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U N I T

8Toward Equality and Social Reform

See pages 970–971 forprimary source readingsthat accompany Unit 8.

&HISTORYYOU

Not everyone accepted the conformity of the 1950s. African Americans,in an organized movement, rejected their second-class citizenship andthe practice of forced segregation. Inspired by the African American

example, other groups—–feminists, Hispanic Americans, NativeAmericans, and young people—–also raised their voices in protest of

unfair practices or their assigned roles in society. The social turbulenceled the federal government to revive the activism of the New Deal in

an effort to remove barriers to equal opportunity.

1954–1976

UNITED STATES

THE WORLD

1954

1954

Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation is illegal.

French are defeated in Vietnam. 1959 Civil war in Vietnam begins; St. Lawrence Seaway opens.

1961 Bay of Pigs invasion fails; Berlin Wall is built.

1962 Cuban missile crisis occurs.

1955 Montgomery bus boycott begins. 1961 Kennedy becomes President.1963 Kennedy is assassinated; Johnson becomes President.

1964 Civil RightsAct is passed;Dr. King winsNobel Peace Prize.

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1966 First artificial heart implanted.

1965 “March for Freedom”begins; Voting RightsAct is passed.

1967

1973

Green Bay Packers win first Super Bowl.

Arab oil embargo intensifies energy crisis.

1968

1974

Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated.

Isabel Perón becomes president in Argentina.

1969

1975

Neil Armstrong walks on the moon.

American military evacuates Saigon.

1972 Congress approves Equal Rights Amendment.

1965 1970 1976

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks at the march on Washington, August 28, 1963.

664 L I T E R A T U R E

L I T E R A T U R E

To Be of Useby Marge Piercy

The people I love the bestjump into work head firstwithout dallying in the shallowsand swim off with sure strokes almost out

of sight.They seem to become natives of that element.the black sleek heads of sealsbouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to aheavy cart.

who pull like the water buffalo, with massivepatience,

who strain in the mud and the muck to movethings forward,

who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submergein the task, who go into the fields to harvestand work in a row and pass the bags along,who stand in the line and haul in their places,who are not parlor generals and field desertersbut move in common rhythmwhen the food must come in or the fire be put out.

Voices ofChange

During the 1960s and 1970s, women and people of color began to challenge predominant ethnic, racial, and gender stereotypes and worked

to overturn laws that restricted their rights and freedoms. The authors of thefollowing poems assert their identities by linking personal experiences to a

broader understanding of culture, gender, tradition, and family. They repre-sent the diversity of American culture during this period.

Womenby Alice Walker

They were women thenMy mama’s generation Husky of voice—Stout ofStepWith fists as well asHandsHow they battered downDoorsAnd ironedStarched whiteShirtsHow they ledArmies Headragged GeneralsAcross minedFieldsBooby-trappedDitchesTo discover booksDesksA place for usHow they knew what weMust knowWithout knowing a pageOf itThemselves.

The Immigrant Experienceby Richard Olivias

I’m sitting in my history class,The instructor commences rapping,I’m in my U.S. History class,And I’m on the verge of napping.

The Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock.Tell me more! Tell me more!Thirteen colonies were settled.I’ve heard it all before.

What did he say?Dare I ask him to reiterate?Oh, why bother,It sounded like he said,George Washington’s my father.

I’m reluctant to believe it,I suddenly raise my mano.If George Washington’s my father,Why wasn’t he Chicano?

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1. Why does Alice Walker admire the women of hermother’s generation? What does she mean by“ Headragged Generals”?

2. In what ways do you think Richard Olivas wouldchange the way American history is taught in highschool?

Responding to Literature

L I T E R A T U R E

Dinner Quilt Faith Ringgold’s “soft” quilt art tells of growing up as an African American in Harlem. DinnerQuilt tells about Christmas dinners with Aunt Connie, who would embroider place mats with names offamous African American women, such as Fannie Lou Hamer.

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She went instead by bus to Little Rock Cen-tral High School. As she headed for the front door,she found the way blocked by an angry crowd ofwhite townspeople and hundreds of armed sol-diers, Arkansas National Guard members sent bythe governor.

Elizabeth tried to follow a white student throughthe door but was stopped by a soldier. “When I triedto squeeze past him,” she recalled later, “he raisedhis bayonet, and then the other guards moved in andraised their bayonets. . . . Somebody started yelling,‘Lynch her! Lynch her!’”

Elizabeth and the 8 other students never madeit into Central High that day. It took 3 more weeks,intervention by the President, 1,000 paratroopers,and 10,000 members of the Arkansas NationalGuard to integrate the school.

It was a pattern repeated often in the years tocome. Legislation, court orders, grassroots efforts,and nonviolent demonstrations alone were notenough. It took all of these efforts together to bringthe Constitution’s promise of equality for all clos-er to reality. �

Elizabeth Ann Eckford and her mother made acrisp black and white dress for Elizabeth to wearher first day in the new school. The eight otherAfrican American students arranged to go to schooltogether, but Elizabeth never got the message.

The Civil RightsStruggle

SEPTEMBER 4 , 1957 : SCHOOL OPENS AT L I T TLE ROCK CENTRAL H IGH

C H A P T E R

20

Chapter OverviewVisit the American Odyssey Web site at americanodyssey.glencoe.com and click onChapter 20—Chapter Overview to previewthe chapter.

HISTORY

Based on what you know and the picture on page

667, write your understanding of some of the prob-

lems faced by African Americans in their struggle for

full civil rights.

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http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstudies/ushistory/amod2002/chap20/overview.shtml

S t a t e t r o o p s h a d d e f e n d e d s e g r e g a t i o n ;l a t e r f e d e r a l i z e d t r o o p s e n a b l e d

i n t e g r a t i o n .

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668 C H A P T E R 2 0 T H E C I V I L R I G H T S S T R U G G L E

African Americans madegains during World War II.Yet they did not share in thepromise and prosperity that fol-lowed, and most white Ameri-cans seemed unaware of this.Novelist Ralph Ellison wrote:

Iam an invisible man. . . . Iam invisible, understand,

simply because peoplerefuse to see me. . . . Whenthey approach me they seeonly my surroundings,themselves, or figments oftheir imagination—indeedeverything and anything except me.

—Ralph Ellison,Invisible Man, 1952

In the South, laws that ensured segregation enforcedthis invisibility. Indeed, sepa-ration of blacks and whitesformed a fundamental part ofsouthern culture. All across theregion, African Americans hadto enter public buses by the backdoor, sit in separate waitingrooms at train stations, eat inseparate restaurants, and attendseparate schools. The power tovote was regularly withheld.

In the North, the patternof urban life often resulted in defacto segregation——segregationin fact though not by law. AsAfrican Americans migrated toNorthern cities, white peoplemoved out to the suburbs.

ChallengingSegregation

EARLY 1950S : THE UNITED STATES

Two AmericasAfrican Americans were not allowed

to ride in the same cabsas white patrons.

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� segregation� civil rights

� the importance of Brown v. Board ofEducation to the civil rights movement.

� the ways whites in the South resistedthe Brown decision and the chain ofevents that led a reluctant Eisenhowerto enforce school desegregation.

Vocabulary Read to Find Out . . .Main IdeaAfrican Americans in thepost–World War II era steppedup efforts to end the system ofsegregation that divided theUnited States into two sepa-rate and unequal societies,one black and one white.

Other, more subtle, means of separating whites andAfrican Americans emerged. For example, school dis-tricts were carefully drawn so that they included onlyblack neighborhoods or only white ones.

The country had two societies, one white and oneblack. The invisible world of the African Americans,however, was about to make its presence known. Thishappened dramatically when Jackie Robinson, a starathlete at UCLA, broke the color line in 1947 to becomean infielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Facing hostileteammates and opponents, Robinson held his temper andwon over the fans with his spirited play. African Amer-icans, formerly confined to segregated leagues, soon be-gan moving into professional sports.

The Segregation SystemThe North Eases, the South Intensifies

If integrated major league baseball worked, askedmany African Americans, why should segregation pre-vail elsewhere? In the country they had bravely helpedto defend, why should they not be entitled to fair hous-ing and fair employment protections?

However, the issue that most inflamed both segre-gationists and integrationists was public education. Be-cause public schools placed children in daily social

situations of playing and learning, attitudes learned in theclassroom could be expected to influence students for therest of their lives.

In the early 1950s, 17 states and the District of Co-lumbia prohibited African American and white childrenfrom attending school together. Only 16 states requiredtheir public schools to be integrated, and individualschool districts often violated these requirements.

Then in 1950 three Supreme Court decisions hand-ed down on a single day gave a new direction to thosewho were fighting for civil rights, the rights of all citi-zens. First, railroad dining cars operating in the Southnow had to provide equal service to all travelers, re-gardless of race. Second, African American studentscould not be segregated within a school also attendedby whites. Third, “intangible factors,” not just buildingsor books, had to be considered when comparing the ed-ucation provided for African Americans and whites.

The Challenge of the CourtsSupreme Court Rules Against Segregation

For more than 50 years, Plessy v. Ferguson had stoodas the legal precedent for the “separate but equal” doctrine. This 1896 Supreme Court opinion held that ifseparate accommodations provided in railroad cars were

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KansasColorado

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School segregation was treated differently in various parts of the United States. In how many states were schools segregated bylaw? In what region was segregation predominant?

equal for African American and white passengers, thenthe resulting segregation was constitutional. Soon the“separate but equal” principle was being used to justifysegregation in housing, restaurants, public swimmingpools, and other public facilities.

NAACP StrategyAfter World War II, the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) initiated a se-ries of court cases that chipped away at the Plessy ruling.In case after case, the Supreme Court held that the sepa-rate facilities provided for African Americans were not, infact, equal to those provided for white people. This strat-egy was engineered largely by Charles Houston, a Har-vard Law School graduate who later taught at the all-blackHoward University. As chief legal counsel for the NAACP,he was assisted by Thurgood Marshall, who later becamethe first African American justice on the Supreme Court.

The NAACP’s strategy concentrated first on de-segregating graduate and specialized schools. Theyhoped to prove that the facilities for nonwhites were notequal to those of whites. Then, instead of building newschool buildings for use by only a handful of AfricanAmerican students, states would be forced to integrate.

After succeeding on this level, theNAACP planned to attack segregationin elementary and high schools. In 1950the NAACP made a bold decision.Rather than trying to prove case by casethat the “separate but equal” doctrinewas unworkable, they agreed to fightsegregation head-on. They would chal-lenge the courts that segregation itselfwas illegal.

