Civil Rights, 1945-1960
Fulfilling old promises
- Seeking to fulfil Reconstruction-era promises, civil rights activists and political leaders achieved some legal and political successes in ending segregation, although progress toward racial equality was slow.
- Reconstruction-era promises ties this directly to 5.10's amendments and 5.11's eventually became the basis for court decisions.
- Some successes and progress... was slow are both the CED's own qualifiers, and both belong in an answer.
Select both federal measures the CED names.
The Civil Rights Act belongs to 8.10.
All three branches acted
- The three branches of the federal government used measures including desegregation of the armed services and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to promote greater racial equality.
- The CED names an executive measure and a judicial one in a sentence about all three branches.
- 3.9's separation of powers means each branch can act independently, and here that produces several routes to one goal.
Select both of the CED's qualifiers on the achievement.
Both belong in an answer.
Why the courts mattered first
- 5.11 said the 14th and 15th amendments eventually became the basis for court decisions upholding civil rights in the 20th century.
- That is the promise being fulfilled: a claim written in 1868 and enforced ninety years later.
- So a court can act where a legislature cannot, because it applies a text already adopted rather than passing a new one.
The promise, a federal measure, or the qualifier?
Sort each element of early civil rights.
A court could act where a legislature could not because it...
5.11's amendments were the text.
"Some" successes and "progress... was slow" are both the CED's own qualifiers. Activists and political leaders achieved some legal and political successes in ending segregation, although progress toward racial equality was slow — and 8.10 names the cause of the pace: continuing resistance.
The CED says the ____ branches of the federal government used these measures.
3.9's separation of powers gives several routes to one goal.
'Slow' is the CED's own word
- Although progress toward racial equality was slow — the CED qualifies the achievement in the same sentence that records it.
- 8.10 explains why: continuing resistance slowed efforts at desegregation, sparking social and political unrest across the nation.
- So the pace is itself a historical fact with a named cause, not a vague impression.
8.10 names the cause of the slow pace as...
The pace is a fact with a named cause.
How and why the movement developed
- The objective is how and why the civil rights movements developed and expanded from 1945 to 1960.
- Why: Reconstruction-era promises unfulfilled, wartime service and mobilisation (7.12, 7.13), and a Cold War claim to lead the free world.
- How: through activists and political leaders using all three branches, with successes that were real and partial.
A right written into a constitution in one century and enforced in the next was never absent; it was unenforced. That distinction is why a court could act without waiting for a new law.
Seeking to fulfil Reconstruction-era promises, civil rights activists and political leaders achieved some legal and political successes in ending segregation, although progress toward racial equality was slow. The three branches of the federal government used measures including desegregation of the armed services and Brown v. Board of Education (1954) to promote greater racial equality — an executive measure and a judicial one, and 5.11 had already said the 14th and 15th amendments would eventually become the basis for such decisions.