Pre Civil Rights Era
1865-1954
1863
• In 1863 President Lincoln had issued
the Emancipation Proclamation
declaring all persons held as slaves
within any State, shall be forever free.
But…….
• The Emancipation Proclamation did not end
slavery in the nation.
• Lincoln knew that the Emancipation
Proclamation would need a constitutional
amendment to guarantee the abolishment of
slavery.
• There were 3 “reconstruction ammendments”
Post-Slavery (“Reconstruction”)
• The Union army (north) defeated the Confederate
army (south).
The U.S. passed amendments banning slavery and saying
*men* could vote regardless of their ethnicity.
Many former slaves moved to cities in the North; those who
couldn't often lived in conditions similar to slavery,renting
parts of the former slavemaster's plantations (sharecropping).
January 31, 1865
13th Amendment
• Passed by Congress on January 31,
1865 abolished slavery in the United
States.
1866
• The Civil Rights Act of 1866
granted citizenship and the same
rights enjoyed by white citizens to
all male persons in the United
States "without distinction of race
or color, or previous condition of
slavery or involuntary servitude."
Ku Klux Klan
1866
Those blacks that tried to vote were
intimidated by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK),
who would burn houses and murder
just to prevent blacks from voting.
The KKK was a terrorist organization.
The Ku Klux Klan beat, whipped, and
murdered thousands, and intimidated tens
of thousands of others from voting.
Blacks often tried to fight
back, but they were
outnumbered and out gunned.
While the main targets of Klan wrath
were the political and social leaders
of the black community, blacks could be
murdered for almost any reason.
Men, women, children, aged and crippled,
were victims. A 103-year-old woman was
whipped, as was a completely paralyzed
man.
14th Ammendment
1868
Citizenship
• In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States
granted citizenship and equal civil and
legal rights to African Americans and
slaves who had been emancipated after
the American Civil War.
15th Ammendment
1870
Voting Rights
• The 15th Amendment, granting AfricanAmerican men the right to vote, was formally
adopted into the U.S. Constitution on
March 30, 1870.
1875
• African Americans were
guaranteed the right to
equal treatment in public
and on public
transportation.
John Mercer Langston- helped draft the
Act and was one of the early African
Americans elected to Congress.
The Exodus of ‘79
• Thousands of
African
Americans
migrate from
the south to
Kansas led by
Benjamin Pap
Singleton
1881
Tennessee Passes First
Jim Crow Laws for trains
Railroads Railways to
provide equal but
separate
accommodations for
the white and colored
races.
1883
• The Supreme Court decided
the Civil Rights Act was
unconstitutional in 1883.
• Laws were to be decided by
states, not the federal
government.
John Marshall Harlan was • Individual states could now
discriminate in any way they
the only member of the
wanted against African
Supreme Court who
Americans.
believed the Civil Rights
Act should remain.
1890
Mississippi Poll Tax
• Many Southern
states created poll
tax laws as a way
to prevent eligible
voters from voting.
• These laws
disfranchised
African-American
and poor whites.
• This tax kept them
from voting.
Literacy Test
Laws were passed requiring a literacy test as
well. Since most freed men couldn't read or
write, blacks were prevented from voting.
Louisiana Grandfather Clause
1898
Whites in the South didn't have to pay or
pass the literacy test because of
"Grandfather Clause.”
If their grandfather could vote in 1867 then they
could vote.
However, no African Americans could vote in 1867
so they were disenfranchised.
1906
Plessy vs. Ferguson
On June 7, 1892,
30-year-old Homer Plessy
was jailed for sitting
in the "White" car of the
East Louisiana Railroad.
1909 NAACP
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People
• Why was this organization founded
(set up)?
In 1909, the country was still stunned
from a race riot the year before in
Springfield, Illinois, the city in
which Lincoln had once lived. Eight
blacks were killed and dozens injured
as mobs of whites rampaged through the
black community destroying homes,
property, and businesses, forcing
thousands to flee. After the riot, an
Englishman by the name of William
English Walling described how race
prejudice was rampant in the North and
called for "a powerful body of
citizens to come to their aid."
• The NAACP will " ensure the political,
educational, social, and economic
equality of rights of all persons and to
eliminate racial hatred and racial
discrimination."
1910-1920
The Great Migration
• In the twentieth century, blacks started to
move to the North as the train provided easy
access to Chicago and other Northern cities.
• When World War I began in Europe, and foreign
workers could no longer emigrate to America,
factories needed a new labor source. Hundreds
of thousands of blacks migrated from the South
to Chicago and other cities of the North.
•
The CHICAGO DEFENDER, the most influential
black newspaper,encouraged blacks to leave. The
paper held a vision of the North as the land of
freedom, a dream that has been in the hearts of
black men and women since slavery time -- many
referred to the North as "The Promised Land"
Richard Wright 1908
– Young Richard Wright, who
became an internationally
acclaimed writer, remembered
how the North kept hope alive
during the dark days of his
childhood in the deep South.
"The North symbolized to me all
that I had not felt or seen; it
had no relation to what
actually existed. Yet by
imagining a place where
everything is possible, it kept
hope alive inside of me."
Jackie Robinson
1947
• Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born
in Cairo, Georgia in 1919 to a
family of sharecroppers. His
mother, Mallie Robinson, singlehandedly raised Jackie and her
four other children. They were the
only black family on their block,
and the prejudice they
encountered only strengthened
their bond. From this humble
beginning would grow the first
baseball player to break Major
League Baseball's color barrier
that segregated the sport for more
than 50 years.
1948
President Truman’s
Executive Order
• On July 26, 1948, President Truman
issued Executive Order 9981
establishing equality of treatment and
opportunity in the Armed Services.
The Civil Rights Movement
1954-1968
Why was the Civil Rights
Movement Necessary?
Plessy vs. Fergusson:
Separate (segregation) but “equal”
1896
1954
What are some things we expect to be “equal” in
this country?
Equality
Injustice
Emmett Till
Peaceful Demonstrations;
Violent Reactions
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Name of the famous and
important Supreme
Court Case that made
the whole country
INTEGRATE schools.
Eight-year old Linda Brown
who crossed railroad tracks
to take a bus 21 blocks to a
black school when there was
a white school five blocks
from her home.
"We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of
'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal."
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483. 495 (May 17, 1954)
Delivered August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC.
Washington
Monument
By President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964
Segregation was not allowed in:
• public places
• schools
• employment (“Equal Opportunity Employers”)
•Affirmative Action