MR. TICKLER – UNITED STATES HISTORY: DISTANCE LEARNING Week #5: The Early Civil Rights Movement In place of in-class meetings for the week of April 27. 2020 – May 1, 2020, please complete the following activities this week in the order shown below. You can complete assignments at your own pace for the week, but all should be complete and submitted by May 1. Please communicate any issues with completion to Mr. Tickler and understand that flexibility remains important for all of us. All documents and materials are linked or included in this document and are posted both in Google Classroom and on www.mrtickler.weebly.com . Please keep your own notes in order in your binders as best you can and submit all digital assignments via google class. WEEK LONG FOCUS QUESTION (to be continued in next week’s assignments): COMPARE and CONTRAST the methods used by activists in the 1950s and 1960s to fight for the ideals of equality, rights, liberty, and opportunity in America. How effective were the various strategies used during the Civil Right Movement? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Weekly Check-In Starter Discussion Post: o America was founded on the ideals and principles of Equality, Rights, Liberty, and Opportunity, based on a system of Democracy that places the power of the government in the hands of the people (“ERLOD”). o ASSIGNMENT : Write a quick 3-5 sentence response to the question posed on Google classroom explaining your answer to the questions. Has the United States lived up to the founding ideals of the nation, assess the United States of today in 2020. In which of the founding ideals has the country found the most success in promoting and protecting? Which of the founding ideals does the nation have the most work to do in order to improve upon the goals of the founders? 2. The Civil Rights Movement: Part I – Video Lecture o Watch the posted lecture from Mr. Tickler and follow along with the Google Slides to get a better understanding of the causes and events of the Civil Rights Movement. (Part II of this lecture will be included in the Week #6 Assignments)
Transcript
MR. TICKLER – UNITED STATES HISTORY: DISTANCE LEARNINGWeek #5: The Early Civil Rights Movement
In place of in-class meetings for the week of April 27. 2020 – May 1, 2020, please complete the following activities this week in the order shown below. You can complete assignments at your own pace for the week, but all should be complete and submitted by May 1. Please communicate any issues with completion to Mr. Tickler and understand that flexibility remains important for all of us.
All documents and materials are linked or included in this document and are posted both in Google Classroom and on www.mrtickler.weebly.com. Please keep your own notes in order in your binders as best you can and submit all digital assignments via google class.
WEEK LONG FOCUS QUESTION (to be continued in next week’s assignments): COMPARE and CONTRAST the methods used by activists in the 1950s and 1960s to
fight for the ideals of equality, rights, liberty, and opportunity in America.
How effective were the various strategies used during the Civil Right Movement?
1. Weekly Check-In Starter Discussion Post:o America was founded on the ideals and principles of Equality, Rights, Liberty, and
Opportunity, based on a system of Democracy that places the power of the government in the hands of the people (“ERLOD”).
o ASSIGNMENT: Write a quick 3-5 sentence response to the question posed on Google classroom explaining your answer to the questions.
Has the United States lived up to the founding ideals of the nation, assess the United States of today in 2020. In which of the founding ideals has the country found the most success in promoting and protecting? Which of the founding ideals does the nation have the most work to do in order to improve upon the goals of the founders?
2. The Civil Rights Movement: Part I – Video Lectureo Watch the posted lecture from Mr. Tickler and follow along with the Google Slides to get a
better understanding of the causes and events of the Civil Rights Movement. (Part II of this lecture will be included in the Week #6 Assignments)
o Assignment: Write your argument in a two to three sentence claim. Post your claim to Google Classroom and reply to at least ONE classmate’s post to support, modify, or refute their argument.
Why do you the think Civil Rights Movement developed, as it did and when it did, in the mid-twentieth century?
What caused the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s in America?
3. Introduction to The Civil Rights Movement –Articleo Read the article describing the Civil Rights Movement and explaining the different
strategies used. Be sure to note the set of “What do you think?” questions at the end of each article.
o Assignment: Write your argument in a two to three sentence claim. Post your claim to Google Classroom and reply to at least ONE classmate’s post to support, modify, or refute their argument
Which of the strategies employed by civil rights activists was the most effective and why? The strategies to think about are
1) Legal strategies the challenged the laws and Constitution of the U.S. 2) Non-Violent Civil Disobedience strategies which were used to expose ad
challenge the issue and power of discrimination and racism 3) Organizational strategies that built support, spread knowledge of the
movement, and encouraged greater activism, and 4) Direct Aggressive Activism that fought back against a system of violence
and discrimination with greater force.
