Civil Rights 1954- 1965
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the "separate
but equal" clause was unconstitutional because it violated the children's 14 amendment
rights by separating them solely on the classification of the color of their skin.
Chief Justice Warren delivered the court's opinion,
stating that "segregated schools are not equal and
cannot be made equal, and hence they are deprived of
the equal protection of the laws."_ This ruling in favor
of integration was one of the most significant strides
America has taken in favor of civil liberty. Plessy vs.
Ferguson was now struck down.
On August 28, 1955,14 year old Emmett Till
is beaten, shot and lynched by whites after
allegedly saying "bye, baby" to a white
woman in a store in Mississippi.
Thurgood Marshall leader of the
NAACP team that argued the
Brown vs. the Board Case.
Then on Dec 1st 1955 Rosa Parks took a seat on a Montgomery Bus.
Parks was an active member of The Civil Rights Movement and joined the
Montgomery chapter of NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People) in 1943.
She took a seat in the front row of the “colored section” the bus filled and Ms. Parks was
asked to give up her seat. Parks was arrested and charged with the violation of a
segregation law in The Montgomery City Code. Sparked the Montgomery Bus
Boycott
50 African American leaders in the community met to discuss what to do
about Rosa’s arrest.
They are led by the Ebenezer Baptist Church Minister Dr. Martin Luther King.
“People always say that I didn't give
up my seat because I was tired, but
that isn't true. I was not tired
physically, or no more tired than I
usually was at the end of a working
day. I was not old, although some
people have an image of me as being
old then. I was forty-two. No, the
only tired I was, was tired of giving
in.” -Rosa Parks Autobiography
Montgomery Bus Boycott
On December 5, 1955, through the rain, the African Americans in
Montgomery began to boycott the busses.
40,000 Black commuters walked to work, some as far as twenty miles.
The boycott lasted 382 days.
The bus companies finances struggled. Until the law that called for
segregation on busses was finally lifted.
Martin Luther King
In 1955 he became involved in The Montgomery Bus
Boycott. The Boycott was the start to his incredible
career as the most famous leader of the Civil Rights
movement.
Early in 1956, King’s home in Montgomery is bombed.
In 1957 King helped found the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC).
A group that used the authority and power of
Black churches to organize non-violent protest to support the Civil
Rights Movement.
King believed in the philosophy used by Gandhi in India known as
nonviolent civil disobedience. He applied this philosophy to protest
organized by the SCLC.
The civil disobedience led to media coverage of the daily inequities
suffered by Southern Blacks.
The televised segregation violence led to mass public sympathy. The
Civil Rights Movement became the most important political topic
during the early 60’s.
Integration of Clinton High School in Clinton, TN (1956)
● 12 African American students integrated all white Clinton HS-first school in TN to be
integrated.
● Governor Frank Clements sent National Guard to stop rioting and enroll students in
Clinton High School.
Little Rock High School - 1957
Efforts to integrate Little Rock, Ark., Central High School meet with legal
resistance and violence.
Gov. Orval Faubus predicts "blood will run in the streets" if African Americans
push effort to integrate.
Faubus refused to call out his National Guard
On Sept. 24, federal troops mobilize to protect the nine African American
students at the high school from white mobs trying to block the school's
integration.
1958
On October 25, more than 10,000 march down
Constitution Avenue and rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
The march includes delegations from most of the main
universities and colleges, church, labor, and civic
organizations, and from as far away as California.
Still recovering from a near-fatal stab wound, Dr. King is
unable to attend, and his wife Coretta reads his address to the
marchers.
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a
nonviolent protest group under the leadership
of James Farmer (1920-1999) was
established in Chicago.
In September 1959 CORE organizes a two-week workshop on
nonviolent direct action called the "September Action
Institute." It is held in Miami, and participants stage a series of sit-ins at the
segregated lunch counters of the Jackson-Byron and Grants department stores.
Both stores close their counters. The institute ends on the 20th, and JacksonByron tells CORE that they are reopening the counter on the following day
without segregation — that all races will be served. But when the counter
reopens, Blacks from CORE are refused service.
