Montgomery spring: postwar change and the emergence of the civil rights movement, 1945-65

Since the 1980s there has been a growing recognition by historians of the importance of grassroots civil rights activity in the 1930s and 1940s. This has led to the rediscovery of a number of early pioneers who provided the groundwork for the later successes of the civil rights movement, 1955-68. In Virginia the black educator, journalist and minister Gordon Blaine Hancock was a campaigner against 'Jim Crowism' in his writings and lectures for approaching thirty years from the 1930s to the 1950s. He also helped found the SRC in 1944.