4. SIGNIFICANT EVENTS of the EARLY CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENTo Select and read about one of the following events of the Early Civil Rights Movement, pick
one that you are most interested in learning about. Be sure to note the set of “What do you think?” questions at the end of your selected article.
Brown c. Board of Education of Topeka (Legal) Emmett Till (Non-Violent Civil Disobedience) The Montgomery Bus Boycott (Non-Violent Civil Disobedience) Massive Resistance and the Little Rock Nine (Non-Violent Civil Disobedience) SNCC and CORE (Organizational)
o ASSIGNMENT: Write your summary of the significant event in a minimum five sentence response. Post your response to Google Classroom.
How did your selected historical event influence the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement? Explain how and why your event affected the Civil Rights Movement. Be sure to discuss how your event represents one of the strategies used by Civil Rights activists.
Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement Learn about the origins, strategies, and unfinished business of the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.
Overview
The Civil Rights Movement is an umbrella term for the many varieties of activism that sought to secure full political, social, and economic rights for African Americans in the period from 1946 to 1968.
Civil rights activism involved a diversity of approaches, from bringing lawsuits in court, to lobbying the federal government, to mass direct action, to black power.
The efforts of civil rights activists resulted in many substantial victories, but also met with the fierce opposition of white supremacists.
The Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement did not suddenly appear out of nowhere in the twentieth century. Efforts to improve the quality of life for African Americans are as old as the United States. By the time of the American Revolution in the late eighteenth century, abolitionists were already working to eliminate racial injustice and bring an end to the institution of slavery. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which was codified into law as the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment officially outlawed slavery and went into effect in 1865.
After the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction, the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments established a legal foundation for the political equality of African Americans. Despite the abolition of slavery and legal gains for African Americans, racial segregation known as Jim Crow arose in the South. Jim Crow segregation meant that Southern blacks would continue to live in conditions of poverty and inequality, with white supremacists denying them their hard-won political rights and freedoms.
The twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement emerged as a response to the unfulfilled promises of emancipation, partly as a result of the experiences of black soldiers in the Second World War. African Americans fought in a segregated military while being exposed to US propaganda emphasizing liberty, justice, and equality. After fighting in the name of democracy in other countries around the world, many African American veterans returned to the United States determined to achieve the rights and prerogatives of full citizenship.
The Civil Rights Movement involved many different strategies and approaches, including legal action, nonviolent civil disobedience, and black militancy.
Figure 1: "Colored" waiting room at the Durham, North Carolina bus station, May 1940. Photograph by Jack Delano. Image courtesy Library of Congress.
One of the earliest approaches was centered in the courts. Spearheaded by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), this strategy initiated lawsuits to undermine the legal foundation of Jim Crow segregation in the South. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling held that separate facilities were inherently unequal and thereby declared segregation in public education to be unconstitutional.
While the Supreme Court decision was a major victory for civil rights, white supremacists in the South pledged "massive resistance" to desegregation. In response to Brown v. Board, a group of Southern congressmen issued the “Southern manifesto,” denouncing the court’s decision and pledging to resist its enforcement. Ultimately, federal intervention was required to implement the ruling.
Nonviolent Protest and Civil Disobedience.
With authorities in the South actively resisting court orders to desegregate, some leaders of the Civil Rights Movement turned to direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience. Civil rights activists launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, after Rosa Parks refused to vacate her seat on the bus for a white person. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as a leader of the boycott, which was the first mass direct action of the contemporary Civil Rights Movement and provided a template for the efforts of activists across the country.
Religious groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), student organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO), all took part in massive protests to raise awareness and to accelerate the momentum for passage of federal civil rights legislation. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the largest civil rights protest in US history, and contributed to the successful implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Mass direct action was highly effective, particularly due to widespread news media coverage of nonviolent protestors being harassed and physically beaten by law enforcement officers.