CORE resumes sit-in against Grants and Jackson-Byron on the the 23rd,
occupying all of Jackson-Byron's 40 seats from 10am to 3pm. The following
day, racists attack them. Miami police harass, and arrest the sit-ins on trumped
up charges. The sit-ins are temporarily suppressed, but are successfully
resumed by Miami CORE in 1960 when sit-ins sweep across the South.
1959
Fayette County TN Tent City for Evicted Voters (19591965)
Fayette and Haywood Counties lie just east of Memphis and
just north of the Mississippi state line. They're "cotton
counties" and in the 1950s Blacks outnumber whites 2 to 1.
Economically, culturally, and politically these two counties
are more like Mississippi than Tennessee, but they are governed by Tennessee
law. And unlike Mississippi, under Tennessee law Blacks are eligible to vote.
There is no literacy test, no poll tax, and no "grandfather clause." However, few
were allowed to vote because the two counties will not allow them to register.
When many tried to do so on August 1st, 1959, they were
told they couldn’t. Most of the people in the county were
still sharecroppers, living in shacks on white property-owners land.
When a motion was filed to allow them to vote, they were evicted
from their shacks and home by the white land owners of the county.
Many white businesses refused to do business with AfricanAmericans, meaning many had to travel over thirty miles to
Memphis to the basic necessities of life.
Shephard Towles a black land-owner, allowed those evicted to build a tent-city on his
land. Soon, there were hundreds of black people living on Towles’ land and in another
tent city near Moscow Tennessee. In November of 1960, the new Black voters
elect Republicans to county office for the first time since the end of
Reconstruction more than 80 years previous. They also vote for Democratic
senator Estes Kefauver who has supported them against the White Citizens
Council and defended their right to vote.
On Christmas night, 1960, Jim Forman records Georgia Mae Turner in her cold,
damp tent:
They say if you register, you going to have a hard time. Well, I had a hard time
before I registered. Hard times — you could have named me 'Georgia Mae
Hard Times.' The reason I registered, because I want to be a citizen. ... I
registered so that my children could get their freedom. — Georgia Mae
Turner.
In 1962, a federal court made it clear that landowners could not use economic
pressure and evict people as a way of insuring the would not vote. It tooks
years for many of the tent city residents to find places to live. But, in 1965,
with the Voting Rights Act, African Americans all over Tennessee were
allowed the right to vote.
1960
Four black freshmen from the North Carolina A&T
University planted themselves at Woolworth five-and-dime
store and refused to leave until they were served. Historian
Paul Harvey noted, "The young students who integrated
lunch counters in Greensboro and inspired the original SNCC
organizing conference also grew up in black churches. Two
of the four initial pioneering student demonstrators in
Greensboro attended Shiloh Baptist Church," (Harvey 192).
One of these students, Ezell Blair, was especially known for his commitment to the
Christian faith. After Israel's establishment as an independent state in 1948, "Blair told
his friends he would someday drink out of Woolworth's whites-only water fountain.
Surely, if the Jews had found freedom after thousands of years, then one day Negroes, too,
would enter their Promised Land,"The Ku Klux Klan reacts.
Led by George Dorsett — North Carolina's official State
Chaplain — they heckle and harass the students. The
students are not deterred. Hoping that their presence will
deter white violence, the NCA&T football team joins the
protests. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends
organizers to help train the students in the tactics and
strategies of Nonviolent Resistance. Finally, in July, the
national drugstore chains agree to serve all "properly
dressed and well behaved people," regardless of race. Nonviolence according to Dr. King has worked.
Nashville Student Movement (1960-1964)
I was really feeling stifled that fall. My goodness, I came to college to grow and expand,
and here I am shut in. In Chicago, I had had access, at least, to public accommodations,
lunch counters and what have you. So my response was, "Who's trying to change these
things?" Paul LaPrad, a white Fisk student, told me about the nonviolent workshops that
Jim Lawson was conducting. They were taking place a couple of blocks off campus. —
Diane Nash.
