The Civil Rights era

African Americans, especially in the South, are treated as second-class citizens. After the Second World War, more and more African Americans want to fight for equality.

Legal progress

July 26, 1948: President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services.
Brown v. Board of education makes ban racial segregation in schools. It will take more than a decade to be effective everywhere in the USA.

A largely unchanged South

Segregation remains in the South: laws based upon the “separate but equal” principle keep African-Americans in poverty. Other laws restrict freedom of movement and where they can live or work.
White supremacy is also enforced through racial violence through a resurgence of the KKK or lynchings.

On August 28 1955, Emmett Till, a 14 year-old boy is lynched in Mississippi.
National outcry ensues.

Fight for civil rights

In December 1955 Rosa Parks famously refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, prompting a boycott and the end of segregation of bus lines.
Pastor Martin Luther King becomes a leader of the movement.
The Civil rights act of 1957 signed by Eisenhower makes it a crime to suppress votes.

In 1963, the racial integration of University of Alabama is enforced through the use of federal troops. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom gather 250,000 people. A deadly terrorist bombing of a church in Birmingham spurs protests.

Johnson presidency

Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes discrimination due to race, color, sex, religion or national origin illegal.
African-American leader Malcom X is assassinated on February 21st 1965.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 bans voting literacy tests.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 stipulates fair housing opportunities for all.

On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr is assassinated in Memphis. Weeks of protests and riots in major cities ensued.