There were a lot of factors that affected the civil rights movement of the black people of America in a negative way.
Brown v Topeka in 1954 was prime example of the racism of the people of America. The case, in which 13 parents of 20 students demanded that schools became unsegregated as the level of education taught in black schools was a lot lower than that in white.
The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement.
However, although the Supreme Court ruled that black and white schools should be integrated, they did not state how long the states had to achieve this. So most states simply ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling and left the educational system as it was.
This was because the majority of the states of America were governed by racists who did not believe that black and white people were anywhere near equal. Some states even held demonstrations to prevent the integration of the two races.
For instance In Virginia, Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. organized the Massive Resistance movement that included the closing of schools rather than desegregating them.
And in 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out his state's National Guard to block black students' entry to Little Rock Central High School.
The fact was that, although technically it was now law of the U.S. to integrate the schools, the majority of the states simply refused.
Another reason why the movement for black civil rights suffered was because at the time there was the Red Scare in which America really began to fear communism. And the idea of blacks demanding equal rights sounded like communism to the people of America. This would add to the opposition of white Americans very greatly as white people were already reluctant to accept that black people are equal, the accusations of the black people being communist only furthered the threat that the white Americans saw.
The only way in which the cries of the black people would be heard would be through an interested government, or more importantly, an interested President. Now this had many implications.
For instance, President Roosevelt began to become increasingly worried on the issue of black civil rights when he heard of black servicemen being attacked and abused as they returned from war. This sickened Roosevelt.
He began to issue laws which would gain black people at least some rights; however he soon began to realise that it was be impossible. This is due to the fact that in order for a law to be passed he would have to take it through the Supreme Court, which at the time was almost as racist as the southern Americans themselves.
The blacks finally had a sympathetic president, yet he couldn’t pass any laws that would actually make any major difference on the lives of Black people.
He also feared that even attempting to pass such laws would lose his vote from the southern states, so he also didn’t attempt any radical law changes from fear of his party losing votes.
Many southern states also created ‘Jim Crow Laws’ as they were known which were slightly different in each state. The basic aims of the Jim Crow Laws were to ensure that black people always knew that white people were superior. These Laws may have seemed quite minor such as black people having to sit at the back of the bus and having to give up their seat for white people, however it was psychological abuse to the black people.