Liberty and Equality
in the Civil Rights Movement
Bill of Rights Institute
Kansas City, Kansas
October 27, 2015
Artemus Ward
Dept. of Political Science
Northern Illinois University
aeward@niu.edu
Jim Crow Origin
• The term Jim Crow is believed to have originated
around 1830 when a white, minstrel show performer,
Thomas “Daddy” Rice, blackened his face with charcoal
paste or burnt cork and danced a ridiculous jig while
singing the lyrics to the song, “Jump Jim Crow.”
• While traveling in the south, Rice created this character
after seeing either a disabled, elderly back man or
young black boy dancing and singing a song ending with
these chorus words:
• “Weel about and turn about and do jis so,
Eb’ry time I weel about I jump Jim Crow.”
• Some historians believe that a Mr. Crow owned a slave
who inspired Rice’s act—thus the reason for the Jim
Crow term in the lyrics.
• In any case, Rice incorporated the skit into his minstrel
act, and by the 1850s the “Jim Crow” character had
become a standard part of the minstrel show scene in
America.
• Youtube: http://youtu.be/T5FpKAxQNKU
• Youtube: http://youtu.be/ALTam2L9NhE
Jim Crow Laws
• Denying black men the right to vote through intimidation and violence was a first step in taking away their civil rights.
• Beginning in the 1890s southern states enacted literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate registration systems, and eventually
white only democratic party primaries to exclude black voters.
• In Mississippi, fewer than 9,000 of 147,000 voting age African-Americans were registered after 1890. In Louisiana, where
more than 130,000 black voters had been registered in 1896, the number plummeted to 1,342 by 1904.
• On the local level, most southern towns and municipalities passed strict vagrancy laws to control the influx of black
migrants and homeless people who poured into these urban communities in the years after the Civil War. In Mississippi, for
example, whites passed the notorious “Pig Law” of 1876, designed to control vagrant blacks at loose in the community. This
law made stealing a pig an act of grand larceny subject to punishment of up to five years in prison. Within two years, the
number of convicts in the state penitentiary increased from under three hundred people to over one thousand. It was this
law in Mississippi that turned the convict lease system into a profitable business, whereby convicts were leased to
contractors who sub-leased them to planters, railroads, levee contractors, and timber jobbers.
• Jim Crow laws only spread… Consider some examples:
• “Any white woman who shall suffer or permit herself to be got with child by a negro or mulatto…shall be sentenced to
the penitentiary for not less than eighteen months.” Maryland 1924
• “No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.” Atlanta, Georgia, 1926
The Fuller Court
1899. (L-R) Top: Rufus Peckham, George Shiras, Edward White, Joseph McKenna; Bottom: David Brewer,
John Marshall Harlan, Chief Justice Melville Fuller, Horace Gray, Henry Brown.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
• Louisiana passed an 1890 law segregating
the races on all railroads.
• A group of New Orleans residents of black
and mixed-race heritage challenged the law.
Their suit was supported by the railroads
who found the law too costly to administer.
• The group’s lawyer Albion Tourgee selected
Homer Plessy to test the law. Plessy was 7/8
white and 1/8 black.
• Plessy bought a first class ticket and was
arrested.
The Fuller Court hears oral argument in the Income Tax Cases, 1895. Old Senate Chamber, U.S. Capitol.
Justice Henry Billings Brown for the Court
• Writing for the 7-1 majority, Justice Henry Brown (a
Lincoln Republican and New Englander who supported
the abolitionist movement) said:
• “The object of the [14th] amendment was undoubtedly
to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before
the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been
intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to
enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or
a commingling of the two races upon terms
unsatisfactory to either.”
• “We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s
argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced
separation of the two races stamps the colored race with
a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of
anything found in the act, but solely because the colored
race chooses to put that construction upon it.”
Justice John Marshall Harlan Dissenting
• In dissent was Justice John Marshall Harlan (an aristocratic Kentuckian whose
family had owned slaves).
• “The Thirteenth Amendment….not only struck down the institution of
slavery…but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that
constitute badges of slavery or servitude….It was followed by the Fourteenth
Amendment, which added greatly to the dignity and glory of American
citizenship, and to the security of personal liberty.”