On Saturday, February 13, less than two weeks after the Greensboro sit-in,
more than 100 students commence the Nashville Student Movement —Created
by James Larson (seen below with Dr. King) it was the largest, best organized,
most disciplined, and most persistent of the student sit-in groups in the South.
They occupy the Kress, McClellan, and Woolworth's lunch counters. The
managers close the counters rather than serve Blacks.
Matthew
Walker,
Peggy
Alexander,
Diane Nash
and Stanley
Hemphill eat
at formally
segregated
counter in
Nashville,
Tennessee.
On April 19, the Attorney for the Nashville Sit- In students had his home is destroyed
by a terrorist bomb. More than 2,500 demonstrators — students and adults, including
some whites — silently march through Nashville to the steps of City Hall. There they
confront Mayor Ben West. Diane Nash then steps up to face the Mayor.
I confronted Mayor West with what his feelings were as a man, as a person. I was
particularly interested in that, as opposed to his just being a mayor. I have a lot of
respect for the way he responded. He didn't have to respond the way he did. He said that
he felt it was wrong for citizens of Nashville to be discriminated against at the lunch
counters solely on the basis of the color of their skin. That was the turning
point. — Diane Nash.
Soon the downtown stores began to desegregate. Nashville becomes the first
Southern city to at least begin desegregating its public facilities, though
demonstrations continue in Nashville until passage of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 finally makes overt, legally-sanctioned segregation illegal.
• SNCC Led by Harvard Grad & math teacher, Moses led
Students Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
• Moses took SNCC into the Civil
Rights movement and the African
American young people joined him.
• Pronounced Snick, the SNCC
became a movement for students.
• Moving away from the churches
and religious reasons, SNCC,
moved toward young activists.
• It also demanded immediate change instead of gradual
movement.
The Election of 1960 - John Kennedy and his brother Robert will help get Martin
Luther King out of jail in October of 1960 (the Nixon campaign
does nothing). A few weeks later, Kennedy defeats Nixon by
just .002 of the popular vote — the closest presidential election
in living memory (up to that time). Four years earlier, in the
election of 1956, Blacks voted Republican ("the party of
Lincoln") by a 60% majority. In 1960, JFK gets 70% of the
Black vote. Analysts conclude that it is this dramatic shift in
Black votes that gives Kennedy his narrow margin of victory in
several key northern industrial states (he wins the crucial swing state of Illinois
by only 5,000 votes). They attribute this sea-change in Black voting patterns to
his gesture of support for Dr. King.
It is pretty conclusive now that the Negro played a decisive role in electing the
president of the United States, and maybe for the first time we can see the
power of the ballot and what the ballot can do. Now we must remind Mr.
Kennedy that we helped him to get in the White House. We must remind Mr.
Kennedy that we are expecting him to use the whole weight of his office to
remove the ugly weight of segregation from the shoulders of our nation. — Dr.
King.
Freedom Rides
● organized by CORE and SNCC to force compliance with the Supreme
Court’s order to integrate interstate buses by refusing to segregate while
riding on buses in southern states
● riders encountered the most violence in Alabama and Mississippi
An integrated group of Freedom Riders got as far as Anniston, Alabama where
they were beaten, and the Greyhound bus was burned on May 4, 1961.
They needed Federal Government support.
● RFK’s Justice Dept. sent federal marshals to protect the
riders
President Kennedy & his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy
soon got the law passed to have Federal Marshal’s protect
riders on all forms of transportation.
1962 After being rejected for admission, James Meredith sued & won
admission to the University of Mississippi for entrance on the grounds of
racial discrimination. It required Attorney General Robert Kennedy to
send in Federal Marshals and Federal troops to get him finally enrolled
in October 1962.
I noticed in the hallway
a black janitor and he
had a mop under his
arm. And as I passed
him, he turned his body,
twisted his body, and
touched me with the mop handle. Now this delivered a message, and the
message was clear: "We are looking after you while you are here." — James
Meredith
1963
Letter from Birmingham Jail
King, wrote the letter after being arrested at a peaceful
protest in Birmingham, Alabama.
