There are several questions posed here. This response will look at the first—the origins of the civil rights movement in the 1940s and early 1950s. We tend to think of the civil rights movement as an event of the late 1950s and 1960s, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. But in reality, Brown v. Board was the culmination of a series of legal battles, mostly waged by the NAACP, that were part of the origins of the movement. Beginning in the 1930s, the NAACP began to challenge segregation in institutions as varied as public transportation, labor unions, and universities. This was part of a strategy that eventually brought the practice of segregation in public schools into the contest. The NAACP also helped bring the issue of lynching before the public, raising awareness of the violence that undergirded Jim Crow society.
The civil rights movement also took root in World War II. This happened for several reasons. For one thing, it was not lost on many people that the struggle against Nazi Germany was a fight against a regime that was based on racism. Some politicians and soldiers recognized the contradiction of fighting against a racist regime overseas while tolerating racism at home. This was given voice by a Pittsburgh newspaper that described the war as viewed by African Americans as a "Double-V" campaign. They had to fight for freedom overseas as well as at home, and many recognized the war as an opportunity to achieve both. It was also the case that many black soldiers who participated in the war overseas were in no mood to face discrimination at home.
Finally, some civil rights organizations formed in the 1940s and early 50s. The most important was CORE, or the Congress of Racial Equality. CORE would eventually become famous for its sponsorship of the Freedom Rides in the early 1960s, but CORE was born in Chicago out of groups who protested discrimination in that city. Their tactics included the "sit-ins" that would become famous nationwide after the "Greensboro Four" used the tactic in the downtown Woolworths store in Greensboro, North Carolina. While the civil rights movement really began to gain momentum in the late 1950s, its roots stretched back much further, and it should be remembered that resistance to Jim Crow segregation began as soon as it was established. The freedom struggles of the 1950s and 60s drew on a long tradition of black activism at the grassroots level.
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/crm.htm
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/sit-ins
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/congress-of-racial-equality
The CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) sent their first April Freedom Fighters into the South in 1947; these were activists who rode interstate buses to test the 1946 Supreme Court ban of segregated interstate bus routes. CORE sponsored the majority of the subsequent Freedom Rides in the early 60s, and we cannot forget Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat in the colored section of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white passenger. She was arrested for civil disobedience, and her defiance became an influential symbol of the civil rights movement.
After participation of African Americans in the Second World War, June A. Philip Randolph formed the League for Nonviolent Disobedience Against Military Segregation in 1948, paving the way for Truman's executive order ending segregation in the US military later that year. In 1947, Jackie Robinson emerged as a popular leader in the pre–civil rights movement, becoming the first African American to play professional sports.
Between the 1940s and 1960s, black urban culture developed during the Harlem Renaissance, contributing to an expansion of arts and literature. Novels such as Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) and James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) increased black representation in literature, inspiring the artistic movement of the civil rights era. Additionally, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, for her poetry book Annie Allen (1949).
The events in the 1940s and 1950s that gave rise to the modern Civil Rights movement include the "Double Victory" campaign for African American veterans of World War II. This campaign involved the recognition that veterans who had fought in the war deserved, and should push for, civil rights for all African Americans. In addition, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which made segregation in public schools illegal, forced the issue of desegregation in southern schools and in other public places.
One of the first events of the modern Civil Rights campaign was the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956, during which Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist preacher (originally from Georgia) in Atlanta, led a non-violent movement to desegregate the city buses. Later, his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the student offshoot of the group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), used non-violent protests, including tactics such as sit-ins, demonstrations, speeches, and boycotts, to desegregate public places and transportation. The movement also pushed for voting rights and was successful in part because of its ability to mobilize massive grassroots support and its appeal to northern whites and African Americans across the nation. Later, the Black Power movement moved away from non-violence and favored a more confrontational approach, as well as an interest in fostering Black Pride rather than promoting desegregation.
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