• “If a State can prescribe…that whites and blacks shall not travel as passengers
in the same railroad coach, why may it not so regulate the use of the
streets…to compel white citizens to keep on one side of the street and blacks
on the other? Sheriffs to assign whites to one side of a courtroom and blacks
to the other? Prohibit the commingling of the two races in the galleries of
legislative halls or in public assemblages?”
• “The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in the country. And so it
is, in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and power. So, I doubt
not, it will continue to be for all time, if it remains true to its great
heritage….But in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this
country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here.
Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among
citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law.”
Segregation Bolstered
• In response, the legislatures of the South
passed segregation laws affecting courtrooms, jails and prisons, restaurants, hotels,
bars, trains and train stations, buses,
streetcars, elevators, lunch counters,
swimming pools, beaches, baseball fields,
fishing holes, telephone booths, prizefights,
pool halls, factories, public toilets, hospitals,
cemeteries, schools, parks, water fountains,
libraries, recreational facilities, and almost
every other public and commercial facility.
• These laws, coupled with segregated private
lives, inevitably resulted in two separate
societies.
Supreme Court After Plessy
• In the years after Plessy, the Court applied the precedent to sustain segregation
that did not purport to be “separate but equal” as well as a number of other
instances of racial discrimination:
• Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899)—the Court refused to
interfere with a county school system that provided high school education for
whites but not African-Americans.
• Berea College v. Kentucky (1908)—the Court sustained a statute requiring
private colleges to exclude African-Americans.
• Newberry v. United States (1921)—the Court concluded that party primary
elections were private affairs, unknown to the framers and therefore beyond
the reach of the Constitution. The decision constitutionalized the “white
primary” in the one-party Democratic South.
• Gong Lum v. Rice (1927)—the Court affirmed the right of Mississippi to
segregate Chinese-Americans from public schools set up for whites.
Springfield Race Riot (1908)
• Throughout American history, white rage has always followed African
American activism and progress (e.g. when African Americans fought
for their freedom in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the
Civil War and after Reconstruction.
• On August 14, 1908, white mobs stormed through the African
American district in Springfield, Illinois burning homes and destroying
business establishments.
• It took more than 4,000 militiamen 2 days to restore order. By this
time, 2 people had already been lynched, and 2,000 African
Americans had fled the city.
• Shock waves reverberated throughout the nation that such violence
could occur in the North. The racist violence that occurred
heightened the need for action and mobilized reformers to act.
• A biracial coalition of activists, clergy, and scholars was formed in
1909 as a watchdog of liberties for African Americans. The coalition
members sought to create a unified front against future racial
injustice and committed themselves to improving the fragile
citizenship rights of African Americans.
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
(1909)
• Prompted by the violence Springfield, in 1909 the largest civil rights organization in the United States
was founded for the purpose of lobbying, political education, and legal action to alter the status of
African-Americans in education, voting, and labor.
• W.E.B. DuBois was among the founders of the NAACP and from 1910 to 1934 served it as director of
publicity and research, a member of the board of directors, and editor of The Crisis, its monthly
magazine.
• In its early years (1909-1923), the NAACP focused on ending racial violence—specifically, lynching
and mob violence. It raised public awareness through media campaigns, won over American
Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Warren Harding who issued public statements against lynching, and
secured the support of Congress.
• The backlash of white rage against the efforts of the NAACP was palpable and lynchings actually
increased.
Early Battles for Equality:
NAACP
• As the scourge of lynchings and the inequality of segregated public facilities grew worse, the disadvantages of the
black population increased. The NAACP and its affiliate, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) fought back through a litigation
strategy.
• At first, the NAACP relied on volunteer attorneys to bring legal challenges to racial injustice. In its first two decades it
participated in a number of Supreme Court cases that expanded the rights of African-Americans:
• Guinn v. United States (1915)—submitted a legal brief which helped persuade the Court to overturn the use of the
“grandfather clause” to disenfranchise black voters. Though originating in Connecticut in 1818, the grandfather
clause was used during the Jim Crow era by 6 southern states as a transparently racist attempt toth circumvent the 15th
Amendment. Grandfather clauses released men who were eligible to vote in 1867 (when the 15 was passed), and
their legal progeny, from literacy or property requirements for voting. This would ensure that older white illiterates
would remain enfranchised.
