Name __________________________
Date: ________________
Section: 11.1
11.2
(circle one)
U. S. History II
Civil Rights Unit Coursepack
This coursepack contains nearly all of the readings that we will use in our unit on the civil
rights movement. You will need it every day, in class and for homework; you will earn a
demerit for every day that you come to class without this coursepack. Extras can be
found on my course website.
Contents
Instructions and Strategies
How to Read This Coursepack ........................................................................................................................... 2
How to Annotate Readings .................................................................................................................................. 3
How to Take Notes on Readings........................................................................................................................ 4
Secondary Sources
Jim Crow ..................................................................................................................................................................... 5
The Great Migration ............................................................................................................................................... 7
African Americans and the New Deal .............................................................................................................. 8
African Americans in World War II .................................................................................................................. 9
Brown v. Board ..................................................................................................................................................... 10
Showdown in Little Rock .................................................................................................................................. 12
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.......................................................................................... 13
Claudette Colvin.................................................................................................................................................... 15
The Sit-In Movement .......................................................................................................................................... 17
Freedom Riders .................................................................................................................................................... 19
The March on Washington ............................................................................................................................... 20
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ............................................................................................................................. 22
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ........................................................................................................................ 24
Malcolm X, Black Nationalism, and Black Power ..................................................................................... 26
Modern Feminism ................................................................................................................................................ 29
Reproductive Rights............................................................................................................................................ 31
The Chicano Movement ..................................................................................................................................... 33
The Native American Power Movement ..................................................................................................... 36
Gay and Lesbian Liberation ............................................................................................................................. 38
Primary Sources
Brown v. Board ...................................................................................................................................................... 40
Rules for Riding Desegregated Buses........................................................................................................... 42
Handbill from Central Alabama Citizens Council Rally ......................................................................... 44
Martin Luther King, Jr., “Non-Violence and Racial Justice” .................................................................. 45
Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet” ........................................................................................................... 48
How to Read This Coursepack
As you read for homework each night, I expect you to do four things:
1. Annotate the reading (directly in the coursepack) as you see fit. Some suggestions are
included in this coursepack. You should have at least four annotations per page, not
including highlighting/underlining.
2. Take notes on the reading (on a sheet of looseleaf paper, or in your notebook). Some
suggestions are included in this coursepack. At minimum, you should have one full
page of notes per reading. (This means that if your homework for the night includes
two readings, you should turn in two separate pages of notes.)
3. Identify the key terms that are listed at the bottom of the reading. As a reminder,
each identification must include:
 Date
 Definition – a phrase or complete sentence in your own words
 Significance – 1-2 sentences explaining why this key term is important, in
your own words
You can do this in your notebook, in the key terms section of your binder, or on the
back side of your notes.
4. Answer the guiding question at the bottom of the reading. Your response should
include at least 7 complete sentences and be in your own words.
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How to Annotate Readings1
I ask you to annotate readings for two purposes: to make sure that you’re engaging with the
text as you read it, and to make it easier for you to find key points when you revisit these
texts as you work on your essay for this unit. You are free to use whatever annotation
strategies you find most helpful. A few possibilities:

New vocabulary – put a box around unfamiliar words, look up the definition, and
write it in the margins.

Key terms – circle key terms, people, or events; you might want to jot down a
definition and/or other key details in the margins.

MAJOR TOPICS – at the start of a new paragraph or section, write the topic of that
section in all caps in a few words in the left-hand margin, so that you can easily find
that topic when you revisit the reading.

Reactions and connections – in the margins, make a note of your response to a piece
of the reading, or point out any connections you can make with other texts, other
historical events, or your own experience.

Questions – write any questions you have about the reading; this works better when
you ask “how” or “why” questions.

So Basically – write a brief paraphrase at the end of a section or an entire reading,
putting the main ideas into your own words.
Remember that you need to have at least four annotations per page of reading.
1
Borrowed liberally from Ms. Rieser. If you like these, thank her.
3
How to Take Notes on Readings
You’re welcome to devise your own strategy for taking notes on these readings, but I
suggest Cornell notes.2 To take Cornell notes:
Title and Date
1. At the top of the paper, write down the date
Key Words Notes
and the title of the reading.
2. Divide your paper into three parts – a
narrow column on the left, a wide column on
the right, and a box at the bottom, about 2”
tall.
3. As you read, in the right-hand column, write
down notes that will help you answer the
question or define the key term.
4. After you read, in the left-hand column,
write down key questions or words to
summarize major sections of your notes.
5. In the bottom section, write a short
Summary
summary of the entire reading, in your own
words.
Big Important Point
Later in the unit, you’ll be using these notes to help you write an essay. When you take
notes, be very careful to distinguish between the author’s words and your own words – this
will make it easier to use your notes without unintentionally commiting plagiarism.
Adapted from Walter Pauk and Ross Owens, How to Study in College (11th ed.), Boston:
Wadsworth, 2014.
2
4
Jim Crow
Source: Excerpts from David Pilgrim, “What Was Jim Crow?”, Jim Crow Museum of Racist
Memorabilia, 2012, http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm.
Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not
exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. Jim Crow was
more than a series of rigid anti-black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African
Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the
legitimization of anti-black racism. Many Christian ministers and theologians taught that
whites were the Chosen people, blacks were cursed to be servants, and God supported racial
segregation. Craniologists, eugenicists, phrenologists, and Social Darwinists, at every
educational level, buttressed the belief that blacks were innately intellectually and culturally
inferior to whites. Pro-segregation politicians gave eloquent speeches on the great danger of
integration: the mongrelization of the white race. Newspaper and magazine writers
routinely referred to blacks as niggers, coons, and darkies; and worse, their articles
reinforced anti-black stereotypes. Even children's games portrayed blacks as inferior
beings… All major societal institutions reflected and supported the oppression of blacks.
The Jim Crow system was undergirded by the following beliefs or rationalizations: whites
were superior to blacks in all important ways, including but not limited to intelligence,
morality, and civilized behavior; sexual relations between blacks and whites would produce
a mongrel race which would destroy America; treating blacks as equals would encourage
interracial sexual unions; any activity which suggested social equality encouraged
interracial sexual relations; if necessary, violence must be used to keep blacks at the bottom
of the racial hierarchy. The following Jim Crow etiquette norms show how inclusive and
pervasive these norms were:
a. A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it
implied being socially equal. Obviously, a black male could not offer his hand or any
other part of his body to a white woman, because he risked being accused of rape.
b. Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat together, whites
were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to be placed between them.
c. Under no circumstance was a black male to offer to light the cigarette of a white
female -- that gesture implied intimacy.
d. Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public,
especially kissing, because it offended whites.
e. Jim Crow etiquette prescribed that blacks were introduced to whites, never whites to
blacks. For example: "Mr. Peters (the white person), this is Charlie (the black
person), that I spoke to you about."
f. Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for example,
Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, blacks were called by their first names. Blacks
had to use courtesy titles when referring to whites, and were not allowed to call them
by their first names.
g. If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person sat in the
back seat, or the back of a truck.
h. White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections…
5
Jim Crow etiquette operated in conjunction with Jim Crow laws (black codes)…
Blacks were denied the right to vote by grandfather clauses (laws that restricted the right to
vote to people whose ancestors had voted before the Civil War), poll taxes (fees charged to
poor blacks), white primaries (only Democrats could vote, only whites could be Democrats),
and literacy tests ("Name all the Vice Presidents and Supreme Court Justices throughout
America's history"). Plessy sent this message to southern and border states: Discrimination
against blacks is acceptable.
Jim Crow states passed statutes severely regulating social interactions between the races.
Jim Crow signs were placed above water fountains, door entrances and exits, and in front of
public facilities. There were separate hospitals for blacks and whites, separate prisons,
separate public and private schools, separate churches, separate cemeteries, separate public
restrooms, and separate public accommodations. In most instances, the black facilities were
grossly inferior -- generally, older, less-well-kept. In other cases, there were no black
facilities -- no Colored public restroom, no public beach, no place to sit or eat…
The Jim Crow laws and system of etiquette were undergirded by violence, real and
threatened. Blacks who violated Jim Crow norms, for example, drinking from the white
water fountain or trying to vote, risked their homes, their jobs, even their lives. Whites could
physically beat blacks with impunity. Blacks had little legal recourse against these assaults
because the Jim Crow criminal justice system was all-white: police, prosecutors, judges,
juries, and prison officials. Violence was instrumental for Jim Crow. It was a method of social
control. The most extreme forms of Jim Crow violence were lynchings.
Lynchings were public, often sadistic, murders carried out by mobs. Between 1882, when
the first reliable data were collected, and 1968, when lynchings had become rare, there
were 4,730 known lynchings, including 3,440 black men and women. Most of the victims of
Lynch Law were hanged or shot, but some were burned at the stake, castrated, beaten with
clubs, or dismembered. In the mid-1800s, whites constituted the majority of victims (and
perpetrators); however, by the period of Radical Reconstruction, blacks became the most
frequent lynching victims. This is an early indication that lynching was used as an
intimidation tool to keep blacks, in this case the newly freed people, "in their places."… Most
blacks were lynched for demanding civil rights, violating Jim Crow etiquette or laws, or in
the aftermath of race riots.
Key Terms: Jim Crow
Guiding Question: How did white Americans use laws, customs, and violence to make
African Americans second-class citizens in the Jim Crow South?
6
The Great Migration
Source: Richard Wormser, “The Great Migration,” The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow, PBS, 2002,
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_migration.html.
Within the black community, there had been constant migration since the end of the
nineteenth century. Much of that migration had taken place within the South as blacks
migrated from place to place trying to make a decent living. In the twentieth century, blacks
started to move to the North as the train provided easy access to Chicago and other
Northern cities. When World War I began in Europe, and foreign workers could no longer
emigrate to America, factories needed a new labor source. Hundreds of thousands of blacks
migrated from the South to Chicago and other cities of the North. The Chicago Defender, the
most influential black newspaper, encouraged blacks to leave. The paper held a vision of the
North as the land of freedom, a dream that has been in the hearts of black men and women
since slavery time -- many referred to the North as "The Promised Land" Young Richard
Wright, who became an internationally acclaimed writer, remembered how the North kept
hope alive during the dark days of his childhood in the deep South. "The North symbolized
to me all that I had not felt or seen; it had no relation to what actually existed. Yet by
imagining a place where everything is possible, it kept hope alive inside of me."
Southern whites feared the migration would deprive them of black labor. Blacks saw the
exodus as a fulfillment of God's promise. A Birmingham minister offered the following
prayer to his congregation: "We feel and believe that this great Exodus is God's hand and
plan. In a mysterious way God is moving upon the hearts of our people to go where He has
prepared for them." Among those who migrated were the most creative people in the South.
