tutions of the South changed. There had been civil rights organizations in America for some time, groups such as the NAACP that worked for the legal rights of blacks, but civil rights as a major social movement started in the 1950s. The year 1954 is a key one in the Civil Rights Movement that would follow because that was the year of the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (also known as Brown v. Topeka). This decision was one of several forces at work in the early 1950s and into the 1960s that caused the Civil 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 influenced thinking in the private sector as well, 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 (Zinn 435-440).
The movement started 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. The successes of the movement were uneven. 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 ...