• Buchanan v. Warley (1917)—successfully challenged residential neighborhood segregation ordinances.
• Moore v. Dempsey (1923)—successfully argued that federal courts can intervene to protect the procedural rights of
defendants who are tried in mob-dominated state proceedings.
• John J. Parker Nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court (1930)—played a pivotal role in defeating the nomination after
it discovered that Parker had criticized political participation of African-Americans during the 1920 North Carolina
gubernatorial campaign.
Criminal
Justice
• In the Scottsboro Cases—Powell v. Alabama (1932) and Norris v. Alabama (1935)—the Supreme Court made
clear that it was no longer willing to ignore the blatant racism rampant in southern courtrooms, overturning
convictions of black teenagers accused of raping white girls.
• Hollins v. Oklahoma (1935) – the first of many decisions declaring exclusion of African American jurors
unconstitutional.
• Brown v. Mississippi (1936) – ruling that confessions exacted through torture violated the Due Process Clause.
• Chambers v. Florida (1940) – establishing that confessions obtained under duress were illegal.
• These decisions sent a message to state governments that a criminal trial had to have more than simply the
appearance of being conducted in a lawful manner—it had to have substance as well. The Supreme Court had
positioned itself as a major institutional player in the politics of race in Jim Crow America.
Charles Hamilton Houston
• The issue of racial discrimination often coalesced around education. After
a debate within the African-American community of whether separate
school or integrated schools were desirable, in the 1930s the NAACP
began litigation to overturn the separate but equal doctrine.
• Charles Hamilton Houston was a key figure in this early movement. He
attended Harvard Law School and became the first African-American
member of the Harvard Law Review in 1921. In 1924 he began teaching at
Howard University and was Dean of the Law School from 1929 to 1935. As
Dean, Houston transformed the law school from a traditional part-time
operation into a full-time school with a focus on civil rights law.
• Houston inspired many of his students, including Thurgood Marshall, who
graduated from Howard Law School in 1933, to devote substantial parts of
their careers to civil rights law.
• In 1935 Houston joined the staff of the NAACP in New York as its first fulltime counsel. He advocated a unified approach to resolving the disparate
problems associated with discrimination, segregation, and racial violence.
Charles Hamilton Houston
Thurgood Marshall
(L-R): Thurgood Marshall, Donald Murray, and Charles Hamilton Houston. Murray was the first African-American to enter the University of Maryland School of Law
since 1890 as a result of winning the landmark civil rights case Murray v. Pearson (1935), decided in Maryland courts.
The Road to Brown
Lloyd Gaines
Heman Marion Sweatt
G.W. McLaurin
• In Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938), the NAACP successfully
argued that Missouri could not exclude African Americans from its whiteonly law school if the alternative (an out-of-state legal education) was
inferior.
• In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the NAACP persuaded the Court to strike
down restrictive racial covenants—private agreements that prohibited
local property owners from selling or renting their properties to nonwhites.
• Military Desegregation (1948)—Executive Order 9981, issued by
President Harry Truman desegregated all branches of the United States
military.
• In Sweatt v. Painter (1950), the NAACP successfully argued that Texas
could not exclude African Americans from its white-only law school if the
alternative (a hastily constructed black-only law school) was inferior.
• In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950), the NAACP won again—
this time convincing the Court to strike down the University of
Oklahoma’s decision to segregate an African-American doctoral student
in the classroom, library, and lunchroom.
• In Henderson v. United States (1950), the U.S. government joined AfricanAmerican plaintiffs in convincing the U.S. Supreme Court that segregation
on interstate railroad dining cars was unconstitutional.
Brown v. Board of Education I (1954)
• The Browns
wanted their
daughter to
attend the local
white-only school
in Topeka, KS.
The black school
was far from the
Brown’s home, it
was what they
considered a
dangerous
journey, and was
in their view
inferior.
• They lost in the
lower courts
under the Plessy
doctrine.
Third-grader Linda Brown (L) and her sister Terri walk through the
railroad switchyard on their one-mile journey to the black
elementary school.
From Vinson to Warren
• In 1952, Brown was first heard by the Supreme Court and the justices were split 5-4
with Vinson, Clark, Reed, and Jackson probable dissenters if the Court were to
overturn Plessy.