Jazz musicians came from New Orleans to play in Chicago, Kansas City, and New York. Blues
players came from the Delta. The NAACP welcomed writers and poets like writer Zora Neale
Hurston, poet Langston Hughes, and sculptor Augusta Savage. They, along with poet
Countee Cullen and other black artists, created a cultural explosion known as the "Harlem
Renaissance." The migration slowed down during the Depression in the 1930s but picked up
speed when World War II began. Again jobs opened up in factories. At the same time,
mechanization came to the cotton fields, displacing many black farmers. Between the period
1910 and 1970, an estimated six million blacks migrated from the South.
Key Terms: Great Migration
Guiding Question: What were the causes and effects of the Great Migration?
7
African Americans and the New Deal
Source: Steven Mintz and Sara MacNeil, “African Americans and the New Deal,” Digital
History, 2013, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3447.
Until the New Deal, blacks had shown their traditional loyalty to the party of Abraham
Lincoln by voting overwhelmingly Republican. By the end of Roosevelt's first
administration, however, one of the most dramatic voter shifts in American history had
occurred. In 1936, some 75 percent of black voters supported the Democrats. Blacks turned
to Roosevelt, in part, because his spending programs gave them a measure of relief from the
Depression and, in part, because the GOP had done little to repay their earlier support.
Still, Roosevelt's record on civil rights was modest at best. Instead of using New Deal
programs to promote civil rights, the administration consistently bowed to discrimination.
In order to pass major New Deal legislation, Roosevelt needed the support of southern
Democrats. Time and time again, he backed away from equal rights to avoid antagonizing
southern whites; although, his wife, Eleanor, did take a public stand in support of civil rights.
Most New Deal programs discriminated against blacks. The NRA, for example, not only
offered whites the first crack at jobs, but authorized separate and lower pay scales for
blacks. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) refused to guarantee mortgages for blacks
who tried to buy in white neighborhoods, and the CCC maintained segregated camps.
Furthermore, the Social Security Act excluded those job categories blacks traditionally filled.
The story in agriculture was particularly grim. Since 40 percent of all black workers made
their living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration (AAA) acreage reduction hit blacks hard. White landlords could make more
money by leaving land untilled than by putting land back into production. As a result, the
AAA's policies forced more than 100,000 blacks off the land in 1933 and 1934. Even more
galling to black leaders, the president failed to support an anti-lynching bill and a bill to
abolish the poll tax. Roosevelt feared that conservative southern Democrats, who had
seniority in Congress and controlled many committee chairmanships, would block his bills if
he tried to fight them on the race question.
Yet, the New Deal did record a few gains in civil rights. Roosevelt named Mary McLeod
Bethune, a black educator, to the advisory committee of the National Youth Administration
(NYA). Thanks to her efforts, blacks received a fair share of NYA funds. The WPA was
colorblind, and blacks in northern cities benefited from its work relief programs. Harold
Ickes, a strong supporter of civil rights who had several blacks on his staff, poured federal
funds into black schools and hospitals in the South. Most blacks appointed to New Deal
posts, however, served in token positions as advisors on black affairs. At best, they achieved
a new visibility in government.
Key Terms: New Deal
Guiding Question: To what extent did the New Deal improve life for African Americans?
8
African Americans in World War II
Source: Steven Mintz and Sara MacNeil, “Social Changes During the War,” Digital History,
2013, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3493.
In 1941, the overwhelming majority of the nation's African American population--10 of 13
million--still lived in the South, primarily in rural areas. During [World War II], more than
one million blacks migrated to the North--twice the number during World War I--and more
than two million found work in defense industries.
Black leaders fought discrimination vigorously. In the spring of 1941 (months before
America entered the war), the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, A.
Philip Randolph, with strong backing from the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), called for 150,000 blacks to march on Washington to protest
discrimination in defense industries. Embarrassed and concerned, [President Franklin D.]
Roosevelt issued an executive order prohibiting discrimination in defense industries and
creating the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).
During the war, the Marines excluded blacks, the Navy used them as servants, and the Army
created separate black regiments commanded mostly by white officers. The Red Cross even
segregated blood plasma.
As urban areas swelled with defense workers, housing and transportation shortages
exacerbated racial tensions. In 1943, a riot broke out in Detroit in a federally-sponsored
housing project when whites wanted blacks barred from the new apartments named,
ironically, in honor of Sojourner Truth. White soldiers from a nearby base joined the
fighting, and other federal troops had to be brought in to disperse the mobs. The violence
left 35 blacks and 9 whites dead.
Similar conflicts erupted across the nation exposing, in each instance, the same jarring
contradiction: White Americans espoused [supported] equality abroad but practiced
discrimination at home. One black soldier told Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal, "Just
carve on my tombstone, here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection
of a white man." A 1942 survey showed that many black Americans sympathized with the
Japanese struggle to expel white colonialists from the Far East. Significantly, the same
survey revealed a majority of white industrialists in the South preferred a German victory to
racial equality for blacks.
During World War II, the NAACP intensified its legal campaign against discrimination, and
its membership grew from 50,000 to 500,000. Some African Americans, however,
considered the NAACP too slow... Rejecting legal action, the Congress of Racial Equality,
founded in 1942, organized a series of "sit-ins." Civil disobedience produced a few victories
in the North, but the South's response was brutal. In Tennessee… angry whites savagely beat
the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin for refusing to move to the back of the bus.
Guiding Question: How did World War II change life for African Americans?
9
Brown v. Board
Source: ushistory.org, “Separate No Longer?”, U.S. History Online Textbook, 2014,
http://www.ushistory.org/us/54a.asp.
During the first half of the 20th century, the United States existed as two nations in one.
The Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decreed that the legislation of two
separate societies — one black and one white — was permitted as long as the two were
equal.
States across the North and South passed laws creating schools and public facilities for each
race. These regulations, known as Jim Crow laws, reestablished white authority after it had
diminished during the Reconstruction era. Across the land, blacks and whites dined at
separate restaurants, bathed in separate swimming pools, and drank from separate water
fountains.
The United States had established an American brand of apartheid.
In the aftermath of World War II, America sought to demonstrate to the world the merit of
free democracies over communist dictatorships. But its segregation system exposed
fundamental hypocrisy. Change began brewing in the late 1940s. President Harry Truman
ordered the end of segregation in the armed services, and Jackie Robinson became the first
African American to play Major League Baseball. But the wall built by Jim Crow legislation
seemed insurmountable.
The first major battleground was in the schools. It was very clear by mid-century that
southern states had expertly enacted separate educational systems. These schools, however,
were never equal. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), led by attorney Thurgood Marshall, sued public schools across the South, insisting
that the “separate but equal” clause had been violated.
In no state where distinct racial education laws existed was there equality in public
spending. Teachers in white schools were paid better wages, school buildings for white
students were maintained more carefully, and funds for educational materials flowed more
liberally into white schools. States normally spent 10 to 20 times on the education of white
students as they spent on African American students.
The Supreme Court finally decided to rule on this subject in 1954 in the landmark Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka case.
The verdict was unanimous against segregation. "Separate facilities are inherently unequal,"
read Chief Justice Earl Warren’s opinion. Warren worked tirelessly to achieve a 9-0 ruling.
He feared any dissent might provide a legal argument for the forces against integration. The
united Supreme Court sent a clear message: schools had to integrate.
10
The North and the border states quickly complied with the ruling, but the Brown decision
fell on deaf ears in the South. The Court had stopped short of insisting on immediate
integration, instead asking local governments to proceed "with all deliberate speed" in
complying.
Ten years after Brown, fewer than ten percent of Southern public schools had integrated.
Some areas achieved a zero percent compliance rate. The ruling did not address separate
restrooms, bus seats, or hotel rooms, so Jim Crow laws remained intact. But cautious first
steps toward an equal society had been taken.
It would take a decade of protest, legislation, and bloodshed before America neared a truer
equality.
Key Terms: Brown v. Board
Guiding Question: How did Brown v. Board fundamentally change the legal status of
African Americans under Jim Crow?
11
Showdown in Little Rock
Source: ushistory.org, “Showdown in Little Rock”, U.S. History Online Textbook, 2014,
http://www.ushistory.org/us/54c.asp.
Three years after the Supreme Court declared race-based segregation illegal, a military
showdown took place in Little Rock, Arkansas. On September 3, 1957, nine black students
attempted to attend the all-white Central High School.
Under the pretext of maintaining order, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the
Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students, known as the Little Rock Nine, from
entering the school. After a federal judge declared the action illegal, Faubus removed the
troops. When the students tried to enter again on September 24, they were taken into the
school through a back door. Word of this spread throughout the community, and a thousand
irate citizens stormed the school grounds. The police desperately tried to keep the angry
crowd under control as concerned onlookers whisked the students to safety.
The nation watched all of this on television. President Eisenhower was compelled to act.
Eisenhower was not a strong proponent [supporter] of civil rights. He feared that the Brown
decision could lead to an impasse [stalemate] between the federal government and the
states. Now that very stalemate had come. The rest of the country seemed to side with the
black students, and the Arkansas state government was defying a federal decree. The
situation hearkened back to the dangerous federal-state conflicts of the 19th century that
followed the end of the Civil War.
On September 25, Eisenhower ordered the troops of the 101st Airborne Division into Little
Rock, marking the first time United States troops were dispatched to the South since
Reconstruction. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard in order to remove the soldiers
from Faubus's control. For the next few months, the African American students attended
school under armed supervision.
The following year, Little Rock officials closed the schools to prevent integration. But in
1959, the schools were open again. Both black and white children were in attendance.
The tide was slowly turning in favor of those advocating civil rights for African Americans.
An astonished America watched footage of brutish, white southerners mercilessly harassing
clean-cut, respectful African American children trying to get an education. Television
swayed public opinion toward integration.
In 1959, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, the first such measure since Reconstruction.
The law created a permanent civil rights commission to assist black suffrage. The measure
had little teeth and proved ineffective, but it paved the way for more powerful legislation in
the years to come.
Key Terms: Little Rock Nine
Guiding Question: How did the integration of Central High School illustrate the difficulty of
desegregating schools in the South?
12
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Source: ushistory.org, “Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott”, U.S. History Online
Textbook, 2014, http://www.ushistory.org/us/54b.asp.
On a cold December evening in 1955, Rosa Parks quietly incited a revolution — by just
sitting down.
She was tired after spending the day at work as a department store seamstress. She stepped
onto the bus for the ride home and sat in the fifth row — the first row of the "colored
section.”
In Montgomery, Alabama, when a bus became full, the seats nearer the front were given to
white passengers.
Montgomery bus driver James Blake ordered Parks and three other African Americans
seated nearby to move ("Move y'all, I want those two seats,") to the back of the bus.
Three riders complied; Parks did not.
The following excerpt of what happened next is from Douglas Brinkley's 2000 Rosa Parks
biography.
"Are you going to stand up?" the driver demanded. Rosa Parks looked straight
at him and said: "No." Flustered, and not quite sure what to do, Blake retorted,
"Well, I'm going to have you arrested." And Parks, still sitting next to the
window, replied softly, "You may do that."
After Parks refused to move, she was arrested and fined $10. The chain of events triggered
by her arrest changed the United States.
In 1955, a little-known minister named Martin Luther King Jr. led the Dexter Avenue Baptist
Church in Montgomery.
Born and educated in Atlanta, King studied the writings and practices of Henry David
Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi. Their teaching advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent
resistance to social injustice.
A staunch devotee of nonviolence, King and his colleague Ralph Abernathy organized a
boycott of Montgomery’s buses.
The demands they made were simple: Black passengers should be treated with courtesy.
Seating should be allotted on a first-come-first-serve basis, with white passengers sitting
from front to back and black passengers sitting from back to front. And African American
drivers should drive routes that primarily serviced African Americans. On Monday,
December 5, 1955 the boycott went into effect.
13
Montgomery officials stopped at nothing in attempting to sabotage the boycott. King and
Abernathy were arrested. Violence began during the action and continued after its
conclusion. Four churches — as well as the homes of King and Abernathy — were bombed.
But the boycott continued.
King and Abernathy's organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), had
hoped for a 50 percent support rate among African Americans. To their surprise and delight,
99 percent of the city's African Americans refused to ride the buses. People walked to work
or rode their bikes, and carpools were established to help the elderly. The bus company
suffered thousands of dollars in lost revenue.
Finally, on November 23, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the MIA. Segregated
busing was declared unconstitutional. City officials reluctantly agreed to comply with the
court ruling. The black community of Montgomery had held firm in their resolve.
The Montgomery bus boycott triggered a firestorm in the South. Across the region, blacks
resisted "moving to the back of the bus." Similar actions flared up in other cities. The boycott
put Martin Luther King Jr. in the national spotlight. He became the acknowledged leader of
the nascent civil rights movement.
With Ralph Abernathy, King formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
This organization was dedicated to fighting Jim Crow segregation. African Americans boldly
declared to the rest of the country that their movement would be peaceful, organized, and
determined.
To modern eyes, getting a seat on a bus may not seem like a great feat. But in 1955, sitting
down marked the first step in a revolution.
Key Terms: Montgomery bus boycott; Martin Luther King, Jr. (dates: 1929-1968); Rosa
Parks (dates: 1913-2005)
Guiding Question: How did the Montgomery bus boycott succeed?
14
Claudette Colvin
Source: Excerpts from Brooks Barnes, “From Footnote to Fame in Civil Rights,” The New York
Times, November 25, 2009.
On that supercharged day in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a
white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., she rode her way into history books, credited with
helping to ignite the civil rights movement.
But there was another woman, named Claudette Colvin, who refused to be treated like a
substandard citizen on one of those Montgomery buses — and she did it nine months before
Mrs. Parks. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his political debut fighting her arrest.
Moreover, she was the star witness in the legal case that eventually forced bus
desegregation.
Yet instead of being celebrated, Ms. Colvin has lived unheralded in the Bronx for decades,
initially cast off by black leaders who feared she was not the right face for their battle,
according to a new book that has plucked her from obscurity.
Last week Phillip Hoose won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for
“Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice,” published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The honor
sent the little-selling title shooting up 500 spots on Amazon.com’s sales list and immediately
thrust Ms. Colvin, 70, back into the cultural conversation.
“Young people think Rosa Parks just sat down on a bus and ended segregation, but that
wasn’t the case at all,” Ms. Colvin said in an animated interview at a diner near her
apartment in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. “Maybe by telling my story — something
I was afraid to do for a long time — kids will have a better understanding about what the
civil rights movement was about.”
Ms. Colvin made her stand on March 2, 1955, and Mrs. Parks made hers on Dec. 1 that same
year. Somehow, as Mrs. Parks became one of Time Magazine’s 100 most important people of
the 20th century, and streets and schools were named after her, Ms. Colvin managed to let
go of any bitterness. After Ms. Colvin was arrested, Mrs. Parks, a seasoned N.A.A.C.P. official,
sometimes let her spend the night at her apartment. Ms. Colvin remembers her as a
reserved but kindly woman who fixed her snacks of peanut butter on Ritz crackers.
“My mother told me to be quiet about what I did,” Ms. Colvin recalled. “She told me: ‘Let
Rosa be the one. White people aren’t going to bother Rosa — her skin is lighter than yours
and they like her.’ ”
Ms. Colvin said she came to terms with her “raw feelings” a long time ago. “I know in my
heart that she was the right person,” she said of Mrs. Parks.
Ms. Colvin was riding the bus home from school when the driver demanded that she give up
her seat for a middle-age white woman, even though three other seats in the row were
empty, one beside Ms. Colvin and two across the aisle.
15
“If she sat down in the same row as me, it meant I was as good as her,” Ms. Colvin said.
Two police officers, one of them kicking her, dragged her backward off the bus and
handcuffed her, according to the book. On the way to the police station, they took turns
trying to guess her bra size.
At the time, the arrest was big news. Black leaders, among them Dr. King, jumped at the
opportunity to use her case to fight segregation laws in court. “Negro Girl Found Guilty of
Segregation Violation” was the headline in The Alabama Journal. The article said that Ms.
Colvin, “a bespectacled, studious looking high school student,” accepted the ruling “with the
same cool aloofness she had maintained” during the hearing.
As chronicled by Mr. Hoose, more than 100 letters of support arrived for Ms. Colvin — sent
in care of Mrs. Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery branch of the N.A.A.C.P.
But Ms. Colvin was ultimately passed over.
“They worried they couldn’t win with her,” Mr. Hoose said in an interview from his home in
Portland, Me. “Words like ‘mouthy,’ ‘emotional’ and ‘feisty’ were used to describe her.”
Mrs. Parks, on the other hand, was considered “stolid, calm, unflappable,” he said. The final
straw: Ms. Colvin became pregnant by a married man.
A second Montgomery teenager, Mary Louise Smith, was also arrested for refusing to give
up her bus seat — after Ms. Colvin’s arrest but before Ms. Parks’s — and she was also
deemed an unsuitable symbol for the movement partly because of rumors that her father
had an alcohol problem.
Although Ms. Colvin quickly left Montgomery, she returned during the peak of the bus
boycott that Mrs. Parks had subsequently sparked, and testified in federal court in Browder
v. Gayle, the landmark case that effectively ended bus segregation.
“It’s an important reminder that crucial change is often ignited by very plain, unremarkable
people who then disappear,” said David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Dr.
King.
Key Terms: Claudette Colvin (date: born 1939)
Guiding Question: Why is Rosa Parks more widely remembered than Claudette Colvin?
16
The Sit-In Movement
Source: Steven Mintz and Sara MacNeil, “Freedom Now,” Digital History, 2013,
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3324.
"Now is the time." These words became the credo and rallying cry for a generation. On
Monday, February 1, 1960, four black freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
College--Ezell Blair, Jr., Franklin McClain, Joseph McNeill, and David Richmond--walked into
the F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and sat down at the lunch counter.
They asked for a cup of coffee. A waitress told them that she would only serve them if they
stood.
Instead of walking away, the four college freshmen stayed in their seats until the lunch
counter closed--giving birth to the "sit-in." The next morning, the four college students reappeared at Woolworth's, accompanied by 25 fellow students. By the end of the week,
protesters filled Woolworth's and other lunch counters in town. Now was their time, and
they refused to end their nonviolent protest against inequality. Six months later, white city
officials granted blacks the right to be served in a restaurant.
Although the four student protesters ascribed to Dr. King's doctrine of nonviolence, their
opponents did not--assaulting the black students both verbally and physically. When the
police finally arrived, they arrested black protesters, not the whites who tormented them.
By the end of February, lunch counter sit-ins had spread through 30 cities in seven Southern
states. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a storekeeper unscrewed the seats from his lunch
counter. Other stores roped-off seats so that every customer had to stand. Alabama, Georgia,
Mississippi, and Virginia, hastily passed anti-trespassing laws to stem the outbreak of sit-ins.
Despite these efforts, the nonviolent student protests spread across the South. Students
attacked segregated libraries, lunch counters, and other "public" facilities.
In April, some 142 student sit-in leaders from 11 states met in Raleigh, North Carolina, and
voted to set up a new group to coordinate the sit-ins, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC). The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told the students that their
willingness to go to jail would "be the thing to awaken the dozing conscience of many of our
white brothers."
In the summer of 1960, sit-ins gave way to "wade-ins" at segregated public beaches. In
Atlanta, Charlotte, Greensboro, and Nashville, black students lined up at white-only box
offices of segregated movie theaters. Other students staged pray-ins (at all-white churches),
study-ins (at segregated libraries), and apply-ins (at all-white businesses). By the end of
1960, 70,000 people had taken part in sit-ins in over 100 cities in 20 states. Police arrested
and jailed more than 3,600 protesters, and authorities expelled 187 students from college
because of their activities. Nevertheless, the new tactic worked. On March 21, 1960, lunch
counters in San Antonio, Texas, were integrated. By August 1, lunch counters in 15 states
had been integrated. By the end of the year, protesters had succeeded in integrating eating
establishments in 108 cities.
17
The Greensboro sit-in initiated a new, activist phase in black America's struggle for equal
rights. Fed up with the slow, legalistic approach that characterized the Civil Rights
Movement in the past, Southern black college students began to attack Jim Crow directly. In
the upper South, federal court orders and student sit-ins successfully desegregated lunch
counters, theaters, hotels, public parks, churches, libraries, and beaches. But in three states-Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina--segregation in restaurants, hotels, and bus, train,
and airplane terminals remained intact. Young civil rights activists launched new assaults
against segregation in those states.
Key Terms: Greensboro sit-ins
Guiding Question: How did the sit-in movement use nonviolent tactics to desegregate
public facilities?
18
Freedom Riders
Source: Steven Mintz and Sara MacNeil, “To the Heart of Dixie,” Digital History, 2013,
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3325.
In early May 1961, a group of 13 men and women, both black and white, set out from
Washington, D.C., on two buses. They called themselves "freedom riders"; they wanted to
demonstrate that segregation prevailed throughout much of the South despite a federal ban
on segregated travel on interstate buses. The freedom riders' trip was sponsored by the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights group dedicated to breaking down racial
barriers through nonviolent protest. Inspired by the nonviolent, direct action ideals
incorporated in the philosophy of Indian Nationalist Mahatma Gandhi, the freedom riders
were willing to endure jail and suffer beatings to achieve integration. "We can take anything
the white man can dish out," said one black freedom rider, "but we want our rights ... and we
want them now."
