Williams 2013

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

Emancipation Proclamation (1863): President Abraham Lincoln Declared the freedom of black slaves in Confederate

statesAmerican Civil War (1861 – 1865)Jim Crow Laws (1880s – 1960s):

Names after black-face character from minstrel show in 1930s-40s

Laws that enforced racial segregation. Laws varied from state to state or even city to city

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

Intermarriage: The marriage of a person of Caucasian blood with a Negro, Mongolian, Malay, or Hindu shall be null and void. Arizona

The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately. Florida

Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them. North Carolina

It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play on any vacant low or baseball diamond within two block of any playground devoted to the white race. Georgia

Jim Crow Laws

(1880s – 1960s)

“SEPARATE BUT

EQUAL”

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Homer Plessy jailed in 1892 for sitting in the “white”

section of the East Louisiana Railroad. Argued that the Separate Car Act violated the

Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution

Supreme Court upheld the guilty verdict against Plessy

Set the precedent for “separate” facilities for blacks and whites as constitutionally valid as long as they were “equal”

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

Constitutional PAUSE!!!13 th Amendment: Neither slavery nor involuntary

servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

14 th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

Montgomery Bus Boycott

December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man.

A city wide boycott was planned and organized, in part by Dr. King, for the fol lowing Monday.

Pressure to end the boycott was intense – from poli t ic ians, white business owners, and government efforts.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared the segregation unconstitutional under the 14 t h Amendment.

The boycott lasted unti l December 21, 1956.

Rosa Parks

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

Litt le Rock Nine (1957)

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

Ruby Bridges (1960)

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

James Meredith & Ole Miss (1962)

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

University of Alabama (1963)

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

INCREASING HOSTILITY

Murder of Emmitt Till (1955): 14-year-old boy from

Chicago visited relatives in Mississippi

Followed a dared by peers to address a white woman in a store

Two men, both related to the woman in the store, came to the cabin where Emmitt was staying and took him away in their truck

Emmitt’s body was found three days later in the river. His head was shot and crushed in. His body was nearly unrecognizable.

The defendants were found not-guilty.

INCREASING HOSTILITY

1955: Reverend George Lee, Vice President of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership and NAACP worker, was shot in the face and killed for urging blacks in the Mississippi Delta to vote. No one was charged and Governor Hugh White refused to investigate.

1961: Herbert Lee was shot and killed in Liberty, Mississippi, by E.H. Hurst, a member of the Mississippi State Legislature. Hurst targeted Lee for his involvement with a voter registration campaign. Despite multiple eyewitnesses, Hurst was never charged.

1963: NAACP State Director Medgar Evers was gunned down in his Jackson driveway by White Citizens Council member Byron De La Beckwith from Greenwood, Mississippi.

INCREASING HOSTILITY

1966: James Meredith is shot by a sniper after beginning a lone civil rights march from Memphis to Jackson.

He called his journey the “March Against Fear”. The march was intended to encourage voter registration by African Americans in the South.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, arrived to continue the march on Meredith’s behalf.

The shooter, Aubrey Norvell, confessed and was found guilty. He only served 18 months of his five year sentence.

INCREASING HOSTILITY

Freedom Summer (1964): Civil rights activists James

Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner left their base in Meridian, Mississippi, to invetigate a church burning at the Mount Zion Church.

The men were stopped by a County Deputy Sheriff, Cecil Price, released after several hours, and then detained again.

Price turned the men over to his fellow Klansmen who beat and shot the men to death.

Seven Klansmen, including Sheriff Price, were charged. They were all found not guilty.

INCREASING HOSTILITY

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial pol i t ical and moral questions of our t ime…”

Dr. Mart in Luther King, Jr.

“…any black man who teaches black people to turn the other cheek and suffer peaceful ly after they’ve been

turning the cheek and suffering peacefu l ly for 400 years…he is doing those people an in just ice and he’s a

tra itor to his own people.”Malcolm X

INCREASING HOSTILITY

AN ORGANIZED RESPONSE

NAACP: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Founded in 1909 by W.E.B. Du Bois and several white northerners

that sought to achieve legal victories for African Americans, especially the reversal of “separate but equal”.

SCLC: Southern Christian Leadership Conference Coalition founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King, Jr. and nearly

one hundred other southern ministers to rally church support for the growing civil rights movement. Sought integration through “love and nonviolence”.

SNCC: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Founded in 1960 after the Greensboro sit-in. Goal was to organize

students on campuses across the country. Participated in nearly every major peaceful campaign of the civil rights movement.

CORE: Congress of Racial Equality Founded in 1942 to campaign against segregation in the North

using sit-ins and other nonviolent forms of protest. Worked closely with SNCC, the SCLC, and the NAACP.

AN ORGANIZED RESPONSE

NUL: National Urban League Nonpartisan civil rights organization founded in 1910 that

advocates on behalf of African Americans and against racial discrimination.

BLACK PANTHERS: Organization of militant black civil rights activists inspired

by Stokley Carmichael’s “black power” philosophies. Founded in California in 1966. Advocated the use of violence to incite a racial revolution in the United States. Helped poor residents in black communities by running clinics and schools.

NATION OF ISLAM: Group founded in 1930 to promote black nationalism in

Detroit’s black community during the Great Depression. Malcolm X emerged as the organization’s chief spokesman in the early 1950s.

AN ORGANIZED RESPONSE

SIT-INS February 1, 1960: Four African American college students walked into a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, and were refused service. They sat down and refused to move.

Day 2: more than twenty African American students came to the store to join the sit-in.

Day 3: Sixty people joined. Day 4: More than 300 On July 25, 1960 black

employees of the Greensboro’s Woolworth’s store were the first to be served at the store’s lunch counter. The next day the entire Woolworth’s

chain was desegregated.

AN ORGANIZED RESPONSE

200,000 people from all across the U.S. met in Washington, D.C., in 1963 to promote action on civil rights issues.

The “March on Washington” was supported by the NUL, NAACP, CORE, SCLC, and SNCC

A peaceful march that culminated in the delivery of “I Have a Dream” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

MARCHES

AN ORGANIZED RESPONSE

FEBRUARY 1, 1968: Two black sanitation workers were crushed to death when the compactor mechanism of the trash truck was accidentally triggered. On the same day, 22 black

workers were sent home for the day while their white counterparts were kept on with pay.

February 12, 1968: 1,100 of a possible 1,300 black sanitation workers began a strike for job safety, better wages and benefits, and union recognition.

STRIKES

AN ORGANIZED RESPONSE

LANDMARK VICTORIES

Civil Rights Act of 1957: Nominally outlawed racial segregation and created a civil rights division within the Justice Department. More symbolic than legally significant.

Civil Rights Act of 1964: Outlawed discrimination in public places and the workplace on the basis of race, religion, nationality, or gender. Also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to ensure that people would abide by the law.

Voting Rights Act of 1965: Outlawed literacy tests as a voting prerequisite and sent federal election officials into the South to help blacks register to vote. Some historians claim that its passing marked the true end of Reconstruction.

Interracial Marriage: June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court voted unanimously to overturn the conviction of Richard and Mildred Loving, a young interracial couple from rural Caroline County, VA.

LANDMARK VICTORIES