The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)
Dr. Stephen Zunes & Jesse Laird
January 2010
Summary of events related to the use or impact of civil resistance
©2010 International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Disclaimer:
Hundreds of past and present cases of nonviolent civil resistance exist. To
make these cases more accessible, the International Center on Nonviolent
Conflict (ICNC) compiled summaries of some of them between the years
2009-2011. Each summary aims to provide a clear perspective on the role that
nonviolent civil resistance has played or is playing in a particular case.
The following is authored by someone who has expertise in this particular
region of the world and/or expertise in the field of civil resistance. The author
speaks with his/her own voice, so the conflict summary below does not
necessarily reflect the views of ICNC.
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The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)I 2
Dates: 1942-1968
Nature of Struggle: Civil rights
Target: Legally-enforced segregation
Movement: Pacifist and civil rights organizations, including the Fellowship of
Reconciliation (FOR), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC),
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC), as well as religious denominations, trade unions, and others.
Conflict Summary:
The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-68) restored universal suffrage in the
southern United States and outlawed legal segregation. The movement’s
overall strategy combined litigation, the use of mass media, boycotts,
demonstrations, as well as sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience to turn
public support against institutionalized racism and secure substantive reform
in US law. Thousands were arrested in nonviolent protests as images of the
confrontations inspired widespread public support for the movement’s
objectives. Hundreds of thousands more participated in marches, boycotts
and voter registration drives throughout the US South. The movement helped
spawn a national crisis that forced intervention by the federal government to
overturn segregation laws in southern states, restore voting rights for
African-Americans, and end legal discrimination in housing, education and
employment.
Political History:
The US Civil Rights Movement grew out of four hundred years of violent and
nonviolent conflict, rooted in the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans to
work primarily in the plantation economy of the US South. Abolitionists, for
both principle and strategy, practiced nonviolent resistance often in the
period between colonization and the American Civil War (most notably
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The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)I 3
members of the historic peace churches–the Quakers, Mennonites and
Church of the Brethren). In addition to periodic rebellions, slaves would
deliberately ruin equipment and supplies, slow down work, fake illness,
escape and practice dissembling. Their free allies published letters and
polemics, shielded escapees, purchased freedom for slaves and waged direct
action. William Lloyd Garrison founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in
1833. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave inspired by Garrison’s radical
weekly The Liberator, publishes the first issue of the Abolitionist North Star in
1847. Many escaped slavery through a secret network of safe houses linking
the US South to Canada.
Militant perspectives grew among Abolitionists in the years leading to the Civil
War, most notably that of an attempted armed uprising led by John Brown.
More than 200,000 black soldiers fought in the Civil War and 38,000 died from
combat. Despite the abolition of slavery and the passage of constitutional
amendments establishing equal protection and due process and universal
adult male suffrage, African-Americans are still denied equal rights. Racist
state laws, called Black Codes during the Reconstruction Era (1863-77) and
Jim Crow Laws subsequently, deny most African-Americans the right to vote
and confine them to racially segregated transportation, theaters, schools and
restaurants throughout most of the former states of the confederacy. Despite
these challenges, more than 30,000 African American teachers were trained
and employed by 1900, making literacy widespread throughout black
communities. African-Americans founded hundreds of churches and mutual
support organizations.
African Americans, despite facing harsh injustice, organize on a mass scale for
equal access to jobs and other rights in the face of widespread violence, with
hundreds of African-Americans lynched by white mobs in the early years of
the 20th century and race riots led by white racists decimate
African-American communities in a number of cities across the country. The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was
founded in 1909 and 8,000 African Americans marched in silence down Fifth
Avenue in New York City seeking fair wages and jobs. Prominent black
intellectuals, including W.E.B. Dubois and Wendell Johnson, were among
those present to “make America safe for democracy.” The Communist Party
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The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)I 4
established the American Negro Labor Congress in 1925 to advance the rights
of African Americans. The same year the mostly African-American
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is founded, which becomes an influential
organization in the civil rights movement.
News of Gandhi’s campaigns in India reached African-American activists,
inspiring powerful movement leaders such as A. Phillip Randolph (President of
the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and Howard Thurman (Dean of the
Chapel at Howard University) to consider his methods of strategic
nonviolence. In 1941 Randolph called for a massive march on Washington,
D.C. to protest job discrimination in the defense industry in which 100,000 are
predicted to join, prompting President Roosevelt to immediately issue an
Executive Order banning discrimination in defense hiring. The march, having
won its objective without having happened, is called off. A group of American
conscientious objectors and pacifist allies, also inspired by the remarkable
success of Gandhi, found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942. The
organization began and remained relatively small—never more than a few
hundred members—yet it waged a series of successful sit-ins Chicago (1942),
St. Lewis (1949) and Baltimore (1952) to desegregate public facilities. In 1947
CORE partners with the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) in the first
Freedom Ride, in which an interracial group of eight white and eight black
men provoke harassment and arrest as they ride interstate buses through
Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. The action, called a Journey
for Reconciliation, focuses national attention on CORE, nonviolent action and
the injustice of segregation.
