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''Plessy'' might be understood amid the strategies of Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Machine. In his famous speech a year before the legal case, known as the “Atlanta Compromise,” Washington argued that social agitation for rights should be pushed to the side in favor of separate development. It immediately allowed him access to philanthropic funds, gained the purchase of many Southern leaders and Tuskegee University became a model for Black institutions in the South. But some Black leaders retorted that the question of rights should not be subordinated to separate development of the races and that rights were required to make that development happen. [[File:Niagara.jpg|thumb|The Niagara Movement]]Those who believed that Washington’s program was flawed continued to organize using the model of the test case. Many of the lawyers in the Black community joined their work to formations like the Afro-American Council and won many important victories for desegregation of public accommodations throughout the country. This strategy was followed by the Niagara Movement, which emerged to oppose the political tactic of the Tuskegee Machine in 1905. Their “Declaration of Principles” essentially affirmed their alignment with the civil rights struggles of the past and foreshadowed the future.

 In 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded amid the outcry and fallout from the Springfield Race Riot in 1908. A collection of moderate white liberals, the group was fused out of the settlement house movement and American progressivism. They felt strongly that progress would be made by appealing to the inherent morality of the nation and getting it to see that racism was an impediment to human flourishing. Equality, it was understood, was foundational to the nation and could only be made real with the advancement of Black people.

In order to make civil rights a reality, more than While the legal shift had to occur. Direct action was seen as a way 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott is an important case study of making an opening and pressuring these issues, with the government to ensure that the laws on the books were changed and then enforcedindigenous leadership, providing the ultimate protections of Black citizenship. Among the most effective targets for direct action were public accommodationsnational attention, and those spaces that received the earliest moments eventual Supreme Court case as key nodes, there is a long history of civil rights agitation were public transportation. The “right to ride,” direct action work as well as framed by historian Blair L.Mboycotts that preceded it and set the stage. Kelley, An influential one was critical for it allowed the vast majority Baton Rouge Bus Boycott of Black people to 1953. Much of this work can be able traced to navigate the cities and towns where they often worked1940s, many times in white neighborhoods. The irony is that residential segregation provided with institutions like the context for Highlander school, providing training to those would eventually take up the need for desegregation of public transportationstruggle. Black people were forced into the backs of buses and trainsIt was at Highlander where Rosa Parks, and in the cases heroine of interstate travel, they were relegated to the Jim Crow car. It Montgomery Bus Boycott was a source of both shame and denigration and deeply inconvenient, if not absurdtrained.

While the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott is an important case study of these issues, with the indigenous leadership, the national attention, and the eventual Supreme Court case as key nodes, there is a long history of public transportation direct action work as well as boycotts that preceded it and set the stage. An influential one was the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott of 1953. Much of this work can be traced to the 1940s, with institutions like the Highlander school, providing training to those would eventually take up the struggle. It was at Highlander where Rosa Parks, the heroine of the Montgomery Bus Boycott was trained. Even in cities like Montgomery, there were previous attempts to raise this question and what it demonstrated was that people were thinking about these questions and seeking solutions long before the national attention of the late 1950s. Out of these moments, Black churches, became the base for much of civil rights activity throughout the south, ministers like Martin Luther King, Jr. were then thrust into the leadership positions that they were known for during the period. But without the spark of ordinary people, they would not have had anyone to lead. With the Freedom Rides, young activists began to take center stage on these questions. By the 1960s, they would be firmly ensconced in the movement.

[[File:sitin.jpg|thumbnail|300px|left|The Greensboro Four]]Providing a new spark and energy to the tradition of direct action, young activists during the early 1960s helped expose the nation to the evils of segregation executing a number of sit-ins that made public accommodations a key issue in the fight for civil rights. These students were products of complex histories. One group of students was Southern-born and bred and came to the movement out of a deep antipathy for the environments that fostered the hate that underpinned segregation. They were the products of the inadequate schools, their parents were the laborers who were cheated out of economic opportunity. But in 1955, when Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, they felt the call to do something. Calling themselves, “The Emmett Till generation,” they joined their local NAACPs and many of them attended local HBCUs and used those spaces as the launching pad for the sit-in movement. Another group came to the movement from the north. They were Black and experienced levels of poverty and dispossession, but did not experience Jim Crow in the same way until they came south to attend college. Many of them, however, did come with a previous understanding of socialism and pacifism and other radical ideologies that they picked up from various Northern environments. They saw ways to immediately apply these tactics to the Southern struggle. [[File:sitin.jpg|thumb|The Greensboro Four]] The fusion of these two groups created a prime opportunity to develop a national struggle. After the Greensboro Four, sparked a new wave of sit-ins on February 1, 1960, Black students across the nation begin to emulate their example. Seeing the need to organize this fervor, longtime activist and current organizer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ella J. Baker sent out a call for a meeting on Easter Weekend. The result of that call was the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.