These two laws constituted the real beginning of the end for Jim Crow laws and practices.

EMPOWERING THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The civil rights movement may have gained impetus and cooperation among people with differing opinions and goals from what Canady (1998) called the "animating principle," or the principle that got people of differing views and backgrounds working effectively together: the idea that dignity was the right of all men, women and children in the country, and not just those born to relative power. This sense of personal dignity was reflected in the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's speeches during the Civil War, by Justice Harlan in his dissenting opinion of 1896, the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court in 1954, and in the civil laws that followed. The Civil Rights movement embraced Harlan's view that our Constitution should be color-blind. People of all races and backgrounds...
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