What were the key features of the civil rights movement in the 1950s?

Before the 1950s, the way in which the court justified segregation was that they were separate but equal. However, in reality they were treated very unequally. Therefore Martin Luther King and the NAACP picked on certain issues to challenge. These court issues were very difficult to decide about so they moved all the way up to the supreme court.

They used non-violent ways to protest against the segregations. Their first challenge against segregation was against the segregation of the army. They won the challenge and ruled out that there shouldn’t be segregation with in the army. This however did not take affect until the later years.

On 17 May 1954, the NAACP challenged the board of education in Topeka and Kansas. During the case they judged that by separating children with similar qualifications solely because of their race generates the feeling of inferiority and the “field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place”.

President Eisenhower was not pleased to hear this because even though he supported racial interrogations, he knew the southern white Americans were strongly against it.

Because of this, the KKK led to many violent actions and required police forces and soldiers to protect the safety of blacks. The KKK led to many bombings, riots and murders after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unlawful. The lynching and beatings increased again after the decrease in the 1920s.

The jury which were called to court were all whites which made unfair judgments and let some murderers slip away with out punishment

After that, the NAACP wanted equal rights for blacks on public transports. Since whites benefited greatly from the age of affluence, most whites had their own private transports which makes the bus company cover only 25% whites and 75% blacks. When Rosa Parks carried out the bus boycott, all the blacks didn’t ride the bus which caused the bus firm (owned by the whites) to give in and allow equality on the buses, following the first-come-first-serve basis.