Civil rights and the Great Society

Black Americans came home from World War II demanding the rights they had fought for. In 1948 Truman ordered equal treatment in the armed forces. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, rejecting for public education the separate but equal rule of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Many white Southern officials answered with massive resistance, and in 1957 Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine Black students entering Central High School.

The movement used nonviolent direct action. The Montgomery bus boycott (1955 to 1956), sparked by Rosa Parks's arrest and led by Martin Luther King Jr., ended when courts struck down the city's bus segregation. In 1960 students began lunch-counter sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, and formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Freedom Riders challenged segregated interstate bus travel in 1961, and televised attacks on protesters in Birmingham (1963) and Selma (1965) built national support. The 1963 March on Washington drew about 250,000 people.

Congress responded. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in public accommodations such as hotels and restaurants and in employment, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended literacy tests in covered areas and sent federal examiners to register voters. The Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) ended poll taxes in federal elections, and the Fair Housing Act (1968) barred discrimination in the sale and rental of housing.

Frustration with slow change fed new voices. Malcolm X urged Black pride and self-defense and criticized the movement's focus on integration, and in 1966 SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael called for Black Power. Riots broke out in many cities, including Watts (1965) and Detroit (1967), and King was assassinated in 1968. Other groups drew on the movement's methods: César Chávez and Dolores Huerta organized Mexican American farm workers, the American Indian Movement demanded treaty rights and self-determination, and the women's movement, energized by Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and the National Organization for Women (1966), won laws such as Title IX (1972).

President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society aimed to use federal power and the prosperity of the 1960s to end poverty and racial injustice. His War on Poverty (1964) created programs such as the Job Corps and, in 1965, Head Start. In 1965 Congress created Medicare, health insurance for people 65 and older, and Medicaid, health care for many low-income people; passed the first large program of federal aid to public schools; and passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which ended the national-origins quotas of the 1920s.

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren expanded individual rights. Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) required states to provide lawyers for poor defendants charged with felonies, Reynolds v. Sims (1964) required state legislative districts of equal population, and Miranda v. Arizona (1966) required police to warn suspects in custody of their rights. Critics, especially in the South and among conservatives, argued that the Court and the Great Society reached too far.

To explain how a protest changed policy, name the protest, say what it showed the nation, and connect it to the law or ruling that followed. Pressure usually worked through publicity: televised violence against peaceful protesters pushed presidents and Congress to act.