When Houston died in 1950, Thur-good Marshall continued the effort forthe NAACP. Marshall was popularamong most African Americans. As onesupporter explained, Marshall was “ofthe people. He knew how to getthrough to them. Out in Texas or Ok-lahoma or down the street here inWashington at the Baptist Church, hewould make these rousing speeches thatwould have them all jumping out oftheir seats.”

Then the NAACP decided whichsegregated school district to bring be-fore the Supreme Court. A suitable caserequired parents courageous enough tosign a court petition despite pressurefrom local officials. It also required pa-tience. The NAACP expected to losewhen the suits were first tried, allowing

for an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Brown DecisionThe Supreme Court case that helped overturn

school segregation did not originate in the South at all.The case was called Brown v. the Board of Education ofTopeka, Kansas. By selecting a case from outside theSouth, the Court hoped to emphasize that the questionof school segregation was a national one.

The “separate but equal” school facilities in Topekawere of comparable quality. Seven-year-old Linda Brown,however, had to cross through a railroad switching yardto catch the bus to her all-black elementary school, whichwas miles away. Why, her father insisted, couldn’t she attend the all-white school just a few blocks from herhome instead of riding a bus to a school located miles away?

Oral arguments before the Supreme Court were setfor December 9, 1952. As usual, the NAACP lawyers rehearsed their presentation before the mostly nonwhitefaculty and students of Howard Law School in Wash-ington, D.C. After the hearing came months of waiting.The Court then asked for some more information, butbefore arguments were heard again, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died suddenly. President Eisenhower


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Fighting Segregation Through the System Thurgood Marshall and Mrs. L.C. Bates,president of the Arkansas NAACP, talk with Arkansas students outside the SupremeCourt. In what way was the Brown case different from previous segregation cases?

appointed in Vinson’s place the former governor ofCalifornia, Earl Warren.

Warren felt that such a sensitive decision required a unanimous decision. Such a decision would send a clearmessage to all parts of the country. Again, weeks of negotiations went on before the Court announced its decision. That historic moment came on May 17, 1954.Chief Justice Warren, in delivering the opinion, said:

Does segregation of children in public schoolssolely on the basis of race, even though the

physical facilities and other tangible factors may be equal, deprive children of the minority group ofequal educational opportunities? We believe itdoes. . . . To separate them from others of similarage and qualifications solely because of their racegenerates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts andminds in a way very unlikely ever to be undone.

We conclude that in the field of public education thedoctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Sepa-rate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

—Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

Resistance to BrownThe South Resists Integration

When the Supreme Court declared in 1954 thatschool segregation was illegal, they said nothing abouthow integration was to be carried out. That announce-ment came a year later. The rather vague ruling of theCourt, pronounced in May 1955, was that integrationshould take place “with all deliberate speed” and “at theearliest possible date.” The reluctance to give definiteguidelines for ending segregation may have been theprice that Chief Justice Warren had to pay for his jus-tices’ unanimous decision. After all, the integration de-cision was not a popular one among many groups. Pollsshowed that 80 percent of Southern whites opposed the Brown decision.

Some of the nation’s school districts took steps tocomply with the ruling. Other districts, particularly inthe South, devised plans to resist the decision.

Massive ResistanceIn Southern districts where resistance was strong,

white students, encouraged by parents, refused to attendintegrated schools. The Ku Klux Klan reemerged, whileother white Southerners joined the less militant WhiteCitizens’ Councils.

Resistance often received encouragement from thosein high offices. Virginia’s governor, Thomas Stanley, de-clared, “I shall use every legal means at my commandto continue segregated schools in Virginia.” Southernstate legislatures passed more than 450 laws and reso-lutions aimed at preventing enforcement of the Brown de-cision. In 1956 the Virginia state legislature passed amassive resistance measure that cut off state aid to alldesegregated schools.

In the same year, 100 Southern members of Congresssigned what came to be called the Southern Manifesto,praising “the motives of those states which have de-clared their intention to resist forced integration by anylawful means.” One of the three Southern representativeswho refused to sign was Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas,future President of the United States.

Eisenhower and BrownWhen elected President in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower

carried 4 of the 11 states of the old Confederacy, onlythe second time the Republicans had made inroads inthe solidly Democratic South since Reconstruction. Outof personal conviction, and out of loyalty to his South-ern constituents, Eisenhower attempted to be neutral toward desegregation. He neither endorsed nor refutedthe Supreme Court decision, saying instead, “I don’t believe you can change the hearts of men with laws ordecisions.” Privately, he called his appointment of EarlWarren to the Supreme Court his biggest mistake.

In 1956 the African American student AutherineLucy was suspended and then expelled from the Uni-versity of Alabama after whites rioted to prevent her fromremaining. Eisenhower said, “I would certainly hopethat we could avoid any interference with anybody as long as that state, from its governor down, will do its best to straighten it out.” The university continued toexclude African Americans for the next seven years.

Crisis at Little RockDesegregation Meets Violent Resistance

Little Rock, Arkansas, seemed an unlikely place fora showdown on school segregation. Just 5 days after theBrown decision, the Little Rock school board announcedits willingness to obey the new law. The school districtsuperintendent worked out a careful plan that consistedin its first stage of placing 9 African American studentsin Central High School, a school with approximately2,000 white students. Then on September 2, 1957——thenight before the first day of school——Arkansas governor,Orval Faubus, appeared on statewide television. He

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announced that soldiers from the state’s NationalGuard would surround Central High School the nextmorning. The move was necessary, Faubus claimed, be-cause of “evidence of disorder and threats of disorder.”

The nine new students stayed away from school thenext day, as school plans to delay and federal court orders to desegregate followed one another in quick suc-cession. Many saw the issue as a fight between federaland state authority, but President Eisenhower was reluctant to intervene. Finally Governor Faubus metwith Eisenhower. Faubus asked for but was denied a one-year delay in implementing desegregation. The meetingended with the President thinking he had persuadedFaubus to allow integration of the school.

Chaos EruptsThen, in a surprising show of defiance, Faubus

removed the National Guard and left Little Rock. Asan angry crowd of nearly 1,000 white people gatheredat the school the next day, the so-called “Little RockNine” were forced to leave class at midday under po-lice protection.

Reluctantly Eisenhower ordered federal troops intoLittle Rock and nationalized the Arkansas National Guard.For the first time since Reconstruction, a President hadsent federal troops into the South to enforce the Consti-tution. On September 25, the day after the President’s ac-tion, paratroopers lined the route to the high school. Thenine students arrived in a military convoy, escorted byarmed federal soldiers.

The paratroopers left at the end of the month, butthe federalized National Guard remained for the rest of the school year. The next year, Little Rock publicschools closed entirely.

White students attended private schools, schoolsoutside the city, or none at all. Most African Americanstudents had no school to attend. Finally, in August 1959,following another Supreme Court ruling, the Little Rockschool board reopened and integrated its public schools.


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State and Federal Authorities Struggle Opposition to school desegregration by white citizens of Arkansas was so strong thatarmed soldiers had to protect African American students. What were the results of this military intervention?

S e c t i o n A s s e s s m e n t

Main Idea1. Use a diagram like this one to show the steps in

the NAACP strategy to end segregation in publiceducation.

Vocabulary2. Define: segregation, civil rights.

Checking Facts 3. What did Brown v. Board of Education say about

the “separate but equal” doctrine?

4. How did many white Southerners react to theBrown decision? What were some results of thisreaction?

Critical Thinking 5. Making Inferences Why did President Eisen-

hower say that appointing Earl Warren to bechief justice of the Supreme Court was his worst mistake?

Step 1Step 2

Step 3Integrated Schools

Learning the SkillEffectively presented statistical data can strengthen

and clarify oral and written material. NAACP lawyers, forexample, used statistical data to present each of thecases brought against segregated school systems.

Understanding how to show statistical data in graphor chart form allows you to present information clearlyand effectively, often focusing on a specific aspect of abroad topic. Data thus presented can be used to answerspecific questions or to draw conclusions.

Below is a list of four visual-presentation formats andthe main features of each.

To present statistical data, follow these steps:

a. Define the topic you want to cover.b. Collect data about the topic (you can ask a refer-ence librarian for assistance).c. Decide which aspect(s) of the data to highlight.d. Organize and present the data, highlighting theaspects you selected.

Study and Writing SkillP R E S E N T I N G S TAT I S T I C A L D ATA

Segregated Professional Schools, 1945

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Dentistry

Law

Medicine

Pharmacy

Social Work

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Profession Total White AfricanAmerican

Profession Bar Graph Chart Circle Graph

Number of Schools

WhiteAfrican American

93% WhiteStudents

7% AfricanAmerican Students

Dentistry 4 4 0

Law 20 16 4

Medicine 15 15 0

Pharmacy 14 14 0

Social Work 9 9 0

Library Science 12 11 1

Statistical Data Presentation Formats

Format Characteristics

Bar graphs Compare data using colored bars

Charts Show various aspects of data, using columns and rows

Circle graphs Show percentages of a whole using a segmented circle

Line graphs Show changes or trends over time using lines on a grid

Practicing the SkillAnalyze the presentation of the data in the bar

graph, the chart, and the circle graph below.1. The bar graph uses labeled, colored bars topresent information. What does the bar graphshow? What do the divided bars indicate?2. The chart presents data in labeled rows andcolumns. What does the chart show? Does it pre-sent more or less data than the bar graph?3. The circle graph uses a circle to represent thetotal number of schools (74). What percentageaccepted only white students?4. Which seems most effective to you—the bargraph, the chart, or the circle graph? Why?5. You could also use a line graph to show atrend such as the number of law schools open toAfrican American students over a specified periodof time. What is another trend you could showwith a line graph, using the data on this page?

Applying the SkillChoose a chart or graph in a current newspa-

per or magazine. Analyze the information it pre-sents. How else might this data be visuallypresented? Would it be more or less effective? Why?

The Glencoe Skillbuilder InteractiveWorkbook, Level 2 CD-ROM providesmore practice in key social studies skills.

S T U D Y A N D W R I T I N G S K I L L 673


Rosa Parks was tired. It wasthe Christmas shopping season,and the 43-year-old bespectacledwoman worked hard as a tailor’sassistant in a Montgomery, Al-abama, store.

