Thesis Paper #2- June 2019

The Warren Court and The Civil Rights Movement 

The 1950s and 60s was a time period that brought major change to the United States. With the Warren Court and the civil rights movement happening at the same time a lot of progressive ideas were being pushed to the public. The Warren Court ruled on decisions that still impact us today, and the civil rights movement is used as inspiration for the youth of this generation.  The Warren Court and the civil rights movement caused the 1950’s and 60’s to be the most progressive and socially productive decades in U.S history.
The Warren Court was the period of time when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice in the Supreme Court. He replaced Fred Vinson in 1953 and started focusing the court on people not property. At a young age Warren worked for the Southern Pacific, through this job he learned about monopolistic power, corruption, and political dominance, seeing this in action helped shape his ideals and career. Although he grew up with a semi-traditional and conservative background his views tended to be more liberal and he was determined to not only protect people's rights but to also expand them. As he grew older his views became more liberal, and he started to believe that the roots of crime were in education, poverty, social standard, and treatment by law enforcement, this belief helped him rule on many racially charged cases.
The Warren Court ruled on many ground breaking cases including Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling v. Sharpe, Boynton v. Virginia, Gomillion v. Lightfoot, McLaughlin v. Florida, Loving v. Virginia, and many more. Brown v. Board, 1954, was a case “in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.” The Supreme Court had previously ruled on Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896, which stated that services could be racially segregated as long as they were equal, but this decision began to be questioned with Brown v. Board.  Bolling v. Sharpe, 1954, found the segregation of DC public schools to be unconstitutional. Boynton v. Virginia, 1960, after a black interstate traveler was arrested for sitting on the white side of a train station restaurant during his 40 minute stop in Richmond, the court ruled that station stops and restaurants should have the same restrictions as the interstate commerce act that prohibits racial discrimination during travel.  Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 1960, the Alabama legislature wanted to redraw the electoral district boundaries for Tuskegee, this “new district” would essentially exclude “all blacks from the city limits of Tuskegee and place them in a district where no whites lived.” The court ruled unanimously that a state would be violating the 15th amendment if it constructed electoral boundary lines so that African Americans would not have equal political representation. McLaughlin v. Florida, 1964, “the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Florida law that punished interracial cohabitation more severely than cohabitation by individuals of the same race violated the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause.”  Loving v. Virginia, 1967, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man were married in DC, and when they returned to their home state of Virginia they were charged with violating the anti miscegenation statute that Virginia had in place. The Lovings were sentenced to one year in prison, they were also told that the jail time would be dropped if they were to leave Virginia for at least 25 years. The court found that this law “had no legitimate purpose” and decided that under the constitution no state could tell you who you could or could not marry based on race.
Nearly 100 years after slavery was abolished there was still widespread racism and segration. There started to be an uptake in activism by people of all races and genders to fight this rascim and unfair discrimination, this activism is known as the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for African Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States. Although the civil rights movement focused mostly on rights for African Americans, other groups like women, Native Americans, and immigrants also fought for more rights. This was not the first time that a movement like this had happened but it was the biggest.
The main focus of the civil rights movement was African Americans, but people of all races, and genders were also joining the fight. Women in the civil rights movement were partial to the fight because they had also had to fight for basic human rights. Many women used their new power of voting rights, being able to get higher education and getting jobs that were not traditional to help aid in the fight. “Many women played important roles in the Civil Rights Movement, from leading local civil rights organizations to serving as lawyers on school segregation lawsuits.” however these accomplishments by women were often overshadowed by men. Many women fighting during the civil rights movement faced gender discrimination or sexual harasment within the movement, and this led to them later leading a feminsit movement. There were many protests and boycotts during the civil rights movement but the most popular and influential were the Montgomery Bus boycott, the Greensboro Sit-in, and the March on Washington.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a 13 month long boycott of the Alabama public transportation system. In 1955 both Claudette Colvin and the more famously known, Rosa Parks, were arrested for not giving up their seats to white travelers. This sparked outrage in the community and led to the boycott. This boycott was led mostly by women, and led to the desegregation of buses in Alabama and throughout the rest of the country.
   In 1960 four men from North Carolina decided  to stage a peaceful protest at the lunch counter inside of the Woolworth department store. The counter’s policy was to only serve white customers, the men decided they would go in, sit down, and when they were refused service they would stay seated until the counter closed. The next day more than 20 other students joined them. On day 4 of the protest there were more than 300 participants and it had spread to another lunch counter. The sit-in eventually spread to Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte North Carolina. It also spread to other states including Tennessee, Georgia and, Virginia. The sit-in lasted almost 5 months, until the original lunch counter finally served African American customers. Lunch counters in the surrounding area also became desegregated in the coming weeks.
     Including over a quarter of a million people and over 3,000 members of the press the March on Washington is perhaps one of the most well known protests during the civil rights movement. The March on Washington was a march for jobs and freedom. The crowd of over 250,000 people gathered at the base of the Lincoln Memorial to hear Martin Luther King jr. deliver his “I have a dream” speech. His speech emphasized a faith that one day all men would get along, and called for an end to racial discrimination. This speech and movement greatly influenced the ideas of the American people and is believed to be one of the leading factors in the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
      The Warren Court helped the Civil Rights movement because it started to protect rights for African Americans on a national scale. The Warren Court and the Civil Rights movement caused the 1950s and 60s to be one of the most influential time periods because its influence is still being felt today. The Civil Rights movement was a symbol back then and it is a symbol today of how people can affect real change. It showed how people from all backgrounds can come together in times of hardship and adversity and cause a ripple in everyday life.