The Civil Rights Movement Did the Civil Rights

The Civil Rights Movement Did the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950 s and 1960 s bring about equality for African Americans?

The white race deems itself to be the dominant race in this country. . . But in the view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant ruling class of citizens. . . Our Constitution is color-blind. . . In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law…. We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellowcitizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations. . . will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

I. Civil Rights Background n A. Reconstruction: 1865 -1877 1. 13 th, 14 th, 15 th amendments 2. Election of blacks to state legislatures B. Election of 1876 - Rutherford B. Hayes 1. Withdrawal of troops in the South 2. Democrats return to power. - Redeemers, Home Rule, Solid South C. Jim Crow Laws 1. Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 2. Lynching 3. Rise of KKK D. NAACP E. Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du. Bois

I. Civil Rights Background (cont. ) F. World War II - A. Phillip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters - FDR “Fair Employment Practices Comm. ” - Exec. Order 8022 – banned discrimination in defense industry and federal workplace - Double V Campaign - Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

G. Jackie Robinson Integrates Major League Baseball

H. Truman Desegregates Military (Southern Dems. split and form Dixiecrats) -

II. The Early Civil Rights Movement (1954 -1963) A. Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 1. Initiated by NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, led by Thurgood Marshall 2. Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

3. The Warren Court’s unanimous decision: ”We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. a. Eisenhower’s Response: leave it up to southern states to enforce. b. Supreme Court: “All deliberate speed”

B. Rosa Parks and Civil Disobedience (Montgomery, Alabama, 1955)

Martin Luther King & the Montgomery Bus Boycott Southern Christian Leadership Conference

C. Murder of Emmett Till 28, 1955 August

D. Crisis In Little Rock, 1957 1. Governor orders AK National Guard to prevent Black students from attending - “Little Rock Nine” 2. Eisenhower sends federal troops

“Two, four, six, eight, we ain’t going to integrate!”

On September 24, 1957, President Eisenhower intervened…

E. The Greensboro Sit-ins

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

SNCC Founding Statement We affirm the philosophical or religious ideal of nonviolence. Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear…. By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence, nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities.

“Go where the spirit say go and do what the spirit say do. ” Bob Moses

F. Freedom Rides

A. Spring, 1961 2. 3. Goal: To ride through Southern states and force them to comply with federal ban on interstate segregation. Activists were ambushed and attacked

G. James Meredith 1. 2. First black student enrolled at Univ. of Miss. JFK sent 5, 000 troops after rioting breaks out.

III. Civil Rights Movement, 1963 - 1966

A. Birmingham & the Children’s Crusade 1. 2. 3. Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated city in the US The goal: Boycott local businesses, fill public jails, and gain national attention Police Chief Bull Connor orders fire hoses and attack dogs on teenagers. “Here in Birmingham, we have reached the point of no return” MLK

BIRMINGHAM 1963

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was "well timed, " according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the words "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never. " We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied. " - MLK Letter from a Birmingham Jail

B. Death of Medgar Evers 1. Civil Rights leader assassinated by Klansman, 1963

C. Birmingham Church Bombing 1. 2. Klan bombs 16 th Street Baptist Church Kills 4 young girls

D. March on Washington August 28, 1963

“ More than 250, 000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to rally for “jobs and freedom” http: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=B 3 P 6 N 9 g-d. Qg

E. Mississippi Freedom Summer n Voter registration drives, freedom schools.

Neshoba County, Mississippi, June 1964

F. LBJ and Civil Rights

1. 2. 3. 4. Civil Rights Act of 1964: outlawed discrimination Voting Rights Act of 1965 – enforced 15 th Amendment and removed restrictions that kept Blacks from voting 24 th Amendment – outlawed poll taxes Civil Rights Act of 1968 - banned housing discrimination, jury intimidation, etc.

G. SELMA n. On "Bloody Sunday, " March 7, 1965, 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma, Alabama. n At the Edmund Pettus Bridge, six blocks away, state and local lawmen attacked them with clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. n. Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr. , led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. n. After being granted court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, 3, 200 marchers set out for Montgomery, on Sunday, March 21. n. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25, 000 -strong.

H. Malcolm X n. Born Malcolm Little, took the name “X” to represent stolen identity of African slaves n. Black nationalist and spokesperson for the Nation of Islam n“Break free of white domination by any means necessary” n. Did not support integrationist goals of civil rights movement n. Militant approach to Civil Rights n. Supported social, political, and economic equality n. Violence as self-defense n. February 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in NYC

IV. Black Separatism and Black Power A. B. Malcolm X Stokely Carmichael – SNCC Student National Coordinating Committee 1. Repudiated non-violence and advocated Black Power

C. Black Panther Party (Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, etc. ) 1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. 2. We want full employment for our people. 3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our Black Community. 4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. 5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society. 6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service. 7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people. 8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. 9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States. 10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

D. Race Riots in the 1960’s Race riots overwhelmed dozens of American cities 1. 2. Assassination of MLK, 1968 Detroit : military tanks rolled through the streets, 41 died, hundreds injured and thousands left homeless.

Martin Luther King January 15, 1929 April 4, 1968

E. The struggle continues… 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Affirmative Action laws – minority preference 1971: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Edu (busing, immediate desegregation of public schools) 1978: Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (Affirmative Action) Racial disparity and segregation continues 1992: LA Race Riots (Rodney King) 2003: Supreme Court upholds Bakke decision 2005: Edgar Ray Killen (Mississippi murders) convicted of manslaughter on 41 st anniversary of murder of Cheney, Goodman, Schwerner Segregation continues 2012: Shooting of Trayvon Martin