 The letter was in response to a letter sent to him
by eight Alabama Clergymen called, “A Call For
Unity.”
 The men recognized that injustices were
occurring in Birmingham but believed that the
battles for freedom should be fought in the
courtroom in not in the streets.
 In the letter, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King
justified civil disobedience by saying that without
forceful action, true civil rights would never be
achieved. Direct action is justified in the face of
unjust laws.
In the letter King justifies civil disobedience in the town
of Birmingham.
 “I cannot sit idly in Atlanta and not be concerned
about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
 “There can be no gain saying the fact that racial
injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is
probably the most thoroughly segregated city in
the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is
widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly
unjust treatment in the courts.
 “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed
forever. The yearning for freedom eventually
manifests itself.”
 “We know through painful experience that
freedom is never voluntarily given by the
oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.
 “Wait has almost always meant 'never.‘”
Still, he reminded his followers that, "One who breaks an unjust law must
do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty." Dr.
King also argued that segregation was a direct violation of God's laws,
writing, "segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically
un-sound, it is morally wrong and sinful."
Murder of Medgar Evers
• On June 12th, 1963, NAACP & Mississippi civil
rights leader Medgar Evers was gunned down
outside his home in Jackson.
• The District Attorney in LaFore County
Mississippi, refused to take anyone to trail
because of a lack of evidence. The prime suspect
Mississippi Klan Member Byron De la Beckwith seemed to have
gotten away with the crime.
• It took 31 years for Evers' killer to be brought to justice --
• In 1994, almost 30 years later, District Attorney Robert
DeLaughter got a jury in Jackson Miss. to find Byron de
la Beckwith guilty of Evers murder.
De la
Beckwith
was given
life in
prison.
He died
there in
2001.
1963-Governor George Wallace
stands in the door at the
University of Alabama
In a vain attempt to halt the enrollment of
black students Vivian Malone and James Hood,
Governor Wallace stood in front of Foster
Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. This became known as
the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door".
1963 the March on Washington
Known as the March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom it is where Dr. King's
well-known "I Have a Dream" is given.
Appropriately delivered on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial, King’s speech is
packed with religious references and
allusion
More than 250,000 Black and White Americans celebrated in a
joyous day of song, prayer and speeches. In a powerful speech,
Martin Luther King Jr. stated eloquently that he desired a world
were Black’s and whites to coexist equally.
The powerful words of Martin Luther King Jr.
…“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and
live out the true meaning of its creed: - 'We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal.’”
…“I have a dream that one day even
the state of Mississippi, a state
sweltering with the heat of injustice,
sweltering with the heat of
oppression, will be transformed into
an oasis of freedom and justice.”
…“I have a dream that my four little
children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character.”
…“black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics - will be able to join hands and
sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last!
Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
1963 - Bombing of Sixteenth St. Baptist Church Birmingham, AL
•
On September 15, less than three weeks after the March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom, a dynamite bomb planted by
Klansmen explodes inside 16th Street Baptist
Church, killing four young girls: Addie Mae
Collins (14), Denise McNair (11), Carole
Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14). More
than 20 others are injured in the attack, timed to
occur during a “Youth Day” tribute to the part of
local young people in the Birmingham Campaign.
It is the city’s 28th racial bombing.
Civil Rights Legislation
• In 1963, after the March on Washington, John Kennedy tried to bring
about a Civil Rights package to the Congress.
• He was killed before it could be voted on.
• Then in 1964, the new President, Lyndon Johnson got Congress to pass
the law in the “spirit of John Kennedy” the way it was originally drafted, &
signed into law.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Title I - No different standard for voting 22nd Amendment.
• Title II & III - No discrimination in public places or private areas open to
the public.
• Title IV –End of segregated public schools
• Title V -Withholding of Federal funds against organization who
discriminate.
• Title VI - Creation of the EEOC and illegal to discriminate on race color or
creed or gender.
• President Johnson promised to and did ENFORCE the law.
• There was still far more to go…