Civil Rights Movement
Chapter 28
Read the first three (3) pages of this chapter in your text. Note the import of the actions of Rosa Parks,
on December 1, 1955.
I. Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.
A. World War II caused major African American migration to the North
because of the war industries.
B. 1947: Harry S. Truman passes the Civil Rights Acts.
C. 1947: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
NAACP, has a membership of 500,000. The NAACP is beginning a legal
assault on segregation.
D. Due to the 1946 USSC decision, Morgan v Virginia, CORE, Congress on
Racial Equality, sponsors an interracial non-violent demonstration. This
demonstration is the FIRST Freedom Ride, it takes place in North Carolina.
E. 1947: Jackie Robinson breaks the color barrier in sports.
F. 1950: Ralph Bunche, an African American, receives the Nobel Peace Prize for
his work in settling the Arab-Israeli Crisis in 1948.
II. Beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s.
A. NAACP’s plan: Chip away at Plessy v Ferguson.
1. 1938: Missouri v ex rel Gaines: University of Missouri Law School
found at fault for not accepting Black student. This violated the equal
protection under the Fourteenth Amendment.
B. 1950: McLaurin v Oklahoma State Regents , the Law School was found at
fault for not allowing black students to sit, eat, and study in the same facilities as
white students was a badge of inferiority.
C. Thurgood Marshall (NAACP)takes direct aim at Plessy v Ferguson.
1. 5 similar cases, all questioning the “separate but equal “doctrine
combined in one, Brown v The Board of Education, of Topeka, Kansas.
Brown was a black elementary student, living 3 blocks from a white
elementary school, but forced to attend the black elementary school, 30 minutes away.
2. Thurgood Marshall argues: separate is inherently unequal, that
psychologically separate schools for black students leads to negative
self-image.
3. 1953: Chief Justice of the USSC, Fred Vinson dies. DDE appoints
Warren Burger as the new Chief Justice. Burger is a conservative, DDE
does not expect Burger to do anything out of the ordinary.
D. The Warren Burger Court becomes THE most liberal USSC in history.
May 17,1954: Brown v The Board of Education decision:
1. Segregation on the basis of race deprives a child of a equal education.
2. Segregation deprives the plaintiff of equal protection of the law
guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
E. Enforcement:
1. USSC leaves enforcement to local school boards with the federal
district judges as monitors.
2. Various methods used to get around Brown v Board of Education.
3. Little Rock Crisis:
a. Central High School, 9 black students, September 1957.
b. Governor Orval Faubus and the National Guard
c. DDE, the 101 st Airborne, September 24, 1957.
d. Governor Faubus closes school system, 1958-1959.
III. Freedom 1957 - 1962.
A. Montgomery, Alabama. Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks, December 1, 1955.
B. Reverend Martin Luther King MLK Background.
C. Gandhi’s non-violent civil disobedience
D. 1957: Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC, formed by
MLK and 100 Black ministers.
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1. non-violence is not a symbol of weakness, but of strength and courage.
2. President: MLK, Treasurer: Ralph Abernathy
E. February 1960: Greensboro, North Carolina, SIT-IN
1. 4 black college students at the Woolworth counter.
2. April 21, 1960: 45 students arrested for sit-in.
3. Black community boycotts targeted stores.
4. July 25, 1960: Blacks eat at Woolworth’s counter.
F. Nashville Sit-in led by Rev. James Lawson
1. Rule of Conduct for Sit-In.
G. Atlanta: College students sit-in at City Hall
1. arrests, boycotts of targeted businesses.
2. September 1961: Atlanta desegregates.
H. April 1960: Conference of 120 black student activists form: SNCC, Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
1. role of Ella Baker, and James Lawson
2. Tactics of SNCC: direct confrontation, mass action, civil disobedience,
locally based, spontaneous.
I. Election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy 1960
1. JFK and the Civil Rights Movement
2. Role of Executive Action in civil rights.
J. Freedom Rides:
1. Brainchild of James Farmer, national director of CORE, Congress On
Racial Equality (1942). It was to test the anti-segregation laws on interstate commerce. The CORE plan was to press the issue but at the same
time informing the FBI and Justice Department of their actions.
2. Two busses of racially integrated riders left Washington DC in May,
1961. The busses traveled to the South. In Anniston, Alabama, one bus
was disabled and its riders violently beaten. The second bus arrived in
Birmingham and were beaten too. The FBI watched these incidents.
3. A new group of freedom riders left Birmingham for Montgomery,
Alabama. The violence that this group met in Montgomery made national
and international news. Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked for
a cooling off period.
4. Freedom rides in Mississippi: jail and intimidation.
K. Albany Movement: (Mississippi) Target small, southern towns with
sit-ins and boycotts. Failure, WHY?
L. Fall 1962: James Meredith, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi,
federal troops.
IV. The Movement: High Tide 1963 1965.
A. Need for Civil Rights Bill is the impetus.
B. Birmingham, MLK and SCLC: existing conditions and actions taken by
civil rights activists. MLK’s “Letter From Birmingham”: Justice delayed is
Justice denied.
The violence in Birmingham brings national attention.
C. On May 10, 1963 mediation efforts bring a lull in action.
D. Governor George Wallace and the Klu Klux Klan react with violence, federal
are sent to Birmingham.
E. In June, Medgar Evers, head of the Mississippi NAACP is killed.
F. JFK endorses the civil rights activists.
G. High Point of Civil Rights Movement: March on Washington D.C.
August 1963, over one-quarter million people, MLK’s “ I Have A Dream”
speech.
H. September 1963: Birmingham Baptist Church blown-up, 4 young girls killed.
(Spike Lee documentary recently released)
I. November 22, 1963: JFK assassinated.
J. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, LBJ, background information.
1. July 2, 1964: Civil Rights Act of 1964: end discrimination in public
troops
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accommodations, no job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex,
or national origin. No bias in federally funded programs. The Justice
Department is to desegregate public schools and other facilities. Creation
of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, EEOC.
K. SNCC’s Freedom Summer Project: Register Black voters.
1. Mississippi program: faults and disaster.
a. June 1964: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, James
Chaney.
L. Limits of Non-Violence:
1. Nation of Islam: Malcolm X, background
a. self-reliance, highly disciplined, separate “nation for blacks”,
racial solidarity.
b. 1964: Malcolm X, new name, wants to cooperate with the
civil rights movement, assassinated in 1965.
M. Voting Rights Act: 1965
1. LBJ: landslide victory in 1964, the African American vote, the
composition of Congress.
2. MLK, SCLC, and SNCC go to Selma, Alabama to meet Jim Clark.
4. March 1965, March from Selma to Montgomery ends in Bloody Sunday
5. New march: 30,000 , brings national attention and passage of the
Voting Rights Act, 1965. Federal supervision of voter registration,
outlawing of literacy test and other methods used to exclude black voters.