The Civil Rights
Movement
Today’s Lecture
• Early Movement
– WWII
– Brown (1954)
• Massive Resistance
• Little Rock (1957)
– Bus Boycott (1955)
– Non-Violent Protest
• March On Washington
(1963)
– Freedom Summer
– Selma, AL (1965)
– Voting Rights Act
(1965)
• Reaction
– Black Power
• Malcolm X
– Black Panthers
• Memphis (1968)
– Civil Rights Act (1964)
• Continuation
• Action and Progress
‘Jim Crow’ America
World War Two
• 1 million African American soldiers; Combat
troops; officer status; international situation lead to
desegregation of military (1948)
• Racially motivated military riots; whites resisted black
economic improvement – fear of ‘uppity blacks’ mirrored
situation post-WWI;
first to lose jobs
post-war
• Black women
exchanged traditional
careers for essential war
work; ‘for the duration’
The Double ‘V’ Campaign
• ‘Double V’ Campaign: demanded victory over racism
at home as well as the Axis abroad
• Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) founded in 1942
• There is bound to be a
redefinition of the Negro’s
status as a result of this war”
– Gunnar Myrdal An American
Dilemma (1944)
• Migration made Southern
problem nationwide
• Increase in rights
consciousness
Brown v. Board of
Education of Topeka (1954)
• Conglomeration of many school segregation cases
• Argued at the Supreme Court by Thurgood Marshall
• Overseas reputation had deteriorated due to Jim Crow
laws – post war focus on human rights
• Made all school segregation
illegal (in theory)
– In practise, Brown not
effective
• First ‘big’ win for CRM
– Spurred backlash
Massive Resistance
• Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd
• March 1856: Southern Manifesto
– Signed by 101 Southern Senators
• Not Lyndon B.
• Eisenhower wary of international situation but
also white Southern votes
Little Rock, Arkansas 1957
Montgomery Bus Boycott
(1955)
• Rosa Parks
– Carefully planned ahead of
time
– Claudette Colvin
• Bus boycott lasts 381 days
• MLK comes to public
attention
– 1957: Southern Christian
Leadership Conference,
Non-Violent Protest
Greensboro’, NC 1960
March On
Washington
(August 1963)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE
The Civil Rights Act (1964)
• Banned racial
discrimination and
segregation in public
areas
• Equal Employment
Opportunity
Commission (EEOC)
• Did not address statemandated voting
restrictions
The Early Movement
• Multiple theories on success
• Derrick A. Bell Jr: Interestconvergence theory
– Grass roots combined with
white momentum
• Mary L. Dudziak: ‘Cold War
Imperative’ theory
– International situation spurred
Federal action
• Michael Klarman: Backlash
-
Massive Resistance spurred
grass roots activism
Freedom Summer
• 1961: Mississippi Campaign
– Student Non-violent Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) led
by Robert (Bob) Moses
• Council of Federated Organizations (COFO)
– NAACP/ SCLC/ SNCC/ CORE
• 1964 Freedom Summer
– Volunteers young, white, Jewish
– Freedom murders - publicity
• Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party (MFDP)
and Democratic Convention
Selma, Alabama (1965)
• https://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=fG_2ZwFhnys
• ‘Next great battle’
• Selma chosen as the location
• March to Montgomery
• Violently prevented
• Peaceful 2nd March
• Voting Rights Act (1965)
• Prevented registration
qualifications
• 1m – 3.1m black southern
voters by 1968
• 23 black office-holders –
1200 by 1972
MLK on the Defensive
• 1965: FBI leaked stories about his private life
• ‘Long hot summer’: 1965, then 1966, then 1967…
– Watts Riot; Chicago Riot; Newark Riot; Detroit Riot
– Spurred by disenchantment with the CRM
– Did not receive equality
• 1967: King came out
against the Vietnam War
• Rise of alternate methods
Black Power
• Dissatisfaction/ fracturing
• Malcolm X
– ‘if ballots don’t work, bullets will’
– Assassinated 21st Feb 1965
• 1966 SNCC and CORE
adopted Black Nationalism
– Advocated separatism
– SNCC led by Stokely Carmichael,
then by H. Rap Brown
– ‘Violence is necessary and it’s as
American as apple pie.’ - Brown
The Black Panthers
• 1966 BPs founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale,
Oakland, CA
– Encouraged black men to be like ‘panthers – smiling,
cunning, scientific, striking by night and sparing no one’
• Involved in both social
programs and police
shootouts
– High attrition rate
• Death/ arrest
– Splintered movement
and black/ white alliance
Memphis (April 4th 1968)
• MLK supporting
Garbage Workers’
strike
• Killed on hotel balcony
• Riots erupted in
over 100 cities
Mexico (1968)
Continuation of the Struggle
• Martin Luther King Jr National
Monument, Washington DC
• “Out of a mountain of despair, a
stone of hope
• 1964 Independence Ave
• Unfinished, as is the movement
Next time…
The 1960s