AP® United States History · Unit 8 · Topic 8.6
Early Steps in the Civil Rights Movement
Early civil rights victories came from a patient legal strategy that chipped away at segregation case by case, and from mass community action like the Montgomery bus boycott, culminating in Brown v. Board and the Little Rock crisis.
The NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, led by Thurgood Marshall, did not start by attacking segregated grade schools. It started with law schools and graduate programs, where the gap between a black school and a white school was obvious and hard to defend. In Sweatt v. Painter (1950), Texas had no black law school worth the name, so the Supreme Court ordered Heman Sweatt admitted to the University of Texas. Each win built a precedent that 'separate' facilities were rarely 'equal,' and by 1954 the NAACP had enough legal ground to challenge segregation itself, not just its unequal funding, in Brown v. Board of Education. The Court ruled unanimously that segregated schools were inherently unequal, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson's 'separate but equal' doctrine.
Brown struck down the legal basis for segregation, but it did not desegregate a single classroom by itself. The Court gave no deadline, southern school boards stalled for years, and enforcement depended on later court orders, federal troops, and local activism. Montgomery showed that other kind of power: after Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955, black residents refused to ride city buses for 381 days. The boycott survived on carpools, church networks, and willingness to walk miles daily, which hurt the bus company's revenue until the Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional.
Little Rock in 1957 showed what resistance to Brown looked like on the ground. Governor Orval Faubus sent the Arkansas National Guard to block nine black students from entering Central High School. President Eisenhower, reluctant but forced to act, federalized the Guard and sent the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students inside, showing that desegregation needed federal enforcement, not just a court ruling.
Key terms
- Separate but equal
- The doctrine from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) allowing segregation if facilities were supposedly equal in quality.
- Sweatt v. Painter
- A 1950 Supreme Court case ordering a black student admitted to the University of Texas law school, weakening separate but equal.
- Brown v. Board of Education
- The 1954 Supreme Court decision ruling that segregated public schools were inherently unequal, overturning Plessy.
- Montgomery bus boycott
- A 381-day mass refusal by black residents to ride segregated buses, starting after Rosa Parks's arrest in 1955.
- Little Rock Nine
- The nine black students whose 1957 enrollment at Central High School required federal troops to enforce against state resistance.
Watch it explained
- How it worksWalk me through the NAACP's case strategy from Sweatt to Brown, one precedent at a time.
- How it worksHow does the Montgomery bus boycott sustain itself for 381 days without buses?
- Worked exampleTrace the Little Rock crisis of 1957 from the governor's guardsmen to the 101st Airborne.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't Brown v. Board a decision that desegregated southern schools?
Check yourself
End of topic.