When Parks boarded theCleveland Avenue bus, she waspleased to find a seat in the mid-dle section. In Montgomery,African American riders couldoccupy the middle section seatsunless the front seats reservedfor whites were fully occupied.Then, in order to provide moreseats for white riders, AfricanAmerican passengers had tomove to seats farther back in thebus or stand.

By the third stop, the seats reserved for whites hadfilled up, and one white man was standing. The otherAfrican American passengers in Parks’s row of seats gotup and stood in the back, but she did not move.

The bus driver, James Blake, called out, “If you don’t stand up, I’m going to have to call the police andhave you arrested.” “You may do that,” Rosa Parksreplied.

The Bus Boycott Economic Meansto Attain Goals

Rosa Parks’s simple decisionnot to give up her seat set in mo-tion a series of events with far-reaching consequences for thewhole country. Later, many peo-ple came to regard her action asthe true beginning of the civilrights movement of the 1950sand the 1960s. Out of Mont-gomery emerged the courage,leadership, and strategies for anentire movement.

The news of Parks’s arrestsoon spread through Montgomery’s African Americancommunity. Protests like Parks’s were not new, but hers wasthe kind of case community leaders had been waiting for.Parks was dignified, soft-spoken, well liked. She was a for-mer secretary of the local NAACP chapter and was activein her church. The previous summer she had attended aninterracial workshop at the Highlander Folk School in Ten-nessee. Now, local civil rights leaders asked if she would

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Freedom NowDECEMBER 1, 1955: MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA—BUS BOYCOTT BEGINS

Simple Refusal Stirs BoycottRosa Parks was prepared to fight for

her civil rights.

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� boycott� nonviolent resistance� civil disobedience

� how the Southern ChristianLeadership Conference counteredsegregation in the South.

� the role that the Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee played in thecivil rights movement.

Vocabulary Read to Find Out . . .Main IdeaA civil rights movementbegan to take shape in theSouth as African Americans,working initially through theNAACP and churches, used avariety of nonviolent tacticsto protest segregation.

be willing to fight her case for as long as it tookto win. Despite her mother’s and husband’sfears, she said yes.

The Boycott BeginsImmediately the call went out for a boy-

cott of the Montgomery bus system. By re-fusing to use the services of the bus company,African Americans would exert economicpressure on the company. Jo Ann Robinson,an English professor at Alabama State Col-lege, worked through the night writing andmimeographing 35,000 leaflets that in-structed, “Don’t ride the buses to work, totown, to school, or anywhere on Monday.”

Meanwhile, ministers and communityleaders met and pledged their support of theone-day boycott. They agreed to a secondmeeting at Holt Street Baptist Church onMonday evening to decide whether to con-tinue the boycott.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the new minister of theDexter Avenue Baptist Church, announced the boycottduring his Sunday morning services, asking for the con-gregation’s support. So did other ministers, includingthe white minister of the Trinity Lutheran Church.

A Successful StrategyOn Monday, nearly empty buses rolled through

Montgomery. Although Rosa Parks was found guiltyand fined $10 plus $4 in court charges, the boycott wasa success. Of the 52,000 passengers who normally rodethe bus every day, 40,000 were African American, andthey had stayed away in droves. That afternoon theministers and community leaders met again. Theynamed themselves the Montgomery Improvement As-sociation and selected a president——Dr. King.

That evening some 5,000 people packed into theHolt Street Baptist Church. Loudspeakers were set upfor thousands of people outside. King declared:

There comes a time when people get tired. Weare here this evening to say to those who have

mistreated us so long that we are tired—tired of be-ing segregated and humiliated, tired of being kickedabout by the brutal feet of oppression . . .

If you will protest courageously and yet with dignityand Christian love, in the history books that arewritten in future generations, historians will have topause and say “there lived a great people—a blackpeople—who injected a new meaning and dignityinto the veins of civilization.” This is our challengeand our overwhelming responsibility.

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1955

The Montgomery bus boycott lasted nearly 400days. At first the city’s 18 African American–owned cabcompanies filled in by agreeing to accept African Amer-ican passengers for 10 cents, the price of bus fare. Thenthe city threatened to fine the taxi companies for notcharging the full 45-cent taxi fare.

Next, boycott leaders worked out an elaborate planof car pooling. Station wagons picked up riders at 42 sep-arate locations. Funds to buy and operate the stationwagons——called “rolling churches” because they werepainted with the names of churches——came from whiteand African American supporters in Montgomery andthroughout the nation. When city officials tried to pre-vent the “rolling churches” from getting the necessaryinsurance, King arranged coverage with Lloyd’s of Lon-don, known for insuring almost any risk.

City officials had not expected such strong resis-tance. As the bus company continued to lose money dayafter day, the segregationists in power became increas-ingly frustrated. The mayor, the city commissioners, thepolice commissioner, and the city council all publiclyjoined the White Citizens’ Council. King’s house wasbombed. King and 88 other African American leaderswere arrested and fined for conspiring to boycott.

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Supporting the Movement Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a powerful commu-nicator. How did King use his communication abilities to promote civil rights?

Student Web Activity 20Visit the American Odyssey Web site atamericanodyssey.glencoe.com and click on Chapter20—Student Web Activities for an activity relating tothe civil rights movement.

HISTORY

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstudies/ushistory/amod2002/chap20/webact.shtml

The end of the boycott finally came when the Unit-ed States Supreme Court ruled that segregation onMontgomery buses was unconstitutional. City officialschallenged this ruling on the grounds that it violatedstates’ rights. When the Court’s written order was re-ceived on December 20, 1956, however, the segrega-tionists gave up. All riders sat where they pleased onbuses that rolled through Montgomery.

Ain’t gonna ride them buses no more, Ain’t gonna ride no more.

Why don’t all the white folk knowThat I ain’t gonna ride no more.

—Sung by Montgomery boycotters, 1955–1956

Martin Luther King, Jr.An African American Leader Emerges

After the Montgomery boycott, Dr. Martin LutherKing, Jr., emerged as the unchallenged leader of theAfrican American protest movement. Short in statureand gentle in manner, King was at that time only 27 yearsold. What had propelled him into this demanding rolein history?

The son of a Baptist minister, King, like his father,was named after Martin Luther, the founder of the Protes-

tant branch of Christianity. Theyounger King grew up in a com-fortable, middle-class home in At-lanta. He attended MorehouseCollege there and when he was 18years old decided on a career in theministry. He already showed a giftfor the eloquent, emotion-arousingart of speaking popular in South-ern churches. After a trial sermonin his father’s Ebenezer BaptistChurch, he was ordained a Baptistminister.

King then went north for moreschooling——to Crozer TheologicalSeminary in Pennsylvania and then to Boston University for aPh.D. in religion. By the time hefirst arrived in Montgomery in Sep-tember 1954 as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he had also met and marriedCoretta Scott.

The Creation of SCLCFollowing the success of the Montgomery bus boy-

cott, King faced the issue of how to extend the lessonslearned there to other cities and other civil rights are-nas. In January 1957, King called a meeting in Atlanta of60 Southern ministers to discuss nonviolent integration.

The news that the home and the church of King’sfriend and fellow minister Ralph Abernathy had beenbombed marred the beginning of the conference. Aftera hurried trip back to Montgomery to survey the damage, King returned to Atlanta to assume the presi-dency of the newly formed Southern Christian Leader-ship Conference (SCLC).

NonviolenceFrom the beginning of the Montgomery boycott,

King encouraged his followers to use nonviolent resistance. This meant that those who carried out thedemonstrations should not fight with authorities, evenif provoked to do so.

The SCLC and the Fellowship of Reconciliation(FOR), the latter an interracial organization founded in 1914, conducted workshops in nonviolent methods of resistance for civil rights activists. Those attend-ing learned how to sit quietly while others jeered atthem, called them names, and even spat on them. Workshop participants also learned how to guard themselves against blows and how to protect one anotherby forming a circle of bodies around someone under attack.


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Impact of Boycott Felt Although African Americans enjoyed few rights in the South,their numbers gave them economic power. What finally ended the Montgomery busboycott?

King’s use of nonviolent tactics has often been compared to those Mohandas Gandhi used in India’sstruggle for independence from Great Britain. In bothcases the final victory depended on using moral argu-ments to change the minds of the oppressors. Kinglinked nonviolence to the Christian theme of lovingone’s enemy. He was certainly familiar with Gandhi’steachings, however, and in 1959 traveled to India to talkwith some of Gandhi’s followers.

The Gandhian strategy of nonviolence involved foursteps: investigation, negotiation, publicity, and demon-stration. Applied to civil rights actions, this meant that theactivists ought first to look into a situation and gather thefacts. Next, the activists should attempt to negotiate withthe party responsible for the segregation. Failing that,others should be made aware of the situation and whatthe activists intended to do. Only then should action,such as a march or a demonstration, be carried out.

Soon after the victory in Montgomery, nonviolentmethods began to be applied in a startlingly fresh way.Students in universities and colleges all over the coun-try were tired of waiting for change. They vowed to integrate the nation’s segregated lunch counters, hotels,and entertainment facilities by a simple new strategy ofnonviolent resistence——sitting.

A Season of Sit-insStudents Sit to Protest

The first sit-in was not elaborately planned. Thefour African American freshmen from North CarolinaAgricultural and Technical College had never attendeda workshop on nonviolence, but late one night they be-gan to talk about what they could do to fight segrega-tion. Earlier in the day Joseph McNeil, one of the four,had tried to get something to eat at the local bus stationbut had been turned down. He was hurt and resentful.

“We should just sit at the counter and refuse to gountil they serve us,” one suggested.

“You really mean it?” his friend asked.“Sure I mean it,” the first replied.The next day, February 1, 1960, the four walked

into a local store. Nervous, they first tested the watersto see if their business was welcome. One bought a tubeof toothpaste, another some school supplies. Then thefour sat down at the whites-only lunch counter andasked for coffee and doughnuts.

“I’m sorry but we don’t serve colored here,” thewaitress said.


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Sit-ins: A Powerful Instrument of Integration Employing nonviolent tactics brought abuse not only from authorities but also frompeople who disagreed with the protesters. Who started the sit-ins?

1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961

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December 1955 AfricanAmericans boycott bus servicein Montgomery, Alabama.

1959 Dr. King visitsfollowers of MohandasGandhi.

May 1954 Brown v.Board of Education declaressegregation illegal.

January 1957Martin Luther King,Jr., and others formSCLC.

Apri l 1960SNCC is formed.

February 1960Civil rights protestersstage the first sit-in.

