ABSTRACT
The American civil rights movement, beginning with the Niagara Convention in 1906, saw the fruits of its labors rewarded in 1954 when the highest court of the United States ordered nationwide school desegregation to fulfill the constitutional promise of equal protection under the law. School desegregation stands as one of the major efforts at social engineering launched by any government in the 20th century. Albeit not as massive or violent as the socialist revolutions, it reorganized modern human society by insisting that people of color be included as equal citizens in a multiethnic United States—a country proclaiming itself the melting pot of nations welcoming to its shores the “tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free”.
