"With All Deliberate Speed": The Modern Civil Rights Movement, Part 1

I. The Fight for Civil Rights Before 1945

A. Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC)--the predecessor to the present-day Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC), was established to end discriminatory practices in hiring for war-related work

1. 1941--FEPC was established by an executive order, and simply required companies seeking government contracts to promise that they would not engage in discriminatory hiring practices.

2. 1943--because the initial FEPC was largely ineffective, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (the largest black majority union), A. Philip Randolph, began organizing a "March on Washington" to protest the government's lack of commitment to civil rights. After negotiating with the Roosevelt Administration, Randolph called off the protest--and a non-discrimination clause was thereafter placed in every government contract.

II. "With All Deliberate Speed"

A. The Legal Defense and Education Fund--established in 1938 as a division of the NAACP, the LDF engaged in a series of lawsuits that began to systematically challenge segregation in the United  States. The LDF was headed by Thurgood Marshall, and staffed by a number of lawyers dedicated to ending segregation.

1. Murray v. Pearson (1935)--directed by Marshall  before the LDF was established, this case opened up  the law school at the University of Maryland to African Americans, who had been excluded before, and who had no other law schools in the state to attend.


2.  Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada,  (1938)--ended segregation in Missouri for graduate programs where there was no graduate programs in black collegew.

3. Alston v. School Board of City of Norfolk (1940)--decreed that teachers in segregated schools were to be paid the same salary as teachers in white schools.

B. Brown v. Board of Education--while not all cases argued before the Supreme Court by the LDF involved segregation in schools, it does become apparent that this was part of an overall strategy by Marshall and his lawyer to remove the legal underpinnings for the continuation of the segregation of public schools.

1. Topeka, Kansas--was one of twelve cities in Kansas authorized by the state legislature to establish segregated schools.  Kansas was not the only northern state that permitted segregation; Indiana also permitted segregated schools in Indianapolis and in Gary.

2. Combined cases--the decision known as Brown v. Board of Education combined 5 different cases: one from Topeka, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and Washington, D.C. Oliver Brown's name was place as the lead plaintiff in order to place a male name at the front of the document, which the legal defense team thought the court would favor.

3. Brown I (1954)--a unanimous decision, achieved when Chief Justice Fred C. Vinson died and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with former California governor Earl Warren. Warren was governor when Japanese-Americans were removed from the coast and interred in concentration camps inland, and was haunted by his contribution to that decision. Brown I ended legal segregation of schools in the United States.

4. Brown II (1955)--the following year, segregated school systems sought relief from having to immediately comply with the Brown decision; the Court granted that school systems should comply "with all deliberate speed."

III. The African American Response to Brown

A. Montgomery Bus Boycott (Dec. 1955-Jan. 1957)--this 13 month boycott ended Jim Crown segregation on Montgomery city buses, and is also noted for the introduction of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the civil rights cause.

1. Rosa Parks--the exhausted seamstress who refused to give up her seat to a white man was also a NAACP activist who worked part-time as secretary for the chair of the Alabama NAACP, E.D. Nixon.

2. E.D. Nixon--one of the principal organizers of the boycott, Nixon was a retired porter and member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, where he learned  to organize under the tutelage of A. Philip Randolph.

3. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.--the most famous name to emerge from this event, but he came to it only reluctantly; after initially turning E.D. Nixon down, King only agreed to become the face of the boycott after every other pastor also turned down Nixon's offer.

B. Little Rock Central High School



C. Woolworth's Sit-in, Greensboro, NC (1960)



1. Inspiration--the action of the Greensboro 4 inspired a number of other college students--mostly African Americans, but with some whites--to challenge similarly segregated facilities around the South.