hey there and welcome back to high much history now we've been going through unit 8 of the ap u.s history curriculum and in this video it's time to start talking about civil rights and here in this video we're only going to consider some of the foundations of the civil rights movement in the 1940s and the 1950s and then in a later video we're gonna come back to the civil rights movement in the 1960s so if you're ready to get them bring cows milked well then let's get to it so in this video we're basically trying to do one thing explain how and why the civil rights movements developed and expanded from 1945 to 1960. so as you'll probably remember many promises were made to black americans after the civil war into the reconstruction era those promises included constitutional amendments securing voting rights and equal protection under the law but as you'll further remember the fulfillment of many of those promises were suppressed with the advent of jim crow laws and voter suppression tactics like poll taxes and literacy tests and supreme court decisions like plessy versus ferguson which upheld racial segregation as the law of the land and so during the 1940s and 1950s civil rights activists sought to put pressure on the american government to make good on those promises and to their credit all three branches of the federal government actually did make gains with respect to civil rights for example president truman who had been an early supporter of civil rights issued executive order 9981 which banned segregation in the united states armed forces you know that is good but while he signed that order in 1948 he didn't enforce it until two years later when the korean war began at the end of the day he was still a politician who feared that if he went too far with civil rights he'd lose the support of southern members of the democratic party and truman didn't get the idea to desegregate the armed forces in one of his sweet dreams that recommendation actually came out of the committee on civil rights created by truman in 1946 and was tasked with examining the real conditions of civil rights in america and to give recommendations for how to address those problems the committee recommended the desegregation of the armed forces and they also recommended the abolishment of poll taxes and the encouragement of federal protection from lynching and while truman took care of many of these recommendations through executive orders he also urged congress to make these into law and by 1962 congress proposed the 24th amendment which abolished the poll tax so we've got two branches of the federal government working for civil rights how about we check in with the supreme court and here's where we talk about the landmark case of brown versus the board of education this was actually a conglomeration of cases but for simplicity let's just talk about it as one case and one decision the brown case had to do with the racial segregation of schools the brown referred to in the case title was oliver brown whose young daughter had to attend a black school over a mile from her house instead of being admitted to a white school around the corner the argument was that segregated schools violated the provisions of the 14th amendment which granted all citizens equal protection under the law seeing as how plessy was the precedent those seeking integration were turned down in the lower courts then in 1954 the case wound up on the docket of the supreme court and the court overturned plessy versus ferguson in a unanimous decision arguing that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal and that meant that schools would now be integrated however there was a downside to this victory when the court ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional they ordered that schools be integrated with all deliberate speed now you and i we know what that means it means like do it now but southerners who oppose this measure found just enough vagueness in that phrase to stall like think about it all deliberate speed speed means go fast do it now but deliberate that means to like thoughtfully consider an act before you do it now look i want to integrate these schools as fast as possible i want to do it now but daggum chief justice earl warren told me to be deliberate about how fast i go so i'm just going gonna sit here and deliberate about my speech in about 10 years get back to me anyway as you can imagine southern states resisted this decision with great sound and great fury and their congressional representatives wrote out their arguments in something called the southern manifesto it argued that the supreme court had engaged in a gross abuse of power in the brown decision and in order to uphold their rights in the face of such abuses of power some southern states shut schools down rather than have them integrated another manifestation of this came in 1956 when arkansas governor orville fabus called in the state's national guard to prevent black students from entering little rock high school these students became known as the little rock nine and in response to phabas intransigence president eisenhower sent federal troops to protect these nine students as they entered the school so the point is this during the 40s and 50s there were certainly some momentous strides made in the cause of civil rights however there was also much opposition too and so efforts like school integration made only small gains over the next decade all right that's what you need to know about unit 8 topic 6 of the ap us history curriculum if you need more unit 8 videos they're right here if you want help getting an a in your class and a 5 on your exam may then click right here and grew back and finally if you want me to keep making these videos and you can let me know by subscribing heimler out