• Justice Felix Frankfurter, a former Harvard Law Professor, was so intellectually
condescending to Vinson that during one of the Justices' private conferences,
Vinson rose from his seat and nearly punched Frankfurter in the nose. Frankfurter
later said that Vinson “found it ‘Hard to get away’ from the contemporary view by
the framers that the 14th amend did not prohibit segregation—for 90 years
segregated schools in the city of Washington.”
• The justices knew a divisive decision in the case would be political anathema to the
election campaign of 1952, so they decided to schedule the case for re-argument in
1953. But shortly before the Term began, Chief Justice Vinson unexpectedly died of
a heart attack. Frankfurter declared on the train back from the funeral, "This is the
first indication I have ever had that there is a God.“
• Who would be the new Chief? During the 1952 GOP presidential-nomination
campaign, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower made a deal with California Governor Earl
Warren (who had run as Thomas Dewey’s VP candidate and narrowly lost to Harry
Truman in 1948). Warren would support Ike for President if Ike selected him for the
first available seat on the Supreme Court. Ike agreed. Following Vinson’s death,
Warren got the appointment.
Felix Frankfurter
Fred Vinson
Waiting for courtroom seats,
the Great Hall, U.S. Supreme
Court, 1953.
The New Chief Justice:
From Division to Unanimity
• In his memoirs, Justice William O. Douglas (1980, 114-115) recounted the internal politics:
• “On December 12, 1953, at the first Conference after the second argument, Warren suggested that the cases
be discussed informally and no vote be taken. He didn’t want the Conference to split up into two opposed
groups. Warren’s approach to the problem and his discussions in Conference were conciliatory; not those of an
advocate trying to convince recalcitrant judges. Frankfurter maintained the position that history supported the
conclusions in Plessy that segregation was constitutional. [Justice Stanley] Reed thought segregation was
constitutional, and Jackson thought the issue was ‘political’ and beyond judicial competence. [Justice] Tom
Clark was of the opinion that violence would follow if the Court ordered desegregation of the schools, but that
while history sanctioned segregation, he would vote to abolish it if the matter was handled delicately.”
• “It was suggested and decided that the new Chief Justice try his hand at the opinion. Opinions are usually typed
the Justice’s office and sent to the printer in the basement, and then two or more printed copies are circulated
to each of the other Justices’ offices. This time we suggested that the Chief Justice’s opinion not be circulated
but that it be given to each individual Justice privately so that each could express his doubts and uncertainties
before a formal opinion was circulated. When circulations are made formally there is always the possibility of a
leak, and it was felt we should take the time needed to come up with an opinion that reflected the true opinion
of the Court. With these thoughts in mind Chief Justice Warren personally handed to each of us one copy of his
draft of his opinion.”
The New Chief Justice:
From Division to Unanimity
• “The four of us who had stood against Plessy the first time these landmark cases were argued
transmitted our approval of his opinion to him either orally or by a written note. With Warren we
were in the majority, but a five-to-four decision was the last thing any of us wanted. It would not be a
decisive decision historically. It would make the issue a political football and would make the filling of
the next vacancy on the Court a roman holiday.”
• “As the days passed, Warren’s position immensely impressed Frankfurter. The essence of
Frankfurter’s position seemed to be that if a practical politician like Warren, who had been governor
of California for eleven years, thought we should overrule the 1896 opinion, why should a professor
object? The fact that a worldly and wise man like Warren would stake his reputation on this issue not
only impressed Frankfurter but seemed to have a like influence on Reed and Clark. Clark followed
shortly, Reed finally am around somewhat doubtfully, and only Jackson was left. Jackson had had a
heart attack and was convalescing in the hospital, where Warren went to see him. I don’t know what
happened in the hospital room, but Warren returned to the Court triumphant. Jackson had said to
count him in, which made the opinion unanimous. We could present a solid front to the country, and
it was a brilliant diplomatic process which Warren had engineered.”
Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the Court
• What does Warren say about the history and the original intent of those who drafted the
14th Amendment? He said that while historical sources “cast some light” on the question of
racial segregation in public schools, they were ultimately “inconclusive.” He explained that
there were varying views of what the Amendment meant at the time and furthermore public
education for former slaves in the South was disorganized if not non-existent.
