CHAPTER 28: THE
CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
BIG PICTURE: In the mid-1900s, many
African Americans rose up against the
treatment they had endured for decades.
They fought discrimination through court
cases and non-violent resistance. Their
efforts resulted in meaningful government
protections of basic civil rights.
CHAPTER 28 SECTION 1:
FIGHTING
SEGREGATION
MAIN IDEA: In the mid-1900s, the
civil rights movement began to make
major progress in correcting the
national problem of racial
segregation.
The Civil Rights Movement Prior to 1954
Civil Rights Through the 1940s
Seeking Change in the courts
• African Americans had been
working for civil rights since the
end of the Civil War
• They faced set backs (like Plessy v.
Ferguson) and successes (founding
of NAACP and increased programs
during the New Deal)
• 1940s: founding of CORE: Congress
of Racial Equality to end
discrimination
• 1947: Jackie Robinson: 1st AA to
play for a major league baseball
team
• NAACP law team worked to
challenge segregation laws as
violations of the 14th Amendment
(equal protection)
• Thurgood Marshall helped lead
the team to challenge Plessy v.
Ferguson attempting to show that
separate was not equal
Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court Hears Brown
• NAACP 1st focused on segregation in
graduate schools, then on public
schools
• They combined several cases
challenging segregation in public
schools into Brown v. Board of
Education, Topeka, KS (1954)
• The Court heard arguments over
two years and looked at studies of
the effects of segregation on
children
• May, 1954: Chief Justice Earl Warren
announces a unanimous decision
striking down segregated public
schools
The Little Rock Crisis
• This decision impacted 21 states, but
they were slow to change because
the court gave no guidance on how
or when to desegregate
• Many states resisted integration,
including Arkansas where Gov. Orval
Faubus delayed a court order to
integrate Little Rock High
• He used the national guard to turn
away the Little Rock Nine (9
students who integrate the HS)
• President Eisenhower eventually
sent in the National Guard to protect
the students
A Boycott Begins in Montgomery, Alabama
The Montgomery bus boycott
• Brown ruling only applied to schools,
but segregation was still prevalent in
other public places, like buses
• 1955 Rosa Parks, NAACP secretary
challenged the segregation law by
sitting in the 1 st row of the black
section and refusing to move when
the white section filled up—was
arrested
• NAACP held meetings in local churches
to call for a boycott of the bus system
(1 day and then indefinitely) until they
were desegregated
• Martin Luther King became the
movement’s leader
• Supreme Court finally ruled
segregated buses were
unconstitutional late 1956
Birth of the SCLC
• Success of Montgomery boycott
led to boycotts across the South
• Southern Christian Leadership
Conference(SCLC) formed to help
organize protests and MLK was
elected their leader
• the group was committed to
nonviolent protest and civil
disobedience
CHAPTER 29 SECTION 2:
FREEDOM NOW!
MAIN IDEA: The quest for civil rights
became a nationwide movement in
the 1960s as African Americans won
political and legal rights, and
segregation was largely abolished.
