YEAR: 1955-1965Civil Rights Revolution
The modern Civil Rights movement burst onto the scene with the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama that began Dec. 5, 1955. Nine years later, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. The Voting Rights Act was enacted in 1965, one year later. Legal apartheid in the United States was formally ended.
While not a revolution in the sense of a seizure of power, the apartheid police state that existed in the South was dismantled by the U.S. capitalist political establishment through the use of legislation and court decisions. The concessions were a way of preventing an increasingly militant and conscious movement from passing over to outright revolution.
Nevertheless, the outcome of the Civil Rights movement is comparable in magnitude to a political revolution. It was an uprising from below, lasting over a decade, which led to a profound restructuring of the political superstructure in the United States.
