1950's Religion | Black Church Leaders and Civil Rights

Struggle for Rights.

The long-running efforts by black Americans to gain constitutional rights, especially in the South, acquired national attention in the 1950s. The 1956 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ruled that legal segregation was unconstitutional, a ruling that signaled its ultimate end. But national attention was drawn to the problem of civil rights in the South in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. On 1 December 1955 Mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested when she refused to obey a city ordinance that required her to give up her seat to a white person when ordered to do so by the bus driver. The long-simmering dissatisfaction of the black community with the segre-gated bus system boiled over.

The Boycott.

After a successful one-day boycott of the buses, a meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church organized the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected...