Major Events of the Civil Rights Movement

A Legacy of Discrimination and Segregation• All men are created equal? (1787)• 3/5 Compromise (1789)• Dred Scott Decision (1856)• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Supreme Court rules separate facilities for whites and blacks is legal (separate but equal)– Birth of legalized segregation– Jim Crow Laws

• Separate entrances to public buildings, separate drinking fountains, separate bathrooms, laws against intermarriage, segregated buses or blacks in back of the bus, segregated schools

World War II and African-Americans• African-Americans fight against

tyranny in Europe and the Pacific, then come home to discrimination (blacks see double standard)

• A. Philip Randolph threatens a march on Washington to Roosevelt to protest discrimination

• Roosevelt compromises and ends segregation of government offices and the defense industry (the march is overted)

• Harry Truman desegregates the armed forces near the end of the war

• Korean War becomes the first de-segregated war

Popular Culture Paves Way for Civil Rights Movement

• 1947 Jackie Robinson, becomes the first black player to break the sports color barrier signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers

• Other professional sports follow suit

• African-American celebrities increasingly in the public eye

– Nat King Cole has his own primetime TV show

– Sammy Davis Jr. part of the Rat Pack

• Increasing popularity of Rock and Roll music and black artists

– Little Richard, Chuck Berry

Emmett Till• Emmett Till beaten and murdered

for whistling at a white woman• Mother chose to have an open

casket funeral in Chicago, for the world to see the horrors of racism

• Beginning of Civil Rights Beginning of Civil Rights MovementMovement

• Illustrates the differences between the North and South– De Facto Segregation De Facto Segregation – racial

segregation by practice and law (North)

– De Jure Segregation De Jure Segregation – overt racial segregation by law (South)

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The Brown Case• Brown v. Board of Education of Brown v. Board of Education of

Topeka, KansasTopeka, Kansas– Brown family sues for having to

send their daughters to a black school across down

– NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall argues case before the court (later becomes first African-American on the Supreme Court)

– Supreme Court lead by Chief Justice Earl Warren rules separate but equal is a violation of the 14th Amendment (equal protection clause)

– Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson– Court calls for desegregation

of schools “with all deliberate speed”

Montgomery Bus Boycott• (1955)Rosa Parks (NAACP

secretary) refuses to give up her seat in the front of the bus- she is arrested.

• Begining of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, economic boycott of buses, which lasts 381 days

• Martin Luther King Jr. head of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) emerges as the leader of the boycott and civil rights movement

Brown Decision tested in Little Rock• Despite the Brown Decision school

desegregation moves slowly• One of the first test cases Central

High School in Little Rock, Arkansas where 9 African-American students are chosen to integrate the school

• Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus comes out against desegregation, sends in state troops to prevent the 9 students from entering the school.

Local white mobs also for barriers to prevent the students from entering

• President Eisenhower sends in National Guard troops and nationalizes state troops to protect the students and allow them in the school

Lunch Counters• Students within the SCLC

form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee push for more confrontational methods of gaining civil rights

• 2/1/1960 SNCC members sit at ‘white-only’ lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina – food is thrown on them, they are yelled at and beaten

Freedom Rides• Congress of Racial Equality

(CORE) lead by James Farmer fight segregation on interstate busing

• 1961 set out on bus trips throughout the south on integrated buses

• Buses firebombed, tires slashed, riders arrested

• Federal government is forced to step in to protect freedom riders

March on Washington• Civil Rights leaders lead by

Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph organized a march on Washington to persuade the Federal government to pass Civil Rights legislation

• 8/28/1963 – 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln memorial

• King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech

• Success of the March on Washington leads to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which barred discrimination in employment and public accommodations

Black Power Movement• Malcolm X Malcolm X emerges as a Civil Rights

leader pushing separation and violence resistance

• 1966 Stokely Carmichael Stokely Carmichael comes to power in SNCC pushing for more confrontational methods – he coins the phrase “Black Power” – combat “White Power”

• Black Panther Party Black Panther Party founded in Oakland – pushing self-determination for blacks and armed resistance to police violence

• Even MLK gets more confrontational speaking out against the war in Vietnam, supporting workers strikes, he is assassinated in Memphis supporting a garbage workers strike

Freedom Summer• 6/1964 Freedom Summer is

launched – campaign to register black voters throughout the south by northern college students (45% of Mississippi was black, only 5% of voters were black)

• 3 civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman were abducted and killed, FBI comes in to investigate (Mississippi Burning)

• Their killers were arrested but found not guilty after the case was over they admitted to the crimes

Take a look around at Selma, Alabama

• African-Americans in Selma trying to register to vote faced beatings and arrests

• They organized a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, 600 people 50 miles

• Police met the marchers and attacked the crowd Edmund Pettis Bridge)

• LBJ sends Federal troops in to allow a second march to occur

• Leads to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – ending discrimination in voter registration by putting it under federal control

Riots• 8/1965 Watts Riots Watts Riots (L.A.) break

out over police violence – riots last 6 days – 4,000 arrested 34 dead

• Over the next 2 years over 100 riots break out across the country

• LBJ appoints commission to look into the problem

• Kerner Commission blames the riots on white racism, warns of the U.S. “moving towards two societies, one black, one white.”

Civil Rights Big Picture• Importance of Television –

protests aired on national TV, whites beating blacks creates support for the movement (non-violent protest)

• Federal Government steps in – State and local governments fail to secure equal rights, Federal government steps in

• Push for equality – 1)Social 2)Political

3)Economic