l Rights Movement to develop. By executive order, the armed forces were in the process of integrating beginning in 1948, a process expected to take 10 years. This change taking place in the military influenced thinking in the private sector, and Blacks wanted to accelerate the process and extend it through all of society. At the same time, the Supreme Court offered further hope by striking down the "separate but equal" doctrine in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. This major decision was supposed to be implemented "with all deliberate speed," according to the decision itself, but even ten years later little had been done. Such delays fueled the frustration felt in the black community and contributed to the development of the Civil Rights Movement. The movement developed first around the busing issue in Montgomery, Alabama, but it was also the culmination of decades of frustration nearly a century after the slave era and after a long history of continuing discrimination and ill-treatment.
Zinn further finds that social class divisions within the black community widened as the movement progressed and achieved some of its goals. There was a growing distinction apparent between the middle- and upper-class population that was benefiting from an improved business and employment situation and from greater educational opportunities on the one hand, and the poorer classes in the ghettoes of the city and in rural regions on the other. The poorer class consisted of people who did not benefit directly from the changes taking place and who were frustrated that the benefits enjoyed by some were not making any changes in their lives. There were social divisions in the white community as well, with white society showing different responses to the racial dissension and agitation in the black community. Some banking interests took an active part in trying to develop "black capitalism." The system as a whole tried to contain the explosiv...