The Civil Rights Movement
Did the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s 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 fellow-citizens, 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�
1. 13th, 14th, 15th 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. DuBois
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)
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.
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 August 28, 1955
D. Crisis In Little Rock, 1957
- “Little Rock Nine”
“Two, four, six, eight, we ain’t going to integrate!”
On September 24, 1957, President Eisenhower intervened…
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E. The Greensboro Sit-ins
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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
G. James Meredith
III. Civil Rights Movement, 1963 - 1966
A. Birmingham & the Children’s Crusade�
“Here in Birmingham, we have reached the point of no return” MLK
BIRMINGHAM�1963
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
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
B. Death of Medgar Evers
C. Birmingham Church Bombing
D. March on Washington� August 28, 1963
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More than 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to rally for “jobs and freedom”
E. Mississippi Freedom Summer
Neshoba County, Mississippi, �June 1964
F. LBJ and Civil Rights�
- banned housing discrimination, jury intimidation, etc.
G. SELMA�
H. Malcolm X��
IV. Black Separatism and Black Power
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
Martin Luther King�January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968�
E. The struggle continues…