Figure 2: Protestors carrying signs at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963. Image courtesy the National Archives.
Although comprehensive civil rights legislation represented a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement, the obstinacy of the white power structure in the South convinced some black activists that nonviolent civil disobedience was insufficient. Some African Americans were also concerned about the presence of so many northern middle-class whites in the movement. The Freedom Summer of 1964, during which northern white college students joined black activists in a voter registration drive in the South, was seen by some as an attempt to impose white leadership onto the Civil Rights Movement.
As a response to the continued power of whites, both within and outside of the movement, a more militant variety of civil rights activism emerged. One of its most influential proponents was Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, who advocated black self-reliance, cultural pride, and self-defense in the face of racial violence. The approach that Malcolm X spearheaded came to be known as Black Power, and it gained many adherents after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 at the hands of James Earl Ray, an escaped convict and white supremacist. Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party were among the most vocal proponents of Black Power after the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965.
The Unfinished Business of the Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement racked up many notable victories, from the dismantling of Jim Crow segregation in the South, to the passage of federal legislation outlawing racial discrimination, to the widespread awareness of the African American cultural heritage and its unique contributions to the history of the United States. The 2008 election of the nation’s first African American president, Barack Obama, was a striking indication of just how far the struggle for equality has come. Yet other indicators reveal that there is still much work to do.
The goal of full social, economic, and political equality still has not been reached. African Americans continue to be incarcerated at a rate greatly disproportionate to their percentage of the population. Black men are the most frequent victims of police brutality, while poverty rates among black children and families are higher than among either whites or Latinos. Stereotypical portrayals of African Americans remain prevalent in popular culture. Many black Americans suffer from poor access to social services and from systemic inequalities in institutions like public education. As successful as the Civil Rights Movement was, there still remains unfinished business in the struggle for full equality.
1. Why did the twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement emerge?
2. Which of the strategies employed by civil rights activists do you think was most effective?
3. What do you think was the most significant achievement of the Civil Rights Movement? Did civil rights activists achieve all of the goals of the movement?
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Learn about the Supreme Court ruling that outlawed school segregation in the United States.
Overview
In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) a unanimous Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
The Court declared “separate” educational facilities “inherently unequal.”
The case electrified the nation, and remains a landmark in legal history and a milestone in civil rights history.
A Segregated Society
An 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, had declared “separate but equal” Jim Crow segregation legal. The Plessy ruling asserted that so long as purportedly “equal” accommodations were supplied for African Americans, the races could, legally, be separated. In consequence, “colored” and “whites only” signs proliferated across the South at facilities such as water fountains, restrooms, bus waiting areas, movie theaters, swimming pools, and public schools.
Despite the claim that black schools were equal to white schools, schools for black children frequently lacked even basic necessities. In South Carolina, black children attended schools without running water, flush toilets, or electricity. In one county, $149 was spent per year on each white student, but only $43 on each black student. In Delaware, black students attended a poorly-equipped one-room schoolhouse, while a well-equipped white school existed nearby. In Virginia, a black high school at the center of the case was overcrowded and was without a cafeteria or gym; the same was not true at the local white school.
In 1950s America segregation was largely, though not exclusively, a southern practice. Every state in the South mandated school segregation, and ten other states outside of the South either permitted or required segregation in public schools.
Map of school segregation laws in each state before the Brown v. Board decision. Map adapted from Wikimedia Commons.
Linda Brown, a third grader, was required by law to attend a school for black children in her hometown of Topeka, Kansas. To do so, Linda walked six blocks, crossing dangerous railroad tracks, and then boarded a bus that took her to Monroe Elementary. Yet, only seven blocks from her house was Sumner Elementary, a school attended by white children, and which, save for segregation, Linda would otherwise have attended. Her father, Oliver Brown, encouraged by NAACP chief counsel Thurgood Marshall, brought suit against the Topeka school district.
The case was named after a lawsuit filed in 1951 by NAACP lawyers against the Topeka, Kansas school district on behalf of Linda Brown and her family. By the time the Brown’s case made it to the US Supreme Court in 1954 it had been combined with four other similar school segregation cases into a single unified case.
Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP, and the Supreme Court
The NAACP’s chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, argued the unified case in Brown v. Board before the Supreme Court.
Marshall and a team of NAACP lawyers had been challenging segregation laws for several years prior to Brown. In 1950 Marshall had won a case before the Supreme Court, Sweatt v. Painter, in which the Court had ruled that a Texas law school purporting to offer black students an education equal to that which it offered whites was not—as measured by funding, faculty, or facilities—in fact equal. (The law school for black students consisted initially of only three basement classrooms and no library).
After their success in Sweatt, Marshall and the other NAACP lawyers wanted to find and develop test cases by which means they could strike at the heart of segregation itself. They wanted the fact that students were being separated into different schools solely because of race itself declared unconstitutional. And, in Brown v. Board, Marshall and his colleagues found five cases through which they could work to achieve their goal.
Linda Brown’s case was particularly useful to Thurgood Marshall’s efforts because Monroe Elementary was not underfunded in comparison to Sumner Elementary. The school Linda attended was separate, but it was not, measured by funding, unequal. The case allowed Marshall and the other NAACP lawyers to focus attention on the question of the constitutionality of segregation itself.
In making the case in Brown, Marshall drew upon the research of two psychologists, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, to argue that the very fact black and white children were sent to separate schools damaged the black children’s self-esteem, stigmatized them, and adversely shaped their self-image for the rest of their lives. Separate schools, Marshall argued, made plain to black children that they were deemed unworthy of being educated in the same classrooms as white children; school segregation reinforced notions of difference and inequality associated with race prejudice and racism.
Figure 3: Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP's chief counsel, argued the Brown v. Board case before
the Supreme Court. Marshall would go on to become the first African American Supreme
Court justice. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Separate is "Inherently Unequal"
In Brown v. Board, the Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and outlawed segregation. The Court agreed with Thurgood Marshall and his fellow NAACP lawyers that segregated schooling violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of law. Speaking for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” He added: “Any language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.” The decision challenged de jure segregation of the races, and electrified the nation.
Though the Court’s ruling applied only to public schools, its declaration that “separate” is “inherently unequal” served as a reminder that not only in schools, but in all aspects of life, the separation of black and white Americans signaled an “inherently unequal” status between them. As such segregation did not measure up to the nation’s founding ideal that “all men are created equal.”
Brown II: Desegregating with "All Deliberate Speed”
In the summer of 1955 the Supreme Court issued its implementation ruling in a decision called Brown II. In Brown II the Court ordered that schools undertake desegregation with “all deliberate speed.” But just what the Court meant by “deliberate speed” came quickly into dispute. White citizens in the South organized a "Massive Resistance" campaign against integration.
Although the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board was a major step forward in civil rights, it is important to note that the decision applied only to public schools. Brown v. Board did not address Jim Crow laws across the South that applied to restaurants, movie halls, public transportation, and more. Not until the 1960s--in laws such as The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965, and The Housing Rights Act of 1968—would these aspects of de jure segregation be put to an end.
Emmett Till Read about the brutal murder of a fourteen-year-old boy that became a rallying point for the Civil Rights Movement.
Overview
In 1955, two white men brutally murdered African American teenager Emmett Till for reportedly flirting with a white woman in the town of Money, Mississippi.
Till's mother Mamie held an open-casket funeral so that the world could see the violence that murderous racists had inflicted on her son's body. The funeral drew over 100,000 mourners.
Till's murderers stood trial one month later, in a case that received a great deal of media attention across the United States and the world. Both men were acquitted.
Till's death, and the acquittal of his murderers, laid bare the savagery of racism in the United States and served as an inspiration to a generation of civil rights activists.
The Murder of Emmett Till
In the summer of 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till went to visit his great-uncle and cousins in the small town of Money, Mississippi. Till was an African American teenager who had grown up in Chicago, a fun-loving prankster who "loved to make people laugh," according to one friend.
