From the 1950s, organizations created to defend the rights of African-Americans (such as the NAACP) and some individuals started to take a stance against these different forms of racial inequality.
Rosa Parks
On 5th December 1955, a lady named Rosa Parks was sitting on a local bus in Montgomery, Alabama, when she was told by the driver to give up her seat to a white gentleman. At the time African-Americans such as Rosa were expected to do this, even though legally they weren’t required to do so. But she refused. She was arrested and convicted by a court.
The Montgomery Improvement Association, a local civil rights group whose leaders included Martin Luther King, organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott in response. The city’s black community rallied around the cause, and because African-Americans made up the majority of the bus service’s passengers, the company lost a lot of money. The boycott lasted for a year, ending when the Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s laws on segregating public transport were unconstitutional.