Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

The Montgomery bus boycott of 1955–1956 has become a landmark event in civil rights history. It was the Committee (changed a year later to Congress) of Racial Equality that first adopted the tactic of a sit-in demonstration for civil rights in Chicago in 1942. A minority of the Committee favors the elimination of segregation as an ultimate goal but opposes the imposition of a federal sanction. President Truman's motives in taking a more forthright stand for civil rights were not purely altruistic but also a matter of political pragmatism. The shift in votes gave the national Democratic Party a greater investment in supporting measures that would appeal to black voters and increase the black vote. The Harlem bus boycott of 1941 demonstrated that such a tactic could be effectively used in the North as leverage for black demands.