Friday, December 27, 2019

Explain how grassroots civil rights groups like the SCLC and groups focused on the court system like NAACP shape the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? From Eyes on the Prize episode 4- No Easy Walk

The Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) adopted two different strategies in the fight for civil rights in the 1950s. The NAACP was a national organization with a large membership. The leadership of the NAACP attacked the legal foundations of segregation in courts via lawsuits that challenged the constitutionality of the laws that established it. The most visible outcome of this strategy was the Supreme Court's unanimous decision to overturn segregation laws based on race in public schools in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954. This was the culmination of hundreds of lawsuits brought by the NAACP. At the same time, grassroots organizations like the SCLC began to emerge. Their strategy was using nonviolent direct action and boycotts to challenge segregation. The SCLC emerged from the Montgomery bus boycotts in 1957 and essentially sought to coordinate the efforts of local, grassroots groups that were themselves organized around local black institutions, especially churches. This two-pronged approach continued throughout the fifties and early sixties. For example, the Freedom Riders, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) were an attempt to test the enforcement of a Supreme Court decision in 1960 that ruled segregation in interstate buses unconstitutional. This case, like Brown v. Board, was argued by NAACP lawyers, including Thurgood Marshall.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/southern-christian-leadership-conference-sclc

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-rides

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