“I beg your pardon,” Franklin McCain said. “You justserved me at a counter two feet away. Why is it that youserve me at one counter and [not] at another?”

The 4 continued to sit at the counter until it closedabout half an hour later. The next day they came back,accompanied by 27 other students. The third day, 63 stu-dents sat down at the lunch counter. They were notserved, so they just sat. On the fourth day, 3 white stu-dents from the Women’s College of the University ofNorth Carolina joined them. By Friday, the fifth day, thenumber of demonstrators had grown to about 300. Theysat in shifts. If some students had to leave to attend class,other students who stood waiting behind them tooktheir place at the lunch counter.

On Saturday evening 1,600 students attended a vic-tory rally, exhilarated by the announcement that thecompany was ready to negotiate. They soon discoveredthat the celebration was premature, however, for thecompany was willing to make only token changes in itssegregation policy.

Two months later students resumed their lunch-counter sit-ins. Adopting a new hard line, the city arrested 45 students and charged them with trespass-ing. This in turn so enraged the students and their supporters that they launched a massive boycott ofstores with segregated lunch counters. As sales droppedby a third, the merchants reluctantly gave in. Six months after the 4 freshmen had first sat down and asked forcoffee, they were finally served.

The Sit-ins SpreadMeanwhile, the spontaneous grassroots movement

started a reaction that spread like a brushfire through-out the border states and the upper South. By April1960, college and high school students in 78 communi-ties had staged sit-ins, and 2,000 protesters had been arrested. A year later those numbers had nearly doubled.By September 1961, 70,000 African American and white students were sitting in for social change.

The targets of many sit-ins were Southern storesthat were part of national chains. In some Northern cities,however, students picketed stores of the same chains,carrying signs that read We Walk So They May Sit. Asmore lunch counters integrated under the pressure ofsit-ins, variations of the technique emerged. Students held “kneel-ins” to integrate churches, “read-ins” in libraries, “wade-ins” at beaches, and “sleep-ins” in motellobbies.

A Student MovementThe driving center of the civil rights movement had

spread from the legal committees of the NAACP andAfrican American churches to college campuses. Thestudents were impatient. As schoolchildren in 1954 whenthe Supreme Court ruled on the Brown decision, theyhad expected immediate results, but progress had beenslow. In 1957 African Americans had shared in the ex-citement of Ghana’s independence from Great Britain.During 1960 alone, 11 African countries threw off theshackles of colonialism. “All of Africa will be free beforewe can get a lousy cup of coffee,” writer James Baldwincomplained.

The nonviolence of the students provoked increas-ingly hostile reactions from those who opposed them. InNashville, after four students had successfully desegre-gated a bus terminal, they were badly beaten. In othercities white teenagers poked students in the ribs, groundcigarettes out on their backs, or threw ketchup on themas they ate.

The Creation of SNCCElla J. Baker, executive secretary of King’s SCLC,

was impressed with the students’ commitment andcourage, but she was concerned about their lack of coordination and leadership. She invited 100 studentleaders of the sit-ins to a conference at Shaw Universityin Raleigh, North Carolina, over Easter weekend in April1960. To her surprise, some 300 students showed up,

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most from Southern African American communities,but a few also from Northern colleges. Out of that meet-ing came a new civil rights organization, the StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pro-nounced snihk).

King addressed the students that weekend. Hestressed the moral power of nonviolence, saying, “Thetactics of nonviolence without the spirit of nonviolencemay become a new kind of violence.”

One of the slogans students warmly applauded at theconference was “jail not bail.” The decision to refuse bailand to remain in jail came about for practical as well asphilosophical reasons. Supporters of the sit-ins through-out the country had been contributing bail money so thatstudents who were arrested could be quickly released onbail. As the number of arrests grew, the bail money became a heavy drain on the treasuries of civil rights organizations. Philosophically, opting for jail placed theburden of supporting the arrested protesters onto the police and local officials. Also, through press coverage,jail service kept the eyes of the nation focused on the protesters and their conflicts with the authorities.

In adopting “jail not bail,” SNCC followed an Amer-ican tradition of civil disobedience, or nonviolent resistance of unfair laws. Henry David Thoreau, for example, had spent a night in jail in 1846 for refus-ing to pay his poll tax as a protest against slavery andthe Mexican War. He later wrote:

How does it become a man to behave towardthis American government today? I answer,

that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.

—Henry David Thoreau,“Civil Disobedience,” 1849

Within a year SNCC evolved from an activity thatstudents engaged in between classes to a full-time com-mitment. The most active students postponed their stud-ies, dropping out of college to work for the movement.In the fall of 1961, SNCC sent 16 “field secretaries” to ar-eas most resistant to integration. By early 1964 that num-ber had grown to 150.

A field secretary could count on only about $10 aweek from SNCC, so most roomed and boarded withlocal African American residents. This arrangementcould mean considerable hardship to many SouthernAfrican Americans who lived constantly on the edge ofpoverty. SNCC workers and their hosts were also subject to physical harassment, even danger.

Yet, more than federal court decisions and civil disobedience would be required before the segregationsystem of 100 years would finally break down. The

active commitment of the nation’s President and theforce of the executive branch also would be needed. Theyear that the sit-ins erupted and SNCC was formed,John F. Kennedy became the presidential nominee of theDemocratic party.


Student Activism Grows Student activism powered SNCC, anorganization that helped bring the civil rights movement outof the courtroom and into the segregated communities of theSouth. How did the policy of “jail not bail” focus public attentionon civil rights issues?


Main Idea1. Use a diagram like this one to show some of the

nonviolent tactics used to protest segregation.

Vocabulary2. Define: boycott, nonviolent resistance, civil

disobedience.

Checking Facts 3. What was the major goal and the primary tactic

of SCLC?

4. Why did SNCC adopt the slogan “jail not bail”?

Critical Thinking 5. Determining Cause and Effect What effect did

the student sit-ins have on the integration ofpublic facilities in the South?

Nonviolent Resistance

Tactic Tactic Tactic


The passengers were ex-pecting trouble. On the wayto Birmingham, Alabama, fromAtlanta, Georgia, one of theirbuses had been firebombed,burned to an iron skeleton. Anangry, violent mob had met thesecond bus as it limped into theBirmingham terminal. After thatthe bus drivers, all white, refusedto go on. For two days the “Free-dom Riders,” as the passengerswere called, waited for the buscompany to find other drivers.Others of their group recuperat-ed in hospital beds. Finally, frus-trated, they left the city by plane.

Some thought the Freedom Rides were over then.However, a group of students fresh from sit-ins inNashville, Tennessee, flew to Birmingham intent on continuing the integrated journey. United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy asked for, andthought he had received, a pledge from the governor ofAlabama to protect the bus and its passengers.

The ride was calm during thefirst leg of the journey to Mont-gomery, Alabama. Alabama statepatrol cars were seen at intervals.When the bus pulled into theMontgomery terminal, however,an angry mob of about 1,000white people quickly surroundedthe bus. No police were present.

John Doar, a Justice Depart-ment lawyer on the scene, placeda call to the attorney general’soffice as the bus rolled into thestation. “Now the passengers arecoming off,” Doar reported.“They’re standing on a corner ofthe platform. Oh, there are fists,

punching. A bunch of men led by a guy with a bleedingface are beating them,” Doar continued. “There are nocops. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. There’s not a cop in sight.People are yelling, ‘Get ’em, get ’em.’ It’s awful.”

The mob violence and the city’s indifference be-came front-page news throughout the world. Deeplydisturbed and faced with international embarrassment,

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Government ResponseMAY 21, 1961: FREEDOM RIDERS MOBBED IN MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA

Freedom Riders Face ViolenceSoldiers guard a bus carrying Freedom Riders.

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� enfranchisement� militant� filibuster

� how politics shaped Kennedy’s civilrights policy.

� why Kennedy sided with Dr. MartinLuther King, Jr.

� successes of the civil rights move-ment during the Johnson presidency.

Vocabulary Read to Find Out . . .Main IdeaMedia coverage of violentattacks on nonviolent civilrights activists forcedPresident Kennedy to chosesides in the segregationstruggle, paving the way forthe civil rights legislation ofthe Johnson administration.

President Kennedy and his brother Robert sent federalmarshals to keep order in Alabama. The segregationistswould never forgive them for that move.

The next night Robert Kennedy called GovernorJohn Patterson and pleaded with him to reinforce themarshals protecting Martin Luther King, Jr., and a groupof his followers who were trapped inside a church by a crowd of several thousand whites. At the last minute, Patterson did send in Alabama National Guard troops to assist the marshals, but not until after the following exchange:

“You are destroying us politically,” Patterson toldKennedy.

Kennedy replied, “It’s more important that the people in the church survive physically than for us to survive politically.”

JFK and Civil RightsKennedy Supports Civil Rights

John F. Kennedy had not demonstrated a strongcommitment to civil rights when he had become a can-didate for the presidency in 1960. Like many otherpoliticians on the state and national scene, his views onthe civil rights issue reflected mainly its political im-portance to him. The question to him was how hisstand would help him defeat his Republican opponent,Richard Nixon.

On the Campaign TrailThe dilemma Kennedy faced was this: To win, he

needed both the segregationists’ vote in the South andthe African Americans’ vote in the North. Kennedy relied upon his vice-presidential running mate, TexasSenator Lyndon Johnson, to bring the Southern whitevote. Republican Eisenhower had attracted significantAfrican American support in the 1956 election, andKennedy expected that Nixon would make a bid for thatsupport by endorsing civil rights.

Kennedy decided to make an all-out effort for theAfrican Americans’ vote. He endorsed the sit-ins andpromised to sponsor a civil rights bill during the nextcongressional session. He also pledged——“with a strokeof the presidential pen,” he said——to end racial discrim-ination in federally supported public housing.

In the closing days of the campaign, King’s arrestduring a sit-in at an Atlanta department store put bothpresidential candidates to the test. The other protesterswere quickly released, but not King. The judge had ruledthat King’s sit-in arrest was a violation of his probation,which King had received as a result of an earlier con-

viction for driving without a valid driver’s license. Kingwas sentenced to four months of hard labor on a Geor-gia road gang. He was led off in handcuffs and shack-les to a rural state prison.

Coretta King and other King supporters feared thatKing might not come out of that prison alive. There fol-lowed a flurry of phone calls to whomever the civil rightsleaders thought might be able to help.