In Virginia and North Carolina, the freedom riders met with little trouble. Black freedom
riders were able to use white restrooms and sit at white lunch counters. But in Winnsboro,
South Carolina, police arrested two black freedom riders, and outside of Anniston, Alabama,
a white hurled a bomb through one of the bus's windows, setting the vehicle on fire. Waiting
white thugs beat the freedom riders as they tried to escape the smoke and flames. Eight
other whites boarded the second bus and assaulted the freedom riders before police
restrained the attackers.
In Birmingham, Alabama, another mob attacked the second bus with blackjacks and lengths
of pipe. In Montgomery, a club-swinging mob of 100 whites attacked the freedom riders;
and a group of white youths poured an inflammable liquid on one black man, igniting his
clothing. Local police arrived ten minutes later, state police an hour later. Explained
Montgomery's police commissioner: "We have no intention of standing police guard for a
bunch of troublemakers coming into our city."
President Kennedy was appalled by the violence. He hastily deputized 400 federal marshals
and Treasury agents and flew them to Alabama to protect the freedom riders' rights. The
president publicly called for a "cooling-off period," but conflict continued. When the
freedom riders arrived in Jackson, Mississippi, 27 were arrested for entering a "white-only"
washroom and were sentenced to 60 days on the state prison farm.
The threat of racial violence in the South led the Kennedy administration to pressure the
Interstate Commerce Commission to desegregate air, bus, and train terminals. In more than
300 Southern terminals, signs saying "white" and "colored" were taken down from waiting
room entrances and lavatory doors.
Key Terms: Freedom Rides
Guiding Question: How did the Freedom Rides demonstrate the strategy of nonviolent
resistance?
19
The March on Washington
Source: History.com, “March on Washington,” A+E Networks, 2009,
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/march-on-washington.
On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., for a
political rally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized by a
number of civil rights and religious groups, the event was designed to shed light on the
political and social challenges African Americans continued to face across the country. The
march, which became a key moment in the growing struggle for civil rights in the United
States, culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for
racial justice and equality.
Background
Twice in American history, more than twenty years apart, a March on Washington was
planned, each intended to dramatize the right of black Americans to political and economic
equality.
The first march was proposed in 1941 by A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters. Blacks had benefited less than other groups from New Deal
programs during the Great Depression, and continuing racial discrimination excluded them
from defense jobs in the early 1940s. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt showed little
inclination to take action on the problem, Randolph called for a March on Washington by
fifty thousand people. After repeated efforts to persuade Randolph and his fellow leaders
that the march would be inadvisable, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in June 1941,
forbidding discrimination by any defense contractors and establishing the Fair Employment
Practices Committee (FEPC) to investigate charges of racial discrimination. The March on
Washington was then canceled. Nearly 2 million blacks were employed in defense work by
the end of 1944. Order 8802 represented a limited victory, however; the FEPC went out of
existence in 1946.
The March on Washington
As blacks faced continuing discrimination in the postwar years, the March on Washington
group met annually to reiterate blacks’ demands for economic equality. The civil rights
movement of the 1960s transformed the political climate, and in 1963, black leaders began
to plan a new March on Washington, designed specifically to advocate passage of the Civil
Rights Act then stalled in Congress. Chaired again by A. Philip Randolph and organized by
his longtime associate, Bayard Rustin, this new March for Jobs and Freedom was expected to
attract 100,000 participants. President John F. Kennedy showed as little enthusiasm for the
march as had Roosevelt, but this time the black leaders would not be dissuaded. The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference put aside their long-standing rivalry, black and white groups across
the country were urged to attend, and elaborate arrangements were made to ensure a
harmonious event. The growing disillusion among some civil rights workers was reflected in
a speech planned by John Lewis of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, but in
20
order to preserve the atmosphere of goodwill, leaders of the march persuaded Lewis to omit
his harshest criticisms of the Kennedy administration.
The march was an unprecedented success. More than 200,000 black and white Americans
shared a joyous day of speeches, songs, and prayers led by a celebrated array of clergymen,
civil rights leaders, politicians, and entertainers. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s
soaring address climaxed the day; through his eloquence, the phrase “I Have a Dream”
became an expression of the highest aspirations of the civil rights movement.
Like its predecessor, the March on Washington of 1963 was followed by years of disillusion
and racial strife. Nevertheless, both marches represented an affirmation of hope, of belief in
the democratic process, and of faith in the capacity of blacks and whites to work together for
racial equality.
Key Terms: March on Washington
Guiding Question: Why was the March on Washington a pivotal moment for the civil rights
movement?
21
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
Source: History.com, “Civil Rights Act,” A+E Networks, 2010,
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned
employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is
considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First
proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern
members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B.
Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and also passed additional
legislation aimed at bringing equality to African Americans, such as the Voting Rights Act of
1965.
Lead-Up to the Civil Rights Act
Following the Civil War (1861-1865), a trio of constitutional amendments abolished slavery,
made the former slaves citizens and gave all men the right to vote regardless of race.
Nonetheless, many states–particularly in the South–used poll taxes, literacy tests and other
similar measures to keep their African-American residents essentially disenfranchised. They
also enforced strict segregation through “Jim Crow” laws and condoned violence from white
supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
For decades after Reconstruction (1865-1877), the U.S. Congress did not pass a single civil
rights act. Finally, in 1957, it established a civil rights section of the Justice Department,
along with a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory conditions. Three
years later, Congress provided for court-appointed referees to help blacks register to vote.
Both of these bills were strongly watered down to overcome southern resistance. When
John F. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, he initially delayed in supporting new
anti-discrimination measures. But with protests springing up throughout the South –
including one in Birmingham, Alabama, where police brutally suppressed nonviolent
demonstrators with dogs, clubs and high-pressure fire hoses – Kennedy decided to act. In
June 1963 he proposed by far the most comprehensive civil rights legislation to date, saying
the United States “will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free.”
The Civil Rights Act Moves Through Congress
Kennedy was assassinated that November in Dallas, after which new President Lyndon B.
Johnson immediately took up the cause. “Let this session of Congress be known as the
session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined,” Johnson
said in his first State of the Union address. During debate on the floor of the U.S. House of
Representatives, southerners argued, among other things, that the bill unconstitutionally
usurped individual liberties and states’ rights. In a mischievous attempt to sabotage the bill,
a Virginia segregationist introduced an amendment to ban employment discrimination
against women. That one passed, whereas over 100 other hostile amendments were
defeated. In the end, the House approved the bill with bipartisan support by a vote of 290130.
22
The bill then moved to the Senate, where southern and border state Democrats staged a 75day filibuster –among the longest in U.S. history. On one occasion, Senator Robert Byrd of
West Virginia, a former Ku Klux Klan member, spoke for over 14 consecutive hours. But
with the help of behind-the-scenes horse-trading, the bill’s supporters eventually obtained
the two-thirds votes necessary to end debate. One of those votes came from California
Senator Clair Engle, who, though too sick to speak, signaled “aye” by pointing to his own eye.
Having broken the filibuster, the Senate voted 73-27 in favor of the bill, and Johnson signed
it into law on July 2, 1964. “It is an important gain, but I think we just delivered the South to
the Republican Party for a long time to come,” Johnson, a Democrat, purportedly told an aide
later that day in a prediction that would largely come true.
Provisions Within the Civil Rights Act
Under the Civil Rights Act, segregation on the grounds of race, religion or national origin
was banned at all places of public accommodation, including courthouses, parks,
restaurants, theaters, sports arenas and hotels. No longer could blacks and other minorities
be denied service simply based on the color of their skin. The act also barred race, religious,
national origin and gender discrimination by employers and labor unions, and created an
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the power to file lawsuits on behalf of
aggrieved workers.
Additionally, the act forbade the use of federal funds for any discriminatory program,
authorized the Office of Education (now the Department of Education) to assist with school
desegregation, gave extra clout to the Commission on Civil Rights and prohibited the
unequal application of voting requirements. For famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King
Jr., it was nothing less than a “second emancipation.”
After the Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act was later expanded to bring disabled Americans, the elderly and women
in collegiate athletics under its umbrella. It also paved the way for two major follow-up
laws: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited literacy tests and other discriminatory
voting practices, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned discrimination in the sale,
rental and financing of property. Though the struggle against racism would continue, legal
segregation had been brought to its knees.
Key Terms: Civil Rights Act
Guiding Question: To what extent did the Civil Rights Act of 1964 accomplish the goals of
the civil rights movement?
23
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
Source: History.com, “Voting Rights Act,” A+E Networks, 2009,
http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act.
The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73) on August 6,
1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African
Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the
Constitution of the United States. The act significantly widened the franchise and is
considered among the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.
Selma Spurs Johnson to Call for Voting Rights Act
Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was officially elected in
a landslide victory and used this mandate to push for legislation he believed would improve
the American way of life, such as stronger voting-rights laws.
After the U.S. Civil War (1861-65), the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states
from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on “race, color or previous condition of
servitude.” Nevertheless, in the ensuing decades, various discriminatory practices were
used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their
right to vote.
During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South
were subjected to various forms of mistreatment and violence. One event that outraged
many Americans occurred on March 7, 1965, when peaceful participants in a voting rights
march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery were met by Alabama state
troopers who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn
back. Some protesters were severely beaten, and others ran for their lives. The incident was
captured on national television.
In the wake of the brutal incident, Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights
legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president
outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African-American citizens the
vote. Blacks attempting to vote often were told by election officials that they had gotten the
date, time or polling place wrong, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or that they
had filled out an application incorrectly. Blacks, whose population suffered a high rate of
illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, often would be forced to take literacy
tests, which they inevitably failed. Johnson also told Congress that voting officials, primarily
in Southern states, had been known to force black voters to “recite the entire Constitution or
explain the most complex provisions of state laws,” a task most white voters would have
been hard-pressed to accomplish. In some cases, even blacks with college degrees were
turned away from the polls.
Voting Rights Act: Signed Into Law on August 6, 1965
The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote on May 26, 1965. After
debating the bill for more than a month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill by
24
a vote of 333-85 on July 9. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, with
Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders present at the ceremony.
The act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration
in areas where less than 50 percent of the nonwhite population had not registered to vote,
and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local
elections (in 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; poll
taxes in state elections were banned in 1966 by the U.S. Supreme Court).
Voting Rights Act: Voter Turnout Rises in the South
Although the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak and
it often was ignored outright, mainly in the South and in areas where the proportion of
blacks in the population was high and their vote threatened the political status quo. Still, the
Voting Rights Act gave African-American voters the legal means to challenge voting
restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among
blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.
