The Civil Rights Movement in the United States

Objective: To understand the African-American struggle for civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s.

The year is 1960, and segregation divides the nation’s people. African Americans

are denied access to jobs and housing and are refused service at restaurants and

stores. But the voices of the oppressed rise up in the churches and in the streets, demanding civil rights for all Americans.

What rights are worth fighting for?

Segregation in America

• 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson ruled that the “separate but equal” law did not violate the 14th amendment, which guarantees all American equal treatment under the law.

• This case stirred the South to pass Jim Crow laws aimed at separating the races.

• Segregation continued throughout the 20th century both in the South and North.

Why a civil rights movement in the 1950s?

WWII set the stage for the movement.

• New job opportunities for African Americans, Latinos, and white women.

• Nearly 1 million African Americans served in the armed forces.

• Civil rights organizations actively campaigned for African-American rights.

Challenging Segregation in the Courts

• The desegregation campaign was led by the NAACP which had fought to end segregation since 1909.

• The nation was spending 10 times as much educating a white child as an African-American child.

• Thurgood Marshal won 29 out of the 32 cases brought before the Supreme Court.

Brown vs. Board of Education

• Marshall's most stunning victory.• May 17, 1954 the Supreme Ct.

unanimously struck down segregation in schooling as a violation of the 14th amendments equal protection clause.

• Within a year 500 schools desegregated. In many areas where African-Americans were the majority, whites resisted desegregation.

Little Rock, Arkansas• Gov. Faubus ordered the National Guard to stop the

“Little Rock Nine” from integrating Little Rock’s Central High School.

• A federal judge ordered Faubus to let the students enter the school.

• NAACP members drove 8 of the 9 students to school. Elizabeth Eckford set out alone and faced an abusive crowd.

• President Eisenhower sent in a thousand paratroopers to ensure the “safety” of the 9 students.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Dec. 1, 1955 Rosa Parks sat in the white section of the bus and refused to give up her seat. She protested the refusal of Alabama to desegregate bus sections.

• Parks was arrested for her refusal to give up her seat.

• News spread rapidly and a bus boycott was started. 26-year old MLK, Jr. led this boycott.

• Boycott lasted 381 days….In 1956 the Supreme Ct. outlawed bus segregation.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

1. What caused the Montgomery Bus Boycott?

2. What inspired MLK, Jr. to lead this movement?

3. What was done in Montgomery to try to intimidate and stop African Americans from continuing the boycott?

4. What factors made the boycott successful?

5. What did the end of this movement MBB symbolize?

Demonstrating for Freedom• Sit-ins: African-American protestors sat

down at segregated lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served.

• The “ugly face of racism” showed in American homes when these sit-ins were televised.

• By 1960, lunch counters had been desegregated in 48 cities in 11 states.

Riding for Freedom• 1961 The Congress of Racial Equality

members set out on a bus tour through the South to test the Supreme Ct. decisions banning segregating seating.

• Freedom Riders were attacked by angry white mobs that fire bombed the bus.

• Freedom Riders were threatened with police brutality..stalling their ride.

• Robert Kennedy sent U.S. marshals to protect the riders.

“We will continue our journey one way or another ….. We are

prepared to die.”

Jim Zwerg, Freedom Rider

“I say segregation now!

Segregation tomorrow!

Segregation forever!”

George Wallace, Alabama Governor, 1963

“Are we to say the world—and much more importantly, to each other—

that this is the land of the free, except for Negroes?”

John F. Kennedy, June 11, 1961

Marching to Washington

• August 28, 1963 more than 250,000 people (75,000 whites) stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial listening to Dr. MLK, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

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FREEDOM SUMMER PROJECT

During the summer of 1964, thousands of civil rights activists, many of them white college students from the North, descended on Mississippi

and other Southern states to try to end the long-time political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the region. Although black

men had won the right to vote in 1870, thanks to the Fifteenth Amendment, for the next 100 years many were unable to exercise that

right. White local and state officials systematically kept blacks from voting through formal methods, such as poll taxes and literacy tests,

and through cruder methods of fear and intimidation, which included beatings and lynchings. The inability to vote was only one of many

problems blacks encountered in the racist society around them, but the civil-rights officials who decided to zero in on voter registration

understood its crucial significance as well the white supremacists did. An African American voting bloc would be able to effect social and political

change.

Fighting for Voting Rights

• 1964, the CORE and SNCC workers began registering African-Americans in the South to vote.

• Freedom Summer project—thousands of student volunteers went in to Mississippi to help register voters.

• Three of these volunteers were murdered for their efforts.

This is the FBI missing persons poster of the three Summer Project volunteers. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi in 1964. 19 men from Neshoba County including a sheriff, deputy and preacher were arrested and charged with conspiracy in connection with the murders.

The 15th Amendment barred states from depriving citizens for the right to vote “on

account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” It also gave

congress the “power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Yet, from the end of Reconstruction, Southern states set up both practical and legal barriers to keep

African Americans from voting.

Voting Rights Passed

• 1964 24th Amendment—barring poll taxes.

• Voting Rights Act of 1968—eliminated the so-called literacy tests that had disqualified many voters.

• The overall % of registered African-American voters in the South tripled.

Segregation in the North

• De facto segregation: segregation that exists by practice and custom.

• De jure segregation: segregation by law

• De facto segregation is much harder to fight than de jure.

Malcolm X vs. MLK, Jr

• Voiced different concerns for the Civil Rights Movement in regards to self-defense and “loving the white man”.

• The press publicized Malcolm X’s controversial statements---became dramatic news stories.

“This is the 27th time I have been arrested—and I ain’t going to jail

no more!…..We been saying freedom for 6 years—an we ain’t got nothin’. What we’re gonna

start saying now is

BLACK POWER.”

Stockley Carmichael, SNCC

Death and Chaos• February 21, 1965 39-year-old

Malcolm X was shot and killed.

• April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed.

• June 1968 Robert Kennedy was shot and killed.

Abolitionists had campaigned since the late 1780s on the motto “Am I not a man and a brother?” This placard carried by striking garbage men in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. marched with the strikers that day, then was assassinated that evening. (Memphis, Tennessee, April 1968)

Kerner Commission

• 1968—studied the causes of urban violence was linked to white racism.

• “This is our basic conclusion: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separated and unequal.”

Civil Rights Gains

• Civil Rights Act of 1957—gave federal power to enforce civil laws.

• Civil Rights Act of 1964—banned discrimination in public and strengthen federal power.

• Voting Rights act of 1968.• Civil Rights Act of 1968—banned

discrimination in housing.

Changes in Poverty and Education

African Americans

• Poverty Status

– 1959 56%

– 1999 23%

• College Education

– 1959 3%

– 1999 15%

Whites

• Poverty Status

– 1959 16%

– 1999 8%

• College Education

– 1959 9%

– 1999 26%

Affirmative Action Programs• Involve making special efforts to hire or

enroll groups that have suffered discrimination.

• Some argued that this was “reverse discrimination”.

• Give examples of how Affirmative Action is used today. Does this program eliminate the problem of discrimination?

Affirmative Action

• Affirmative action was first established in Executive Order 10925, which was was signed by President John F. Kennedy on March 6, 1961 and required government contractors to "not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin" as well as to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin". This executive order was superseded by Executive Order 11246, which was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 24, 1965 and affirmed the Federal Government's commitment "to promote the full realization of equal employment opportunity through a positive, continuing program in each executive department and agency". It is notable that affirmative action was not extended to women until Executive Order 11375 amended Executive Order 11246 on October 13, 1967, expanding the definition to include "sex." As it currently stands, affirmative action through Executive Order 11426 applies to "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."