CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1950s1960s WHAT ARE CIVIL RIGHTS

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1950’s-1960’s

WHAT ARE CIVIL RIGHTS? • Civil rights are rights that protect individuals' freedom from the governments, social organizations, and private individuals. • They allow people to participate in the civil and political life of the society and state without discrimination or repression.

EARLIER CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS • Frederick Douglass • Abolitionist before the Civil War • Fought for the rights of freed slaves to vote • First Black Ambassador (to Haiti)

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON • Civil Rights leader in the late 1800’searly 1900’s • Thought Black people should work hard at their jobs to prove they were equal to White people • Started the Tuskegee Institute to teach Black people vocational education (plumbing, auto mechanic, carpentry, etc. )

W. E. B. DUBOIS • Civil Rights leader in the late 1800’searly 1900’s • First Black man to go to Harvard university • Thought Black people should actively try to change discrimination laws • Started the NAACP to help challenge unfair laws

IDA B. WELLS • Campaigned to stop lynching of Black people

EARLY 1900’S • Most African-American people lived in the South in the early 1900’s • Most African-Americans lived as poor sharecroppers • During the Great Depression, many African-Americans moves to the North for industrial, factory jobs this was called the Great Migration

WORLD WAR II Segregated units: Black only units Often Black units did the support work

NAACP • What is it? National Association for the Advancement of Colored People • Started by W. E. B. Du. Bois • What Did It Do? Paid for Black people to take their cases to court and challenge laws that discriminated by race

SCHOOL DESEGREGATION • Brown v. Board of Education • Case led by NAACP lawyers • Supreme Court decision that segregated schools are unequal and must desegregate • Contained 5 cases, including a Virginia case

BROWN V BOARD OF EDUCATION • Key people • Thurgood Marshall —NAACP Legal Defense Team & First Black Supreme Court Justice • Oliver Hill— NAACP Legal Defense Team in Virginia

VIRGINIA RESPONSE • Massive Resistance—Closing some schools • Establishment of private academies that could choose not to accept Black people • White flight (white people moving away) from urban school systems

1963 MARCH ON WASHINGTON • “I have a dream” speech given by Martin Luther King. • The march helped make white people want to support civil rights laws • The march showed the power of non-violent, mass protest.

NON VIOLENT PROTEST Sit in: when Black people went to White restaurants and did not leave Marches and Boycotts: Black people in Montgomery, Alabama stopped riding buses that segregated Black and White people

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 • The act stopped discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, and gender. • It also desegregated public accommodations. • President Lyndon B. Johnson played an important role in the passage of the act.

VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 • The act outlawed literacy tests. • Federal registrars were sent to the South to register voters. • The act resulted in an increase in African American voters. • President Lyndon B. Johnson played an important role in the passage of the act.

VOTING RIGHTS ACT 1965