• Frankfurter’s clerk Alexander Bickel had drafted a memo directing the justices away from
historical arguments, which was later revised and published in 1955 in the Harvard Law
Review.
• “We cannot turn back the clock to 1896 when Plessy v. Ferguson was written. We must
consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in
American life throughout the Nation. Only in this way can it be determined if segregation in
public schools deprives these plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws.”
• What does Warren say about science?
• Warren cited a number of social science/psychology studies for the following point: “To
separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their
race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their
hearts and minds in a way unlikely to be undone.”
• “In the field of public education, separate but equal has no place. Separate educational
facilities are inherently unequal.”
• The final paragraph of Warren’s unanimous decision asked the attorneys to brief issues
regarding implementation and return for oral argument the following year.
Thurgood Marshall explains the decision to the press.
Brown v. Board of Education II (1955)
• The NAACP argued that the Court put an immediate end to racial
segregation while attorneys for the southern states argued for
gradual implementation. The Court also needed to determine
who would be responsible for overseeing implementation.
• Warren explained that local school authorities will face various
problems with implementation. The federal district courts that
first heard these cases will be the best place, based on their
proximity, for appraising the local school board’s good faith at
implementation.
• These courts should exercise traditional “equity power”—
balancing both public and private needs. Mere disagreement
with integration in not valid.
• “To that end the courts may consider problems related to
administration, arising from physical conditions of the school
plant, the school transportation system, personnel, revision of
school districts and attendance areas…on a nonracial basis” and
revision of local laws necessary toward these ends.
• This is a “transition period.” Public schools should admit children
on a racially nondiscriminatory basis “with all deliberate speed.”
• When Warren announced the remedy in Brown II in 1955, he utilized an
equitable conception that originated years earlier with Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr.: "with all deliberate speed.“ Where did this controversial phrase come from?
• In a draft of the decree prepared by Justice Frankfurter on 8 April 1955, which
Warren subsequently adopted, Frankfurter used the phrase "with all deliberate
speed" to replace "forthwith," the word proposed by National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lawyers to achieve an accelerated
desegregation timetable. Frankfurter wanted to anchor the decree in an
established doctrine associated with the revered Holmes, but his endorsement
of "all deliberate speed" sought to advance a consensus held by the entire Court.
Each justice thought that the decree should provide for flexible enforcement,
should appeal to established principles, and should suggest some basic ground
rules for judges of the lower courts, who would implement the Brown decision.
• Shortly after he retired from the Court, Warren acknowledged that "all
deliberate speed" was chosen as a benchmark because "there were so many
blocks preventing an immediate solution of the thing in reality that the best we
could look for would be a progression of action."
• When it became clear, however, that critics of desegregation were using the
doctrine to delay and avoid compliance with Brown, the Court began to express
reservations about the phrase. In 1964, less than a decade after "all deliberate
speed" was prescribed, Justice Hugo Black declared in a desegregation opinion
that "[t]he time for mere 'deliberate speed' has run out."
“All Deliberate
Speed”
Black Monday (1954)
• Arkansas and Virginia closed down their entire public school
systems rather than implement Brown.
• African-American student Emmit Till was murdered in Mississippi in
August 1955, just after Brown II was decided.
• U.S. Representative John Bell Williams (D-Mississippi) coined the
term "Black Monday" on the floor of Congress to denote Monday,
May 17, 1954, the date of the Supreme Court's decision.
• In opposition to the decision, white citizens' councils formally
organized throughout the south to preserve segregation and
defend segregated schools.
• The White Citizens' Council movement in Mississippi, led by
Thomas Pickens Brady, a circuit court judge, published a
handbook, Black Monday, in which the philosophy of the
movement is stated, including its call for the nullification of the
NAACP, the creation of a forty-ninth state for Negroes, and the
abolition of public schools.
The Murder of Emmett Till (1955)
• Till was a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was visiting relatives in the town of Money located in the
Delta region of Mississippi.
• He spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Several
nights later, Bryant's husband and his half-brother went to Till's great-uncle's house. They took Till away
to a barn, where they beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head
and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around
his neck with barbed wire. Three days later, Till's body was discovered. retrieved from the river, and
returned to Chicago.