Since its passage, the Voting Rights Act has been amended to include such features as the
protection of voting rights for non-English speaking American citizens.
Key Terms: Voting Rights Act; 24th Amendment
Guiding Question: How did the Voting Rights Act protect African Americans’ right to vote?
25
Malcolm X, Black Nationalism, and Black Power
Source: Steven Mintz and Sara MacNeil, “Black Nationalism and Black Power,” Digital
History, 2013, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3331.
At the same time that such civil rights leaders as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought
for racial integration, other black leaders emphasized separatism and identification with
Africa. Black Nationalist sentiment was not new. During the early 19th century, black
leaders such as Paul Cuffe and Martin Delaney, convinced that blacks could never achieve
true equality in the United States, advocated migration overseas. At the turn of the century,
Booker T. Washington and his followers emphasized racial solidarity, economic selfsufficiency, and black self-help. Also, at the end of World War I, millions of black Americans
were attracted by Marcus Garvey's call to drop the fight for equality in America and instead
"plant the banner of freedom on the great continent of Africa."
One of the most important expressions of the separatist impulse during the 1960s was the
rise of the Black Muslims, which attracted 100,000 members. Founded in 1931, in the
depths of the depression, the Nation of Islam drew its appeal from among the growing
numbers of urban blacks living in poverty. The Black Muslims elevated racial separatism
into a religious doctrine and declared that whites were doomed to destruction. "The white
devil's day is over," Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad cried. "He was given six
thousand years to rule... He's already used up most trapping and murdering the black
nations by the hundreds of thousands. Now he's worried, worried about the black man
getting his revenge." Unless whites acceded to the Muslim demand for a separate territory
for themselves, Muhammad said, "Your entire race will be destroyed and removed from this
earth by Almighty God. And those black men who are still trying to integrate will inevitably
be destroyed along with the whites."
The Black Muslims did more than vent anger and frustration. The organization was also a
vehicle of black uplift and self-help. The Black Muslims called upon black Americans to
"wake up, clean up, and stand up" in order to achieve true freedom and independence. To
root out any behavior that conformed to racist stereotypes, the Muslims forbade eating pork
and cornbread, drinking alcohol, and smoking cigarettes. Muslims also emphasized the
creation of black businesses.
The most controversial exponent of Black Nationalism was Malcolm X. The son of a Baptist
minister who had been an organizer for Marcus Garvey's United Negro Improvement
Association, he was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska, and grew up in Lansing,
Michigan. A reformed drug addict and criminal, Malcolm X learned about the Black Muslims
in a high security prison. After his release from prison in 1952, he adopted the name
Malcolm X to replace "the white slave-master name which had been imposed upon my
paternal forebears by some blue-eyed devil." He quickly became one of the Black Muslims'
most eloquent speakers, denouncing alcohol, tobacco, and extramarital sex.
Condemned by some whites as a demagogue for such statements as "If ballots won't work,
bullets will," Malcolm X gained widespread public notoriety by attacking the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. as a "chump" and an Uncle Tom, by advocating self-defense against white
violence, and by emphasizing black political power.
26
Malcolm X's main message was that discrimination led many black Americans to despise
themselves. "The worst crime the white man has committed," he said, "has been to teach us
to hate ourselves." Self-hatred caused black Americans to lose their identity, straighten their
hair, and become involved in crime, drug addiction, and alcoholism.
In March 1964 (after he violated an order from Elijah Muhammad and publicly rejoiced at
the assassination of President John F. Kennedy), Malcolm X withdrew from Elijah
Muhammad's organization and set up his own Organization of Afro-Americans. Less than a
year later, his life ended in bloodshed. On February 21, 1965, in front of 400 followers, he
was shot and killed, apparently by followers of Black Muslim leader Elijah Muhammad, as he
prepared to give a speech in New York City.
Inspired by Malcolm X's example, young black activists increasingly challenged the
traditional leadership of the Civil Rights Movement and its philosophy of nonviolence. The
single greatest contributor to the growth of militancy was the violence perpetrated by white
racists. One of the most publicized incidents took place in June 1964, when three civil rights
workers--two whites, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and one black, James
Chaney--disappeared near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Six weeks after they were reported
missing, the bodies of the men were found buried under a dam; all three had been beaten,
then shot. In December, the sheriff and deputy sheriff of Neshoba County, Mississippi, along
with 19 others, were arrested on charges of violating the three men's civil rights; but just six
days later the charges were dropped. David Dennis, a black civil rights worker, spoke at
James Chaney's funeral. He angrily declared, "I'm sick and tired of going to the funerals of
black men who have been murdered by white men.... I've got vengeance in my heart."
In 1966, two key civil rights organizations--SNCC and CORE (the Congress of Racial
Equality)--embraced Black Nationalism. In May, Stokely Carmichael was elected chairman of
SNCC and proceeded to transform SNCC from an interracial organization committed to
nonviolence and integration into an all-black organization committed to "black power."
"Integration is irrelevant," declared Carmichael. "Political and economic power is what the
black people have to have." Although Carmichael initially denied that "black power" implied
racial separatism, he eventually called on blacks to form their own separate political
organizations. In July 1966--one month after James Meredith, the black Air Force veteran
who had integrated the University of Mississippi, was ambushed and shot while marching
for voting rights in Mississippi--CORE also endorsed black power and repudiated
nonviolence.
Of all the groups advocating racial separatism and black power, the one that received the
widest publicity was the Black Panther Party. Formed in October 1966, in Oakland,
California, the Black Panther party was an armed revolutionary socialist organization
advocating self-determination for black ghettoes. "Black men," declared one party member,
“must unite to overthrow their white ‘oppressors,’ becoming ‘like panthers--smiling,
cunning, scientific, striking by night and sparing no one!’" The Black Panthers gained public
notoriety by entering the gallery of the California State Assembly brandishing guns and by
following police to prevent police harassment and brutality toward blacks.
27
Separatism and Black Nationalism attracted no more than a small minority of black
Americans. Public opinion polls indicated that only about 15 percent of black Americans
identified themselves as separatists and that the overwhelming majority of blacks
considered Martin Luther King, Jr. their favored spokesperson. The older civil rights
organizations, such as the NAACP, rejected separatism and black power, viewing it as an
abandonment of the goals of nonviolence and integration.
Yet despite their relatively small following, black power advocates exerted a powerful and
positive influence upon the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to giving birth to a host of
community self-help organizations, supporters of black power spurred the creation of black
studies programs in universities and encouraged black Americans to take pride in their
racial background and to recognize that "black is beautiful." A growing number of black
Americans began to wear "Afro" hairstyles and take African or Islamic surnames. Singer
James Brown captured the new spirit: "Say it loud--I'm black and I'm proud."
In an effort to maintain support among more militant blacks, civil rights leaders began to
address the problems of the black lower classes who lived in the nation's cities. By the mid1960s, King had begun to move toward the political left. He said it did no good to be allowed
to eat in a restaurant if you had no money to pay for a hamburger. King denounced the
Vietnam War as "an enemy of the poor," described the United States as "the greatest
purveyor of violence in the world today," and predicted that "the bombs that [Americans]
are dropping in Vietnam will explode at home in inflation and unemployment." He urged a
radical redistribution of wealth and political power in the United States in order to provide
medical care, jobs, and education for all of the country's people. And he spoke of the need
for a second "March on Washington" by "waves of the nation's poor and disinherited," who
would "stay until America responds ... [with] positive action." The time had come for radical
measures "to provide jobs and income for the poor."
Key Terms: Malcolm X (dates: 1925-1965); Black Power; Black Panther Party
Guiding Question: How did the Black Power movement differ from the nonviolent
movement in its philosophy, aims, and tactics?
28
Modern Feminism
Source: ushistory.org, “Modern Feminism,” U.S. History Online Textbook, 2014,
http://www.ushistory.org/us/57a.asp.
"Motherhood is bliss." "Your first priority is to care for your husband and children."
"Homemaking can be exciting and fulfilling."
Throughout the 1950s, educated middle-class women heard advice like this from the time
they were born until they reached adulthood. The new suburban lifestyle prompted many
women to leave college early and pursue the "cult of the housewife." Magazines such as
Ladies Home Journal and Good Housekeeping and television shows such as "Father Knows
Best" and "The Donna Reed Show" reinforced this idyllic image.
But not every woman wanted to wear pearls and bring her husband his pipe and slippers
when he came home from work. Some women wanted careers of their own.
In 1963, Betty Friedan published a book called The Feminine Mystique that identified "the
problem that has no name." Amid all the demands to prepare breakfast, to drive their
children to activities, and to entertain guests, Friedan had the courage to ask: "Is this all
there is?" "Is this really all a woman is capable of doing?" In short, the problem was that
many women did not like the traditional role society prescribed for them.
Friedan's book struck a nerve. Within three years of the publication of her book, a new
feminist movement was born, the likes of which had been absent since the suffrage
movement. In 1966, Friedan, and others formed an activist group called the National
Organization for Women. NOW was dedicated to the "full participation of women in
mainstream American society."
They demanded equal pay for equal work and pressured the government to support and
enforce legislation that prohibited gender discrimination. When Congress debated that
landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in employment on
account of race, conservative Congressmen added gender to the bill, thinking that the
inclusion of women would kill the act. When this strategy backfired and the measure was
signed into law, groups such as NOW became dedicated to its enforcement.
Like the antiwar and civil rights movements, feminism developed a radical faction by the
end of the decade. Women held "consciousness raising" sessions where groups of females
shared experiences that often led to their feelings of enduring a common plight.
In 1968, radical women demonstrated outside the Miss America Pageant outside Atlantic
City by crowning a live sheep. "Freedom trash cans" were built where women could throw
all symbols of female oppression including false eyelashes, hair curlers, bras, girdles, and
high-heeled shoes. The media labeled them bra burners, although no bras were actually
burned.
29
The word "sexism" entered the American vocabulary, as women became categorized as a
target group for discrimination. Single and married women adopted the title Ms. as an
alternative to Miss or Mrs. to avoid changing their identities based upon their relationships
with men. In 1972, Gloria Steinem founded a feminist magazine of that name.
Authors such as the feminist Germaine Greer impelled many women to confront social,
political, and economic barriers. In 1960, women comprised less than 40 percent of the
nation's undergraduate classes, and far fewer women were candidates for advanced
degrees. Despite voting for four decades, there were only 19 women serving in the Congress
in 1961. For every dollar that was earned by an American male, each working American
female earned 59¢. By raising a collective consciousness, changes began to occur. By 1980,
women constituted a majority of American undergraduates.