Till was unprepared for the rigidly-maintained racial order in the South, where blacks were expected to display constant deference to whites or else face violent reprisal. Three days after he arrived in Mississippi, Till entered Bryant's Grocery store to buy a pack of bubblegum. Carolyn Bryant, the white woman who was working behind the counter, alleged that Till had wolf-whistled at her, grabbed her around the waist and uttered obscenities. More than fifty years later, Bryant admitted that she fabricated this story and lied under oath about their encounter.
Bryant told her husband, Roy Bryant, that Till had made sexual advances toward her. Four days later he and his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnapped Till from his great-uncle's house in the middle of the night. They beat the fourteen year old boy mercilessly, gouged out one of his eyes, and then shot and killed him. They tied his body to a large industrial fan and dumped him in the nearby Tallahatchie River.
When Till's corpse was salvaged from the river three days later, he was recognizable only by the ring he wore, which had belonged to his father. His remains were sent to his mother with the coffin nailed shut.
Till's Funeral
It's likely that Till's murder, like those of so many other African Americans during the Jim Crow era, would have gone virtually unnoticed, if his mother Mamie Bradley had not made the brave decision to hold an open-casket funeral. Jet magazine published pictures of Bradley with her son's mutilated corpse, which excited outrage and horror from the broader public. Bradley said she felt she had to "let the world see what has happened, because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like."
Over 100,000 people attended Till's funeral in Chicago. Had the funeral been an official protest, it would have been the largest civil rights demonstration in American history until that point.
Figure 4: Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African American boy, was brutally murdered by two white men in
Mississippi in 1955. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
The Trial of Till's Murderers
Calls for justice throughout the country led to the indictment of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, whose trial for Till's kidnapping and murder began on September 22, 1955. Because women and African Americans were barred from serving on juries in Mississippi at that time, the defendants were tried before an all-male, all-white jury. At great personal risk, Till's great-uncle Mose Wright took the stand and identified Bryant and Milam as the men who kidnapped his nephew.
The case was the first major media event of the nascent Civil Rights Movement, bringing hundreds of reporters and all three television networks to the small Mississippi town. The courtroom was segregated, and many outside observers were surprised at the informal conduct of the sheriff, who casually used racial epithets and initially refused to admit black Congressman Charles Diggs to the courtroom.
In his closing statements, defense attorney advised the jury that if they convicted Bryant and Milam for Till's murder, "Your ancestors will turn over in their grave, and I'm sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men." The jury deliberated for just sixty-six minutes before acquitting both men. "We wouldn't have taken so long if we hadn't stopped to drink pop," said one of the jurors.
Till's Influence on the Civil Rights Movement
Although Bryant and Milam were never punished for their crime—they admitted to the killing in a 1956 interview—Till's death was a watershed moment for the Civil Rights Movement. To African Americans who had grown up in the Jim Crow South, the fact that Bryant and Milam had been tried for the murder at all was an incredible mark of progress. Amzie Moore, the president of the Bolivar County NAACP, marveled that: "A white man was openly tried for lynching a black boy, you know that hadn’t happened in our memory."
Till's murder awakened Americans to the true extent of racism in the nation. "People really didn't know that things this horrible could take place," according to Till's mother Mamie. "And the fact that it happened to a child, that made all the difference in the world." Many individuals who would go on to play leading roles in the Civil Rights Movement felt that Till's death was the last straw. Rosa Parks, who would initiate the Montgomery Bus Boycott just two months after the trial, said that on that day, "I thought about Emmett Till, and I couldn't go back [to the back of the bus]."
1. Why do you think Bryant and Milam murdered Till? What does their treatment of Till tell us about Mississippi society in this time period?
2. How do you think media affected the Till case? How would things have been different had there not been magazine, newspaper, and television coverage of the funeral and trial?
3. Why do you think Till's murder was such an important event in the Civil Rights Movement?
The Montgomery Bus Boycott Learn about Rosa Parks's courageous decision to fight discrimination
and the boycott that ended segregation on public buses.
Overview
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for refusing to give up her bus seat so that white passengers could sit in it.
Rosa Parks’s arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, during which the black citizens of Montgomery refused to ride the city’s buses in protest over the bus system’s policy of racial segregation. It was the first mass-action of the modern civil rights era, and served as an inspiration to other civil rights activists across the nation.
Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister who endorsed nonviolent civil disobedience, emerged as leader of the Boycott.
Following a November 1956 ruling by the Supreme Court that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional, the bus boycott ended successfully. It had lasted 381 days.
Rosa Parks’s Arrest
Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama for failing to give up her bus seat—so that it would be available for white passengers—when instructed to do so by the bus’s driver.Parks was arrested at a time in American history when, under Jim Crow laws, African Americans faced discrimination and segregation across the South. Jim Crow bus laws in Montgomery at the time of Parks’ arrest established a section for whites at the front of the bus, and a section for blacks in the back. The law required that when the white section filled, black passengers in the “colored section” give up their seats and move further back.
Parks, on her way home from her job as a seamstress in a downtown department store, was sitting in the first row of seats in the bus’s “colored" section. As the white section filled, the driver announced that black passengers in the “colored" section’s front row were to give up their seats. But Parks refused to do so. She was arrested and fined ten dollars.
Rosa Parks was forty-two years old, married, regularly attended church, and worked as a seamstress in a downtown department store. She had also been active in her local chapter of the NAACP for more than a decade. Four days before her arrest she had attended a large meeting at which the August 1955 murder of Emmett Till had been discussed by a member of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership. She later recounted that Emmett Till was on her mind the evening of her arrest.
Figure 5: Rosa Parks, the 42 year old secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama NAACP, provided the inspiration for the Montgomery Bus Boycott with her 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to accommodate white passengers. Image courtesy Wikimedia
E.D. Nixon, head of the Alabama NAACP, and Jo Ann Robinson, head of the local Women’s Political Council, had been looking for means by which to challenge the treatment of African Americans in Montgomery for some time. As a model citizen and woman of unimpeachable conduct, Parks was an ideal candidate for a public campaign. After Parks’s arrest, they decided to call for a boycott of the city’s buses.
Nixon held meetings with members from the community in area churches. Robinson and members of her Council worked tirelessly to produce some fifty-thousand leaflets which were distributed that Sunday at the city’s black churches. The leaflets read, “Don’t ride the bus to work, town, to school, or any place Monday, December 5. . . . Come to a mass meeting, Monday at 7:00 P.M. at the Holt Street Baptist Church for further instruction.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., a little-known, twenty-six year old Baptist minister with a doctorate from Boston University, led the boycott. During the boycott he began his rise to national and international prominence in the US Civil Rights Movement. Drawing on his study of nonviolent civil disobedience in the teachings of Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi, King delivered a message of nonviolent protest against racial injustice in eloquent, powerful sermons and speeches. On the boycott’s first day, speaking before a crowd of more than 5,000 black citizens, he said:
"There comes a time when people get tired.... tired of being segregated and humiliated.... If you will protest courageously and yet with dignity and Christian love...historians will have to pause and say ‘there lived a great people—a black people—who injected a new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.’ This is our challenge and our overwhelming responsibility.”
The Boycott Succeeds
African American men, women, and children stopped taking the bus, and instead carpooled or walked to their destinations. Most bus riders had been African American, and with the precipitous decline in ridership, bus company revenues collapsed. The boycott became major news as the nation’s television networks, newspapers, and major news magazines covered it.
The leaders of the boycott brought suit, demanding the end of segregation on public buses in Montgomery. The suit took months to make its way through the judicial system, but by mid-November 1956 the US Supreme Court—basing its decision on the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law—ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The boycott was a success.Many of the elements in the Montgomery Bus Boycott—organization, community solidarity, nonviolence, and the intervention of the federal government—proved to be the groundwork on which the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s would be based.
1. Why did the boycott succeed? Were the actions of both the citizens of Montgomery as well as those of the US Supreme Court necessary for its success?
2. How do you think people around the world who looked to the United States as a beacon of freedom might have felt and thought when they read about the boycott and the laws and practices that led to it?
3. What do you think led Rosa Parks to decide to take a stand against discrimination and segregation?
"Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine Read about resistance to desegregation and the nine African American students who dared to integrate
Little Rock's Central High School.
Overview
A campaign of "Massive Resistance" by whites emerged in the South to oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling that public schools be desegregated in Brown v. Board (1954).
