In the southern states, segregation has a legal status until the 1950s. These are the famous Jim Crow laws established in the south after abolition in 1865. They were intended to keep blacks separated from whites And to restrict their civil rights. In all public places, black and white have separate spaces, do not use the same toilets, eat and play in different places. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama refuses to A white in the bus. She is arrested and sentenced to a fine of $ 15. It was then the beginning of the boycott of buses by the blacks of the city launched by a young Baptist pastor, Martin Luther King.
On 13 November 1956, the Supreme Court declared Montgomery's segregationist laws illegal. This is a first victory for the civil rights movement. The photograph opposite was taken in 1956, after the favorable decision of the Supreme Court.
Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005 at the age of 92.
De-segregation also affects schools as evidenced by the story of Ruby Bridges. On November 14, 1960, she entered a public school in New Orleans. Learn more about Norman Rockwell's artwork.
Finally, the legal obstacles to the vote of the blacks were lifted in 1964 and 1965 by the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act voted under the presidency of Democrat Lyndon Johnson. The Promoter of the Great Society (including all its members, following the New Frontier of Kennedy) decided in 1965 to launch an Affirmative Action program to encourage the training and recruitment of blacks in universities, Administration and society. These decisions will be worth to the Democrats to lose the voices of many whites in the South to the benefit of the republics, until today ...
