11.4The civil rights movement

The civil rights movement mounted a sustained assault on the Jim Crow system of segregation. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional, overturning Plessy. Activists then challenged segregation through boycotts, sit-ins, and marches, often meeting brutal resistance.

Under leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., the movement's disciplined nonviolence and moral clarity won broad support.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Their pressure produced landmark laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning discrimination, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally enforcing the Fifteenth Amendment's promise nearly a century late.