Southern congressmen issued a “Southern Manifesto” denouncing the Court’s ruling. Governors and state legislatures employed a variety of tactics to slow or stop school desegregation; white Citizens’ Councils emerged to lead local resistance.
In September 1957, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the Court’s desegregation order.
Massive Resistance
After the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown cases, it ordered that schools be desegregated with “all deliberate speed.” But many white Americans, especially in the South, responded angrily to the Court’s rulings. They did not want public schools to be desegregated. Soon, "Massive Resistance, a campaign to block desegregation at the local, state, and national level, was underway
To this end, a group of 101 southern congressmen issued a “Southern Manifesto” accusing the Supreme Court of a “clear abuse of judicial power,” and vowing to use “all lawful means to bring about a reversal” of the Court’s decision in Brown. White Citizens' Councils opposed to desegregation organized in towns across the South. Composed of white businessmen, civic leaders, and ordinary citizens, the Citizens’ Councils led local and statewide efforts against public school desegregation.
In late summer 1956, crowds of angry whites prevented the desegregation of public schools in Texas, Tennessee, and elsewhere. And, since the Supreme Court’s ruling applied to public but not to private schools, some counties simply closed public schools altogether.
Massive Resistance spread beyond opposition to school desegregation to encompass a broad agenda in defense of the race prejudiced traditions in the South. Some southern states outlawed the NAACP. In 1956, Georgia incorporated the Confederate battle flag into its state flag, and within a few years South Carolina and Alabama began flying the Confederate battle flag over their state capitol buildings. Even
Figure 6: Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus speaking before a school integration protest in Little Rock. Note the young white woman waving a
President Eisenhower did not personally support the Court’s ruling in Brown, saying privately, “I don’t believe you can change the hearts of men with laws.”
The "Little Rock Nine"
On 3 September, the first day of school, a small group of African American high school students, accompanied by an escort of ministers, were turned away from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas by a large crowd of white citizens and armed troops from the Arkansas National Guard.
Among the African American students soon to be known as the Little Rock Nine was Elizabeth Eckford. She recounted her efforts that morning: “I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in.... When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet and then the other guards closed in and they raised their bayonets. They glared at me with a mean look and I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me . . . . I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd—someone who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.
Television and newspaper reports showing of the event drew national and international attention to the issue of school desegregation.
Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division escort the Little Rock Nine students into Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Eisenhower Enforces Desegregation
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus removed the National Guard from the school only after a federal district court ordered him to do so on September 20. On September 24, President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered more than a thousand federal troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock. It was the first time that federal troops had been deployed in a southern state since the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
President Eisenhower addressed the nation on television from the White House on the evening of September 24. In his address he called attention to the necessity of law and order, and to his obligation as president to “support and insure the carrying out of the decisions of the federal courts.” He also reminded Americans that segregation was a blight on the international image of the United States in the midst of the Cold War. Due to segregation, Eisenhower said, “We are portrayed as a violator of those standards of conduct which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations. There they affirmed ‘faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and worth of the human person’ and they did so ‘without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.’”
Protected by the armed federal troops who accompanied them to school, September 25 was the first full day of school for the African American students at Central High. That day, as the New York Times reported, some classrooms were half-empty, and “from time to time groups of [white] students threw down their books and walked out of school. Some of them chanted . . . ‘two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate.’”
Troops remained in Little Rock for the 1957-1958 school year. After the troops were withdrawn, however, Governor Faubus closed Little Rock’s public schools for the 1958-1959 school year. “Massive Resistance” persisted: by 1964 fewer than two percent of black students in the South attended school with white students.
1. How do you think the “Southern Manifesto,” and Governor Faubus’s deployment of the Arkansas National Guard looked in the eyes of people outside the United States who looked to the country as a land dedicated to freedom?
2. When the US Supreme Court interprets the US Constitution is it sometimes, in effect, making new laws? Is such “activism” on the part of the Supreme Court part of its job?
3. Would Central High School have been successfully desegregated if the federal government had not aided local African American citizens?
SNCC and CORE Read about the two civil rights groups that organized nonviolent protests during the 1950s and 1960s.