Critical legal victories paved the way for an escalation of direct action. A class
action lawsuit filed in 1951 by African-American parents from Kansas on
behalf of their children challenging racial segregation in schools resulted in a
landmark Supreme Court decision affirming that separate educational
facilities are inherently unequal. A case the following year challenging racial
segregation on private interstate buses and railways led to a ruling that racial
segregation on private interstate trains and buses was illegal.
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The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)I 5
Strategic Actions:
Direct action became the movement’s salient strategic weapon by the
mid-1950’s. The Highlander Folk School in Tennessee began to discuss
strategic nonviolence with civil rights workers such as Rosa Parks of the
Montgomery, Alabama chapter of the NAACP, who—upon her return from
Highlander—was arrested for failing to give up her seat for a white man as a
test case challenging the city’s racist ordinances. A bus boycott was organized
under the leadership of the newly-founded Montgomery Improvement
Association, which became headed by the then 26-year old Rev. Martin Luther
King, Jr. The boycott involved 42,000 people, lasted 381 days, and
economically crippled the municipal bus service, resulting in the successful
integration of all city buses.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott energized young African-Americans to support
a broader civil rights based upon strategic nonviolent direct action. King,
riding the wave of energy created in Montgomery, founded the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Baynard Rustin, William H.
Borders, Charles K. Steele and Fred Shuttlesworth in 1957. Together they
asked President Eisenhower for a White House Conference on Civil Rights.
When the president refused, SCLC responds by leading 25,000 people in a
prayer march on the Lincoln Memorial. Speakers called for nonviolent
struggle, boycotts, work slow-downs and strikes. In the wake of the event,
which remained peaceful, Wichita and Oklahoma City are targeted by sit-ins.
The United States Congress, reacting to events, authorized the Justice
Department in the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to sue on behalf of African
Americans that are still unable to vote in the Southern States. Meanwhile,
nine students created a national crisis as they tried to be the first African
Americans to enroll at the newly desegregated Central High School in Little
Rock, Arkansas. When the governor the Arkansas National Guard tried to
prevent them from entering the school, public outcry led to a new judicial
ruling and intervention by federal troops. CORE continued its work in the
Northern States while SCLC focused on the Southern. King resigned his
pastorate in Montgomery, moving with the SCLC to a new headquarters in
Atlanta, Georgia in 1960.
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The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)I 6
The sit-ins pioneered by CORE rapidly spread across the southern United
States in 1960. In Greensboro, North Carolina university students who had
learned about nonviolent direct action from comic books and manuals
published by FOR and CORE engaged in a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch
counter. Other students quickly joined. Seasoned direct action strategists
James Lawson, Glen Smiley and Charles Walker arrived to advise the young
activists. Dramatic footage of sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee showed students
being harassed and arrested for sitting at the lunch counter. Bernard
Lafayette and John Lewis are key participants of the Nashville sit-ins—both go
on to make profound contributions to the movement as leaders and trainers.
More sit-ins rocked South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, and
Virginia. Rather than slow the sit-ins, the arrests publicized them, as sit-ins hit
50 American cities in just three months. One lunch counter after another
became integrated. More than 3,600 people were voluntarily arrested in the
sit-ins. Out of this movement is formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) in April of 1960, which soon became a powerful force for
civil rights.
The movement took advantage of another Supreme Court case in 1961 which
expanded the ban on segregated interstate travel to include station
restrooms, waiting areas and restaurants. CORE tested this ruling by
organizing a second Freedom Ride, this time far deeper into the South. Seven
blacks and six whites leave Washington, D.C. on May 4 in two integrated
groups were met by violent white mobs and arrests by police. Federal
authorities stepped in to guarantee protection and a new group of mostly
SNCC arrived to continue the Ride until they were arrested and jailed. Like
the lunch counter sit-ins, more and more activists arrive to fill the seats of the
jailed and beaten Riders. 328 people are arrested before they finish. By
November, Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the Interstate Commerce
Commission intervene to force integration. In just a few months the Freedom
Riders had integrated interstate travel.
