when did the civil rights movement gain momentum
Civil rights movement The civil rights movement (also known as the African-American civil rights movement, American civil rights movement and other terms)[b] was a decades-long movement with the goal of securing legal rights for African Americans that other Americans already held. With roots starting in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, the movement resulted in the largest legislative impacts after the direct actions and grassroots protests organized from the mid-1950s until 1968. Encompassing strategies, various groups, and organized social movements to accomplish the goals of ending legalized racial segregation and discrimination in the United States, the movement, using major nonviolent campaigns, eventually secured new recognition in federal law and federal protection of all Americans.
Civil Rights Act of 1875 The Civil Rights Act of 1875 (18 Stat. 335–337),[2] sometimes called Enforcement Act or Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era in response to civil rights violations to African Americans, "to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights", giving them equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and to prohibit exclusion from jury service. The bill was passed by the 43rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1875. The law was generally opposed by public opinion, but blacks did favor it. It was not effectively enforced and historian William Gillette says the passage of the law was an "insignificant victory."[3] Eight years later, the Supreme Court ruled in Civil Rights Cases (1883) that the public accommodation sections of the act were unconstitutional, saying Congress was not afforded control over private persons or corporations.