Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968

"It can be said of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that, short of a declaration of war, no other act of Congress

had a more violent background - a background of confrontation, official violence, injury, and murder."

“ What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—and then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar overlike a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags like a heavy load…Or does it explode?” – Langston Hughes

Jim Crow Laws

What You Should Already Know

• De jure segregation vs. de facto segregation

• CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)

• NAACP (famous NAACP lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, a prominent lawyer during 1950’s and 60’s)

Brown vs. Board of Education May 1954

“Does segregation of children in public school solely on the basis of race…deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does…to separate them solely because of their race generates of feeling inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds

in way unlikely to ever be undone.” –Chief Justice Earl Warren

The Montgomery Bus BoycottDecember 1955

“There comes a time when people get tired…of being segregated and

humiliated, tired of being kicked about by the brutal feet of oppression. We have no alternative but to protest.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.”

– Rosa Parks

Little Rock School Integration 1957

“In the present case the troops are there, pursuant to law, solely for the purpose of

preventing interference with the orders of the Court.” – President Eisenhower

Civil Rights Act of 1957

“Southern whites have become a massive resistance and the government must step in”

The Philosophy of Non Violence

“Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear. Love transcends hate. Acceptance dissipates

prejudice; hope ends despair. Peace dominates war. Justice for all overthrows

injustice.”

–Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founding statement

Sit In’s: Greensboro Four first to start this movement

Swim in’s

Freedom Rides 1961

The goal of the Freedom Riders was for a mix of white and African American people to ride buses through the

Deep South, where interstate bus segregation was illegally enforced, in a hope to be arrested and

therefore forcing the Justice Department to enforce laws opposing segregation. Images like the next one of the burned bus, helped create sympathy for the non-

violent Freedom Riders and their cause.

Bull Connor: Birmingham, Alabama 1963

As the Public Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s, Bull Connor became a symbol of bigotry. He infamously

fought against integration by using fire hoses and police attack dogs against protest marchers. His aggressive tactics backfired when the

spectacle of the brutality being broadcast on national television served as one of the catalysts for major social and legal change in

the South and helped in large measure to assure the passage by the US Congress of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

March on Washington - 1963

“He has seen little children stand up against dogs, pistol packing policemen and pressure hoses, and they kept on coming, wave after wave. So the white man is afraid. He is afraid of his own conscience.”

– Congressman Adam Powell

Selma Marches: 1965

The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American Civil Right’s movement. The call was to call attention to voting rights. The first march took place on

March 7, 1965 — "Bloody Sunday" — when 600 marchers were attacked by state and local police with clubs and tear

gas. The second march took place on March 9.

Only the third march, which began on March 21 and lasted five days, made it to Montgomery, 54 miles away.

Civil Rights Act of 1964/Voting Rights Act of 1965

Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee – April 4, 1968

New Leaders EmergeMalcolm X: “Blacks should separate from white society”

Stokely Carmichael: “…in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom. No man can give anybody his freedom. A man is born free. “country does.

In one last cruel irony, the plane carrying the body of the apostle of non violence (MLK) is given the salute of black power

advocates, while and armed guard stands by…the victim of violence, protected by the tools of violence, mourned with a

symbol of violence.

Essential Question

To what extent were non-violent protests effective in accomplishing their goals?

In what ways did the advent of television help the movement?