The Civil Rights Movement
Essential Question:
How has the Civil Rights Movement changed America?
 Background
o Amendments
 13th (1865)
 Officially ended slavery
th
 14 (1868)
 Citizenship for African Americans
 Guaranteed “equal protection of the laws”
th
 15 (1870)
 Suffrage for African Americans
th
 19 (1920)
 Suffrage for women
o Segregation
 Separation of the races in the South after the Civil War
 Justified by the idea of “separate but equal”
o Jim Crow Laws
 Established segregation
 Included:
 Literacy tests
 Poll taxes
 Grandfather clauses
o No literacy tests/poll taxes if ancestors were registered
to vote
o Ku Klux Klan (KKK)
 White supremacist organization
 Used violence and intimidation
o Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
 Supreme Court decision
 Declared that segregation was constitutional
o National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
 Played a major role in the Civil Rights Movement
 Emmett Till (Mississippi, 1955)
o Murdered for talking to a white woman
o Mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral
 Civil Rights leaders
o Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK)
 Baptist minister
 Methods based on non-violent protests of Gandhi in India
o Malcolm X
 Muslim minister
 Believed in using violence
 Desegregation
o Military
 President Truman integrated the military (1948)
o Schools
 Mendez v. Westminster (1947)
 Federal court decision
 Ended segregation of Mexican-American students in
California schools
 Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
 Supreme Court decision
 Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson
o “Separate is inherently unequal”
 Declared segregation of public schools unconstitutional
 Little Rock (Arkansas, 1957)
 Nine black students enrolled at Little Rock Central High
 Governor tried to stop them
 President Eisenhower enforced Brown v. Board decision
o Transportation
 Montgomery Bus Boycott (Alabama, 1955-56)
 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat
 MLK helped organize a boycott
o 381 days
o Supreme Court declared bus segregation
unconstitutional
 Freedom Riders (1961)
 Protesters tested desegregation of Southern bus stations
o Many were harassed, arrested, beaten, etc.
o Forced the federal government to enforce the law
o Sports
 Baseball
 Jackie Robinson
o 1st African American in Major League Baseball
(1947)
 Football
 Ernie Davis
o 1st African American to win the Heisman Trophy
(1961)
 Basketball
 Texas Western (UTEP)
o All-black starting line-up
o NCAA basketball champions (1966)
 More non-violent protests
o Sit-ins
 Protesters sat at lunch counters
 Attacked by segregationists
 Forced restaurants to change policy
o Birmingham campaign (Alabama, 1963)
 MLK organized protests
 Police used violence to break up protests
 Media coverage outraged the nation
o March on Washington (1963)
 250,000 people gathered to support JFK’s civil rights bill
 MLK delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech
o Freedom Summer (Mississippi, 1964)
 Effort to register African American voters
 3 volunteers (1 black, 2 white) were murdered by the KKK
 LBJ sent the FBI to investigate
o Selma to Montgomery marches (Alabama, 1965)
 Motivated by:
 Murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by police
 Voting rights violations
 Governor blocked the Edmund Pettus Bridge with state police
 March was successful on the third attempt
 Arizona
o Employment and housing discrimination
o Desegregated all schools (1951)
o MLK gave a speech at ASU in 1964
o One of the last states to recognize MLK Day (1992)
 Other civil rights organizations
o United Farm Workers
 Led by Cesar Chavez
 Used non-violent protests
 Won rights for farm workers in the Southwest
o National Organization for Women (NOW)
 Fought for equal rights in the workplace
 Supported the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
 Not enough votes to be added to the Constitution
 Civil Rights laws
o Civil Rights Act (1964)
 Ended segregation nationwide
o Voting Rights Act (1965)
 Outlawed literacy tests, poll taxes, etc.
o Indian Rights Act (1968)
 Bill of Rights applies to reservations
o Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
 Reasonable accommodations
o Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (1990)
 Special Education
o Title IX (1972)
 Prohibits discrimination based on gender in education
 Assassinations
o Malcolm X (1965)
 New York City
 African American Muslims
o MLK (1968)
 Memphis, Tennessee
 James Earl Ray