THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Civil Right Movement
• Early vs. Modern
Civil Rights
Movement
• Searching for an
Identity and
Leadership
• Leaders,
Activities, and
Organizations
Civil Right Movement
• Plessy v Ferguson
– 1896
– “14th amendment does not prevent private
organization from discriminating”
– Legalized Jim Crow Laws
– Segregated accommodations were legal provided
they were equal
– “separate but equal”
Civil Right Movement
• Booker T. Washington
– Not for social equality
– Remain apart
– Founder of Tuskegee
Institution in 1891
– Focus – industrial
education/learn a skill
– Vocational jobs to
improve economic
situation
– Problem?
Civil Right Movement
• W.E.B. Du Bois
– Ph.D. from Harvard
– Founder of the NAACP in
1910
• Grew out of the Niagara
Movement
– Never except inferiority
– Use courts to fight
discrimination
– Rejected Washington’s
ideas
– “The Talented Tenth”
Civil Right Movement
• Marcus Garvey
– Black nationalist
– United Negro
Improvement
Association in 1914
– Stressed racial
separation from
white
– Black only
businesses etc.
– Encouraged a return
to Africa
Civil Right Movement
• In the 1950s
– 15 million African
Americans living in the
United States
– 2/3 living in the south
– Jim Crows laws ruled their
lives
– Legal segregation in schools,
parks, transportation,
hospitals etc
Civil Right Movement
• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
– Bring about change through peaceful
measures
– Founded by James Farmers in 1942
James Farmer 1920-1999
Civil Right Movement
• Brown v Board of
Education of Topeka,
Kansas
– May 17, 1954
– Supreme Court
unanimously decided
segregation violates the
14th amendment
Brown Family
Civil Right Movement
• Chief Justice Earl Warren
• 1. Education plays a vital role
in training children for
citizenship, employment and
leisure-time activities
• 2. Separating black children
from others solely on the basis
of race “generates a feeling of
inferiority that may affect
them in a way unlikely to be
undone”
• 3. therefore, separate
educational facilities are
inherently unequal
– Reversed Plessy v Ferguson
– Thurgood Marshall argues the
case
Civil Right Movement
• Emmett Till
– Killed in 1955
– Brings the problem to the attention of
the nation
Civil Right Movement
• Montgomery Bus Boycott 1955-1956
– Rosa Parks “mother of the civil rights
movement” refused to leave seat for a white
man
– Arrested for violating the city’s segregation law
– Year long boycott of the bus company
– Calls by pastors of church to lead resistance
– City agreed to change the law to allow black to
sit anywhere
– Event produced a leader, an organization,
technique
• Martin Luther King Jr.
• SCLC
• Non- violent civil disobedience
Civil Right Movement
• Integration at Little Rock 1957
– Orval Faubus, gov. of Arkansas,
mobilized the National Guard to prevent
nine African-Americans students from
attending
– Direct challenge to federal authority
– Eisenhower sent in army (paratroopers)
to restore order and protect the “Little
Rock Nine”
Civil Right Movement
• Woolworth lunch counter in
Greensboro, North Carolina
– Greensboro four
– Feb. 1st Bought items at
Woolworth than sat down to
order coffee
– Not served
– Result
• July desegregated lunch
counters
• Over 70,000 people
participated in sit-in
through out the South
• Press they received
Civil Right Movement
• Student Nonviolent Coordination
Committee (SNCC)
– Grew out of SCLC
– For students
– Leaders was Robert Moses
– was organized to advance the "sit-in"
movement
Civil Right Movement
• Freedom Rides
– Spring of 1961
– SNCC members joined with activists from the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a New
York-based civil rights organization to encourage
the Freedom Rides
– Placed white and black students on interstate
busses to test the new court decision to
desegregate waiting rooms and dining facilities
at bus stops
– In deep South response was violent
– Attorney General Robert Kennedy assigned
federal marshals to protect riders
Civil Right Movement
• Integration of “Ole Miss”
– 29 yr old veteran James Meredith
– Arrival touched off riots
• Mostly KKK members NOT students
• Gov Ross Barnett refused to allow to register
• Announced state laws were superior to federal laws
– Pres. Kennedy federalized Miss. National Guard
– Took 400 Marshals and 3000 troops to enroll
him
– Meredith remained and graduated in 1963
– Cost 200 lives and 4 million in taxpayer’s $
Civil Right Movement
• University of Alabama
– Vivian Malone
– Gov George Wallace stood in doorway
– National Guard was federalized
– Wallace walked away
Civil Right Movement
• Birmingham, Alabama
– Rev. Shuttlesworth asked
MLK to come to city
– Most segregated big city in
America
– Test nonviolence
– It was a planned non-violent
campaign
– Police Commissioner “Bull”
Connor decided to crush the
protest
– Police used fire hoses, police
dogs and clubs
– TV carried scene to the
nation
Civil Right Movement
• MLK arrested
– Leaders felt MLK was pushing
too hard/too fast
– Response “Letters from
Birmingham”
– Kids march, 1000 arrested
– Result
• End to segregation in
Birmingham
• HUGE victory
• Kennedy on TV asked Congress
to pass a Civil Rights Bill
• Nation saw racism in the South
at its worst
Civil Right Movement
• March on Washington (Aug 1963)
– To support and pressure Kennedy
– 250,00 African Americans marched on
nation’s capital
– “I have a Dream”
Civil Right Movement
• Civil Rights Act
– Three months later Kennedy was
assassinated
– Bill wasn’t close to passing
• Southern Congressmen had a filibuster going
– Johnson addressed Congress
• “…couldn’t more eloquently honor Pres.
Kennedy’s memory”
– Passed in June 1964
Civil Right Movement
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
– Elections:
• Prohibited election officials from applying different
standards to blacks and whites voting
– Public Accommodations:
• Forbade discrimination in public places
• Forbade discrimination in government owned or operated
facilities
– Federally Assisted Programs
• Allowed the government to withhold aid from states involving
discrimination
– Employment
• Prohibited discriminatory practices by employers, agencies,
and labor union
• No discriminatory hiring on basis of race, sex , religion or
nationality
Civil Right Movement
• 24th Amendment
– Passed in 1964
– Prohibited the use
of poll taxes as a
requirement for
voting in a federal
election
Civil Right Movement
• Voting Act of 1965
– A result of Selma, Alabama
incident
– State troops assaulted
demonstrators as they marched
to the state capital
– President Johnson “We shall over
come”
– Outlawed literacy test
– Federal examiners in to register
voters where irregularities
existed
– Signed 100 years after the Civil
War ended
Civil Right Movement
• Results of Civil Rights
– Right to vote
• South would never be the same again
• Served in politics at all level
– Segregation became illegal
– Ended an Era
• Civil Rights campaigns in the South led by
peaceful moderates
• Lets go North!
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can
do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can
do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies
violence and toughness multiplies toughness in a
descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction
of evil………must be broken, or we shall be plunged
into the dark abyss of annihilation."
» Martin Luther King Jr.