America’s Second
Reconstruction
The Civil Rights Movement, 1954 1968
The Unfinished Business of
Reconstruction
In what ways had African Americans
experienced success during the
Reconstruction era?
 In what ways had Reconstruction
failed African Americans?
 Where did African Americans stand in
American society by 1950?

The Need for a Civil Rights
Movement

Key Events in African American
History, 1857 - 1900
Dred Scott Decision (1857)
 Civil War Amendments (1865 – 1869)
 Vigilante “justice”, the KKK, and
lynchings (1870s-1960s)
 Plessy vs. Ferguson Court Case
(1896)
 Jim Crow Laws

The Need for a Civil Rights
Movement

Key Events in African American
History, 1900 – 1950
Creation of NAACP (1910)
 Great Migration (1916 – 1920)
 Harlem Renaissance (1920s)
 WWII and the “Double V” Campaign
(1941 – 1945)
 Truman’s desegregation of the military
(1947)

School Desegregation
Thurgood Marshall and NAACP
lawyers following the Brown decision
Brown Family, Topeka, KS
School Desegregation:
Southern Opposition
Protesting Desegregation in
Alabama
Protesting Desegregation in Arkansas
School Desegregation:
State vs. Federal Authority
Roots of the Movement
(1954 – 1957)

Brown vs. Bd of Ed



Emmett Till Murder


Legal justification for desegregation based
on 14th Amendment
Separate can never be equal
Generated anger  change
Montgomery Bus Boycott


Proved the power of non-violent direct action
Leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
High Tide of the Movement
(1957 – 1965)

Creation of Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) in 1957
 Built on energy of Montgomery Bus Boycott
 Organization of ministers and community leaders; led
by King
 Message
• 20th Century Social Gospel
• Christians have a responsibility to make society better
and more just
• Nonviolent Resistance (Ghandi)
• Highly confrontational, but not violent
• Civil Disobedience (Thoreau)
• Peacefully disobey unjust laws
• Love, not hate (Jesus Christ)
High Tide of the Movement
(1957 – 1965)

Student Involvement and Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) – 1960



Biracial and “grassroots organizing”
Worked with SCLC, but more radical and
impatient for change
Sit-In Movement



Attempt to desegregate lunch counters using
nonviolent, direct action and civil
disobedience
Greensboro, NC and Nashville, TN
Boycotts of national chains in support of
movement
Sit-In Movement
Greensboro, NC 1960
Being jailed was a
“badge of honor” to
many SNCC members
Northern
support for
sit-ins
Sit-In Movement
Jackson, Mississippi 1963 @ Woolworth’s
High Tide of the Movement
(1957 – 1965)

Election of 1960
High Tide of the Movement
(1957 – 1965)

Freedom Riders (May 1961)


CORE and SNCC participation
Testing federal interstate bus desegregation
mandates
• Create a crisis situation that forces the federal
government to intervene

Trouble in the Deep South
•
•
•
•
Anniston, AL
Birmingham and Montgomery, AL
Robert Kennedy and federal intervention
Jackson, MS – riders arrested and sentenced to
60 days in prison
Freedom Riders
Rider Jim Zwerg –
Montgomery, AL riots
Bus Burnings – Anniston, AL
High Tide of the Movement
(1957 – 1965)


1963: “the year of the Negro Revolution” – Dr. King
Birmingham, AL (April 1963)
 Most racially segregated and explosive city in the
South
• End segregation here  symbolically end it everywhere

King, Shuttlesworth, SCLC organize to desegregate
the city
• Boycotted stores
• Public demonstrations and protests


King arrested “Letter from Birmingham Jail” – a
defense of civil disobedience
Children’s Crusade – May 2
•
•
•
•
Why kids?
900+kids arrested  “Fill up the jails”
Reactions of Bull Connor  dogs, fire hoses, tear gas
Americans and the world shocked, horrified
High Tide of the Movement
(1957 – 1965)

Birmingham Campaign and March on Washington (1963)  Civil Rights
Act of 1964


Outlawed discrimination in all public accommodations; equal
employment opportunities
Voting Rights
 24th Amendment (1964) – no poll taxes
 Freedom Summer (Mississippi 1964) – Bob Moses and SNCC
 Selma – Montgomery March (March 1965)
• Jimmie Lee Jackson’s murder  people need to constructively grieve
• Violence at Edmond Pettus Bridge – “Bloody Sunday” (March 7)
•
Use of media  national condemnation; issue of human rights
• SNCC vs. SCLC
•
•
SCLC  build support for new voting rights legislation
SNCC  impatient for change; work locally
• Lowndes County Freedom Organization  Black Panther Party
• March resumed on March 21 under protection of federalized AL National
Guard (LBJ); 25,000 marchers

Voting Rights Act – August 1965
•
•
•
•
Banned literacy tests
Federal authority to register voters
Tripled African American voting #’s in 1 year
5 days later  Watts riots in LA
Challenges and Dissent in
the Movement: 1965 - 1968

De jure segregation vs. de facto segregation



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Mid 1960s  70% of Af. Am. live in cities
Do African Americans work as insiders to
integrate peacefully into the established
system?
Do African Americans work as outsiders who
demand an equal, if not separate, position in
American society taken by force if necessary?
Do “civil rights” include a guarantee to earn a
decent living and enjoy a respectable standard
of living?
Challenges and Dissent in
the Movement: 1965 - 1968
March 26, 1964
Challenges and Dissent in
the Movement: 1965 - 1968

Urban Race Riots (northern cities 1965 – 1968)  a reflection
of growing frustrations over economic and social inequalities



“White flight”  black ghettos
Police brutality
Kerner Commission (1968)
• White racist attitudes to blame
• Separate, but unequal society developing


Kerner Commission’s solution
 Federal involvement to equalize employment, educational,
and housing opportunities (context: Great Society)
Black Panther Party Solution (1966)


Take control of own communities  establish social
services
Meet violence with violence; armed self-defense
Challenges and Dissent in
the Movement: 1965 - 1968

Current race relations



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrpv2tHaDo – Obama’s “More Perfect Union
Speech – March 2008
Your assessment of current relations?
Some current statistics:
• 57% of African American and Hispanic students
graduate from high school (78% of whites)
• 27% of African Americans live in poverty; 26% of
Hispanics live in poverty (15% for total population)
• 25-30% of Af. Am. and Hispanic students attend
schools that are non-integrated