The first case study explores the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from 1954 to 1965. In 1954, the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of education marked a major legal victory for civil rights campaigners. A decade of struggle ensured until, in 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act which finally ended the blatant disenfranchisement of millions of African Americans.
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The second case study considers apartheid in South Africa from 1948 to 1964. In 1948, the National Party came to power and began a comprehensive programme to segregate South Africans on the basis of their races. Black Africans protested the succession of legal restrictions, without success. By 1964, the leadership of one of the major resistance groups, the African National Congress (ANC), had been jailed as a result of the Rivonia trial. What followed were some of the darkest days of apartheid before its eventual overturn in 1994.
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