Major Events of the Civil Rights Movement

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Major Events of the Civil Rights Movement
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A Legacy of Discrimination and Segregation

• All men are created equal? (1787)
• 3/5 Compromise (1789)
• Dred Scott Decision (1856)
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) Supreme Court rules
  separate facilities for whites and blacks is
  legal (separate but equal)
• Birth of legalized segregation
• Jim Crow Laws
• Separate entrances to public buildings, separate
  drinking fountains, separate bathrooms, laws
  against intermarriage, segregated buses or blacks
  in back of the bus, segregated schools

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World War II and African-Americans

• African-Americans fight against tyranny in Europe
  and the Pacific, then come home to discrimination
  (blacks see double standard)
• A. Philip Randolph threatens a march on
  Washington to Roosevelt to protest discrimination
• Roosevelt compromises and ends segregation of
  government offices and the defense industry (the
  march is overted)
• Harry Truman desegregates the armed forces near
  the end of the war
• Korean War becomes the first de-segregated war

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Popular Culture Paves Way for Civil Rights
Movement

• 1947 Jackie Robinson, becomes the first black
  player to break the sports color barrier signing
  with the Brooklyn Dodgers
• Other professional sports follow suit
• African-American celebrities increasingly in the
  public eye
• Nat King Cole has his own primetime TV show
• Sammy Davis Jr. part of the Rat Pack
• Increasing popularity of Rock and Roll music and
  black artists
• Little Richard, Chuck Berry

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Emmett Till

• Emmett Till beaten and murdered for whistling at
  a white woman
• Mother chose to have an open casket funeral in
  Chicago, for the world to see the horrors of
  racism
• Beginning of Civil Rights Movement
• Illustrates the differences between the North and
  South
• De Facto Segregation racial segregation by
  practice and law (North)
• De Jure Segregation overt racial segregation
  by law (South)

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The Brown Case

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
• Brown family sues for having to send their
  daughters to a black school across down
• NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall argues case before
  the court (later becomes first African-American
  on the Supreme Court)
• Supreme Court lead by Chief Justice Earl Warren
  rules separate but equal is a violation of the
  14th Amendment (equal protection clause)
• Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson
• Court calls for desegregation of schools with
  all deliberate speed

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Montgomery Bus Boycott

• (1955)Rosa Parks (NAACP secretary) refuses to
  give up her seat in the front of the bus- she is
  arrested.
• Begining of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, economic
  boycott of buses, which lasts 381 days
• Martin Luther King Jr. head of the Southern
  Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) emerges as
  the leader of the boycott and civil rights
  movement

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Brown Decision tested in Little Rock

• Despite the Brown Decision school desegregation
  moves slowly
• One of the first test cases Central High School
  in Little Rock, Arkansas where 9 African-American
  students are chosen to integrate the school
• Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus comes out
  against desegregation, sends in state troops to
  prevent the 9 students from entering the school.
  Local white mobs also for barriers to prevent the
  students from entering
• President Eisenhower sends in National Guard
  troops and nationalizes state troops to protect
  the students and allow them in the school

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Lunch Counters

• Students within the SCLC form the Student
  Nonviolent Coordinating Committee push for more
  confrontational methods of gaining civil rights
• 2/1/1960 SNCC members sit at white-only lunch
  counters in Greensboro, North Carolina food is
  thrown on them, they are yelled at and beaten

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Freedom Rides

• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) lead by James
  Farmer fight segregation on interstate busing
• 1961 set out on bus trips throughout the south on
  integrated buses
• Buses firebombed, tires slashed, riders arrested
• Federal government is forced to step in to
  protect freedom riders

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March on Washington

• Civil Rights leaders lead by Martin Luther King
  and A. Philip Randolph organized a march on
  Washington to persuade the Federal government to
  pass Civil Rights legislation
• 8/28/1963 250,000 people gathered at the
  Lincoln memorial
• Kings I Have a Dream Speech
• Success of the March on Washington leads to the
  passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which
  barred discrimination in employment and public
  accommodations

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Black Power Movement

• Malcolm X emerges as a Civil Rights leader
  pushing separation and violence resistance
• 1966 Stokely Carmichael comes to power in SNCC
  pushing for more confrontational methods he
  coins the phrase Black Power combat White
  Power
• Black Panther Party founded in Oakland pushing
  self-determination for blacks and armed
  resistance to police violence
• Even MLK gets more confrontational speaking out
  against the war in Vietnam, supporting workers
  strikes, he is assassinated in Memphis supporting
  a garbage workers strike

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Freedom Summer

• 6/1964 Freedom Summer is launched campaign to
  register black voters throughout the south by
  northern college students (45 of Mississippi
  was black, only 5 of voters were black)
• 3 civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and
  Goodman were abducted and killed, FBI comes in to
  investigate (Mississippi Burning)
• Their killers were arrested but found not guilty
  after the case was over they admitted to the
  crimes

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Take a look around at Selma, Alabama

• African-Americans in Selma trying to register to
  vote faced beatings and arrests
• They organized a protest march from Selma to
  Montgomery, 600 people 50 miles
• Police met the marchers and attacked the crowd
  Edmund Pettis Bridge)
• LBJ sends Federal troops in to allow a second
  march to occur
• Leads to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of
  1965 ending discrimination in voter
  registration by putting it under federal control

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Riots

• 8/1965 Watts Riots (L.A.) break out over police
  violence riots last 6 days 4,000 arrested 34
  dead
• Over the next 2 years over 100 riots break out
  across the country
• LBJ appoints commission to look into the problem
• Kerner Commission blames the riots on white
  racism, warns of the U.S. moving towards two
  societies, one black, one white.

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Civil Rights Big Picture

• Importance of Television protests aired on
  national TV, whites beating blacks creates
  support for the movement (non-violent protest)
• Federal Government steps in State and local
  governments fail to secure equal rights, Federal
  government steps in
• Push for equality
• 1)Social
• 2)Political
• 3)Economic