Civil rights

By samzim2012
  • Period: to

    desegregation

    During the 1940s and 1950s, executive action, rather than legislative initiatives, set the pace for measured movement toward desegregation. President Harry S. Truman “expanded on Roosevelt’s tentative steps toward racial moderation and reconciliation,” wrote one historian of the era. Responding to civil rights advocates, Truman established the President’s Committee on Civil Rights

  • Secure the rights

    the committee’s October 1947 report, “To Secure These Rights,” provided civil rights proponents in Congress with a legislative blueprint for much of the next two decades. Among its recommendations were the creation of a permanent FEPC, the establishment of a permanent Civil Rights Commission, the creation of a civil rights division in the U.S. Department of Justice, and the enforcement of federal anti-lynching laws and desegregation in interstate transportation.

  • Truman’s civil rights policies

    The backlash to Truman’s civil rights policies contributed to the unraveling of the solid Democratic South. A faction of southern Democrats, upset with the administration’s efforts, split to form the States’ Rights Democratic Party, a conservative party that sought to preserve and maintain the system of segregation. Also known as the Dixiecrats, they nominated South Carolina Governor

  • civil rights

    President Dwight D. Eisenhower, largely cautious and incremental in his approach, followed FDR’s pattern. To serve as his Attorney General, he appointed Herbert Brownell, a progressive to whom he gave wide discretion. Eisenhower also appointed California Governor Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1953, preparing the way for a series of landmark civil rights cases decided by the liberal Warren court.

  • Second Reconstruction

    The nation began to correct civil and human rights abuses that had lingered in American society for a century. A grassroots civil rights movement coupled with gradual but progressive actions by Presidents, the federal courts, and Congress eventually provided more complete political rights for African Americans and began to redress longstanding economic and social inequities.