As more and more women chose careers over housework, marriages were delayed to a later
age and the birthrate plummeted. Economic independence led many dissatisfied women to
dissolve unhappy marriages, leading to a skyrocketing divorce rate.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, invoking the memory of her mother, evokes the
mood of the women's rights movement: "I pray that I may be all that she would have been
had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve, and daughters are cherished
as much as sons."
Key Terms: National Organization for Women
Guiding Question: What were the goals, tactics, and achievements of the feminist
movement in the 1960s?
30
Reproductive Rights
Source: ushistory.org, “The Fight for Reproductive Rights,” U.S. History Online Textbook,
2014, http://www.ushistory.org/us/57b.asp.
The consequences of sexual relations between women and men simply were not fair.
An old double standard dictated that men were rewarded for sexual prowess and women
suffered a damaged reputation. Males were encouraged to "sow a few wild oats" while
women were told "good girls don't."
Most of all, if a relationship resulted in pregnancy, it was the woman who was left with the
responsibility. For decades, pioneers like Margaret Sanger fought for contraceptives that
women would control. With the introduction of the birth control pregnancy to the market in
1960, women could for the first time deter pregnancy by their own choice.
The fight for reproductive freedoms was intense. Organized religions such as the Roman
Catholic Church stood firm on their principles that artificial contraceptives were sinful.
Many states in the early 1960s prohibited the sale of contraceptives — even to married
couples.
In a landmark decision, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled such laws
were unconstitutional. Setting a precedent, the Court determined that a fundamental right
to privacy exists between the lines of the Constitution. Laws prohibiting contraceptive
choice violated this sacred right. The ban of prohibitive laws was extended to unmarried
couples in Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972). A federal judge imparted the right to purchase
contraceptives to unmarried minors in 1974.
The pill made it finally possible for American women to separate sexuality and childbearing.
Masters and Johnson, a pioneering research team in the field of human sexuality, challenged
entrenched beliefs that women did not enjoy sex and were merely passive partners.
Reports of premarital sex increased dramatically as the "sexual revolution" spread across
America. Young couples began cohabiting — living together before marriage — in greater
and greater numbers. Critics denounced the tremendous change in lifestyle.
But those in favor of this new trend maintained that young people were simply more open
and honest about activities that had traditionally transpired behind closed doors and
shielded from public scrutiny. As attitudes toward sexuality relaxed, the entertainment
industry rode the wave. Courts were more permissive with pornographic materials and the
movies and television pressed new boundaries with controversially suggestive content. "Rrated" and even "X-rated" films became commonplace.
Inevitably the reproductive struggle took aim at laws that restricted abortion. Throughout
the 1960s, there was no national standard on abortion regulations, and many states had
outlawed the practice. Feminist groups claimed that illegality led many women to seek black
31
market abortions by unlicensed physicians or to brutally perform the procedure on
themselves.
In 1973, the Supreme Court heard the case of the anonymous Jane Roe, an unmarried Texas
mother who claimed the state violated her constitutional rights by banning the practice. By
a 7-2 vote, the Court agreed. Since Roe v. Wade, the battle lines have been drawn between
pro-choice supporters of abortion rights and pro-life opponents who seek to chisel away at
the Roe decision.
Key Terms: Griswold v. Connecticut; Roe v. Wade
Guiding Question: How did feminist activism and court decisions change women’s
reproductive rights in the 1960s and 1970s?
32
The Chicano Movement
Source: Steven Mintz and Sara MacNeil, “Viva La Raza!”, Digital History, 2013,
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3347.
On Election Day 1963, hundreds of Mexican Americans in Crystal City, Texas, the "spinach
capital of the world," gathered near a statue of Popeye the Sailor to do something that most
had never done before: vote. Although Mexican Americans outnumbered Anglos by two to
one, Anglos controlled all five seats on the Crystal City council. For three years organizers
struggled to register Mexican American voters. When the election was over, Mexican
Americans had won control of the city council. "We have done the impossible," declared
Albert Fuentes, who led the voter registration campaign. "If we can do it in Crystal City, we
can do it all over Texas. We can awaken the sleeping giant."
During the 1960s, a new Chicano movement suddenly burst onto the national stage. Epic
struggles arose across the Southwest to register voters, organize farm workers, and regain
stolen lands. The Mexican American struggle for political and civil rights has received far
less attention than the struggles of other minority groups for social justice, but it is, in fact,
only the most recent expression of a long tradition of Mexican American labor and political
activism…
Three major surges of immigration, punctuated by two large-scale efforts at deportation,
shaped 20th century Mexican American history. Between 1910 and 1930, nearly 700,000
Mexican immigrants entered the Southwestern United States, pushed out of Mexico by
revolutionary upheaval and economic instability and pulled into the Southwest's increasing
demand for low wage, unskilled physical labor. Mexican immigrants took jobs as migratory
laborers or seasonal workers in mines and packinghouses and on commercial farms and
ranches. But these jobs generally resulted in lives characterized by geographical isolation
and physical mobility with few opportunities for economic advancement. Most immigrants
lived in segregated communities where Mexican culture and organizations prevailed.
Depression-era unemployment, however, reduced immigration to less than 33,000 during
the 1930s. The United States and Mexico sponsored a "repatriation" program that returned
half a million people to Mexico, about half of whom were American citizens. Although the
program was supposed to be voluntary, many were pressured to leave.
Demand for Mexican American labor resumed during World War II. In 1942, the United
States and Mexico instituted the Bracero Program, which allowed Mexican contract laborers
to work in the United States during seasonal agriculture and in other sectors of the
economy. Following the war, however, a new deportation effort sought to expel resident
Mexicans who lacked American citizenship.
During the 1960s, Mexican immigration rose rapidly, propelled by the rapid growth of
Mexico's population--which tripled in 50 years; driven by the higher wages found in the
United States--at least six times higher than those in Mexico; and forced by the
unwillingness of the Mexican government to control immigration after the demise of the
Bracero Program in 1964. Mexican immigration has continued to increase into the 1990s.
33
Beginning in the early 20th century, Mexican Americans formed many organizations to
address problems of poverty and discrimination. Among the earliest were self-help
organizations known as "mutualistas," which provided members with a broad range of
benefits and services including credit, insurance, funeral and disability benefits, and often
served as the basis for labor unions. During the 1920s, new kinds of organizations appeared
which sought to assimilate Mexican Americans into the mainstream of American society and
to combat discrimination in education, jobs, wages, and political representation. In 1929,
these organizations united to form the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC).
During the 1940s and 1950s, LULAC organized voter registration drives and filed law suits
to end school and job discrimination. World War II marked a major turning point in Mexican
American history. More than 300,000 Mexican Americans served in the armed forces,
earning more military honors proportionately than any other ethnic group. Veterans formed
new activist organizations, like the American G.I. Forum and the Mexican American Political
Association, to fight discrimination and end segregation.
As the 1960s began, Mexican Americans shared problems of poverty and discrimination
with other minority groups. The median income of a Mexican American family was just 62
percent of the median income of the general population, and over a third of Mexican
American families lived on less than $3,000 a year. Unemployment was twice the rate
among non-Hispanic whites, and four-fifths of employed Mexican Americans were
concentrated in semi-skilled and unskilled jobs, a third in agriculture.
Educational attainment lagged behind other groups (Mexican Americans averaged less than
nine years of schooling as recently as 1970). Mexican American pupils were concentrated in
predominantly Mexican American schools, which were less well staffed and supplied than
non-Mexican American schools and employed few Hispanic or Spanish-speaking teachers.
Mexican Americans were under-represented as a result of gerrymandered election districts
and restrictive voting legislation. In addition, they were under-represented or excluded
from juries by requirements specifying that jurors be able to speak and understand English.
During the 1960s, a new surge of Mexican American militancy arose. In 1962, Cesar Chavez
began to organize California farm workers; three years later, in Delano, California, he led his
first strike. At the same time that Chavez led the struggle for higher wages, enforcement of
state labor laws, and recognition of the Farm Worker Union, Reies Lopez Tijerina fought to
win compensation for the descendants of families whose lands had been seized illegally. In
1963, Tijerina founded the Alianza Federal de Mercedes (the Federal Alliance of Land
Grants) in New Mexico to restore the legal rights of heirs to Spanish and Mexican land
grants that had been guaranteed under the treaty ending the Mexican War.
In Denver, Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales formed the Crusade for Justice in 1965 to protest
school discrimination, to provide legal, medical, and financial services and jobs for Chicanos,
and to foster the Mexican American cultural heritage. Chapters of La Raza Unida, a political
party centered on Chicano nationalism, arose in a number of small towns with large
Mexican American populations. On college campuses across the Southwest, Mexican
Americans formed political organizations.
34
In 1968, Congress responded to the demand among Mexican Americans for equal
educational opportunities by enacting legislation encouraging school districts to adopt
bilingual education programs to instruct non-English speakers in both English and their
native language. In a more recent action, Congress moved in 1986 to legalize the status of
many immigrants, including many Mexicans, who entered the United States illegally. The
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 provided permanent legal residency to
undocumented workers who had lived in the United States since before 1982 and
prohibited employment of illegal aliens.
Since 1960, Mexican Americans have made impressive political gains. During the 1960s,
four Mexican Americans--Senator Joseph Montoya of New Mexico, representatives Eligio de
la Garza and Henry B. Gonzales of Texas, and Edward R. Roybal of California--were elected
to Congress. In 1974, two Chicanos were elected governors--Jerry Apodaca in New Mexico
and Raul Castro in Arizona--becoming the first Mexican American governors since early in
this century. In 1981, Henry Cisneros of San Antonio became the first Mexican American
mayor of a large city.
Key Terms: Chicano movement (date: 1960s)
Guiding Question: What were the aims, tactics, and accomplishments of the Chicano
movement in the 1960s?
35
The Native American Power Movement
Source: Steven Mintz and Sara MacNeil, “The Native American Power Movement,” Digital
History, 2013, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3348.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new spirit of political militancy arose among the
first Americans, just as it had among black Americans and women. No other group, however,
faced problems more severe than Native Americans. Throughout the 1960s, American
Indians were the nation's poorest minority group, more deprived than any other group,
according to virtually every socioeconomic measure. In 1970, the Indian unemployment
rate was 10 times the national average, and 40 percent of the Native American population
lived below the poverty line. In that year, Native American life expectancy was just 44 years,
a third less than that of the average American. In one Apache town of 2,500 on the San
Carlos reservation in Arizona, there were only 25 telephones, and most homes had outdoor
toilets and relied on wood burning stoves for heat.
