History: The Civil Rights Movement

USA 1950's and 60's civil rights movement.

After the Second World War, organisations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and the Congress of Racial equality (CORE) campaigned for black peoples civil rights. They fought against racism, violence against black people and segregation. Under segregation black people were forced to live in seperate, usually worse facilities for everything from education to healthcare. In the North black people often had the worst living conditions too.

During the Second World war, over a million black people fought in the US armed forces. Many more worked on the home front. Under pressure from the NAACP, the army appointed more black officers- by the end of the war there were about 6000 black officers, but the army was not desegregated until 1948, after the war and even then it was done by a presidential order.