Civil rights proved to be the crucial test of the l960s. President Kennedy took up the cause which threatened to split the Democratic Party. Leadership came from black political and religious organizations such as the Congress on Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Council Sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and other forms of nonviolent protest became the weapons to fight segregation. The sometimes brutal reactions of southern police and white supremacists shocked national television audiences and especially Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. On several occassions the younger Kennedy ordered federal marshals to protect civil rights groups. The President introduced a major civil rights bill and on August 28, l963, over 200,000 people gathered in Washington to hear Martin Luther King speak of his dreams for integration.

President Kennedy committed himself to a civil rights bill, but was assassinated in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson, a Southerner, honored Kennedy's commitment by passing a broad Civil Rights Act in l964 and a Voting Rights Act in l965. But even those advances could not quiet the increasingly militant and radical demands of black nationalist groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Muslims, and the Black Panthers. In the North, civil rights leaders discovered the barriers to integration far more difficult to remove than the "Jim Crow" laws in the South. Beginning in the summer of l964, a series of race riots tore through the nation's cities.