What rights are worth fighting for?

Main Idea
Activism and a series of Supreme Court decisions advanced equal rights for
African Americans in the 1950’s and
1960’s.
Why it Matters Today
Landmark Supreme Court decisions beginning in 1954 have guaranteed civil rights for Americans today.

• Segregated buses might never have rolled through the streets of
Montgomery if the Civil Rights Act of 1875 had remained in force.
• It promised that all persons, regardless of race, color, or previous condition, was entitled to full and equal employment of accommodation in "inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement."
Plessy v. Ferguson
1896
Separate but equal
Jim Crow Laws-South
Segregation
Segregation in the
20 th Century
African Americans
Find segregation
Throughout the nation
Civil Rights Movement
Shortage of white laborers
African Ams in the military
Challenged Jim Crow Laws
& voting rights

• The desegregation campaign was led largely by NAACP, which had fought since 1909 to end segregation.
• The NAACP Legal Strategy
• Charles Michael Houston
• Public Education
• Thurgood Marshall
• Morgan v. Virginia, Sweatt v. Painter
• Brown v. Board of Education
• May 17, 1954
• Supreme Court struck down segregation in schooling unconstitutional

Crisis in
Little Rock
Resistance to
School Desegregation

• The face-to-face confrontation at Central HS was not the only showdown over segregation in the mid1950’s.
• Boycotting Segregation
• Dec. 1, 1955- Rosa Parks
• Montgomery Improvement Association
• Martin Luther King- 26 years old.
• Walking for Justice
• Dec. 5, 1955- filed a lawsuit and refused to ride the buses for 381 days
• 1956- Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation.

• The Montgomery bus boycott proved to the world that the African
American community could unite and organize a successful protest movement.
Soul Force
MLK &
The SCLC
From Grassroots Up
Peaceful Protest
SCLC
SNCC

• Although SNCC adopted King’s ideas in part, its members had ideas of their own. Many people called for a more confrontational strategy and set out to reshape the civil rights movement.
• Demonstrating for Freedom
• Sit-Ins
• Lunch Counters

• What were Jim Crow laws and how were they applied?
• Jim Crow laws, passed in the South, were aimed at separating the races. Application of these laws included separate schools, streetcars, and public restrooms.
• What were the roots of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s beliefs in nonviolent resistance?
• King’s beliefs were rooted in Jesus’ teaching of love one’s enemy. Thoreau’s concept of civil disobedience, Randolph’s techniques for organizing massive demonstrations, and Gandhi’s use of nonviolent resistance
.

Main Idea
Civil Rights activists broke through racial barriers. Their activism prompted landmark legislation.
Why it Matters Today
Activism pushed the federal government to end segregation and ensure voting rights for African Americans.

• 1961- James Peck, a white civil rights activist, joined members of CORE and a trip across the South.
• Freedom Riders
• New Volunteers
• Bus companies refused to carry CORE freedom riders
• SNCC volunteers carried on
• Arrival of Federal Marshals
• Kennedy sends U.S. Marshals to protect freedom riders in Montgomery, AL.

• With the integration of interstate travel facilities under way some civil rights workers turned their attention to integrating some Southern schools and pushing the movement into additional
Southern towns.
Kennedy
Takes a Stand
Integrating
Ole Miss
Letters from
Birmingham Jail

• The civil rights bill that President Kennedy sent to Congress guaranteed equal access to all public accommodations and gave the U.S. attorney general the power to file school desegregation suits.
• Dream of Equality
• Aug. 28, 1963- 250,000 people
• “I Have a Dream Speech”
• More Violence
• Two weeks after the speech 4 Birmingham girls are killed.
• 2 Mos. Later JFK killed
• Civil Rights Act of 1964

• 1964- African Americans began to register to vote in the South
• Freedom Summer
Freedom
Summer
Recruited College
Students
Voting Rights
New Political
Party
Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party
Fannie Lou Hamer
Selma
Campaign
1965- SCLC walk from
Selma to Montgomery
Voting Rights
Act of 1965
Eliminated Literacy Tests

• What was the significance of the federal court case won by James Meredith in 1962?
• Meredith won a federal court case allowing him to enroll in the University of
Mississippi.
• Cite three examples of violence committed between 1962 and 1964 against African
Americans and civil rights activists.
• Fannie Lou Hamer was beaten trying to register to vote; a bomb in a Birmingham church killed four African-American girls;
Klansmen, with the support of local police, murdered three civil rights activists in
Mississippi.

Main Idea
Disagreements among civil rights groups and the rise of black nationalism created a violent period in the fight for civil rights.
Why it Matters Today
From the fight for equality came a resurgence of racial pride for African
Americans, a legacy that influences today’s generations.

• What civil rights groups had in common in the early
1960’s were their calls for a newfound pride in black identity and a commitment to change the social and economic structures that kept people in a life of poverty.
• Northern Segregation
• De Facto Segregationsegregation that exists by practice and custom.
• De Jure Segregationsegregation by law.
• During WWII many African Americans headed north
• “White Flight”
• 1966“Open City”
• Urban Violence
• Aug. 15, 1965- Watts; Los Angeles
• War on Poverty

• Malcolm X, declared to a Harlem audience, “If you think we are here to tell you to love the white man, you have come to the wrong place.”
Voice of
Discontent
African Am.
Solidarity
Nation of Islam
Elijah Muhammad
Malcolm X
Ballots or Bullets ?
Black Power
Pilgrimage to Meca
Feb. 21, 1965- Harlem
Stokely Carmichael-SNCC
“Black Power”
Black Panthers
Oct.1966
Huey Newton
& Bobby Seale

• MLK objected to the Black Power movement. He believed that preaching violence could only end in grief.
• King’s Death
• April 3, 1968- King addressed a crown in
Memphis, TN
• James Earl Ray
• Reactions to King’s Death
• Over 100 cities exploded into flames
• Baltimore, Chicago, Kansas City, and
Washington, D.C.
• June 1968- RFK was assassinated.

• Mar. 1, 1968- the Kerner Commission- appointed by
President Johnson to study the causes of urban violence.
• One main cause outlined“White Racism”
• Civil Rights Gains
• Ended De Jure Segregation
• Civil Rights Act of 1968
• Greater pride in African American culture
• Black studies in colleges
• 1970- 2/3 were registered to vote
• Rev. Jesse Jackson
• Unfinished Work
• Affirmative Action
• Federal government jobs

• What were some of the key beliefs advocated by Malcolm X?
• Black nationalism, self-determination, racial pride, self-respect, the use of selfdefense
• Why did some civil rights leaders urge
Stokely Carmichael to stop using the slogan
“black power”?
• Leaders felt that the slogan “black power” antagonized whites.