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The Civil Rights Movement:Part 1

Background and the Movement up to 1965

What we’ve already learned…

#113th Amendment: Outlawed slavery14th Amendment: Equality under the law for all citizens15th Amendment: Right to vote

#2 Black CodesLaws (esp. the deep South) meant to limit rights of freedmen and to keep them as landless workersLtd. # of occupations (servants & laborers)Could not own landCould go to jail if no job

#3 Jim Crow lawsPurpose: segregation

housingRestaurants &

other public placestransportation

#4 Denying Voting RightsVocab: “Disenfranchisement”

Property ownership

Poll taxes

Literacy tests

“Grandfather clause”

New content: Plessy v. Ferguson

1896: U.S. Supreme Court upheld constitutionality of Jim Crow lawsEst’d. doctrine of “separate but

equal”

Voices for equality:

Booker T. Washington: learn a trade

W.E.B. Du Bois: full & immediate equality

Marcus Garvey: never will be equal… “Back to Africa” movement

Est’d. 1909

relied mainly on legal strategies that challenged segregation and discrimination in the courts.

The NAACP(Nat’l. Org. for the Advancement of Colored People)

Some Progress…

Truman integrates the Armed Forces

Jackie Robinson breaks color barrier in MLBB

School Desegregation1954: the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, stating racially segregated education was unconstitutional, overturning the Plessy decision.

Desegregate the schools! Vote Socialist Workers : Peter Camejo for president, Willie Mae Reid for vice-president.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.; LC-USZ62-101452

Southern whites react:

By 1955, white opposition in the South had grown into massive resistance

Tactics included:1. firing school employees who supported

integration

2. closing public schools rather than desegregating

3. boycotting all public education that was integrated.

School Desegregation

Few schools in the South integrated in the 1st years following the Brown decision. In Virginia, one county actually closed its public schools.

In 1957, Governor Orville Faubus called out the Ark. Nat’l Guard to stop 9 African American students from entering Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce desegregation.

Protesters against integration in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1959

Little Rock HS, 1957

KKK reborn…againAs desegregation continued, the membership of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) grew. The KKK used violence or threats against anyone who was suspected of favoring desegregation or African American civil rights.Klan terror was widespread in the South during the 1950s and 1960s

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Dec. 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress, was told to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man.When Parks refused to move, she was arrested.The local NAACP recognized her arrest might rally local African Americans to protest segregated buses.

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted, 1955

The Montgomery Bus BoycottThe boycott lasted for more than a year

In November 1956, a federal court ordered Montgomery’s buses desegregated and the boycott ended in victory.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Martin Luther King, Jr.Baptist ministerNow a national figure1957: Became president of the new Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC

The SCLC encouraged the use of nonviolent, direct action to protest segregation

Marches, demonstrations, and boycotts.

Quick Review:

• Since 1877, Jim Crow laws in the South• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)… “separate but

equal NOT unconstitutional”• Brown v. Bd. of Ed (1954)…reverses Plessy

decision• Central HS: Little Rock, Arkansas …

federal gov’t sends troops to enforce desegregation

• Montgomery Bus boycott (1955)…Rosa Parks…MLK becomes nat’l. figure in civil rights movement

The Movement in the Early 1960s

1960: Greensboro, N.C. Sit-InRefused service at Woolworth’s lunch counter

Stayed at the counter ‘til closing time

Sparked a wave of similar non-violent protests

Led to creation of SNCC

Freedom Riders

Civil rights activists target interstate transportation…why?

1961: 2 buses traveling thru deep south I bus firebombed…other attacked by white mob in Birmingham, AL

Birmingham, AL

1963: Activists targeted the city as the “most segregated” city in the U.S.

ML King arrested: “Letter From Birmingham Jail”

Police Chief “Bull” Connor turned fire hoses and dogs loose on demonstrators

JFK now convinced fed. gov’t. had to take more active role promoting civil rights

The March on Washington DC1963: 200, 000 protested peacefully

MLK: “I Have a Dream” speech

1964: Civil Rights Act of 1964

Freedom Summer (1964)Recall: Jim Crow laws denying voting rights

SNCC made concentrated effort to register black voters in MISS…1,000 college kids (B & W)

3 volunteers murdered by Klan

1965: Congress passed Voting Rights Act

Significance? Black participation in politics skyrocketed

Significance? Black participation in politics skyrocketed