Conditions on many of the nation's reservations were not unlike those found in
underdeveloped areas of Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The death rate among Native
Americans exceeded that of the total U.S. population by a third. Deaths caused by
pneumonia, hepatitis, dysentery, strep throat, diabetes, tuberculosis, alcoholism, suicide,
and homicide were 2 to 60 times higher than the entire U.S. population. Half a million Indian
families lived in unsanitary, dilapidated dwellings, many in shanties, huts, or even
abandoned automobiles…
During World War II, Native Americans began to revolt against such conditions. In 1944,
Native Americans formed the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the first major
inter-tribal association. Among the group's primary concerns were protection of Indian land
rights and improved educational opportunities for Native Americans. Congress voted in
1953 to allow states to assert legal jurisdiction over Indian reservations without tribal
consent, and the federal government sought to transfer federal Indian responsibilities for a
dozen tribes to the states (a policy known as "termination") and to relocate Indians into
urban areas. The NCAI vehemently led opposition to these measures. “Self-determination
rather than termination!' was the NCAI slogan. Earl Old Person, a Blackfoot leader,
commented, "It is important to note that in our Indian language the only translation for
termination is to ‘wipe out’ or ‘kill off’ ... how can we plan our future when the Indian Bureau
threatens to wipe us out as a race? It's like trying to cook a meal in your tipi when someone
is standing outside trying to burn the tipi down."
By the late 1950s, a new spirit of Indian Nationalism had arisen. In 1959, the Tuscarora
tribe, living in upstate New York, successfully resisted efforts by the state power authority
to convert reservation land into a reservoir. In 1961, a militant new Indian organization, the
National Indian Youth Council, appeared and began to use the phrase "Red Power." They
sponsored demonstrations, marches, and "fish-ins" to protest state efforts to abolish Indian
fishing rights guaranteed by federal treaties. In 1964, Native Americans in the San Francisco
Bay area established the Indian Historical Society to present history from the Indian pointof-view. At the same time, the Native American Rights Fund brought legal suits against
states that had taken Indian land and abolished Indian hunting, fishing, and water rights in
36
violation of federal treaties. Many tribes also took legal action to prevent strip mining or
spraying of pesticides on Indian lands.
The best known of all Indian Power groups was the American Indian Movement (AIM),
formed by a group of Chippewas in Minneapolis in 1966 to protest alleged police brutality.
In the fall of 1972, AIM led urban Indians, traditionalists, and young Indians along the “Trail
of Broken Treaties' to Washington, D.C., seized the offices of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in
Washington, D.C., and occupied them for a week in order to dramatize Indian grievances. In
the spring of 1973, a group of 200 heavily armed Indians took over the town of Wounded
Knee, South Dakota--site of an 1890 massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. Army cavalry. The
group of armed Indians occupied the town for 71 days.
Militant protests paid off. The 1972 Indian Education Act gave Indian parents greater
control over their children's schools. The 1976 Indian Health Care Act sought to address
deficiencies in Indian health care; while the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act gave tribes
control over custody decisions involving Indian children. A series of landmark Supreme
Court decisions aided the cause of Indian sovereignty and tribal self- government. The
Williams v. Lee (1959) case upheld the authority of tribal courts to make decisions involving
non-Indians. The Menominee Tribe v. United States (1968) case declared that states could
not invalidate fishing and hunting rights that Indians had acquired through treaty
agreements.
Beginning in the 1970s, a number of tribes initiated lawsuits to recover land illegally seized
by whites. In 1980, the federal government agreed to pay $81.5 million to the
Passamaquoddy and Penobscot of Maine, and $105 million to the Sioux in South Dakota.
Court decisions also permitted tribal authorities to sell cigarettes, run gambling casinos, and
levy taxes.
Indians are no longer a vanishing group of Americans. The 1990 census recorded an Indian
population of over two million, five times the number recorded in 1950. About half of these
people live on reservations, which cover 52.4 million acres in 27 states, while most others
live in urban areas. The largest Native American populations are located in Alaska, Arizona,
California, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. As the Indian population has grown in size,
individual Indians have claimed many accomplishments, including author N. Scott
Momaday, a Kiowa, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Although Native Americans continue to face severe problems related to employment,
income, and education, they have decisively demonstrated that they will not abandon their
Indian identity and culture, nor will they be treated as dependent wards of the federal
government.
Key Terms: American Indian Movement
Guiding Question: What were the aims, tactics, and accomplishments of the Native
American movement during the 1960s and 1970s?
37
Gay and Lesbian Liberation
Source: Steven Mintz and Sara MacNeil, “Gay and Lesbian Liberation,” Digital History, 2013,
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3349.
Early in the morning of June 27, 1969, New York City police staged a raid on the Stonewall
Inn, a Greenwich Village bar whose patrons included transvestites, gay men, and lesbians.
Raids on gay or cross-dresser bars were common at the time. State law threatened bars with
the loss of their liquor licenses if they tolerated same-sex dancing or employed or served
men who wore women's clothing. Instead of acquiescing in the raid, the bar's patrons fought
back, battling the police with bricks, bottles, and shards of broken glass. Three days of civil
disobedience followed.
This incident ushered in a new era for gays and lesbians in the United States: an era of pride,
openness, and activism. It led many gays and lesbians to "come out of the closet" and
publicly assert their sexual identity and to organize politically. In Stonewall's wake, activist
organizations like the Gay Liberation Front transformed sexual orientation into a political
issue, attacking customs and laws that defined homosexuality as a sin, a crime, or a mental
illness.
Hostility toward homosexuality had deep roots in American society. State sodomy laws
criminalized homosexual acts. Federal immigration laws excluded homosexual aliens. The
1873 Comstock Act permitted postal authorities to exclude homosexual publications from
the mail. Hollywood's "Production Code," adopted in 1934, prohibited the depiction of gay
characters or open discussion of homosexuality in film. The American Psychiatric
Association's diagnostic manual defined homosexuality as a psychopathology. During the
McCarthy era, the charge that homosexuals were "moral perverts" and security risks led the
government to adopt rules explicitly excluding them from federal jobs or military service.
Police entrapment of homosexual men and harassment of gay bars were widespread; during
the 1950s, cities such as Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., police arrested 100 men a
month on misdemeanor charges relating to homosexuality.
Although the emergence of the gay and lesbian liberation movement caught the general
public by surprise, it did not emerge overnight. During the 1950s, a handful of advocacy
groups, including the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, arose, opposing laws
that prohibited and punished homosexuality. By the late 1960s, gay and lesbian subcultures
and communities had grown in many of the nation's cities, complete with bars, cabarets,
magazines, and restaurants.
At the same time, challenges to earlier legal and medical opinion about homosexuality
appeared. Alfred Kinsey's studies of sexual behavior, published in 1948 and 1953, suggested
that homosexual and lesbian behavior was far more prevalent than most Americans
previously suspected. Kinsey estimated that about 10 percent of men and 5 percent of
women were sexually attracted primarily to members of their own sex. During the 1960s,
reformers within the legal profession argued in favor of decriminalizing private, consensual
adult homosexual relations, on the grounds that government should not regulate private
morality. In 1961, Illinois became the first state to repeal its sodomy statutes. The next year,
38
the Supreme Court ruled that a magazine featuring photographs of nude males was not
obscene, and therefore, not subject to censorship. In 1973, the American Psychiatric
Association removed homosexuality from its list of psychopathologies.
In recent years, homosexuality has become one of the most highly charged issues in
American politics. In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld state sodomy laws, ruling that private
acts of homosexuality were not protected by the Constitution. Gay advocacy groups
responded to the decision by lobbying for passage of state and city civil rights acts that
would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment and housing. As
a result of the gay rights movement, two states--New York and Vermont--and several
municipalities, extended health and dental insurance to the gay and lesbian domestic
partners of public employees. A number of municipalities and states, including Colorado,
responded to these initiatives by passing referenda prohibiting government from extending
special rights to homosexuals. But state courts found these to be unconstitutional
infringements on the rights of gay and lesbian citizens to petition government. In 1993, a
major controversy erupted after President Bill Clinton proposed a policy to allow gays and
lesbians to openly serve in the military. The policy that eventually emerged--nicknamed
"don't ask, don't tell"--satisfied few, and federal courts refused to permit the expulsion of
gays from the military.3
Key Terms: Stonewall Riots
Guiding Question: What were the aims, tactics, and accomplishments of the gay rights
movement in the 1960s and 1970s?
Note: The gay rights movement has achieved substantial gains in the last decade. In 2003,
the Massachusetts Superior Court legalized same-sex marriage in Goodridge v. Department
of Public Health, making Massachusetts the first U.S. state to legally recognize same-sex
marriages. In 2011, with authorization from Congress, President Obama repealed “don’t ask,
don’t tell,” allowing gays and lesbians (but not transgender men and women) to serve in the
military openly. As of May 2014, a total of 17 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have
legalized same-sex marriage.
3
39
Primary Source: Brown v. Board
Source: Excerpts from Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
These cases come to us from the States of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware…
In each of the cases, minors of the Negro race, through their legal representatives, seek the
aid of the courts in obtaining admission to the public schools of their community on a
nonsegregated basis. In each instance, they had been denied admission to schools attended
by white children under laws requiring or permitting segregation according to race. This
segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under
the Fourteenth Amendment. In each of the cases other than the Delaware case, a three-judge
federal district court denied relief to the plaintiffs on the so-called "separate but equal"
doctrine announced by this Court in Plessy v. Fergson, 163 U.S. 537. Under that doctrine,
equality of treatment is accorded when the races are provided substantially equal facilities,
even though these facilities be separate…
The plaintiffs contend that segregated public schools are not "equal" and cannot be made
"equal," and that hence they are deprived of the equal protection of the laws…
Here… there are findings below that the Negro and white schools involved have been
equalized, or are being equalized, with respect to buildings, curricula, qualifications and
salaries of teachers, and other "tangible" factors. Our decision, therefore, cannot turn on
merely a comparison of these tangible factors in the Negro and white schools involved in
each of the cases. We must look instead to the effect of segregation itself on public
education…
Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.
Compulsory [required] school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education
both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society.
It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in
the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal
40
instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional
training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is
doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the
opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to
provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.
We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools
solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other "tangible" factors
may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational
opportunities? We believe that it does....
To separate [black students] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of
their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may
affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone… Segregation of white and
colored children in public schools has a detrimental [harmful] effect upon the colored
children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of
separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A
sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of
law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro
children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly]
integrated school system. Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge
at the time of Plessy v. Ferguson, this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any
language in Plessy v. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected.
We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no
place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the
plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by
reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws
guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment…
41
Primary Source: Rules for Riding Desegregated Buses
Source: Montgomery Improvement Association, “Integrated Bus Suggestions,” December 15,
1956.
