A History of the Civil Rights Movement

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A History of the Civil Rights Movement

ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. And on December 17, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the ruling that Alabama’s segre gation laws were unconstitutional. Only after the Supreme Court had ruled were Montgomery civil rights activists willing to call off the bus boycott. It officially ended on December 20, 1956. The protest had last ed 381 days. The success of the Montgomery bus boycott was a critical point in the history of the civil rights movement, and helped make Martin Luther King Jr. and others who had been involved in the boycott into nation ally known figures. Most importantly, the success of the bus boycott showed blacks that by working together, they could bring about change. To make this happen, a regional organiza tion was needed to help coordinate protests in the South. In January 1957, Martin Luther King and Bayard Rustin met with several dozen African-American ministers in Atlanta, Georgia. The activists agreed to for a group called the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). King became the group’s

Bayard Rustin was one of the most influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. He is not as well known as other black leaders of the 1950s and 1960s because he preferred to work behind the scenes. He organized protests and boycotts, and allowed others to act as the public face of the movement.

first president, while Ella Josephine Baker, a former NAACP branch pres ident, became the SCLC’s executive secretary. The SCLC also included such well-known pastors as the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, the Reverend Joseph Lowery of Mobile, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy of Montgomery, and the Reverend C.K. Steele of Tallahassee. The group soon issued a document stating that civil rights are essential to democracy, that segregation should end, and that all black people should oppose segregation nonviolently.