Martin Luther King Jr. and others formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after the success of the Montgomery bus boycott. The SCLC remained active and influential in the Civil Rights Movement throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
A group of African American and white activists left Washington, DC, for New Orleans in the first Freedom Ride. Freedom Riders intended to test the enforcement of the ban on segregation in interstate bus travel. The riders faced violent attacks and arrest. Local police forces did nothing to protect them from angry white mobs. Eventually the National Guard was called in for the riders’ protection. On May 29, Robert F. Kennedy petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce the interstate travel segregation ban.
President Lyndon Johnson appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. Marshall was the first African American justice to serve on the Court.
The President’s Committee on Civil Rights released To Secure These Rights, a report that condemned segregation, called for the integration of American society, and made numerous recommendations for the protection of civil rights.
The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. The amendment prohibited poll taxes for federal elections, which had often been imposed by state and local governments to prevent African Americans from voting.
Thirty-four people were killed, one thousand people were wounded, and $50 million in property damage occured over a six-day period during a race riot in the Watts section of Los Angeles. The riot was sparked by the arrest of a black driver by a white police officer.
The US Armed Forces were desegregated by President Truman’s Executive Order 9981, which barred segregation and discrimination in the armed services.
In an unexpected upset, Harry S. Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey in the presidential election. Truman had become unpopular in the wake of World War II, and pollsters and the media predicted that Dewey would oust the incumbent. Truman, however, had run a tireless and clever campaign. He took advantage of Dewey’s expectation of a sure win and appealed to labor, civil rights supporters, and the Democratic Party base for political and monetary support. On election day, Truman won 303 electoral votes to Dewey’s 189—segregationist Dixiecrat Strom...
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was organized in 1960. Formed around the sit-in movement, the SNCC was committed to non-violence, using sit-ins as well as voter registration drives and freedom rides to agitate for civil rights.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 by black and white leaders including Mary White Ovington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Created as a civil rights organization, the NAACP has throughout its existence worked to improve the lives of African Americans by fighting segregation, discrimination, and racism, and by securing legal rights and social equality through court cases, legislation, and protest.