The 1950's had some major protesting going on. The biggest ones were nuclear arms race, and the other was racial discrimination. The rights of minorities were taking the back burner for the nuclear arms. The civil rights movement started with things like the Plessy vs. Ferguson. This was a case which showed that separate but equal was ok only if the conditions were the same, which they weren't in most cases. Many African Americans came back from world war 2 and moved north and west. Many of them moved to the cities. This is where they started joining the middle class. .
Then comes the brown vs. the board of education case. This is the one which proved segregation to be wrong and that it violated equal rights. This is when schools started to desegregate and a whole commotion started from this. Then came the Faubus sending in the national guard to stop nine black people from enrolling in a white school. With a revolution going now there were protests such as the Montgomery bus boycott. .
Now at this time Martin Luther King started to become a leader in the movement. He was one of the men who stressed a peaceful protest. In 1957 was the Civil Rights Act, what this did was stop local officials from interfering with the voting rights of minorities. .
I think that during the 1950's many people only viewed the civil rights movement as political and didn't give it much thought. The fifties may have been known as peaceful but I think everything was also a little bit more sheltered and rose colored than people would have liked to admit. The 1950's proved to be fairly passive but did pave the way for the civil rights movement to really gain the respect it deserved. .