Civil Rights, 1941-1955
Black Americans and the War Effort
When the USA entered the Second World War in 1941, approximately 1 million African Americans served in the armed forces. Yet they did so in segregated units — the military operated under the same Jim Crow system of racial separation that governed life in the South. Black soldiers trained at segregated bases, were often assigned to labour rather than combat roles, and faced daily humiliations — some were refused service at lunch counters in towns near their bases while German prisoners of war were served without question.
African American civil rights leaders launched the Double V Campaign in 1942: Victory against fascism overseas and Victory against racism at home. The Pittsburgh Courier newspaper popularised the slogan. Though the campaign did not immediately change policy, it demonstrated that Black Americans' expectations had shifted — having fought for democracy abroad, they were no longer willing to accept second-class status at home.
Around 1 million Black Americans served in the Second World War in segregated units. The Double V Campaign (1942) demanded victory against fascism abroad AND discrimination at home. President Truman desegregated the armed forces by executive order in 1948 — a major early civil rights victory.
The Issue of Education: Brown v Board of Education, 1954
In 1896, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plessy v Ferguson had established the doctrine of “separate but equal” — that segregated facilities were constitutional as long as they were equivalent in quality. In practice, Black schools received far less funding, had older buildings and fewer resources than white schools. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) mounted a legal challenge through the case of Oliver Brown, a parent in Topeka, Kansas.
On 17 May 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v Board of Education of Topeka that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that segregation generated “a feeling of inferiority” in Black children that harmed their educational development. The ruling was a landmark: it directly challenged the legal foundations of segregation. However, white resistance in the South was fierce — 101 Southern congressmen signed the “Southern Manifesto” in 1956 pledging to resist.
The challenge of desegregating schools became national news in September 1957 when nine Black students — the “Little Rock Nine” — attempted to enrol at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to block their entry. President Eisenhower, reluctant to intervene, eventually sent in 1,200 paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students safely past jeering crowds. Television broadcast the confrontation to millions of Americans and to the world — making the reality of Southern segregation impossible to ignore.
Emmett Till, 1955
In August 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black teenager from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. He was abducted, brutally murdered and his body thrown into a river by two white men, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, following an alleged interaction with Bryant’s wife at a grocery store. The two men were acquitted by an all-white jury after deliberating for just 67 minutes. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world could see what had been done to her son. Photographs of Till’s body published in Jet magazine shocked the country and galvanised the civil rights movement.
Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi in August 1955. His killers were acquitted by an all-white jury. His mother’s decision to hold an open-casket funeral and allow photographs of his body to be published brought the brutal reality of racial violence to national and international attention, energising the civil rights movement.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956
On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress and NAACP activist in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus — as required by local segregation ordinances. She was arrested. Local civil rights leaders, including the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., organised a boycott of the bus system. For 381 days, the vast majority of Black Montgomerians walked, cycled or carpooled rather than use the buses. The city’s bus company, which relied on Black passengers for around 70 per cent of its revenue, suffered serious financial losses.
In November 1956, the Supreme Court ruled in Browder v Gayle that bus segregation in Montgomery was unconstitutional. The boycott ended in December 1956 with the buses desegregated. The significance went far beyond Montgomery: it demonstrated that organised, disciplined, non-violent mass protest could succeed; it launched Martin Luther King Jr. as a national figure; and it provided a model of protest that would be replicated across the South. The Montgomery Improvement Association, which led the boycott, evolved into the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).