The Attainment of Equality Under the Law

Abstract

This chapter depicts the Great Migration of 6.6 million African Americans from the rural South to the urban North between 1910 and 1970. This changed the nationwide political landscape. However, so-called ghettos were formed where the Blacks suffered from isolation, discrimination, and concentrated poverty caused by de facto residential segregation. The U.S. Supreme Court decision of Brown (1954) and the Civil Rights Movement are then discussed. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally fulfilled the promise of equality under the law a century after the Civil War. This chain of local, direct action by Blacks with the help of white volunteers was known as nonviolent social change.