The Early StrugglesIntroduction

Montgomery Bus BoycottSit-Ins

The “Acts” of the MovementFreedom Rides

March on WashingtonHistorical Figures

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Plessy v. Ferguson Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy was only one-eighths black and seven-eighths white, but under Louisiana law, he was considered

black and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car

• Not until 1954, in the equally important Brown v. Board of Education decision, would the "separate but equal" doctrine be struck down.

• Sweatt v. Painter: Herman Sweatt was a black who wanted to attend the University of Texas Law School. The law school denied him

admission solely because of his race

• The murder of 14 year old Emmett Till in 1955 after speaking to a white woman in an “inappropriate” manner

• After decades of silently enduring second-class citizenship, blacks in the late 1940s and early 1950s began to challenge the injustices they

faced on a daily basis

THE EARLY STRUGGLES

• After decades of silently enduring second-class

citizenship, blacks in the late 1940s and early 1950s began to

challenge the injustices they faced on a daily basis

• The Civil Rights Movement was at a peak from 1955-1965

• The Civil Rights movement resulted in Congress passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the

Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing basic civil rights for all Americans, regardless of race, after nearly a decade of

nonviolent protests and marches

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

• December 1, 1955 was the day when the blacks of Montgomery, Alabama, decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted, instead

of being relegated to the back when a white boarded• Technically the movement started in 1955 when Rosa Parks

refused to give her seat on the bus after all the seats were taken

• Dr Martin Luther King was made president of the Montgomery Improvement Association and intended for the boycott to last

a day but voted to continue• Blacks in Montgomery refused to ride the city buses, walking

to work and developing a taxi system amongst the black community

MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT

• Businesses were losing money because of the boycott so whites tried everything they could to end it

• King's home was bombed on January 30, and Nixon's home was bombed on February 1

• On February 21, 89 blacks were indicted under an old law prohibiting boycotts. King was the first defendant to be

tried. As press from around the nation looked on, King was ordered to pay $500 plus $500 in court costs or spend 386

days in the state penitentiary. • November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the

federal court's ruling, declaring segregation on buses unconstitutional. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was officially

over.

MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT (CONT)

• The overall purpose of sit ins were for students to be served at lunch counters despite their skin color, and to do so

without violence and with respect• On February 27 in Nashville, students were attacked by a

group of white teenagers. Police arrived, but they let the white teens go while arresting the protesters for "disorderly

conduct• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was formed

and they led a sit in of over 70,000 participants in 1961• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 declared segregation at lunch

counters unlawful • The technique of the sit-ins was used to integrate other

public facilities, such as movie theaters

SIT INS

SIT INS (CON’T)

•The Civil Rights Act of 1964 - was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of

discrimination against blacks and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter

registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general

public

•The Voting Rights Act of 1965 - outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the

widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S.

THE “ACTS” OF THE MOVEMENT

•A new journey reconciliation called the Freedom Rides and the strategy was to have an interracial group would board buses

destined for the South. The whites would sit in the back and the blacks in the front. At rest stops, the whites would go into blacks-

only areas and vice versa•They left Washington DC on May 4, 1961 with intentions to arrive in New Orleans on May 17, the seventh anniversary of the Brown decision. They met little resistance in the upper South but on May

14, after the group split, one group was met by an angry mob. They were stoned, tires were slashed, and the bus was firebombed

•The second group was attacked beaten. The Public Safety Commissioner claimed bus depots were closed for the holiday yet

they knew and stayed away•The boycott ended after the bus company didn’t want to risk its

bus drivers safety any longer

FREEDOM RIDES

•Civil Rights groups united to organize a March on Washington after Kennedy proposed the civil rights bill. Organizers drew over 250,000 people from around the nation, arrived in DC on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial. There, they heard speeches and songs from

numerous activists, artists, and civil rights leaders. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered the closing address, his famous "I

Have a Dream" speech.

•Even though the civil rights bill wasn’t passed for another year, the day was an overwhelming success. There was no violence and the event received extensive media coverage.

MARCH ON WASHINGTON

•Martin Luther King – preacher, activist, and prominent leader in the African American Civil Rights movement. He is best known for

being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the

teachings of Gandhi.

•Rosa Parks - was an African American civil rights activist, whom Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement. Secretary of the Montgomery NAACP, she was

known for sparking the Montgomery Boycott

•Thurgood Marshall - the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was

best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown vs. Board of Education.

He was nominated to the court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.

HISTORICAL FIGURES