America during the 1950s and 1960s…
 Civil
War Amendments
• 13th Amendment: abolished slavery
• 14th Amendment: granted citizenship to
• 15th
 Civil
everyone born in the United States
Amendment: granted the right to vote
to all male citizens
Rights Act (1875)
• outlawed segregation in public facilities
• declared unconstitutional in 1883
 ruled
that “separate but equal” does
not violate the 14th amendment
 led
to Jim Crow laws, mainly in the
South
 The
Great Migration
 World
War II
• increased demand for workers led to more
jobs for African-Americans, Latinos and
women
• nearly 1 million African-Americans served in
the armed forces
(National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People)
 created in 1909
 legal
strategy focused on the
inequality between
separate schools
 Thurgood
Marshall
• lawyer who began to argue cases
for the NAACP
 Supreme
Court ruled unanimously
that school segregation was
unconstitutional
 “In
the field of public education, the
doctrine of separate but equal has no
place.”
~Chief Justice Earl Warren
 reaction
was mixed and particularly
negative in the South
 within
a year, more than 500 districts
had desegregated
 Brown
II (1955) ordered
desegregation “with all deliberate
speed”
 Governor
Orval Faubus orders the
National Guard to turn away the 9 AfricanAmerican students who will integrate Little
Rock Central H.S. (1957)
a
federal judge ordered Faubus to let the
students enter
 they
faced discrimination/abuse when
they tried to desegregate
 President
Eisenhower placed the Arkansas
National Guard under federal control and
ordered paratroopers into Little Rock
 Faubus
shut down Central H.S.
the next year, rather than
continue integration
 first
civil rights law since
Reconstruction
 gave
the attorney general greater
power over school desegregation and
gave the federal government
jurisdiction over violations of AfricanAmerican voting rights
 December
1, 1955- Rosa Parks refuses
to give up her seat
 after
her arrest, leaders of the AfricanAmerican community formed the
“Montgomery Improvement
Association” and organized a boycott of
the buses
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is elected to lead the
group
 African-Americans
refused to ride the
buses for 381 days
 they
remained non-violent
 late
1956, the Supreme Court outlawed
bus segregation
 Why
did this approach work?
 became
 used
a leader of the movement
nonviolent techniques
• ex: civil disobedience-refusal to obey an
unjust law
 1957—with
other ministers and civil
rights leaders founded the SCLC
• purpose: “to carry on nonviolent crusades
against the evils of second-class
citizenship”
• hoped to gain the support of ordinary
African Americans
 1960—students
at Shaw University
(N.C.) organized SNCC (Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee)
• February 1960-students staged a sit-in at a
whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth’s
 The movement spread and by late 1960,
students had desegregated lunch counters in 48
cities
 de
facto segregation-segregation
that exists by practice and custom
 de
law
jure segregation-segregation by
 Throughout
the 1960s, race riots
spread through the north.
• July 1964: Harlem
• August 1965: Watts
• 1967: 100+ cities
 These
riots showed that AfricanAmericans wanted and needed
economic equality.
 Carmichael
was the leader of SNCC.
 With “Black Power” he advocated his
organization stop recruiting whites
and focus on African-American pride
and their own goals..
 Oakland,
California (October 1966)
 Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
 preached self-defense
 assassination
 led
of Martin Luther King Jr.
to the worst urban rioting in U.S.
history
 Kerner
Commission-said the main
cause of urban violence was white
racism
 Civil
Rights Act of 1968-ended
discrimination in housing
 affirmative
action- programs that
make special effort to hire or enroll
groups that have suffered
discrimination
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3
SrIEM8X0qA&playnext_from=TL&vid
eos=c0KiY-XOVQs