Nixon did nothing. John Kennedy, however, tele-phoned Coretta King and expressed to her his concern,and Robert Kennedy phoned the judge on King’s behalf.When King was released a day later, the Kennedys were given much of the credit. “It’s time for all of us totake off our Nixon button,” Martin Luther King, Sr., exclaimed gratefully.

John Kennedy won the election by the narrowestmargin of popular votes in any presidential election in the twentieth century. His ability to carry 7 of the 11 states of the old Confederacy and 70 percent of the African American vote was a major factor in his political success at that time.

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Politics and Civil Rights The Kennedys were politicians whounderstood the political significance of the civil rights issue.What was John Kennedy’s position on civil rights during the presidential campaign?

Kennedy’s Civil Rights StrategyDespite his campaign promises, Kennedy made no

mention of civil rights in his Inaugural Address. Instead,during his first two years in office he tried to avoid los-ing either Southern white or African American support.He failed to back the promised civil rights bill, whichwould have required Southern school districts to submitdesegregation plans by 1963. When he finally did issuean executive order on housing discrimination in late1962, it was so weak that it had little effect.

Rather than attacking segregation, Kennedy soughtto keep black support by promising African Americansjobs and votes. To find more jobs, Kennedy created apresidential committee, headed by Vice President John-son. The committee was charged with ending job dis-crimination in federal government departments andbusinesses that contracted with the federal government.Johnson chose to rely on voluntary efforts instead of using strict measures such as canceling contracts. The result was that during Kennedy’s term the committee accomplished little.

Kennedy was not any more successful in helpingAfrican Americans obtain voting rights. In 100 countiesof the Deep South, only 5 percent of voting-age AfricanAmericans were registered to vote. The civil rights actspassed in 1957 and in 1960 gave the attorney generalpower to sue in federal courts on behalf of African Americans denied the right to vote because of their race.Accordingly, Robert Kennedy had sent a group oflawyers to the South, to sue when necessary. In 3 yearsthe Justice Department had filed 50 voting-rights cases.

The results of this effort at enfranchisement, or ob-taining the rights of citizenship, for African Americansthrough the courts was, however, largely unsuccessful.This was so in part because President Kennedy himselfhad appointed a number of federal judges who were un-sympathetic to civil rights.

Although President Kennedy could produce neitherthe jobs nor the votes he promised, he did appoint a num-ber of African Americans to his administration. He in-vited prominent African Americans to social events atthe White House and made other symbolic gesturesthat the African American community applauded. At thesame time, many politicians appreciated his reluctanceto address segregation issues head-on. His efforts to ap-peal to both sides of the civil rights issue might have con-tinued if militants——activists who would not tolerate anycompromise——on both sides had not forced his hand.

Kennedy and the MilitantsKennedy Sides With Civil Rights Protesters

Civil rights demonstrators demanded “Freedomnow!” and white segregationists cried “Segregation for-ever!” If violent whites attacked nonviolent demonstra-tors, Kennedy would have to make a choice. Either hewould have to stay aloof, losing the support of thosealigned with the civil rights movement, or he wouldhave to intervene, alienating segregationists. This pre-sented Kennedy with a difficult political dilemma.

The Freedom RidersThe first crisis occurred with the arrival on the scene

of the Freedom Riders. James Farmer, executive direc-tor of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), orga-nized these carefully selected interracial groups of buspassengers. In December 1960, the Supreme Court hadruled that all bus stations and terminals serving interstatetravelers should be integrated. The purpose of the Free-dom Rides was to test the execution of that decision.

On May 4, 1961, the first busload of 13 CORE vol-unteers rolled out of the Washington, D.C., bus termi-nal, bound for New Orleans. On the bus, whites sat inthe back, and African American volunteers sat in thefront. At each stop, African American volunteers got offthe bus and entered the whites-only waiting rooms totest whether the facilities were integrated.

The first leg of the journey went well. Violence,however, soon caught up with the Freedom Riders at An-niston, Alabama, where one of the buses was firebombed.When Robert Kennedy finally intervened in Mont-gomery, he appealed to the Freedom Riders to wait for


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The Push for Voter Participation In Selma, an African Ameri-can man carrying a voter registration sign is arrested by anAlabama State Trooper. Why was the initial attempt at enfran-chisement unsuccessful?

the situation to calm down before continuing. They in-sisted, however, on moving on to Jackson, Mississippi,and potentially more danger. Each of the 26 AfricanAmericans and 2 whites aboard the bus wrote out thenames and addresses of persons to be notified in casethey were killed. “Everyone on the bus was prepared todie,” one Freedom Rider recalled.

Kennedy made a deal with Mississippi Senator JamesO. Eastland. Kennedy would not interfere by sending infederal marshals if Eastland would guarantee there wouldbe no mob violence.

There were no mobs waiting for the Freedom Riders in Jackson; however, police, state troopers, andMississippi National Guard soldiers were everywhere. Asthe Riders stepped off the bus and tried to enter the

whites-only waiting room, they were quickly arrested fortrespassing and taken to jail.

Despite the violence and the jail sentences, moreFreedom Riders kept coming all summer. More than 300were jailed in Jackson alone. Finally, the attorney general petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commissionto issue a ruling against segregation of interstate facili-ties. The ICC made such an announcement on Sep-tember 22; CORE’s victory was secured.

The Voter Education ProjectIn an effort to steer the civil rights organizations away

from violent confrontations with Southern segregationists,Robert Kennedy began to stress the importance of AfricanAmerican voter registration. He reasoned that if more


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9:50 A.M.: Planes fly away as bus crosses Montgomery city line.

10:00 A.M.: As bus arrives, patrol cars disappear. The terminal seems empty.

10:00 A.M.: A group of up to 1,000 whites advance with lead pipes, bottles, base-ball bats—setting upon the Freedom Riders as they emerge from the bus.

10:05 A.M.: As mob slams into them, riders are forced to flee, but their way is blocked. Some find shelter in post office.

Despite serious injuries, ambulances are forced away.

2:30 P.M.: Governor Patterson, at the State Capitol, orders the arrest of the Freedom Riders.

At Birmingham on May 14, 1961, the Freedom Riders had been savagely attacked. Bus drivers refused to take the group farther. The governor refused to guarantee their safe passage. Finally, however, on the morning of May 20, they set out on the 90-mile trip from Birmingham to Montgomery.

8:30 A.M., May 20: Bus leaves Birmingham with protection of police patrol cars and planes.

10:10 A.M.: Police arrive, but mob reign contin-ues for 2hours.

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The Freedom Riders put their lives on the line to ensure desegregation. How did the danger increase for these Freedom Riders whenthey crossed the line from Montgomery to Birmingham?

African Americans voted in elections, they would beable to wield some power on important issues, such ashousing and education.

Of course, the idea of encouraging voter registrationof African Americans was not a new idea. Groups suchas SNCC had been working to increase African Amer-ican registration for some time. To encourage collabo-ration on voter registration, Kennedy called for a meetingin June 1961 of representatives of SCLC, SNCC, CORE,and NAACP. The result was the Voter Education Project, staffed mainly by SNCC workers. An umbrellagroup called the Council of Federated Organizations, orCOFO, carried out voter registration in Mississippi.

To increase the number of African Americans onvoting rolls, SNCC workers held workshops. They ex-plained the sometimes lengthy application forms and accompanied eligible voters to the registration offices.

Few of the eligible voters were able to get their nameson the rolls. They were turned away because the regis-tration dates were changed, or they made spelling mis-takes, or they failed outrageously difficult tests on the state

constitutions. “Sometimesout of 20 or 25 Negroes whowent to register, only one ortwo would pass the test,”SNCC worker Anne Moodyrecalled. “Some of them wereflunked because they used atitle (Mr. or Mrs.) on the ap-plication blank; others be-cause they didn’t.”

The presence of somany SNCC workers andtheir effectiveness in orga-nizing local African Ameri-can communities broughtterrorist responses fromsome white segregationists.In Georgia four churchesthat had been used to regis-ter African American voterswere bombed. Workers werebeaten, assaulted, and shot.African Americans whodared to vote were evictedfrom their land, fired fromtheir jobs, and cut off fromtheir credit.

At the organizationalmeeting, Robert Kennedy’srepresentatives had seemedto pledge money and pro-tection for the workers. Al-

though some private foundation funds were madeavailable, the Justice Department failed to protect the civil rights volunteers it had encouraged to work in theSouth. The department reasoned that maintaining lawand order was the responsibility of local governments.The result was that the militants in the civil rights movement became as alienated from the Kennedy administration as the white segregationists. Then, onSeptember 30, 1962, President Kennedy had to send theUnited States Army to enforce a court order to enrollJames Meredith in the University of Mississippi. It hadbecome clear that Kennedy was losing control of the segregation issue.

Decision at BirminghamIn the spring of 1963, President Kennedy finally

chose sides in the segregation struggle. It happened during King’s campaign of massive civil disobedience inBirmingham, Alabama.

In 1962 Birmingham had closed parks, playgrounds,swimming pools, and golf courses to avoid desegregating


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Protest Leaders March for Equality Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lead agroup of demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama. What were civil rights demonstrators protest-ing in Birmingham?

them. “We believed that while a campaign in Birminghamwould surely be the toughest fight of our civil rights ca-reers,” King wrote later, “it could, if successful, break theback of segregation all over the nation.”

The DemonstrationsCivil rights leaders planned the demonstrations

to gradually increase in frequency and size. The effectwas to keep the attention of newspaper and televisionreporters focused on the streets of Birmingham.

The conflict was dramatic. Representing one sidewas the police commissioner, Eugene “Bull” Connor.Thickset and heavily jowled, Connor took pride in thetoughness with which he handled integrationists. Peo-ple around the world watched in horror as he set snarlingpolice dogs on demonstrators or washed small childrenacross streets with the powerful impact of fire hoses.

Representing the opposition was King, who timedthe demonstrations to include his arrest on Good Fri-day, the Christian holy day marking the death of Jesus.During King’s two weeks in jail, he wrote the eloquent“Letter from Birmingham Jail.” King began the letter onthe margins of a full-page newspaper ad that a group ofwhite ministers had taken out. The ad called for an endto the demonstrations. King’s letter from jail attemptedto explain his use of civil disobedience:

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the

oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well-timed” in the view of thosewho have not suffered unduly from the disease ofsegregation. For years now I have heard the word“Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost alwaysmeant “Never.” We must come to see, with one ofour distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr.“Letter From Birmingham Jail,” 1963

After his release from jail, King began a new tacticof using African American schoolchildren in the demon-strations. To those who protested that the children, whoranged in age from 6 to 18, were too young, King replied,“Children face the stinging darts of segregation as wellas adults.”