This is a historic week because segregation on buses has now been declared
unconstitutional. Within a few days the Supreme Court Mandate will reach Montgomery and
you will be reboarding integrated buses. This places upon us all a tremendous responsibility
of maintaining, in face of what could be some unpleasantness, a calm and loving dignity
befitting good citizens and members of our Race. If there is violence in word or deed it must
not be our people who commit it.
For your help and convenience the following suggestions are made. Will you read, study and
memorize them so that our non-violent determination may not be endangered. First, some
general suggestions:
1. Not all white people are opposed to integrated buses. Accept goodwill on the part of
many.
2. The whole bus is now for the use of all people. Take a vacant seat.
3. Pray for guidance and commit yourself to complete non-violence in word and action
as you enter the bus.
4. Demonstrate the calm dignity of our Montgomery people in your actions.
5. In all things observe ordinary rules of courtesy and good behavior.
6. Remember that this is not a victory for Negroes alone, but for all Montgomery and
the South. Do not boast! Do not brag!
7. Be quiet but friendly; proud, but not arrogant; joyous, but not boisterous.
8. Be loving enough to absorb evil and understanding enough to turn an enemy into a
friend.
Now for some specific suggestions:
1. The bus driver is in charge of the bus and has been instructed to obey the law.
Assume that he will cooperate in helping you occupy any vacant seat.
2. Do not deliberately sit by a white person, unless there is no other seat.
42
3. In sitting down by a person, white or colored, say "May I" or "Pardon me" as you sit.
This is a common courtesy.
4. If cursed, do not curse back. If pushed, do not push back. If struck, do not strike back,
but evidence love and goodwill at all times.
5. In case of an incident, talk as little as possible, and always in a quiet tone. Do not get
up from your seat! Report all serious incidents to the bus driver.
6. For the first few days try to get on the bus with a friend in whose non-violence you
have confidence. You can uphold one another by glance or prayer.
7. If another person is being molested, do not arise to go to his defense, but pray for the
oppressor and use moral and spiritual forces to carry on the struggle for justice.
8. According to your own ability and personality, do not be afraid to experiment with
new and creative techniques for achieving reconciliation and social change.
9. If you feel you cannot take it, walk for another week or two. We have confidence in
our people.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
THE MONTGOMERY IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION
The Rev. M. L. King, Jr., President
The Rev. W. J. Powell, Secretary
43
Primary Source: Handbill from Central Alabama Citizens Council Rally
Source: Handbill produced by the Central Alabama Citizens Council (a white, prosegregation group) and distributed at a February 10, 1956, rally in Montgomery, Alabama.
Available at http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/rosaparks/1/sources/23/.
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper
methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives.
We hold these truths to be self evident that all whites are created equal with certain rights;
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers.
In every stage of the bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black
slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers. The conduct should not be dwelt upon because
behind them they have an ancestral background of Pigmies, head hunters and snot suckers.
My friends it is time we wised up to these black devils. I tell you they are a group of two
legged agitators who persist in walking up and down our streets protruding their black lips.
If we don’t stop helping these African flesh eaters, we will soon wake up and find Rev. King
in the White House.
LET’S GET ON THE BALL WHITE CITIZENS.
The Book "Declaration of Segregation" will appear April, 1956. If this appeals to you be sure
to read the book.
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Primary Source: Martin Luther King, Jr., “Non-Violence and Racial Justice”
Source: Excerpts from Martin Luther King, Jr., “Non-Violence and Racial Justice,” Christian
Century, February 6, 1957.
…the basic question which confronts the world’s oppressed is: How is the struggle against
the forces of injustice to be waged? There are two possible answers. One is resort to the all
too prevalent method of physical violence and corroding hatred. The danger of this method
is its futility. Violence solves no social problems; it merely creates new and more
complicated ones. Through the vistas of time a voice still cries to every potential Peter, "Put
up your sword!" The shores of history are white with the bleached bones of nations and
communities that failed to follow this command. If the American Negro and other victims of
oppression succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle for justice, unborn
generations will live in a desolate night of bitterness, and their chief legacy will be an
endless reign of chaos.
The alternative to violence is non-violent resistance. This method was made famous in our
generation by Mohandas K. Gandhi, who used it to free India from the domination of the
British empire. Five points can be made concerning nonviolence as a method in bringing
about better racial conditions.
First, this is not a method for cowards; it does resist. The non-violent resister is just as
strongly opposed to the evil against which he protests as is the person who uses violence.
His method is passive or non-aggressive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive
toward his opponent. But his mind and emotions are always active, constantly seeking to
persuade the opponent that he is mistaken. This method is passive physically but strongly
active spiritually; it is non-aggressive physically but dynamically aggressive spiritually.
A second point is that non-violent resistance does not seek to defeat or humiliate the
opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The non-violent resister must often
express his protest through non-co-operation or boycotts, but he realizes that non-cooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense
of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of
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non-violence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is
tragic bitterness.
A third characteristic of this method is that the attack is directed against forces of evil rather
than against persons who are caught in those forces. It is evil we are seeking to defeat, not
the persons victimized by evil. Those of us who struggle against racial injustice must come
to see that the basic tension is not between races. As I like to say to the people in
Montgomery, Alabama: "The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro
people. The tension is at bottom between justice and injustice, between the forces of light
and the forces of darkness. And if there is a victory it will be a victory not merely for 50,000
Negroes, but a victory for justice and the forces of light. We are out to defeat injustice and
not white persons who may happen to be unjust."
A fourth point that must be brought out concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids
not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. In struggling for human dignity the oppressed people
of the world must not allow themselves to become bitter or indulge in hate campaigns. To
retaliate with hate and bitterness would do nothing but intensify the hate in the world.
Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the
chain of hate. This can be done only by projecting the ethics of love to the center of our lives.
In speaking of love at this point, we are not referring to some sentimental emotion. It would
be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense. "Love" in this
connection means understanding good will… we love men not because we like them, not
because their attitudes and ways appeal to us, but because God loves them. Here we rise to
the position of loving the person who does the evil deed while hating the deed he does.
Finally, the method of non-violence is based on the conviction that the universe is on the
side of justice. It is this deep faith in the future that causes the non-violent resister to accept
suffering without retaliation. He knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic
companionship. This belief that God is on the side of truth and justice comes down to us
from the long tradition of our Christian faith... So in Montgomery we can walk and never get
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weary, because we know that there will be a great camp meeting in the promised land of
freedom and justice.
This, in brief, is the method of non-violent resistance. It is a method that challenges all
people struggling for justice and freedom. God grant that we wage the struggle with dignity
and discipline. May all who suffer oppression in this world reject the self-defeating method
of retaliatory violence and choose the method that seeks to redeem. Through using this
method wisely and courageously we will emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of
man’s inhumanity to man into the bright daybreak of freedom and justice.
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Primary Source: Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet”
Source: Excerpts from Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet,” Cleveland, Ohio, April 3, 1964.
Just as it took nationalism to remove colonialism from Asia and Africa, it'll take black
nationalism today to remove colonialism from the backs and the minds of twenty-two
million Afro-Americans here in this country. And 1964 looks like it might be the year of the
ballot or the bullet.
Why does it look like it might be the year of the ballot or the bullet? Because Negroes have
listened to the trickery and the lies and the false promises of the white man now for too
long, and they're fed up. They've become disenchanted. They've become disillusioned.
They've become dissatisfied. And all of this has built up frustrations in the black community
that makes the black community throughout America today more explosive than all of the
atomic bombs the Russians can ever invent. Whenever you got a racial powder keg sitting in
your lap, you're in more trouble than if you had an atomic powder keg sitting in your lap.
When a racial powder keg goes off, it doesn't care who it knocks out the way. Understand
this, it's dangerous.
And in 1964, this seems to be the year. Because what can the white man use, now, to fool us?
After he put down that March on Washington – and you see all through that now, he tricked
you, had you marching down to Washington. Had you marching back and forth between the
feet of a dead man named Lincoln and another dead man named George Washington,
singing, "We Shall Overcome."
He made a chump out of you. He made a fool out of you. He made you think you were going
somewhere and you end up going nowhere but between Lincoln and Washington.
So today our people are disillusioned. They've become disenchanted. They've become
dissatisfied. And in their frustrations they want action. And in 1964 you'll see this young
black man, this new generation, asking for the ballot or the bullet.…
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Twenty-two million black victims of Americanism are waking up and they are gaining a new
political consciousness, becoming politically mature. And as they become – develop this
political maturity, they're able to see the recent trends in these political elections. They see
that the whites are so evenly divided that every time they vote, the race is so close they have
to go back and count the votes all over again. Which means that any block, any minority that
has a block of votes that stick together is in a strategic position. Either way you go, that's
who gets it. You're in a position to determine who'll go to the White House and who'll stay in
the doghouse.
You're the one who has that power. You can keep [Lyndon] Johnson in Washington D.C., or
you can send him back to his Texas cotton patch. You're the one who sent Kennedy to
Washington. You're the one who put the present Democratic administration in Washington,
D.C. The whites were evenly divided. It was the fact that you threw 80 percent of your votes
behind the Democrats that put the Democrats in the White House.
When you see this, you can see that the Negro vote is the key factor. And despite the fact
that you are in a position to be the determining factor, what do you get out of it? The
Democrats have been in Washington, D.C. only because of the Negro vote. They've been
down there four years. And they're – all other legislation they wanted to bring up they've
brought it up, and gotten it out of the way, and now they bring up you. And now they bring
up you! You put them first and they put you last. Because you're a chump! A political chump.
In Washington, D.C., in the House of Representatives there are 257 who are Democrats. Only
177 are Republican. In the Senate there are 67 Democrats. Only 33 are Republicans. The
party that you backed controls two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate
and still they can't keep their promise to you. 'Cause you're a chump.
Any time you throw your weight behind a political party that controls two-thirds of the
government, and that party can't keep the promise that it made to you during election-time,
and you're dumb enough to walk around continuing to identify yourself with that party,
you're not only a chump but you're a traitor to your race…
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This is why I say it's the ballot or the bullet. It's liberty or it's death. It's freedom for
everybody or freedom for nobody. America today finds herself in a unique situation.
Historically, revolutions are bloody, oh yes they are. They have never had a bloodless
revolution. Or a non-violent revolution. That don't happen even in Hollywood. You don't
have a revolution in which you love your enemy. And you don't have a revolution in which
you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn
systems. Revolutions destroy systems.
A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She's the only country in history,
in the position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution. The Russian
Revolution was bloody, Chinese Revolution was bloody, French Revolution was bloody,
Cuban Revolution was bloody. And there was nothing more bloody than the American
Revolution. But today, this country can become involved in a revolution that won't take
bloodshed. All she's got to do is give the black man in this country everything that's due him,
everything.
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