hese programs, which emerged in the 1970s, supported the hiring and promotion of minorities and women. Their fairness has been debated and litigated into the 1990s. Conclusion Although full equality has not yet been reached, the civil rights movement did put basic critical reforms in place. Legal segregation as a system of racial control was no longer in effect, and blacks were no longer subject to the humiliation of Jim Crow laws. Public institutions were opened to all. Blacks achieved the right to vote and the influence that went with that right in a democracy. Those were indeed important steps toward racial equality. The civil rights movement of the 1960's occurred when the modern, civilized world clashed with the traditional southern values that southern Americans were clinging to. Americans inside and outside of Washington were realizing the damaging effects of segregation, and along with frustrated blacks, the civil rights revolution was born. The strong liberalism which filled America made fertile ground for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to step up and make their voices heard. Chief Justice Earl Warren, appointed to the bench by Eisenhower, surprised even the president himself with his populist principles He helped to ignite the civil rights fire. The unanimous decision of the Warren led court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in May 1954 was unprecedented. The justices rule of “the segregation in the public schools was inherently unequal and thus unconstitutional” was a slap in the face to traditionalists. The Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that segregating southerners lived by was now dead. The justices now insisted that desegregation must go ahead with “all deliberate speed.” Following up the breakthrough court decision, came the Civil Rights Acts, the first passed since Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 established the Commission on Civil Rights to inv...