Overview
The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) was formed in 1942 as an interracial organization committed to achieving integration through nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), formed in 1960, focused on mobilizing local communities in nonviolent protests to expose injustice and demand federal action.
CORE and SNCC—together with other organizations such as the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference—led the Civil Right Movement’s campaigns of the early 1960s, which included sit-ins, Freedom Rides, voter registration drives, and the 1963 March on Washington.
By the late 1960s both CORE and SNCC became disillusioned with the slow rate of progress associated with nonviolence and turned toward the growing Black Power movement.
CORE
CORE was founded by a group of white and black students on the campus of the University of Chicago in 1942. Its founders had been active in the interfaith, pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, and drew inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s practice of nonviolent civil disobedience. CORE sent some of its members to help in the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and supported student sit-ins at lunch counters across the South.
In 1961, CORE's national director James Farmer organized an effort to integrate interstate bus stations and buses in the Deep South with a series of Freedom Rides. Freedom Riders were groups of white and black civil rights activists who rode buses to challenge segregation in interstate transportation in southern states.
The first Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C. on two buses that traveled into southern states. Freedom Riders were met with brutal violence by whites opposed to racial integration. An unidentified white person threw a fire bomb through an open bus window outside Anniston, Alabama, and Freedom Riders were beaten by a white mob after exiting the burning bus. One rider suffered permanent brain damage from a beating. In Birmingham, Alabama another rider required more than fifty stitches after being struck by a metal pipe.
The first two Freedom Ride buses were terminated after ten days. But during the summer of 1961, the Freedom Rides were carried on by more than a thousand Americans. John Lewis, who would soon become a celebrated civil rights leader, wrote at the time that he would “give up all if necessary for the Freedom Ride, that Justice and Freedom might come to the Deep South.” The Freedom Rides were widely covered in the press, and remain one of the most memorable events in Civil Rights Movement history.
CORE activists also contributed to the voter registration drives in the Deep South that became the focus of the civil rights movement in late 1961, and contributed to the voter education and registration drives during 1963 and 1964 in Mississippi and elsewhere. CORE cosponsored the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the gathering of some 250,000 Americans at which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.
By 1966 CORE increasingly embraced black separatism and black power, and lent its support to the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Figure 7: James Farmer, co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality and president during the Freedom Rides of 1961. Image
SNCC—pronounced “snick”—grew out of student sit-ins at lunch counters that had begun in February 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina.
In April, Ella Baker, the executive secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and students from the sit-ins met on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina and founded SNCC. SNCC, as its name suggests, endeavored to coordinate efforts among students—both black and white—in direct action, nonviolent efforts in the movement for civil rights. SNCC conducted lunch-counter sit-ins, contributed participants to the 1961 Freedom Rides, cosponsored the 1963 March on Washington, and contributed to voter education and registration drives across the South. During the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer three young SNCC activists were murdered in their efforts to register black voters.
In 1966 Stokely Carmichael was elected to head SNCC. Carmichael embraced the Black Power Movement, which included black separatism and the use of violence in self-defense. In June 1966, Carmichael declared at a rally that “1966 is the year of the concept of Black Power. The year when black men realized their full worth in society—their dignity and their beauty—and their power—the greatest power on the earth—the power of the right.”
With its commitment to nonviolence dropped, Carmichael renamed the organization the Student National Coordinating Committee. In 1967, H. Rap Brown took over as SNCC chairman and moved the organization further toward black separatism.
By the late 1960s, the broader Civil Rights Movement fragmented in the wake of the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and rioting in major American cities. By the early 1970s, SNCC had dissolved.
1. College-age students were principal founders of both CORE and SNCC. In what ways did student voices advance the movement for civil rights? In what ways might college-aged students’ perspectives have been limited?
2. What were the successes and challenges of the direct action, nonviolent protest strategy that both CORE and SNCC employed in the early 1960s?
3. Why did both CORE and SNCC increasingly turn away from nonviolence by the late 1960s? Do you think this turn was a good idea? Why or why not?
Figure 8: Ella Baker, civil rights activist and grassroots organizer who helped to found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Image courtesy