On the first day, about 1,000 singing childrenmarched out from the church headquarters and in smallgroups headed toward the city’s downtown. They werequickly arrested. The next day the police cast aside allrestraint and set upon the child marchers with dogs,clubs, and fire hoses. At one point more than 2,000 chil-dren and adults were in jail.

The police tactics swung public opinion squarelyaround in favor of the protesters. Adult demonstratorscame out into the streets in record numbers. King de-scribed the scene on May 27, 1963, when white businessleaders were meeting privately to work out a settlement:

On that day several thousand Negroes hadmarched on the town, the jails were so full

that police could only arrest a handful. There wereNegroes on the sidewalks, in the streets, standing,sitting in the aisles of downtown stores. There weresquare blocks of Negroes, a veritable sea of blackfaces. They were committing no violence; they werejust present and singing. Downtown Birminghamechoed to the strains of freedom songs.

—Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait, 1964

Local business leaders gave in and agreed to de-segregate the big department stores. King called off thedemonstrations; but shortly after, on May 11, 1963,bombs exploded at King’s motel and at his brother’shome, and rioting erupted. Alarmed that the protestmight turn violent, President Kennedy decided to casthis lot with Martin Luther King, Jr.


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Power Through Song Civil rights workers often sang togetherin nonviolent protest. What was the result of police violenceagainst nonviolent protesters in Birmingham?

June 11, 1963, was a historic day for the civil rightsmovement. In the afternoon President Kennedy federal-ized the Alabama National Guard to enforce a court order requiring the admission of two African American students to the University of Alabama. That evening

the President appeared on national television. “We areconfronted primarily with amoral issue,” he said. “It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the Ameri-can Constitution.” He thenannounced that he wouldsend Congress a civil rightsbill, which, it turned out,would deliver crushing blowsto segregation.

Later that night in Jack-son, Mississippi, a whitesniper killed Medgar Evers,head of the state NAACP. Bythe time President Kennedywas assassinated in Novem-ber 1963, his civil rights billwas moving toward passagein the House.

The March on Washington

The massive protestmarch on the nation’s capitalon August 28, 1963, be-gan as a cry for jobs. As plan-ning went on, however, thegoals of the march grew toembrace the entire civil rightsmovement. A key demandwas support for passage ofKennedy’s civil rights bill.The march’s organizers werea coalition of labor leaders,clergy, liberals, and grassrootsworkers.

Trains and buses broughtin thousands of demonstra-tors from all over the country.It was the largest crowd ever to attend a civil rightsdemonstration. There weretwo highlights, most agreed,in a day of memorable songs,speeches, and appearances:Mahalia Jackson’s singing ofthe spiritual “I Been ’Buked

and I Been Scorned” and King’s delivery of a speech, inwhich he cried, “I have a dream that one day this nationwill rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men arecreated equal.’ ”

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The People March More than 200,000 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to call for civilrights reforms. Who were the organizers of the march?

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The Triumph of Civil RightsJohnson Signs Civil Rights Act

Following President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, presidential leadership of civil rightsefforts fell on Lyndon B. Johnson. Born and raised in the South, Johnson had removed himself from the segregationist ranks in 1956 when he refused to sign theSouthern Manifesto. In addition, Johnson had overseenthe passage of a limited civil rights act in 1957.

LBJ Carries OnJohnson was determined to overcome liberal doubts

about his presidency by achieving passage of Kennedy’scivil rights bill without compromising any of its most im-portant elements. The bill passed the House in Febru-ary 1964 but faced an uncertain future in the Senate.

The Southerners in the Senate intended to preventa vote by launching a filibuster——that is, they would debate the bill nonstop to keep it from coming to a vote.According to Senate rules, a motion to end debate couldcarry only if it had the support of two-thirds of those pre-sent and voting. With Southern Democrats solidly be-hind the filibuster, 26 of the 33 Republicans in the Senatewould have to vote with Northern Democrats in orderto end it.

The one man who could deliver these votes was theSenate minority leader, Everett McKinley Dirksen. Aconservative Republican from Illinois, he was not knownas a friend of civil rights. Yet Dirksen ended months ofsuspense by lining up the Republican votes to end debate and to pass the bill. Dirksen explained his deci-sion with a quote from Victor Hugo: “No army canwithstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.”

On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed into lawthe most comprehensive civil rights legislation enacted

up to that time. It met the demands of the civil rightsactivists in several key ways. For example, the civil rightsmovement had protested the forced exclusion or sepa-ration of African Americans and whites in public places.Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbade segregationin hotels, motels, restaurants, lunch counters, theaters,and sporting arenas that did business in interstate com-merce. As a result, most businesses in Southern cities andlarge towns desegregated immediately after passage ofthe Civil Rights Act. The act also relieved individuals ofthe responsibility for bringing discrimination complaintsto court. The act made bringing discrimination cases thejob of the federal government.

Protest in SelmaThe passage of the Civil Rights Act did not mean

that the work of the civil rights movement was over. Leg-islation still did not exist to enforce the Fifteenth Amend-ment, which forbids any state from depriving citizens ofthe right to vote because of race. King decided to forcethis issue by mounting another campaign of nonviolentresistance, this time in Selma, Alabama. At the start ofKing’s campaign there, only 383 African American citizens out of a possible 15,000 were registered.

Selma was an excellent choice for another reason aswell. After Birmingham, King had begun to rely in-creasingly on the power of television and newspapers toreach the conscience of America. Selma had in the per-son of its sheriff, Jim Clark, a civil rights antagonist whorivaled Birmingham’s Bull Connor for ruthlessness.

After 2 months of beatings, arrests, and 1murder, civil rights leaders in Selma announced a cli-mactic protest march from Selma to the state capital inMontgomery, 54 miles (87 km) away. Though Gover-nor George Wallace banned the march, Hosea Williams,who was King’s chief aide in Selma, and John Lewis, aSNCC leader, decided to defy Wallace and march anyway.


May 1961 A busload of CORE workers takes thefirst Freedom Ride to test therecent integration ruling.

August 1963Thousands march onWashington in civil rightsprotest.

September 1962James Meredith requires federal protection to enroll atthe University of Mississippi.

June 1963 Kennedy federalizesthe Alabama National Guard to enforce integration at the Universityof Alabama.

August 1965The Voting RightsAct is signed intolaw.

July 1964 A comprehensive Civil RightsAct is signed into law.

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On March 7, 1965, Williams and Lewis led 600demonstrators onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge outsideSelma on the way to Mongtomery. Sheriff Clark’sdeputies lined both sides of the bridge, and 100 statetroopers blocked the opposite end.

The leader of the troopers gave the marchers twominutes to disperse, then set upon them with tear gasand clubs, driving them back to Selma and into the reachof Sheriff Clark’s men.

Sheyann Webb remembered her experience as aneight-year-old marcher:

Isaw those horsemen coming toward me and they had those awful masks on; they rode right

through the cloud of tear gas. Some of them hadclubs, others had ropes or whips, which they swung about them like they were driving cattle. . . .

I began running and not seeing where I was going. I remember being scared that I might fall over therailing and into the water. . . . I heard more horsesand I turned back and saw two of them and theriders were leaning over to one side. It was like a

nightmare seeing it through the tears. I just knewthen that I was going to die. . . .

—Sheyann Webb, from Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days,by Sheyann Webb and Rachel West Nelson,

as told to Frank Sikora

Governor George Wallace had different memories:

As Major Cloud tells the story, he gave no ordersto attack, and because of the noise of the melee

it was almost impossible to hear commands. When itwas over, there were mercifully no serious injuries—and no deaths. But this was not at all the way I hadwanted things to turn out. I was saddened and angry.

—George C. Wallace, Stand Up for America

King, who had been out of town for the Sundaymarch, returned to lead a second one on March 9. Whenhe reached the middle of the bridge, he halted, led themarchers in prayer, and sang “We Shall Overcome.”Then, to the astonishment of his followers, he wheeledaround and led the marchers back to Selma.

Push for Enforcement of the Fifteenth Amendment At Edmund Pettus Bridge civil rights activists in Alabama met violence—andwon sympathy for their cause. How did the troopers drive the marchers back?

No one knew that King had reluctantly agreed, at the request of the Johnson administration, not to complete the march. King needed the support of thePresident. In addition, he felt that the first bloody marchhad accomplished its purpose.

Once again public opinion in the North rallied toKing’s cause, and once again a President moved to joinhim. On March 15, 1965, in an emotional televised speechto Congress, Johnson promised to send a bill to Congressthat would guarantee African Americans the most basicright of citizenship——the right to vote. Finally on March21, the march from Selma to Montgomery, already twiceturned back, proceeded peacefully under the protectionof the federalized Alabama National Guard.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965At Selma the civil rights movement protested laws

designed to prevent African Americans from voting. Of special concern were literacy tests, which were used to deny African Americans the right to vote in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Geor-gia, Virginia, and 39 counties of North Carolina.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act provided that if literacyor other similar tests were used, and if less than 50 percent of the voting-age citizens were registered, thenracial discrimination could be presumed. In such cases literacy tests were automatically suspended, and eligible African American citizens were allowed to enrollwhether or not they could read. The act further providedthat if local registrars would not enroll African Americans,the President could send federal examiners who would.

As a result of the act, 740,000 African American vot-ers registered to vote in 3 years. They used their new po-litical power to help win elections for hundreds of AfricanAmerican officials. African Americans also used theirpower to help defeat Selma Sheriff Jim Clark, who losthis reelection campaign to a racial moderate.


African American Voting Power, 1970–1976

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African American Elected Officials in Mississippi

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Voter Registration These Mississippi residents get help registering to vote. How did African Americans use their newpolitical power?

Expanded voting rights meant success at the polls. Betweenwhich two time periods were there the greatest number of in-creases in African American elected officials?


Main Idea1. Use a chart like this one to show key civil

rights confrontations during the years 1961 to1965 and the presidential response to each confrontation.

Vocabulary2. Define: enfranchisement, militant, filibuster.

Checking Facts 3. How did politics and actions by militants help

shape Kennedy’s civil rights policies?

4. How did Johnson exert leadership in the civilrights struggle after Kennedy’s death?

Critical Thinking 5. Determining Cause and Effect How do you

think the media affected Kennedy’s views onsegregation?