• Till’s mother had a funeral with an open casket to highlight the brutality of white southern rage. Tens of
thousands attended the funeral or viewed the casket and helped galvanize the civil rights movement.
• The white men who murdered him were acquitted at trial. One of his killers said Till “looked like a man.”
This is a common justification for white rage and recurs in news accounts of lynchings of black boys and
girls from 1880 to the early 1950s, in which witnesses and journalists fixated on the size of victims who
ranged from 8 to 19 years old. These victims were accused of sexually assaulting white girls and women,
stealing, slapping white babies, poisoning their employers, fighting with their white playmates, or
protecting black girls from sexual assault at the hands of white men. Or they were lynched for no reason
at all.
The Southern Manifesto (1956)
• In 1956, 19 U.S. Senators and 77 Congressman
signed “The Southern Manifesto: A
Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” in
which they pledged “to use all lawful means to
bring about a reversal of this decision which is
contrary to the Constitution and to prevent
the use of force in its implementation.”
• The manifesto further said that the Brown
decision was “destroying the amicable
relations between the white and Negro races
that have been created through 90 years of
patient effort by the good people of both
races.”
Sen. Strom Thurmond prepared first draft of Southern Manifesto
repudiating the Supreme Court's 1954 school desegregation
decision. February 1956.
The Hollow Hope?
This photograph shows the results of
the Brown decision with both black and white
students in the same classroom at Anacostia High
School in 1957. Today Anacostia, like many of the
public high schools in D.C. is attended by
predominantly African American students.
• Did Brown integrate the schools?
• In 1954, .001% of black students attended schools with whites in southern and border
states. In 1955 there was a slight upward trend to .12%.
• Yet there were no significant changes until the 1970s: 1965 (6%); 1966 (17%); 1968
(32%); 1970 (86%); 1972 (91%).
• These changes were largely due to forced busing programs.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
(1955)
• On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, forty-three, was arrested for disorderly conducted for
refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. Her arrest and fourteen dollar fine for
violating city ordinance, led African American bus riders and others to boycott the
Montgomery city buses.
• It also helped to establish the Montgomery Improvement Association led by a then unknown
young minister from the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr. The boycott
lasted for one year and brought the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. Martin King to the
attention of the world
• In Gayle v. Browder (1956) the Court silently overturned Plessy by upholding a declaratory
judgment invalidating statues requiring segregation on public transportation in Montgomery,
Alabama.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957
• It is important to understand that
Brown is an example of how the
Supreme Court cannot affect
social change on its own. Instead,
Brown should be understood as
merely one step in the larger civil
rights movement that involved
protests, marches, legislation,
and litigation.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was
the first civil rights law passed by
Congress since Reconstruction. It
was designed to secure the right
to vote for blacks.
Little Rock Nine (1957)
• The NAACP worked with southern school districts to implement Brown. In Little Rock, Arkansas, the
school board agreed to gradual integration of the school beginning in fall 1957.
• The NAACP chose nine exemplary African American students (based on grades and attendance) to
attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High School.
• Segregationists threatened to physically block the students from entering the school and Governor
Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to support the segregationists. The sight of
soldiers blocking the schoolhouse door made national headlines.
• President Dwight Eisenhower ultimately federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent U.S. Army
troops to protect the nine students who enrolled and attended classes that year—though they were
continually harassed by white students and others.
• The next year, Faubus—with the support of the school board—closed the public schools and sought
to establish private-school-only education. He failed, membership on the school board changed, and
after the “lost year” of 1958, the integrated public schools reopened in 1959—though African
American students continued to face harassment.
The "Little Rock Nine" are escorted inside Little Rock Central High School by troops of
the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army.
The Civil Rights Movement
• Black and white Freedom Riders were attacked and brutally beaten, their buses sometimes burned, by angry
white mobs wielding ax handles, bicycle chains, and baseball bats, often times while local law enforcement
stood by and watched.
• Throughout the 1960 presidential campaign, Jack Kennedy had dramatized the plight of African-Americans and
they supported his nomination and election.
