III. The Struggle for Equal Rights
• Many struggles for minority groups in
1960’s to gain equal rights:
A. Civil rights for African Americans
B. American Indian Movement
C. Equal rights for Hispanic Americans
D. Women’s Liberation Movement
A. Black Civil Rights Movement
• De Jure Segregation in the U.S. in 1950
Milestones in the Civil Rights movements prior
to JFK?
– Executive Order 9981 desegration of military 1948
– Brown vs. Board of Education 1954
– Rosa Parks Montgomery Bus Boycotts 1955
1. JFK’s Civil Rights Record
• Kennedy’s hand forced by civil rights
groups
• 1961: JFK sent federal troops to the south
after white mobs savagely attack CORE
(Congress of Racial Equality) freedom riders
in Alabama (defying unconstitutional
segregation of interstate buses)
• JFK hesitated to support civil rights fully:
afraid of splitting up the Democratic
Party & setting of filibusters in the Senate
and losing the re-election
• Appointed many African Americans to
federal offices, but also placed white
segregationists in many positions
• Took 2 years to fulfill his campaign
promise of signing an executive order to
end segregation in federally funded
housing
• 1962 JFK sent troops to Univ. Mississippi
to protect James Meredith (1st black
student enrolled)
2. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Baptist Pastor, head of Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC)
• Fall of 1960 MLK joined forces with CORE (Congress of
Racial Equality)
• Mississippi Freedom Summer Project (volunteer college
students to run freedom schools (literacy skills to
blacks) run by SNCC (Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee)
– used sit-ins, etc to challenge the status quo in MI & GA to
encourage Blacks to resist segregation and to register to vote.
Video: SNCC Brown University video
• 1963 – MLK Jr exposed viciousness of
black racists in the south and
compelled JFK to act,
• Led marches, sit-ins, and pray-ins in
Birmingham, Alabama
• Birmingham Police Chief Bull Conner sent
police in front of cameras with electric
cattle prods, pressure water hoses and
attack dogs against the peaceful
demonstrators
• Televised brutality aroused intl indignation
• Allowed Kennedy to convince
Alabama leaders to
desegregate stores and
upgrade African American
employees
• Concessions won encouraged
Freedom NOW protests in
hundreds of other cities
• JFK began to realize that if the
federal govt didn’t commit
the nation to peaceful and
constructive reform of racial
relations, African Americans
might begin to follow leaders
who preached the need for
violence
• JFK forced segregationist governer
George Wallace (Alabama) to
desegregate Univ. Of Alabama (Wallace
attempted to block entry to 2 black
students)
• June, 1963 JFK proposed a broad civil
rights bill
• March on Washington, August 28, 1963
MLK delivers “I have a Dream” speech
• 200,000 peaceful demonstrators
present
Video: I have a dream Speech
• MLK Unable to convince Congress to pass
the civil rights bill
• Southern white terrorism against African
Americans rampant in 1963:
o Medgar Evers, head of MI chapter
NAACP assassinated by KKK in June
o Church bombing in Birmingham, killing 6
children in September
Civil Rights Movement Under JFK
• Mood of black movement insistent but
goals still moderate
– Directed against segregation and
inequality, not against white America
• MLK Jr by far most popular leader
• 90% of black population supported JFK
Goal of the revolution = integration
“wanted not to get out of white
society but to get deeper into it.”
LBJ takes up the torch
• LBJ urged Congress to pass Civil Rights Bill
and proposed Tax cut as a memorial to
JFK
• Johnson’s speech at Gettysburg:
“we do not answer those who lie
beneath this soil – when we reply to the
Negro by asking, ‘Patience’.”
• MLK :“I am happy to know that a fellow
Southerner is in the White
House who is concerned
about civil rights.”
A Time of Revolution
• Summer of 1963
‘vast majority’ of blacks now demanded an immediate end to
all forms of discrimination.
‘We have woke up,” one Alabama woman said. Black leaders
were all more or less militant, ‘partly by choice-and partly
because they have no choice.’ Their followers wanted
‘complete equality, nothing less.’ They wanted it right away.
And three out of four of them would not be deterred if that
meant bloodshed. ‘Fights, shooting’, said an unemployed
black man in Miami, shrugging, ‘it takes that to make the world
better.’
Black Power
On May 3, five new county “freedom organizations” convened and
nominated candidates for the offices of sheriff, tax assessor,
members of the school boards. Their ballot symbol is the black
panther: a bold beautiful animal, representing the strength and
dignity of Black demands today. A man needs a black panther on
his side when he and his family must endure —as hundreds of
Alabamians have endured—loss of job, eviction, starvation, and
sometimes death for political activity. He may also need a gun, and
SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] reaffirms the
right of Black men everywhere to defend themselves when
threatened or attacked.
As for initiating the use of violence, we hope that such programs as
ours will make that unnecessary; but it is not for us to tell Black
communities whether they can or cannot use any particular form of
action to resolve their problems. Responsibility for the use of
violence by Black men, whether in self-defense or initiated by them,
lies with the White community.
