Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in the Southern states lived in an unequal world with disenfranchisement, segregation, and other abuses. Thanks to Jim Crow laws, blacks were not allowed to go into classrooms, bathrooms, theaters, train cars, juries, legislatures, and much more. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal” by drawing signs that said “colored” and “white.” Then, in the destructive decade and a half, civil rights activists used nonviolent protest and civil unrest for change. Thus, the civil rights movement was the catalyst for permanent change for minorities and the poor. When the last federal troops left the South in 1877, Southern governments quickly fell under the control of racist whites. These racist whites wanted to keep blacks and whites separate, so they created Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws were responsible for segregating restaurants, fountains, restrooms, schools, hotels, and more. By the 1890s, most of the effect blacks had made during Reconstruction had disappeared. Many blacks were poor due to employment discrimination; white people wouldn't hire them for good jobs. The name Jim Crow was ironically a white man's imitation of a dancing, singing black stableman. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. For this she was arrested and fined. 4 days later and on the same day as Parks' court hearing the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. The boycott began on December 5, 1955 and ended on December 20, 1956. During the boycott many blacks got car rides from friends and hitchhiked. They also organized carpooling and Afr...... middle of paper ......ral. The courts upheld the ruling, but accepted the South's delays. The result of all this was that school desegregation occurred very slowly. Without good, strong federal support, the ruling was such a disappointment and no one really expected this to happen. Montgomery began a new phrase in the Civil Rights Movement. The success of the phrase showed people how effective an organized and silent protest could be. In the following years, the strategy of nonviolence became the center of attention of the movement. Martin Luther King Jr. was the best civil rights leader to spread the idea of ​​nonviolence. MLK spread the word to the people. King was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929; he was the son and grandson of Baptist ministers. A brilliant student, he entered college at the age of five. Then three years later he graduated and entered the seminary to study to become a minister