Thousands more join diverse campaigns between 1960 to 1963. In 1960
CORE, SNCC, SCLC, NAACP and the Urban League formed the Council of
Federated Organizations (COFO) to administer the Voter Education Project
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The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)I 7
(VEP), a massive voter registration drive. Confusing and discriminatory
technicalities kept many African-Americans from voting. Despite volunteer
dedication VEP enjoyed little success: progress was slow and marked by
violence against rights workers, including murders. At the same time SNCC
and the NAACP run into trouble in Albany, Georgia, where the police chief had
studied Gandhian tactics in preparation for the confrontation and developed a
counter-strategy to minimize police violence, send arrested protesters out of
town, and avoid negative media coverage.
As that campaign floundered, a larger campaign got underway in Birmingham,
Alabama in 1963, where a selective buying boycott was pressuring local
businesses for equal access to jobs and sit-ins hit Birmingham libraries and
restaurants. Kneel-ins disrupted services in all-white churches.
Demonstrations continued in violation of a court order barring further
protest, resulting in hundreds of arrests, including that of King. In a radical
escalation of the conflict, over 1,000 young African-Americans, teenagers and
even younger, walked out of school for a downtown protest where most were
arrested. Youthful protests the following day were met with police dogs and
high-pressure water cannons, provoking widespread international support for
the movement as images are broadcast and published. As the protests
escalated, jails overflowed and businesses were occupied by protesters, and
local business leaders entered negotiations and agreed to the movement’s
demands for integration and an end to discrimination in hiring.
As the movement’s strategy of direct action resulted in widespread national
support for its objectives, its leaders organized a national March on
Washington for Jobs and Justice in early that August, where over a quarter
million people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial. Within a year, the Omnibus
Civil Rights Act outlawing segregation nationwide was signed into law.
In the summer of 1964, COFO brought in a thousand activists to Mississippi to
register voters, teach, and help develop—as an alternative to the segregated
state branch of the Democratic Party—the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party (MFDP). Three student volunteers were murdered by local police. In
Selma, Alabama a SNCC-led effort to register voters was met with violence. A
subsequent march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery was
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The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)I 8
violently broken up by police before federal marshals and additional
volunteers arrived to complete the initially aborted march. This provided
greater momentum for the passage of a federal voting rights act, which was
signed into law the following year, transforming the politics of the South.
In subsequent years, King and the SCLC began placing a greater emphasis on
economic justice, particularly ending segregated housing, which also afflicts
northern cities. Meanwhile, SNCC and some other elements of the movement
begin adopting a strong Black Nationalist orientation and many abandoned
their commitment to nonviolence. Despite King’s assassination in 1968 and
further splintering in the movement, important victories continued to be won
over the coming decade, including open housing legislation, increasing
desegregation in schools and workplaces, stronger affirmative action, a
greater number of African-American elected officials, and advances in
economic opportunities. Work towards greater racial equality continues
today.
In summary, there was an enormous array of tactics utilized in the movement
from 1942-68. Sit-ins, boycotts, marches and civil disobedience were
signature actions of the struggle, in which thousands were arrested.
Hundreds of thousands participated in marches, boycotts and voter
registration drives. More than almost any movement since the Indian
struggle for independence, King and other leaders consciously adopted
Gandhian satyagraha as the principal model for the nonviolent struggle.
There was also a strong spiritual basis to the movement rooted in the
African-American church. Poetry, the visual arts and particularly music played
an important role in the struggle.
Ensuing Events:
The struggle for racial equality continues in the United States. Many key
organizations of the 1942 – 1968 period are still active. The NAACP, CORE,
FOR, WRL (War Resisters League) and SCLC maintain current websites
detailing their activities. The Highlander Folk School is now Highlander
Research and Education Center and continues its grassroots organizing in
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The US Civil Rights Movement (1942-1968)I 9
Appalachia and the American South. The election of President Barack Obama
is an important milestone, but African-Americans continue to face injustice
throughout the United States. Key civil rights leaders—such as Bernard
Lafayette, John Lewis and James Lawson—are still active in government,
education and society.
For Further Reading:
● Ackerman, P. & Duvall, J. (2000). A Force More Powerful. Palgrave: New York.
● Cooney, R. and Michalowski, H. (ed.s.) (1987). The Power of the People: Active
Nonviolence in the United States. New Society Publishers: Philadelphia.
● Lynd, S. & Lynd, A. (1995). Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History. Orbis
Books: New York.
● Williams, J. & Bond, J. (1987). Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954
– 1965. Penguin: New York.
To read other nonviolent conflict summaries, visit ICNC’s website:
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