Slavery to Civil Rights
Part 2
Jim Crow Laws
Southern states passed laws
requiring segregation
1890’s song sheet
Life Under Jim Crow
• Beginning in the 1880’s Southern states and cities began passing
laws requiring racial segregation
• separate train cars for blacks and whites (challenged later in Plessy)
Also:
required segregation in:
hotels
restaurants
parks
and every facility open to the public
Atlanta even required separate Bibles to swear on for blacks & whites
Plessy v. Ferguson - 1896
Can separate really
ever be equal?
Booker T. Washington
• son of enslaved parents
• hired by the state of Alabama in 1881 to
run Tuskegee Institute (vocational school)
• farming, forestry, plumbing, sewing, nursing
• believed blacks could achieve economic
prosperity, independence, and respect of
whites by succeeding in these fields
• urged blacks to give in to white racism and
not challenge Jim Crow laws (accommodation)
• many agreed, saw economic rights as being
more important than winning the vote
W.E.B. Du Bois
• opposed to Washington’s meek acceptance
of humiliating discrimination
• born in 1868, raised in a free family in Mass.
• 1st African American to receive a Ph.D. from
Harvard, taught history and social science at
Atlanta University
• founded the NAACP in 1909
• called for blacks to demand equality at once
• key to equality was the vote… not economic
• with the vote would come political power to
end lynching, provide better schools for
children, challenge white domination of society
What about the North?
de facto segregation
Jackie Robinson
1947
Supreme Court Decisions in 1950
• RR dining cars in South must
provide equal service
• black students couldn’t be
segregated within a school
• “intangible factors” had to be
considered (not just buildings and
books
Brown v. Board of Education
Linda Brown
Chief Justice Earl Warren
“We conclude that in the field of public
education the doctrine of “separate but
equal” has no place. Separate educational
facilities are inherently unequal”
Unanimous Decision on May 4th 1954
What does the following saying mean to you?
“a picture is worth a thousand words”
"African Americans and White Americans have faced similar
problems when wanting to participate in politics."
Defender (Chicago)
June 12, 1954
by J. Kennedy
Democrat (Arkansas)
May 22, 1954
“Let That One Go. He Says
He Don’t Wanna Be Mah
Equal.”
by Bill Maudlin
March 2, 1960
“Inch by Inch”
by Bill Mauldin
September 1, 1960
“I’m Eight….”
by Herblock
May 17, 1962
“…One Nation…Indivisible...”
by Herblock
ca. 1977
Southern Manifesto
Signed by 100 members of Congress
“to resist forced integration by any means”
“ I don’t believe you can change the hearts
of men with laws or decisions.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Resistance to Brown
Southern states passed more
than 450 laws aimed at
preventing enforcement of
the Brown decision
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
December 1, 1955
Crisis at Little Rock Arkansas
5 days after the Brown decision
Martin Luther King
The SCLC
• Southern Christian Leadership
Conference
Nonviolent Resistance
Sit-Ins
The SNCC
• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• Civil Disobedience
“ jail, not bail”
Kennedy Courted the Black Vote
He endorsed sit-ins
Promised a civil rights
bill
MLK’s Arrest
• sit-in in Atlanta department store
• ruled violation of probation for
driving without a license
• sentenced to four months of hard
labor on Georgia chain gang
• JFK an RFK intervened on King’s
behalf
The Freedom Riders
Educating Black Voters
Difficult Tests
Misspelled Words
Omissions
SNCC (student nonviolent coordinating committee)
• effective in organizing
• brought violent response from white
segregationists
Birmingham Demonstrations
“Letter From Birmingham Jail”
“…For years now I have heard the word “Wait!”
It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing
familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant
“Never.” We must come to see…that “justice too
long delayed is justice denied.”
- Martin Luther King
“Letter from Birmingham Jail,” 1963
June 11, 1963
JFK announces he will send
Congress a civil rights bill that
will deliver crushing blows to
segregation
June 11, 1963
• court order requiring the admission of
two African American students
University of Alabama
• head of Mississippi NAACP
• killed by a white sniper
Medgar Evers
March On Washington
Civil Rights Act of 1964
outlawed segregation
in the US schools and
public places
Civil Rights Act of 1968
prohibited discrimination
in housing
24th Amendment
prohibits conditioning the right to
vote in federal elections on
payment of a poll tax or other
types of tax.