The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Exploring Expository Writing: Historical Context

Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s
As the United States recovered from the Civil War of the 1860s, many white Americans tried to
hold on to their control by enacting laws and policies designed to segregate African-Americans and
prevent them from gaining any political power. While African-Americans citizens endured and
tolerated the unequal policy of separate, but equal, repeated calls for change culminated in the Civil
Rights Movement of the 1960s.
The first major legal challenge rose in Topeka, Kansas in 1954, when a group of AfricanAmericans brought a case before the United States Supreme Court challenging the policy of racial
segregation in public schools. The ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education included the famous
statement that separate, but equal is inherently unequal and heralded the start of the integration in
schools.
The next year, elderly African-American seamstress Rosa Parks sparked an uprising when she
refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. Her choice to challenge
the segregation of public transportation led to her arrest, which African-Americans challenged by
refusing to ride buses in Montgomery until they were desegregated, allowing citizens to sit wherever
they wanted on a bus. This boycott was led by local minister Martin Luther King, Jr. and brought him
to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement.
As the movement moved into the late 1950s and the 1960s, stalemates occurred between the
federal governments rulings to desegregate schools and public transportation and the states that were
supposed to enforce the ruling. When a black teenage girl attempted to attend the all-white Central
High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, the governor of the state called out the National Guard to
prevent the teen from entering the building. Finally, United States President Dwight Eisenhower
ordered federal troops to escort the girl into school. The scene repeated over and over throughout the
South as African- Americans endured jeering and threats from whites as they attempted to gain an
education.
As African-American citizens and their white supporters continued to lobby for full racial
integration, riots and marches frequently occurred across the country. The 1960s saw riots in
Maryland, New York City, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, and New Jersey, while marches in
support of the rights of African-Americans occurred in Mississippi, Alabama, and Washington, DC,
culminating in Martin Luther King, Jr.s famous 1963 I Have a Dream speech. Freedom Riders,
white and African-Americans riding on the same buses, also traveled throughout the South
challenging segregation laws and frequently being attacked and arrested in the process.

Change did occur on the federal level through laws, acts, and court rulings. In 1962, the
Supreme Court ruled that all public transportation must integrate, and the United States military
began the desegregation of federal troops. The 1964 Civil Rights Act ruled that restaurants and other
public establishments must serve blacks and whites, while the 1965 Voting Rights Act disallowed
preventing anyone the right to vote based on the color of his skin.
While the 1960s saw the legal end of segregation, it took several more decades for the United
States to fully integrate its society.