A tactic of peaceful resistance
In 1954 the US Supreme Court brought down the legal barrier to racial equality, ending six decades of segregation of blacks and whites in education.
The landmark ruling was widely seen as a first step toward ending racism, which was particularly entrenched in the South where everything from restaurants to drinking fountains were segregated.
Following the ruling, new desegregation laws were passed one by one. The fight, up to then waged by lawyers, left the courtroom and went into the streets, under the leadership of Martin Luther King.
It was characterised by tactics of peaceful disobedience, while blacks also used their economic weight to oppose unjust laws.
The campaign started with the arrest of Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her place to a white person in a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Four days later, after Parks was fined, blacks launched a year-long boycott of local buses, led by King, who was minister at a Baptist church in Montgomery.
During the campaign of peaceful resistance numerous activists were beaten and jailed, Parks and her husband lost their jobs and had to leave the South, and King's house was all but destroyed in a bomb attack. King himself was sentenced to prison. However the campaign won the day and the Supreme Court banned segregation in public transport in 1956.
Here is a selection of stories on the peaceful struggle by correspondents of Agence France-Presse, translated from the original French.
- Eatery sit-ins -
NEW YORK, February 20, 1960 (AFP) - A new form of battle against racial discrimination, similar to the passive resistance organised in India by Gandhi, has been triggered in the United States by black students in the southern states aimed at ending discrimination in restaurants.
The battle is mainly targeted at cafeteria-style restaurants where meals are served at the counter.
Only whites are allowed to sit on the stools to eat at the counter; blacks have to eat standing up and if they sit down, they are not served.
It is at Hampton, Virginia that the passive resistance started several weeks ago.
A group of black students occupied from opening time all the seats at the counter and remained sitting all day until closing time without eating, preventing whites from occupying the seats.
They did the same the next day.
After three days of this game, which damaged the restaurant's business, white students reacted, attempting to occupy the seats before the blacks.
Brawls led to the restaurant being closed.
The movement quickly spread particularly in Raleigh (North Carolina), Chattanooga (Tennessee) and Richmond (Virginia). From the southern states the battle had, by the end of the week, reached the north of the United States.
- Church kneel-ins -
NEW YORK, August 15, 1960 (AFP) - Continuing their peaceful fight against racial discrimination in the southern states, American blacks launched a week ago a campaign against segregation in churches.
This new form of "kneel-in" has provoked incidents in several churches in Atlanta and Montgomery, capitals of the southern states of Georgia and Alabama.
In Atlanta around 30 black students who were kneeling among whites in four protestant churches were obliged to leave after vergers intervened.
They remained kneeling at the entrance to the churches, however, so as to be able to attend the service.
Last week black 25 students were allowed into six "white" churches but had to take their place in an area reserved for coloured visitors.
- Bathing for freedom -
CHICAGO, July 16, 1961 (AFP) - Twenty blacks and five whites from a Catholic group for racial equality bathed together on one of Chicago's main beaches, on Lake Michigan, in spite of racial segregation laws.
The group remained in the water for around two hours among hundreds of swimmers without being bothered. Some 200 young whites who had surrounded them at one moment were dispersed by the police.
- Protest marches -
Marches, often local and organised by pastors, became a common occurence from 1963.
Usually banned by the local authorities, they were sometimes violently dispersed as in Selma on March 7, 1965.
At the time, half of the population of Selma, a small town in Alabama, was black. Its governor, George Wallace, was a fervent supporter of segregation and a big opponent of federal power.
In 1965 the law did not ban blacks from voting but Alabama, like all segregationist states, imposed such conditions that only two percent of Selma's blacks actually voted.
In February 1965 a black person demonstrating for the right to vote was fatally wounded by the police. On March 7 a protest march was organised.
SELMA, Alabama, March 8, 1965 (AFP) - Alabama police batons and tear gas yesterday prevented some 500 black integrationists from Selma from marching on the state capital, Montgomery, 80 kilometres (50 miles) away, to protest against inequality between blacks and whites over the right to vote.
Reverend King, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who had been one of the organisers of this march, has announced that a new attempt will take place on Tuesday.
The demonstrators, who included many children, had gathered in one of Selma's churches ... The marchers were to be followed by trucks carrying provisions and camping materials.
After an orderly exit from the church, the demonstrators came up a first time against the town's police who dispersed them, but they regrouped and managed to leave the urban area.
When approaching a bridge that crosses the road to Montgomery, they were stopped by a barricade of state troopers who ordered them to disperse.
The demonstrators continued to advance and the police, wearing helmets and gas masks, charged them with batons and whips, and then threw tear gas grenades.
The crowd dispersed in the fields and were followed by the police and, shortly afterwards, by mounted police. The blacks were rounded up and taken back to their neighbourhood. Sixty-seven were injured, some with broken arms and legs or skull fractures.
All these scenes took place in the presence of a crowd of whites, kept at a distance by a police cordon, who shouted encouragement to the police.
The demonstrators, led by King, would finally reach Montgomery on their third attempt on March 26.