Civil Rights and Domestic Change in the Postwar Era
The movement's phases
Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned Plessy and called segregation inherently unequal, but all deliberate speed allowed delay. Massive Resistance and Little Rock (1957) showed the need for federal enforcement. Montgomery's bus boycott produced the SCLC; Greensboro sit-ins produced SNCC; Freedom Rides tested interstate travel. Birmingham (1963) and the March on Washington built support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred discrimination in public accommodations and employment. Selma (1965) produced the Voting Rights Act, which suspended literacy tests and authorized federal supervision; the Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964) had already abolished the poll tax. Malcolm X and Black Power pushed economic and political self-determination, while the Kerner Commission (1968) blamed white racism for urban unrest.
The Great Society and the courts
Johnson's programs included Medicare and Medicaid (1965), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Head Start, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended the quota system. The Warren Court expanded rights in Gideon, Miranda, Engel, and Loving (1967).
Beyond race
Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963), NOW (1966), Title IX (1972), and Roe v. Wade (1973) marked the women's movement; Cesar Chavez organized farmworkers, the American Indian Movement emerged in 1968, and Stonewall (1969) launched gay rights activism.
Traps. The 1964 Act addresses public accommodations and employment while the 1965 Act addresses voting.
Worked example. A question about a Selma-to-Montgomery photograph asks for the Voting Rights Act, not the Civil Rights Act.