Why did the progress of civil rights in America falter in the latter part of the 1950s?

Following the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was established. The creation of this organization caused divisions within the Civil Rights movement and tensions with other groups, in particular the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP initially saw the SCLC as antagonists and hindered many of their early campaigns/ rallies. Although cooperation between the two groups increased over time, the SCLC was not able to achieve …

…voters to the electoral role. Overall the Civil Rights campaign suffered from a lack of organisation at this time as well as a hostile response from whites in the South. Many blacks felt they could not relate to a lot of the leading characters in this movement such as Martin Luther King and were critical of the way that the fact that most of the changes were designed to gain black votes in the North.