The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

The issues of the racial disparity that existed in American society, which culminated in the twentieth century Civil Rights Movement, can be traced back to the failures of the policies of Reconstruction following the Compromise of 1877. Union armies left the South following the Compromise of 1877, allowing white supremacist Redeemer governments to slowly reestablish themselves.[1] Through the period of the 1870s-1890s, the Redeemer governments created segregated schools, disfranchised black voters, and lynched any African Americans who tried to protest these issues.[2] These discriminatory policies were contested in court, and the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson created a legal precedent for the principle of “separate but equal,” which determined “that separate facilities for blacks and whites satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment so long as they were equal.”[3]

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Select African American intellectuals emerged during this early period of discrimination, like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey, and advocated different policies to eliminate racial inequality. However, no politicians would lend support to African American movements, as no politician was eager to re-fight the Civil War.[4] This period of political inaction continued up until World Wars I and II, which created an especially discontent feeling among African Americans. World War I was targeted at promoting democracy abroad, yet it left the black population of the South disfranchised. World War II was targeted at fighting Hitler, a fascist dictator, yet the violent leaders in place in the American South remained.[5] The lack of political action following World Wars I and II inspired blacks to unify and create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which would work tirelessly to legally bring to light the injustices that African Americans faced daily in American society.

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1. Mark Carnes and John Garraty, The American Nation Volume II, (New York: Pearson, 2016), 369-72.

2. Mark Carnes, “The Rise of the Civil Rights Movement,” (lecture, American Civilization Since the Civil War, New York, NY, March 30, 2016).

3."Plessy v. Ferguson," Chicago-Kent College of Law at Illinois Tech, Oyez, April 5, 2016, https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537.

4. Mark Carnes, “The Rise of the Civil Rights Movement,” (lecture, American Civilization Since the Civil War, New York, NY, March 30, 2016).

5. Ibid.