Review: Civil Rights
Movement
DBQ on Thursday and Friday
Multiple Choice – June 9th
CIVIL WAR Amendments
• 13th: 1865 abolished slavery
• 14th: 1868 established citizenship
and due process
15th: 1870 universal male suffrage
Plessy v. Ferguson
• 1896 US Supreme Court legalizes segregation in the
United States
“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”
Civil Rights Movement
• Plessy v. Ferguson 1896- established the principle
“separate but equal.” Allowed for segregation.
• Brown v. Board of Ed. 1954 reversed this decision
and desegregated public schools.
Early Civil Rights Leaders
• W.E.B. DuBois—pushed for
immediate civil rights and equality.
Leader of NAACP(1909)
• Booker T. Washington
founder of Tuskegee Institute.
• Atlanta Compromise Speech
1895
1909 NAACP
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
established
1954 Brown v. Board of Education
of Topeka, Kansas
Supreme Court rules “separate educational facilities
are inherently unequal”. Ends school segregation.
Martin Luther King Jr.
• Influenced by Gandhi
• Passive Resistance – do not hit back
• Civil Disobedience – break a law if you do not agree
with it (but accept the consequences).
Montgomery Bus Boycott
• 1955-1956
• Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus
• Year long boycott that desegregated the buses.
1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to move to the back
of the bus. A boycott follows, leading to
desegregation.
1957 Central High School
Little Rock, Arkansas
“The Little Rock Nine”
• Pres. Eisenhower sends federal troops after Arkansas
governor Orval Faubus uses the National Guard to
deny entrance to African-American students at
Central High.
1960 Sit-ins
• College students in Greensboro, NC stage sit-ins at
the Woolworth’s lunch counter
1961 Freedom Rides
• Volunteers, black and white, take buses into the
South to test new desegregation laws, often meeting
with violence. Meant to increase pressure on the
South for equal rights.
Freedom rides
1962 Univ. of Mississippi
• Pres. Kennedy sends 5000 federal troops to
Mississippi to allow James Meredith, the school’s 1st
African-American student, to attend.
1963 Birmingham, AL
• Martin Luther King and the SCLC (Southern
Christian Leadership Conference) focus on
segregation in Birmingham. Protests there end in
violence, riots, and arrests of adults and children.
• King was jailed – wrote “Letter from a Birmingham
Jail” which he defended his methods.
Medgar Evers
• A field secretary of the NAACP – working to
desegregate Jackson, Mississippi
• June 1963 he was murdered by a sniper outside of
his home.
1963 Bombing in Birmingham
• 16th St. Baptist Church, a bomb explodes on a Sunday
morning, killing four young girls.
• KKK member seen planting bomb, is arrested, but
found guilty of possessing dynamite without a permit.
Fined $100 and six months
in jail.
Aug 1963 March on Washington
• 200,000 people hear Martin Luther King’s “I Have a
Dream” speech in Washington.
1964 24th Amendment
• Outlawed poll tax. Black voter registration begins to
increase.
Civil Rights Act 1964
• No discrimination based on race or color
• Equal access to libraries, parks, schools, etc.
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer
• Civil rights activists attempt to register AfricanAmericans to vote
1965 Selma March
• Demanding voting rights, 600 protesters plan to
march to Montgomery.
• 6 blocks into march, they meet state troopers armed
with nightsticks and tear gas.
SELMA, ALABAMA
1965
1965 Voting Rights Act
• After the events in Selma, Pres. Johnson calls for
passage of a voting rights bill.
• Outlaws literacy tests, established federal oversight
Protests—different views
• KING: Non-violent, passive
resistance
• Influenced by Ghandi
• Black Power: proactive, militant,
focus on black pride and African
heritage.
Black Power Movement
• African Americans should take control of the political
and economic aspects of their lives. Some advocated
the use of violence.
• Malcolm X – promoted black nationalism. Originally
a member of The Nation of Islam, then breaks away
and forms Muslim Mosque, Inc.
1968 Martin Luther King, Jr
assassinated
• Memphis, TN, King is shot by James Earl Ray. He was
39 years old.