• On the eve of the 1960 presidential election the Kennedy brothers engineered the release of Martin Luther
King, Jr. and others who were arrested in Georgia for sitting at a white-only lunch counter. King had been
sentenced to prison and many felt King would be killed while being transported from jail to his prison cell.
Some say the Kennedys saved King’s life.
• After they took office, the Kennedys proposed a sweeping Civil Rights bill which was ultimately passed in 1964.
• The civil rights education of the Kennedys by the movement was exemplary of how bottom-up activism can
influence insulated elites and lead to political and legal change.
March on Washington (1963)
•The assembly of an estimated quarter of a million people on the Mall between the
Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument on August 28th, 1963, was the March
on Washington. “It was the biggest, and surely the most diverse, demonstration in history
for human rights,” wrote Milton Viorst in Fire in the Streets: America In The 1960's. It was
also a march that was 22 years in the making, a march that began as a threat and ended
as a triumphant restatement of the goal of human freedom embodied in the Constitution.
•Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at this event.
•What many people do not know is that opening for King and other speakers were: Gospel
legend Mahalia Jackson who sang “How I Got Over,” Bob Dylan who performed several
songs, including “Only a Pawn in Their Game” about the culturally fed racial hatred
amongst Southern whites that led to the assassination of Medgar Evers and “When the
Ship Comes In” during which he was joined by fellow folk singer Joan Baez, who earlier
had led the crowds in several verses of “We Shall Overcome” and “All My Trials.” Peter,
Paul and Mary sang “If I Had a Hammer” and Dylan’s “Blowin' In The Wind.” They were all
in their early-to-mid 20s.
•Youtube: Jackson’s March on Washington performance: http://youtu.be/TALcOreZi0A
•Youtube: Dylan’s March on Washington performance: http://youtu.be/WLwHnNybADo
•Youtube: King’s speech: http://youtu.be/smEqnnklfYs
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Voting Rights Act of 1965
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a major enactment designed to erase racial discrimination throughout American life. The
act forbids discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, and, in the case of employment, sex. (Discrimination
in housing is covered under the Civil Rights Act of 1968).
• Major provisions of the Act:
1. Outlawed arbitrary discrimination in voter registration and expedited voting rights suits;
2. Bared discrimination in public accommodations, such as hotels and restaurants, that have a substantial relation to
interstate commerce [Title II];
3. Authorizes the national government to bring suits to desegregate public facilities and schools;
4. Extended the life of and expanded the power of the Civil Rights Commission;
5. Provided for the withholding of federal funds from programs administered in a discriminatory manner.
6. Established the right to equality in employment opportunities.
7. Established a Community Relations Service to help resolve civil rights problems.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed and helped increase voting among African Americans in the South.
Conclusion:
The Unfinished March
• The civil rights movement of the 20th Century was only partially successful at ending
racial discrimination.
• The NAACP’s litigation strategy, which included the landmark victory in Brown v.
Board of Education (1954) was only as successful as the larger civil rights movement
was more generally.
• While legal victories in courts and legislatures provided positive gains for racial
minorities, the momentum would ultimately dissipate and begin to reverse as
America became more conservative at the close of the century.
• Supreme Court decisions reflected the turn to the right by striking down racial
quotas, sustaining some forms of de facto discrimination in education, and gutting
the voting rights act.
Conclusion: The Unfinished March
• In a report titled “The Unfinished March,” the Economic Policy Institute found that
school segregation, black unemployment, lack of access to fair housing and living
wages, and abysmal African American household wealth remain at essentially the
same levels of disparity today as they did in 1963, when the March on Washington
occurred.
• Median household wealth today is $141,900 for whites and only $11,000 for blacks.
• Despite making up only 13% of the population, black Americans are 27% of those
living at or below the poverty line.
• The white unemployment rate is 4.6%, while it’s 9.6% for blacks
During the housing bubble of the mid-2000s, 53% of blacks received high-cost
mortgages, while only 18% of whites did.
• The black incarceration rate is 2,207 per 100,000, compared with the national rate of
707 per 100,000.
• Nearly 3 in 4 black children today attend segregated schools.
• In many communities, blacks have poorer health outcomes and access to just half the
social services of whites. The list goes on ad nauseam.
• These statistics make plain that the African American struggle for liberty and equality
is not complete.