Sit-ins and Freedom Rides
The strategy of nonviolence
• CRM used tactics based on Gandhi
and his movement in India to gain
independence from GB
• He believed non-violent protest
was the best way to change
society because it exposed the evil
in the current system
• Both James Farmer of CORE and
King of SCLC promoted and
trained protesters in nonviolent
protest tactics
• Focused primarily on boycotts
The sit-in movement
• Feb 1, 1960: sit-in movement
begins in Greensboro, NC at
Woolworth’s
• Despite backlash from the white
community, the protests
continued and spread throughout
the South
• By the fall, most lunch counters
across the South were
desegregated and students
formed their own civil rights
organization: Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
• They focus primarily on sit-ins
The Freedom Rides
• Led by CORE to end segregation
on the interstate bus system
• Freedom riders included white and
black students; as they moved into
the deep South, the busses and
riders were attacked
• A bus was fire-bombed in
Anniston, AL and in Birmingham,
the riders were brutally attacked
Federal Intervention
• Attorney General Robert Kennedy
arranged with the Governor of
Alabama to have police protect
riders in Montgomery but they did
not show and riders were beaten
• Outraged, Kennedy sent in federal
marshals to protect the riders
• Rides continued into the fall of
1961 when the Interstate
Commerce Commission integrated
the stations
Integrating Higher Education
• NAACP continued working against school segregation
• African American students integrating white universities faced
hostility and violence
• When James Meredith integrated University of Mississippi in 1962,
he had to be escorted by 50 federal marshals and there was still a
riot and troops had to be sent in
• Federal marshals stayed with him until he graduated
Albany and Birmingham
The Albany Movement
The Birmingham Campaign
• Began with sit-ins at the bus station;
they brought in MLK when the
federal government ignored arrests
of protesters
• King’s strategy was to fill the jails to
shame the white leaders
• The police chief began sending
protestors to jails in surrounding
communities
• Local leaders were bitter that the
SCLC came in and took over; the
white leaders refused to talk to
anyone but local protest leaders
• King left in defeat and the Albany
campaign ended in failure
• April 1963: began sit-ins to protest
segregation
• Hundreds were arrested and the
white clergy criticized MLK for his
tactics
• In Letter from a Birmingham Jail
King addressed his critics explaining
how protest was the only way things
would change
• May 2: children march, 900 are
arrested
• May 3: 2,500 show up and chief
Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor used dogs and
fire hoses on them…the American
public is horrified
• Eventually the federal government
stepped in to force integration
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Assassination of Medgar Evers
• Kennedy decided slow
improvement was not enough and
announced he would push for
federal legislation ending
segregation
• Hours later, Medgar Evers, head of
the NAACP was assassinated in his
driveway
• Klan member was arrested but
acquitted (retried in 1994 and sent
to prison)
March on Washington/Civil Rights Act
• To build support for the new
legislation, civil rights leaders planed
a march on Washington in August,
1963
• 200,000 attended
• MLK delivers his I Have A Dream
speech
• The next month, a bombing at a
church killed 4 girls
• Kennedy was assassinated in
November…Johnson supported
passage of the bill and signed the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 banning
discrimination in employment and
public accommodations
CHAPTER 28 SECTION 3:
VOTING RIGHTS
MAIN IDEA: In the 1960s, African
Americans gained voting rights
and political power in the South,
but only after a bitter and hardfought struggle.
Gaining Voting Rights
Registering Voters/24th Amendment
• Civil rights leaders began to focus on
voting to change things in the South
• 1962: CORE and SNCC start the Voter
Education Project (VEP) to register
Southern African Americans to vote
• Marchers were attacked and several
workers were killed in Mississippi
• Despite the violence, the project
was a success, registering more than
1.5 million voters in the 1 st year
• Passed in 1962, the 24th Amendment
banned poll taxes
Freedom Summer/Crisis in Mississippi
• Summer of 1964: project for mass
registration of voters called
Freedom Summer
• Some volunteers registered voters
and others taught in Freedom
Schools helping to teach basic
reading and math skills
• Within a week, 3 volunteers
disappeared…two months later
their bodies were found in an
earthen dam
• The state dropped the charges on
the KKK members accused of killing
them, so the federal government
prosecuted them on civil rights
charges (7 of 21 received 4-10 years)
Political Organizing
• Most civil rights leaders preferred that LBJ win the election of 1964 (his
opponent Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act)
• King and other civil rights leaders suspended protests until after election
day
• SNCC refused and argued that racism should be eliminated from the
Democratic Party
• they helped form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to
send delegates to the national convention in protest of the all-white racist
delegation selected by the state party
• Fannie Lou Hammer argued the case for MFDP before the credentials
committee on live TV detailing how she had been fired and arrested for
registering to vote
• The committee offered a compromise of allowing 2 of the 64 seats, but
MFDP rejected the compromise- none were allowed to contribute
The Voting Rights Act
The Selma Campaign and March
• Jan. 1965: major focus was now on
voting rights and began in Selma,
AL
• King used marches and mass jailing
to bring attention to the issue
• After a marcher is killed in Marion,
King arranges a march from Selma
to Montgomery to protest police
brutality
• 600 African American protestors
joined the march and were
attacked by police crossing the
Edmund Pettus Bridge
• Federal agents were sent in to
protect marchers
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
• A week after the march, LBJ asks
Congress to pass a voting rights
law
• Voting Rights Act of 1965: gave
federal government power to keep
states from preventing African
Americans from voting
• Key parts were recently declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court
CHAPTER 28 SECTION 4:
CHANGES AND
CHALLENGES
MAIN IDEA: Continued social and
economic inequalities caused
many young African Americans to
lose faith in the civil rights
movement and integration and
seek alternative solutions.
