in others also, racial violence aimed at African Americans began to intensify. In Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Kansas discrimination was both required and permitted by government officials. These state and local laws were known as Jim Crow laws.

Plessy v. Ferguson

In 1896 the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision that would become one of the landmarks in the spreading of racial segregation.

A law was passed in the State of Louisiana in 1890 that required blacks to be accommodated separately from the whites on railways, which included separate railway cars. Homer Plessy, who was one-eighth black decided to test the law and sat in the railway car that was designated "whites only". Since under the law of the State of Louisiana he was classified as African American he was asked to move to the "colored" car. After Plessy refused to move, he was arrested and brought up on charges of violating the segregation law.

Even though at trial Plessy claimed that his constitutional rights had been denied him, the judge ruled that that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies as long as they operated within state boundaries and found Plessy guilty. Plessy took the case to the Supreme Court of Louisiana and after being found guilty by them he took the case to the United States Supreme Court.

This court took Plessy's claim that his constitutional rights were violated into consideration but in a 7 to 1 vote rejected his arguments claiming also that the Louisiana railway law did not imply inferiority of blacks but that the separation of the two races was a matter of public policy.

This ruling would cement the legal foundation for the doctrine "separate but equal", which was the idea that segregation based on classifications was legal.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

In 1905 a group of prominent African Americans met, under the leadership of Harvard scholar W.E.B. DuBois to discuss the challenges facing "people of color". The meeting took place at a hotel situated on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and the group came to be known as the Niagara Movement. A year later, three whites joined the group: journalist William E. Walling; social worker Mary White Ovington; and Jewish social worker Henry Moskowitz.

On May 30 1909, the Niagara Movement conference took place at New York City's Henry Street Settlement House, from which an organization of more than 40 individuals emerged, calling itself the National Negro Committee which a year later would be renamed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Their aims were:

“To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.”

Jackie Robinson, a pioneer

Jackie Robinson was an African American who served in the United States Army as a second lieutenant during World War Two. In 1944 in Texas, he refused to obey a direct order to move to the back of a segregated military bus, which resulted in him being court-martialed. The military jury acquitted him and honorably discharged him.

Jackie Robinson went on to become a famous baseball player but his refusal to submit to segregation laws paved the way for the American civil rights movement, making him one of its most recognizable people.