Civil Rights Confrontation Presidential Response


What began in June 1966as a solo march throughMississippi in demonstra-tion of African Ameri-cans’ right to voteturned into one lastmarch in unity. After thatthe civil rights movement dis-integrated into separate fac-tions with radically differentgoals, ideals, and strategies.

James Meredith, who in 1962 became the firstAfrican American to attendthe University of Mississip-pi, undertook the 220-mile(354-km) walk to demonstrate African Americans’ rightto vote and their right to move without fear through thestate. When he fell wounded on the roadside, his backfull of buckshot, civil rights workers rushed to Missis-sippi to complete his march.

During the day they trudged down U.S. Highway51 arm in arm: Martin Luther King, Jr., of SCLC; FloydMcKissick, of CORE; and Stokely Carmichael, of SNCC.

As they stopped to speak incourthouse squares, Kingand Carmichael preachedtwo separate gospels.

King, despite the in-creasing numbers of killingsand assaults, continued tocall on his followers to an-swer violence with nonvio-lence. The SNCC andCORE marchers, however,had given up on nonviolenceand sang a new tune. WhenKing and his supporters be-gan their theme song, “WeShall Overcome,” they were

often drowned out by the militants’ new version, “WeShall Overrun.”

The climactic moment came in Greenwood.Carmichael, just released from a few hours in jail forerecting a tent against a state trooper’s orders, leapedonto a flatbed truck and raised his hand in a clenched-fist salute. “This is the twenty-seventh time I have beenarrested——and I ain’t going to jail no more,’’ he shouted.

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Disappointed HopesJUNE 1966: KING AND SNCC MARCH TOGETHER ONE LAST T IME

Split EmergesStokely Carmichael speaks out.

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� martyr� black separatism� black pride� black power

� how splits developed in the civilrights movement and why someAfrican Americans turned to radicalprotests.

� the causes of rioting in northern citiesduring the mid-1960s.

Vocabulary Read to Find Out . . .Main IdeaDisappointed by the slowpace of change, some AfricanAmericans adopted differentstrategies for gaining equality,causing splits within the civilrights movement.

“We been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t gotnothin’. What we gonna start saying now is Black Power!’’ King tried to calm the crowd, but the new cryof “Black Power” drowned out his call of “FreedomNow! ” By the time the march reached Jackson, Missis-sippi, the new call had replaced the old one.

New Directions inCivil RightsAfrican Americans Turn to Radical Protest

The change in direction in SNCC had been in themaking for a long time. In the early 1960s the studentsshared in the ideal of a new, better American society. After the 1964 and 1965 civil rights acts, when the newlaws were not immediately enforced, SNCC volunteers became disillusioned. Indeed, the progress that did occurseemed to come at enormous cost. One martyr, or person who dies in the name of an important cause, followed another: the four young girls killed when theirchurch was bombed in Birmingham in 1963; the three civil rights workers shot in Mississippi in 1964; and on andon. As time went on, SNCC leaders began to discuss

three key issues: the role that white volunteers should playwithin the organization; a growing movement amongsome African Americans toward black separatism, orthe separation of the races in America; and the continueduse of nonviolence as a strategy for change.

SNCC’s efforts to work within the political systemalso left members disillusioned. In 1964 the MississippiFreedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a grassroots groupthat SNCC supported, asked to be recognized at the national Democratic party convention as the legitimateDemocratic party in the state. They challenged the regular Democratic party principally on the grounds thatfewer than 5 percent of the African American population in the state was allowed to vote.

President Johnson, however, was not sympathetic tothe MFDP. He did not want the convention distractedfrom its main job of enthusiastically supporting his poli-cies. Also, he did not want to risk sending white South-ern Democrats in flight to the Republican party. Johnsonassigned Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey the jobof sidetracking the MFDP challenge, suggesting that atstake might be the vice-presidential nomination thatHumphrey was hoping for.

The compromise Humphrey pushed through gavethe MFDP only 2 of the 40 Mississippi seats. SNCC andMFDP members, who had risked their lives by openlychallenging the local regular Democrats, felt the white lib-erals at the convention had let them down. Fannie LouHamer, sharecropper and member of the MFDP, summedit up by exclaiming, “We didn’t come all this way for notwo votes.”

Black PrideThe success of the civil rights movements in the ear-

ly 1960s gave rise to black pride, a pride in being AfricanAmerican. Ralph Bunche, famous for his skills as a diplo-mat, wrote in 1961, “I am confident that I reflect accu-rately the views of virtually all Negro Americans when Isay that I am proud of my ancestry, just as I am proud ofmy nationality.” Other African American leaders alsorecognized the importance of black pride, as well as theharm done by the feelings of inferiority that had long afflicted African Americans. Malcolm X, a strong AfricanAmerican leader, bitterly recalled his youthful efforts atstraightening his hair in order to look more like a whiteperson:

This was my first big step toward self-degrada-tion: when I endured all of that pain, literally

burning my flesh to have it look like a white man’shair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men andwomen in America who are brainwashed into believ-ing that the black people are “inferior”—and whitepeople “superior.”

—Malcolm X, Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965

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Seeking Political Support Fannie Lou Hamer (center) andtwo other MFDP candidates visit the Capitol. What was theresult of their efforts?

As the 1960s progressed, younger and more race-conscious African Americans adopted natural “Afro”haircuts and put on African-inspired dashikis in place ofshirts and ties. The new pride was reflected also in lan-guage, music, lifestyle, and many other aspects of AfricanAmerican culture. Even the words that African Ameri-cans used to describe themselves changed. The term Ne-gro, used for years by many prominent leaders, wasabandoned because of its evocation of the slave trade.The word colored was rejected as not being sufficientlyprecise. The new preferred term was the simple adjec-tive black, turned into a noun.

Sometimes the powerful desire of African Americansto proclaim their own self-worth was expressed in anti-white feelings. This was part of the reason that someSNCC workers raised in their planning group the trou-blesome question of the role of white volunteers.

Some within SNCC argued that white college-trained workers thoughtlessly took over the jobs thatAfrican Americans with little schooling were just learn-ing to do. Moreover, some accused white volunteers ofbeing insensitive to the local conditions under whichAfrican Americans lived. “Let the whites go fight racismin their own communities,” they said. Others, however,pointed out the sacrifices and efforts that white SNCCworkers made. Some activists protested that by exclud-

ing whites, SNCC itself could be accused of racism. Ul-timately, the new view won, and the white workers wereasked to give up leadership positions in SNCC.

Malcolm X and Black SeparatismEmerging African American pride was one factor

in the move toward black separatism. According to thepromoters of black separatism, this could best beachieved by African Americans returning to Africa orby their occupying an exclusive area within the UnitedStates on land that the federal government supplied tothem.

Black separatism was the antithesis of the civil rightsmovement’s goal of racial integration. It was a view promoted by, among others, the Nation of Islam, a sub-group of the Islamic religion commonly known as theBlack Muslims.

The most vocal Black Muslim was Malcolm X. Abrilliant and bold orator, Malcolm X preached a messagethat included religious justification for black separatism.He was ousted from the Nation of Islam in a fight overleadership and went on a pilgrimage to the Islamic holycity of Makkah. There he was exposed to more tradi-tional Islamic religious teachings, which do not includeracial separatism. On his return to the United States, hesoftened his views on the separation of blacks and whites.On February 21, 1965, three members of the Nation ofIslam assassinated Malcolm X as he spoke in Harlem.

Though Malcolm X’s views on separatism graduallysoftened toward the end of his life, he never supportedKing’s nonviolent methods. Instead, he advocated the useof weapons for self-defense, believing that African Ameri-can nonviolence simply emboldened violent white racists.Shortly before his death, Malcolm X pointed out in aspeech at Selma, “The white people should thank Dr.King for holding black people in check.”

SNCC’s New LeadershipThe rhetoric of Malcolm X lived on long after his

death and influenced SNCC members and other youngmilitants. The final turnaround in SNCC’s orientationcame in 1966 with the election of Stokely Carmichael as chairman.

Carmichael was arrested many times during Freedom Rides, sit-ins, and marches. Jailers were happyto see him go because he was never reluctant to arguewith them over the condition of mattresses and other jail comforts. Once, when six other Riders were put in solitary confinement, he banged on his cell door askingfor equal treatment, which he finally received.

One of Carmichael’s projects during his leadershipof SNCC was the formation of an African American political party in Lowndes County in Alabama. Theparty failed to put any of its candidates into office in the


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Differences Deepen The growing movement for black sepa-ratism and militancy, led by people such as Malcolm X,unsettled many white people. What did black separatists pro-pose as the best way of achieving their goal of black separatism?

1966 election. It was, however, a bold attempt to seize political power, or black power as it was called. Thesymbol used for the Lowndes County Freedom Orga-nization was a black panther about to spring.

The Long, Hot SummersRiots Erupt in Northern Cities

Although civil rights activists fought their majorcampaigns in the South, the pattern of segregation wasnot confined to states that belonged to the former Con-federacy. It was a growing frustration among AfricanAmericans over conditions in the North that led to someof the most dramatic and tragic confrontations of the1960s.

The migration to Northern cities that began in theearly 1900s had by 1965 resulted in the relocation of some3 million Southern African Americans. More than two-thirds of the total African American population werenow urban dwellers. Of these, more than half were con-centrated in just 12 cities.

Perhaps more than in the South, life in Northerncities bred frustration among many African Americans.Problems of poverty, unemployment, and racial dis-crimination followed the migrants as they fled the South.The empty promise of racial equality in the North ignited a smoldering fire of rage in manyAfrican American communities. The follow-ing poem by Langston Hughes, written in 1951,captures the emotions of many city-dwellingAfrican Americans of the mid-1960s:

What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load.

Or does it explode?—Langston Hughes, “Harlem,” 1951

Watts, First of a SeriesThe arrest for a traffic violation of the young

African American in the Los Angeles ghettoshould have been routine. Perhaps it was thewarm, humid August weather that drew peopleonto the streets. Or perhaps it was the time,

7:00 P.M., still early enough in the evening to attract a rest-less crowd.

For whatever reason, that simple arrest in Watts onAugust 11, 1965, exploded into a major riot that lasted6 days. Before it was over, 34 people were dead, 1,072were injured, and 4,000 had been arrested. Close to 1,000buildings were damaged or destroyed, with a propertyloss that totaled nearly $40 million.