Expanding the Movement
Conditions outside the South
Urban Unrest/The Movement Moves North
• SNCC became increasingly
frustrated by the violence against
peaceful marchers and questioned
nonviolent tactics
• The movement had helped
alleviate de jure segregation
(laws) but attitudes had not
changed
• Most places, especially up North,
suffered from de facto
segregation (by practice or
custom) which is harder to fight
• Includes housing and job
discrimination
• 1964-1967: frustration over de
facto segregation led to racial
unrest in large urban centers like
the Watts neighborhood of LA
• After riots, LBJ appointed the
Kerner Commission to study
causes of urban violence: they
blamed it on poverty and
discrimination
• King attempted to take the
movement North, but was
unsuccessful (largely ignored by
both the white and black
community)
Fractures in the Movement
Black Power/Black Panthers
• Various civil rights groups began to
have conflict over goals and tactics
• May 1966 Stokely Carmichael
became the head of SNCC and
abandoned non-violence in favor
of black power: depending on the
African American community for
change; CORE soon embraced this
idea
• Huey Newton and Bobby Seale
form the Black Panther Party in
Oakland in Oct. 1966: they carried
guns and guarded against police
brutality
Black Muslims
• Led by Elijah Muhammad, this
movement preached black
nationalism, self-discipline, and
self-reliance
• Became widespread and popular
due to the teachings of Malcolm X
• He was also critical of nonviolence
• Was assassinated in 1965 by
followers of Elijah Muhammad
The Assassination of King
• King’s failure in the Northern campaign helped him realized the
movement needed to focus on economic issues
• Went to Memphis to support a sanitation workers strike for better
pay and conditions
• April 4, 1968: assassinated by James Earl Ray at on his hotel balcony
• Rioting erupted in more than 120 cities upon hearing the news
• Robert Kennedy, a supporter of civil rights running for the
Democratic nomination, urged calm
CHAPTER 28 SECTION 5:
THE MOVEMENT
CONTINUES
MAIN IDEA: The civil rights
movement was in decline by the
1970s, but its accomplishments
continued to benefit American
society.
A Change in Goals/The Decline of Black Power
• 1967: shift in goals towards poverty: Poor People’s Campaign
• After King’s assassination, Ralph Abernathy of the SCLC led the campaign
• Their march in DC in 1968 was disastrous: gang members showed up and
protesters harassed reporters
• They had no clear message and some in Congress thought they sounded
communist; they were eventually sent home
• SCLC began to decline in importance to the movement
• Head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, began investigating leaders of the civil
rights movement for being communist
• Agents infiltrated meetings and spread rumors to weaken the various civil
rights organizations
New Changes and Gains
Busing and Political Change
Affirmative Action & New Black Power
• Civil Rights Act of 1968: banned
discrimination in sale or rental of
housing
• Courts began ordering the use of
bussing to integrate schools
plagued by de facto segregation
across the nation
• Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg
(1971): bussing for integration is
constitutional
• Further white flight eventually led
to more power for African
Americans resulting in the election
of several black mayors
• Affirmative action: giving
preference to minority and female
applicants for college and jobs
• led to a shift among white
Southern and urban working class
whites to the Republican Party
• Throughout the 1970s, African
Americans became increasingly
active in politics
• Activists like Andrew Young and
John Lewis went onto serve in
Congress and as ambassadors