Board of Education of Topeka was a representative case, in which the Court unanimously declared public school segregation unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment; completely reversing the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine from 1896. And we have to admit that since the end of World War II the main concern of the Supreme Court, under its chief justice Earl Warren, had been civil rights and civil liberties.
The Warren Court started a judicial revolution. The Brown decision was a historic and significant landmark in American constitutional law. The Court continued ruling in favour of blacks. It dealt with civil liberties on a case-by-case basis. Therefore it is understandable when southern congressmen did not want to discontinue Jim Crow segregation laws and repeatedly tried to nullify the decision of 1954.
In the post-war era, African Americans had reached a point where they were both able and determined to start a massive attack on segregation. Together with a significantly growing group of white Americans they began to fight Jim Crow laws. Most northern states, in fact, passed and strengthened antidiscrimination laws. They aimed at reducing, and in the future stopping, inequalities in the society.
Various interracial organizations were created, and among the most prominent were the Southern Regional Council, the National Urban League, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). All these organizations strove for equal employment opportunities, for friendly contact between the races, for further antidiscrimination laws, for political rights, and for further desegregation laws.
The most prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, was Martin Luther King, Jr. favouring non-violent demonstrations and passive resistance (such as Montgomery bus boycott in 1955).4 Another important black figure, but with completely contrasting views, was Malcolm X, the leader of so-called Black Muslims, spreading the doctrine of Black Nationalism; ironically a doctrine full of racism and violence.
The significant change in the civil rights issue began in 1960, when John F. Kennedy was elected President. During the former Eisenhower presidency the civil rights situation did not improve substantially, except for the already discussed decision of 1954. Although in 1957, the first Civil Rights Act since the Reconstruction was passed; its significance was only symbolical, though it was not backed by the federal enforcement.
With the election of Kennedy a new period of expectations, and perhaps later frustrations, among the civil rights leaders began.