Source: Stokely Carmichael, “What We Want,” New York Review of
Books, September 22, 1966
Building Tensions
• Nations’ resources deflected by Vietnam
• Liberals and blacks frustrated by limits of
Great Society
• Blacks living in ghettos of Northern cities
did not benefit from civil rights laws
• Race riots broke out in hundreds of U.S.
cities in 1964=alienating white middle
class from movement
Race Riots 1965-1968
The Long, Hot Summers
• (1965-1968)
– Race riots in cities around the country
• Harlem, NY; South Chicago; Watts, L.A.; Detroit
– $5 M in property damage, 7,000 injured;
200 casualties
Johnson’s Response
– Commission on Civil Disorders: Johnson’s
investigation found causes: persisting white
racism which subjected black Americans to
poverty, slum housing, poor education,
police brutality
– Report recommended more Federal aid to
poor urban African Americans
– Johnson did not act!!!
LBJ’s reaction to the riots
“How is it possible that all these people
could be so ungrateful to me after I had
given them so much? I tried to make it
possible for every child of every color to
grow up in a nice house, to eat a solid
breakfast, to attend a decent school, and
to get a good and lasting job. I asked so
little in return. Just a little thanks. Just a little
appreciation. That’s all.”
Source: Lyndon B. Johnson, interview, 1967
The Majority Reaction
I’m sick of crime everywhere. I’m sick of riots. I’m
sick of “poor” people demonstrations (black,
white, red, yellow, purple, green or any other
color!) . . . I’m sick of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling
for the good of a very small part rather than the
whole of our society . . . I’m sick of the lack of law
enforcement . . . But most of all, I’m sick of
constantly being kicked in the teeth for staying
home, minding my own business, working steadily,
paying my bills and taxes, raising my children to
be decent citizens, managing my financial affairs
so I will not become a ward of the City, County,
or State, and footing the bill for the minuses
mentioned herein.
Source: Letter from private citizen to Senator Sam Ervin of North
Carolina, June 18, 1968.
A New Black Voice
– Radicalization of the civil rights movement
– Initially influenced by teachings of the
Nation of Islam under Elijah Mohammed then
Malcom X
– Race pride, self determination
– Rejected MLK’s non-violence
Malcolm X, Black Muslims, Nation of
Islam
– Questioned value of integration
– After 1966, SNCC and CORE switch from
interracial, integrationists to all black militant
separatists willing to engage in violent
confrontations
– Angry rhetoric of Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap
Brown; Black panthers: same violent message
Video: Malcom X and MLK
Debate
What were the main differences
between their approaches concerning
the following?:
• Non-violent resistance
• whites
• desegregation
• riots
B. American Indian Movement
• Inspired by Civil Rights Movement for
African-Americans
• Sense of pride and redress of grievances
• 1961 400 members of 67 tribes gather to
denounce Termination policy
– Withdrawal of federal gov’t recognition of
tribes as legal entities
– Subject to same local jurisdiction as whites
– Policy of cultural assimilation, loss of cultural
distinctiveness
• Demands to include Indians in War on
Poverty program
• Johnson responded by ending Indian
Termination Policy and endorsing Indian selfdetermination
• Created National Council on Indian
Opportunity: directed more Federal funding
into improving conditions on Indian
reservations
• 1968 because of persistent poverty, militant young
native Americans organized AIM (American Indian
Movement)
• Call for Red Power
• 1968 Congress passed Indian Civil Rights Act
– Accorded protection of Bill of Rights + legitimacy of tribal
laws within reservations
• 1969 – Dissatisfaction – Occupied federal prison on
Alcatraz Island offshore from San Francisco for 1 ½ years
• 1970 – Nixon promises increased tribal selfdetermination & federal aid
• 1972 – demonstrators occupy building of Bureau of
Indian Affairs in Washington 6 days
• 1973 - Wounded Knee, SD – AIM seizes and
occupies town - symbolic place of suffering
– Demanded radical changes of administration of
reservations
– Federal gov’t treaty obligations
– Hostages, starved out by federal troops
• Equality and Justice not attained but new legal
rights and protections strengthened their position
• Video: American Indian Movement 5’36
• Video: Civil Rights Native Americans 1’20 – 4’02
Homework: Reading Assignments
• Unfinished Nation, Chapter 30: The Other America, pp. 797-803
– Rural poverty; inner cities; The Rise of the Civil Rights Movement;
The Brown Decision and Massive Resistance; The expanding
movement; Causes of the Civil Rights Movement
• Unfinished Nation, Chapter 31: The ordeal of Liberalism pp.
819-824; 834-839
– The Battle for Racial Equality, expanding protests, a national
commitment; the battle for voting rights; the changing
movement; urban violence; black power
– The King Assassination; The Kennedy Assassination and Chicago
• Unfinished Nation, Chapter 32: The Crisis of Authority pp. 848855
– The mobilization of minorities; seeds of Indian Militancy; The Indian
Civil Rights Movement; Latino Activism; The New Feminism
• Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Chapter
19: Surprises (see blog)
– Women’s Movement and Native American Movement