148 PART TWO INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS CHAPTER 7 EQUAL RIGHTS:STRUGGLING TOWARD FAIRNESS 149 The Brown Decision parliamentary obstacle that racial conservatives could muster,the Civil Rights Substantial relief for black Americans was finally achieved in 1954 with Brown Act of 1964 was enacted.Even then,southern states resorted to legal maneuver- NA1Y2 THF TSSUE星 v.Board of Education of Topeka,arguably the most significant ruling in Supreme ing and other delaying tactics to blunt the legislation's impact.The state of Why Are Black Americans Virginia,for example,established a commission to pay the legal expenses of Losing Ground? Court history.The case began when Linda Carol Brown,a black child in Topeka Although the lives of blac Kansas,was denied admission to an all-white elementary school that she passed white citizens who were brought to court for violations of the federal act Amer every day on her way to her all-black school,which was twelve blocks farther Nevertheless,momentum was on the side of racial equality.The murder of two ns have improved in absolute terms since the away.The case was initiated on her behalf by the National Association for the civil rights workers during a voter registration drive in Selma,Alabama,helped mid-gixties,their lives have Advancement of Colored People(NAACP)and was argued before the Supreme to sustain the momentum."President Lyndon Johnson called for new legisla- not improved much in Court by Thurgood Marshall,who later became the Court's first black justice a tion that would end racial barriers to voting.Congress's answer was the 1965 n with those af whites.The job and income In its decision,the Court fully reversed its Plessy doctrine by declaring that racial Voting Rights Act. gaps have grown:the segregation of public schools "generates [among black children]a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and The Aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement been closing,s now minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone....Separate educational facilities widening:and the life are inherently unequal. After 1965 the civil rights movement went awry.The rising expectations of expectancy of blacks has started to drop while that of A 1954 Gallup poll indicated that a sizable majority of souther whites black Americans were not met in terms of jobs and other benefits,and rioting contin es to Increase, dTeH7e2u边ega, opposed the Brown decision,and billboards were quickly erected along souther occurred in Detroit,Newark,Los Angeles,and other cities between 1966 and Why are blacks going Brown v.Boord of roadways that called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.In the 1968.In addition,the attention of Washington policymakers had been distract- backward in these important Education of Topeka (1954) so-called Southern Manifesto,southem congressmen urged their state govern- ed from the civil rights movement by the escalating war in Vietnam,which was respects?Is it mainly because new poll' ments to "resist forced integration by any lawful means."In 1957 rioting broke also siphoning away federal funds that might have been used for education, natatives have teen made in out when Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to training,and jobs programs for poor blacks (see Chapter 27).When King was their behalf in reoent years block the entry of black children to the Litle Rock public schools.To restore murdered in 1968,the most active phase of the modern civil rights movement ind some edsting p order and carry out the desegregation of the Little Rock schools,President came to an end. have been ut3Ort Dwight D.Eisenhower used his power as the nation's commander in chief to The most significant progress in history toward the legal equality of all mainly because of the place the Arkansas National Guard under federal control.For their part, Americans occurred during the 1960s.Yet King's dream of a color-blind society destructive impact of dnig northern whites were neither strongly for nor strongly against school desegre. has remained elusive.3 By some indicators,the status of black Americans has gation.A Gallup poll taken shortly after the Bron decision indicated that asm actually deteriorated since the modern civil rights movement began.According lck community?If both majority of whites outside the South agreed with it. these reasons apply,are they aSee David J.Garn connected?Can anything bat The Black Civil Rights Movement University Press,1975). conbemporary,be at the bottom of the whole After Brown,the struggle of black Americans for their rights became a political problem? movement.Perhaps no single event tumned national publie opinion so dramati- cally against segregation as a 1963 march led by the Reverend Martin Luther King,Jr.,in Birmingham,Alabama.An advocate of nonviolent protest,King had been leading peaceful demonstrations and marches for nearly eight years before that fateful day in Birmingham.As the nation watched in disbelief on television,police officers led by Birmingham's sheriff,Eugene "Bull"Connor, attacked King and his followers with dogs,cattle prods,and firehoses. The modem civil rights movement peaked with the triumphant March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of August 2,1963.Organized by King and other civil rights leaders,it attracted 250,000 marchers,one of the largest The Rev.Martin Luther King,Ir. gatherings in the history of the nation's capital."I have a dream,"King told the became the nation's conscience gathering,"that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they as he led the black civil rights will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their movement from the Montgomery,Alabama,bus character." boycott in 1955 until he was A year later,after a months-long fight in Congress that was marked by every murdered in 1968.Here he dream"speech at the Lincoin Memorial in Washington,D.C. to a cronwd of 250,000 people in 1963.(UFi/Beitmann Newsphotos)