In the last two chapters you have seen the groundwork laid for the momentous achievements of the civil rights movement. But great movements have smaller, often painful human dimensions, as the introduction to this chapter shows. Six-year-old Ruby displayed one kind of courage; an Atlanta schoolteacher showed quite another. Both made essential contributions to a movement too long deferred.

The Civil Rights Movement

The material prosperity in1950s America did not spread evenly. At a time when many whites moved to suburbs effectively segregated either by custom or law, African Americans migrated out of the rural South and into urban cities in large numbers. As black reformers began concentrating on ways to end legal segregation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People succeeded in challenging the Supreme Court to overturn, in Brown v. Board of Education, the prevailing doctrine of allowing separate but equal facilities for whites and blacks. That victory inspired civil rights leaders to adopt more assertive approaches. In Montgomery, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. led a campaign to desegregate the city's bus system, while public school desegregation sparked such conflict in Little Rock, Arkansas that President Eisenhower had to send in federal troops to assure protection for black students and respect for government.

A Movement Becomes a Crusade

Civil rights proved the crucial test of liberalism during the 1960s. President Kennedy only reluctantly took up the cause that threatened to split the Democratic Party. Leadership came instead from black political and religious organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Council. Sit-ins, freedom rides, and other forms of nonviolent protest became the weapons they utilized to fight segregation. The sometimes-brutal reactions of southern police and white supremacists shocked national television audiences—and especially Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. On several occasions the younger Kennedy ordered federal marshals to protect civil rights groups. The president introduced a major civil rights bill and on August 28, 1963, over 200,000 people gathered in Washington to hear Martin Luther King speak of his dreams for integration.

Kennedy committed himself to a civil rights bill, but was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963. Lyndon Johnson, a southerner, honored Kennedy's commitment by passing a broad Civil Rights Act in 1964 and a Voting Rights Act in 1965. But even those advances could not quiet the increasingly militant and radical demands of black nationalist groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Muslims, and the Black Panthers. In the North, civil rights leaders discovered de facto barriers to integration far more difficult to remove than the "Jim Crow" laws in the South. Beginning in the summer of 1964, a series of race riots tore through the nation's cities.

Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society

As President, Lyndon Johnson became determined to leave an enduring mark on the nation, much in the spirit of his hero, Franklin Roosevelt. He committed himself not only to civil rights, but also to aid education, health benefits for the elderly and poor, job training, housing, urban renewal, the environment, and more. He called his program "the Great Society" and with it surpassed Roosevelt's legislative achievements. In beating conservative Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential race, Johnson also bested Roosevelt's landslide victory in 1936.

Johnson's vision proved heady indeed. In whirlwind fashion, he passed laws affecting almost every area of life, including health, education, jobs, immigration, auto safety, equal rights, and the environment. Many of the initiatives had a higher price tag than he or his supporters imagined, and inefficiency, corruption, soaring costs, and political infighting dogged many Great Society programs. But more than flawed legislation or political corruption, the Vietnam War shattered Johnson's hopes to create his Great Society.

While the executive branch expanded its role in the lives of Americans, the judiciary also took an active approach during the 1960s. The Supreme Court under Justice Earl Warren handed down a series of landmark decisions in the areas of civil liberties and civil rights. These cases protected the due process rights of accused criminals; banned prayer in schools; promoted a right to privacy that protected the purchase and sale of contraceptives and narrowed the legal definition of obscenity; and forced the reapportionment of legislative districts to follow the principle of "one person, one vote."

The Counterculture

Many young Americans had given up on traditional methods of politics and society, but political movements emerged from this segment of society on both sides of the political spectrum. The left-leaning Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) distinguished their brand of politics from the Marxists of the 1930s by describing themselves as the New Left, and they fought a battle over free speech at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964 that brought their movement national exposure. Meanwhile, the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) launched a less public effort to restrict the power of the federal government. During this same period, the Catholic Church passed Vatican II in an effort to retain its influence by adapting its religious practices to modern life.

Other young people rejected politics altogether and sought non-materialistic lifestyles, experimenting with sex, drugs, and music in search of altered consciousness. They flouted convention through their outrageous clothes and personal styles. Much of the style of the "counterculture" came from West Coast hippies and rock musicians. Drugs played a central role in defining hippie styles. So, too, did the folk music of Bob Dylan and a rock music scene revitalized by the Beatles and other English groups. West Coast acid rock groups such the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane adapted rock to the drug culture. By the late 1960s, the hope of building a better world, whether through a Great Society or through radical politics and cultural revolution, began to collapse. The era's soaring dreams came back to earth under the weight of an invasive commercialism, a lack of coherence within the movements, growing violence, and above all, the impact of the war in Vietnam.