The Watts riot was the first, but not the most destructive, of a series of racial disorders that hit citiesthroughout the United States in the summers of 1965,1966, and 1967. Like some kind of seasonal plague, a feverof rage, looting, and arson seemed to erupt in onecrowded city after another.

Many of the riots began in similar ways, with an arrest or a police raid that was followed by rumors of resistance and police brutality. The numbers of men,women, and children involved were immense: there were30,000 rioters in Watts, while another 60,000 milledabout in the streets; in the 1967 Detroit, Michigan, riot,7,000 people were arrested.

Typically, looters headed for white-owned busi-nesses, stripping them clean of merchandise, then set-ting fire to the buildings. Some stores escaped destructionby putting up signs that read Negro Owned or Blood(meaning African American). Nevertheless, AfricanAmerican–owned businesses were often destroyed. Asthe fires burned, snipers prevented firefighters from


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Violence Erupts The riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles in 1965were the first of many to break out in cities in the United States. Whatsparked the riots in Watts?

doing their work. As a result, whole blocks were left to burn. In Watts in 1965, and again in Detroit in 1967, National Guard troops were sent in to help local police.While the riots were raging, a new African American political group appeared. In 1966 the Black Panther party was formed in Oakland, California. Its goals included protecting African American communities frompolice harassment and assuming neighborhood controlof police, schools, and other services. The Black Panthersdiffered significantly from other African Americangroups in that they supported the use of weapons for self-defense and retaliation.

Reasons WhyDuring the first 9 months of 1967, more than 150

cities in the United States reported incidents of racial disorders. In Newark, New Jersey, and in Detroit, Michi-gan, the incidents erupted into full-scale riots.

To identify and address the causes of the riots, Pres-ident Johnson appointed a National Advisory Commis-sion on Civil Disorders, headed by Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois. The Kerner Report, as the commission’sfindings came to be known, was released in March 1968.As a basic cause of the rioting, the Kerner Report pointed to the “racial attitude and behavior of white Amer-icans toward black Americans.” This could be visible, the report said, in patterns of racial discrimination and

prejudice, in African American migration to the cities followed by white flight to the suburbs, and in the exis-tence of African American ghettos. The report cited threetriggers for the racial violence: frustrated hopes of AfricanAmericans; the approval and encouragement of vio-lence, both by white terrorists and by some African American protest groups; and the sense many AfricanAmericans had of being powerless in a society domi-nated by whites.

The Kerner Report concluded that “the nation is rapidly moving toward two increasingly separate Ameri-cas.” To divert that move, the report recommended theelimination of all racial barriers in jobs, education, andhousing; greater public response to problems of racial minorities; and increased communication across raciallines.

One More AssassinationThe Death of King

The Kerner Report did not end race riots in the United States. One more outburst of rage swept throughnearly 130 ghettos following the April 4, 1968, death ofDr. Martin Luther King, Jr., at the hands of a white assassin. The 39-year-old minister was shot while stand-


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The Panthers Members of the Black Panther party attend the funeral of one of their members in Seattle, Washington. In what waydid the Black Panthers differ from other groups of African Americans at the time?

ing on a balcony with friends in Memphis,Tennessee.

The acceptance of violence as a means ofsocial protest continued to concern King upuntil his death. Protesters against the war inVietnam had long been pressing him to comeout with an antiwar statement. The issue wasnot only the war itself but also its financialcost, which was at the expense, many thought,of the war against poverty at home.

King was reluctant to oppose Johnson, astand he knew would be unpopular amongmany of his supporters. The logic of his com-mitment to nonviolence, however, demandedit. Finally, in 1967 he began to make speechesdenouncing the war. He declared that “thepromises of the Great Society,” the name giv-en Johnson’s social program, “have been shotdown on the battlefield of Vietnam.”

King did lose many supporters because of his anti-war statements. Partly in an effort to rebuild his politi-cal strength, he turned toward organizing an interracialcoalition of the poor. His final trip to Memphis was torally support for the mostly African American garbagecollectors who were attempting to unionize.

The night before his death King spoke at a churchrally. He might have had a premonition when he said,“We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the moun-taintop.” King went on to say, “I may not get there withyou, but I want you to know tonight . . . that we as a people will get to the promised land!”

The Movement AppraisedCivil Rights Gains

Without strong leadership in the years followingKing’s death, the civil rights movement floundered. Middle-class Americans, both African American andwhite, tired of the violence and the struggle. The war inVietnam and crime in the streets at home became thenew issues at the forefront of the nation’s consciousness.

In retrospect, the 14 years between the SupremeCourt’s momentous Brown decision and King’s death wereyears of great progress in civil rights. Not since the pas-sage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amend-ments during Reconstruction had so many gains beenmade. For this reason, these years are sometimes called theSecond Reconstruction. Some civil rights leaders today fearthat, as in the original Reconstruction, hard-won victorieswill gradually slip away. To guard against this, civil rightsgroups remain vigilant in their quest for progress.

Because of the combined efforts of state and federallegislatures, the courts, and the people themselves, somemeasure of political power was given to African Ameri-cans. The next gains would have to come through thepolitical process. Meanwhile, other minorities who alsothought of themselves as disenfranchised looked to thecivil rights movement of the 1950s and the 1960s as amodel for their own efforts.


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Leadership Void Coretta Scott King mourns the death of her husband.How did King’s death affect the civil rights movement?


Main Idea1. Use a diagram like this one to show the factors

that helped cause discontent within the civilrights movement.

Vocabulary2. Define: martyr, black separatism, black pride,

black power.

Checking Facts 3. In what ways did the militant civil rights groups

disagree with the strategies and attitudes ofMartin Luther King, Jr.?

4. Describe the racial unrest that spread to majorcities in the North during the mid-1960s.

Critical Thinking 5. Predicting Consequences What do you think

would have happened in the civil rights move-ment had King not been assassinated?

Factors CausingDiscontent

Chapter AssessmentChapter Assessment20

Reviewing Key TermsOn a separate sheet of paper, writethe number of each phrase and theterm it describes.segregation civil rightsboycott militantsit-in enfranchisement

1. the attainment of the rights of cit-izenship, especially the right to vote

2. the political, economic, andsocial rights of a citizen

3. the enforced separation of racialgroups in schools, housing, andpublic areas

4. one who aggressively pursuesor defends a cause

5. an organized agreement not touse certain goods or services inorder to exert pressure for change

Recalling Facts1. What was the major issue at thestart of the civil rights movement?

2. What principle was overturned inBrown v. Board of Education?

3. What do the acronyms NAACP,SNCC, CORE, and SCLC stand for?What kinds of groups were these?

4. What techniques were used tokeep African American citizens fromregistering to vote?

5. What did John Kennedy sayabout civil rights during his cam-paign for the presidency? What didhe say at his inauguration? Why didhe change his mind?

6. Who were the Freedom Riders,and what was the purpose of theFreedom Rides?

7. How did Lyndon Johnson showsupport of civil rights issues bothbefore and during his presidency?

8. What was the Kerner Report?What did it identify as the causes ofurban violence? What recommenda-tions did it make?

Critical Thinking1. Determining Cause and EffectIn the mid-1960s, most people in theUnited States watched the eveningnews on television. Why was thiscustom significant to the civil rightsmovement?

2. Predicting Consequences Ifthe Supreme Court had given defi-nite guidelines for carrying outschool desegregation early on and ifPresident Eisenhower had taken anearly stand for desegregation, howdo you think desegregation mighthave progressed? Explain.

3. Recognizing Points of ViewUse a diagram like this one to de-scribe how Malcolm X and Dr. MartinLuther King, Jr., differed in theirviews on how to combat racism.

Dr. King Malcolm XStrategies

Self-Check QuizVisit the American Odyssey Web siteat americanodyssey.glencoe.comand click on Chapter 20—Self-Check Quiz to prepare for theChapter Test.

HISTORY


1. Which of the followingwas the result of the otherthree?

A In some places, state andlocal laws upheld racialsegregation.

B Congress passed a new civilrights act and a new votingrights act.

C Several civil rights groupswere organized.

D Some state and localgovernments barred AfricanAmericans from voting.

2. “We have never initiatedviolence against anyone,but we do believe thatwhen violence is practicedagainst us we should beable to defend ourselves.We don’t believe inturning the other cheek.”

This quote best reflectsthe ideas of

A Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.B Rosa Parks.C Malcolm X.D Ella J. Baker.

Standardized Test Practice

Test-Taking Tip: Thisquestion asks you to identify acause-and-effect relationship.One event was caused by theother three. Remember thatracial segregation andrestrictions on voting were twomajor causes of the civil rightsmovement, so you can rule outanswers A and D.

Test-Taking Tip:Remember the methods thateach of these speakers used tochallenge racial injustice. Forexample, Dr. King supportednonviolent resistance, orrefusing to fight, even ifprovoked. So you can eliminateanswer A.

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/socialstudies/ushistory/amod2002/quiz.shtml?BOOK=010&CHAPTER=20&TITLE=The+Civil+Rights+Struggle

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G E O G R A P H Y A N D H I S T O R YCivil Rights Riots, Summer 1965, 1966, 1967

Study the map to answer the following questions:

1. Which cities had civil rights riots in 1965? In what regions of the country are these cities located?

2. In what 2 regions of the country did most of the 1966 and 1967 riotstake place?

3. Which cities had more than one riot? Why might this have happened?

4. Which areas of the country experienced few or no riots? What mightbe a reason for this?

Portfolio ProjectChoose a civil rights figure such

as Martin Luther King, Jr.,Rosa Parks, Fannie LouHamer, Mahalia Jackson, Mal-

colm X, or Stokely Carmichael.Research this person, and write

a personal profile. Include copies of photographs, speeches, and so on, as appropriate.

Cooperative LearningIn Brown v. Board of Education, theSupreme Court handed down aunanimous decision. In some recentcivil rights cases, however, the Courthas been divided. With a few otherstudents, consult newspapers andperiodicals to identify some of thesecases. Choose one, research it, andcreate a chart that lists the argumentson both sides. Share your findingswith other groups in the class.

Reinforcing SkillsPresenting Statistical DataStudy the map on page 669. Thenturn its data into a statistical table.Use each category in the map key asa column head. Present totals at theend of each column. What general-ization can you form about segrega-tion in 1950 based on this table?

Technology Activity

Using the Internet The NationalAssociation for the Advance-ment of Colored People(NAACP) is very active today.Search the Internet for informa-tion about this organization andcreate a brochure that explainsits goals.

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