The guiding principle for the treatment for the blacks in the south was the ''''separate but
equal'''' doctrines
spelled out by the
Supreme Court in 1896. The decision was ultimately reversed in the
Brown v. Board of Education in
1954, which provided for the
desegregation of the schools in the U.S. The civil rights activists challenged segregationist practices elsewhere as well. In 1955 Rosa
Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, but was arrested because she occupied a seat reserved for
white passengers. A boycott movement was started and it was during this movement that
Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a powerful leader of the blacks. He organized the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and led the boycott movement to victory. The next major case in the civil rights movement happened in 1957 when nine black students wished to enter a local high school in
Little Rock, Arkansas. President
Dwight David Eisenhower had to send in the
national guard to protect the black students from the mob action. Some of black civil rights activists became disillusioned with the nonviolent actions and a number of radical organizations were born or becoming more prominent, including the Students'''' Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, the Nation of
Islam, and the Black
Panthers. However, the single most
important action was the
March on Washington, when in August 1963 hundreds of thousands demonstrated peacefully for racial equality. Besides the black civil rights movements a number of other movements were gaining ground in the 1960s, including the women''''s rights movement. The most important feminist
organization in the 1960s was the
National Organization for Women. The students launched the Students for a
Demonstatic Society movement in 1962. By the mid-1960s, the civil rights movement had become radicalized: leaders such as Malcolm
X urged direct action. The biggest legislative victories of the movement were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.