U.S. History

1
U.S. History

• The Civil Rights Movement

2
Who

• The Civil Rights Movement was led by African
  Americans.
• The movement enlisted the support of people from
  all walks of life.

3
What

• The Civil Rights Movement was a political
  movement during the 1950s and 1960s,
• devoted to securing equal opportunity and
  treatment for members of minority groups.

4
When

• In the mid-20th century.
• It began right after World War II.

5
Where

• The Civil Rights Movement was centered in the
  South.
• Southern states never accepted the Reconstruction
  Amendments to the U.S. Constitution

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Why

• A belief in the superiority of and inferiority of
  races

7
How

• It was a reform movement.
• It was a movement for peaceful change.
• Its participants used civil disobedience - that
  is, they broke the law in a peaceful, nonviolent
  way.
• It was a movement to make the U.S. more
  democratic - in politics, in economics, and in
  social life.
• It was a long and difficult process to achieve
  change for people long deprived of political and
  economic power.
• It involved overturning the entrenched interests
  who were hostile to change that would reduce
  their power and privilege

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The Premise

• The Civil Rights Movement was the culmination of
  a long struggle with deep roots.
• It was a struggle to achieve equality expressed
  in the Declaration of Independence (1776)
• and to gain the guarantees of the Constitution
  and Bill of Rights (1789).

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The Civil Rights Movement

• Where did it begin?

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The Dred Scott Case Origins

• Slave whose master had moved him to free
  territory for several years
• Sued for his freedom
• Lost in state and federal courts
• Case appealed to U.S. Supreme Court in 1857

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The Dred Scott Case Decision

• Majority opinion written by Chief Justice Taney
• Ruled that a slave wasnt a citizen and couldnt
  sue in court
• Also ruled the Missouri Compromise
  unconstitutional

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The Emancipation Proclamation

• Announced by Lincoln in 1862 after the Battle of
  Antietam
• Freed slaves only in territories in rebellion,
  not border states
• Signed on January 1, 1863
• Essentially unenforceable

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The Civil War Amendments

• 13th Amendment abolished slavery
• 14th Amendment granted ex-slaves citizenship
  guaranteed equal protection, due process
• 15th Amendment gave African American men the
  right to vote
• Supreme Court ruled these only applied to the
  federal government

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Civil Disobedience

• definition
• refusal to obey a law that is considered
• unjust by using nonviolent techniques such
• as boycotting, picketing, and sit-ins,
• especially for the purpose of bringing about
• change to said unjust law

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An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts
on a minority that is not binding on itself. This
is difference made legal.
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On the other hand a just law is a code that a
majority compels a minority to follow that it is
unwilling to follow itself. This is sameness made
legal.
17
Jim Crow Laws

• From the 1880s to the 1950s, laws enforced
  complete racial separation in the South.
• Jim Crow, a minstrel-show character, was a
  derogatory term for black people.
• Southern states passed laws requiring the
  complete separation of whites and blacks on
  public transportation, schools, restaurants, and
  other public places.

18
Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)

• The Jim Crow laws were tested in 1896.
• Homer Plessy, an African American living in
  Louisiana, was arrested for riding in a
  white-only railway car.
• The Supreme Court ruled that segregation was
  constitutional!
• Segregation was legal as long as public
  facilities were kept "separate but equal".
• Justice John Harlan was the only justice who
  disagreed. Vehemently.

19
Washington vs. Du Bois

• Booker T. Washington
• Believed that blacks should assimilate into the
  world of work by learning technical skills
• Established the Tuskegee Institute

• W.E.B. Du Bois
• Contended that blacks should receive a
  liberal-arts education
• Co-founded the NAACP

20
The New Deal and Civil Rights

• FDRs commitment to civil rights was lukewarm
• Several New Deal agencies discriminated against
  blacks
• Tenant farmers and sharecroppers protested
• A. Phillip Randolph proposed a March on
  Washington

21
FDR Civil Rights

• As president during the Great Depression and
  World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt cut a wide
  swath through the history of the period.
• However, FDRs record regarding civil rights is
  at best mixed.
• He rarely supported civil rights legislation,
  especially laws that would have made lynching a
  federal crime.
• FDR did not support expansive civil rights
  legislation, primarily because he needed the
  votes of white Southern Democrats in order to
  maintain his New Deal Coalition.
• To push for civil rights for African Americans
  might have cost him support for New Deal
  legislation, or even the presidency.

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Civil Rights Movement

• Segregation

23
Segregation

• generally is taken to mean the practice of
  forcibly separating people based upon their race
  or ethnicity.          
• However, under modern civil rights law force
  doesn't have anything to do with the legal
  definition of segregation.
• From a legal standpoint, there are two types of
  segregation which affect preferred racial
  minorities in the U.S. de jure segregation and
  de facto segregation.

24
De jure segregation

• means racial separation forced by specific laws.
  All such laws were eliminated in the U.S. by the
  mid-1960s.  Therefore, today in the U.S. there is
  no such thing as de jure segregation

25
De facto segregation

• means racial separation that occurs "as a matter
  of fact", e.g., by housing patterns (where one
  lives) or by school enrollment (where one goes to
  school).

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Separate but Equal

• Photo Gallery Activity
• Picture 1 Create a title for the picture
• Write your initial feelings
• Write down the Jim Crow Example you see
• Explain why this is social injustice

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Jim Crow Justice

• Lynching is the illegal execution of an accused
  person by a mob.
• In the South, white mobs lynched African
  Americans.
• Between 1880 and 1920, two African Americans a
  week were lynched in the United States.
• In none of these cases was a white person ever
  punished for these crimes.
• In the South, white juries never convicted white
  Klansmen.

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The Civil Rights Movement

• Strange Fruit

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The Ku Klux Klan

• In 1867, the KKK was formed by leaders of the
  Confederacy who lost the Civil War.
• From then on, the number of lynching of African
  Americans increased dramatically.
• The main objective of the KKK was to maintain
  white supremacy in the South.

37
Ida B. Wells

• In 1884 Ida B. Wells was born a slave near
  Memphis, Tennessee.
• She became a newspaper reporter there and
  published The Red Record, an expose of
  lynching
• 728 African Americans had been lynched by white
  mobs.
• Two-thirds were accused of small offenses - like
  public drunkenness or shoplifting - not rape.
• In 1909, she became a founding member of the
  NAACP.

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Emmett Till

• Emmett Till was a 14-year-old boy who lived in
  Chicago.
• In the summer of 1955, he went to visit his
  grandparents in Mississippi.
• Being 14 (and not realizing the ugly climate of
  the South), he winked at a white woman.
• In the middle of the night, two white men
  kidnapped Emmett Till.
• Three days later, Emmett Till's body was found in
  the Tallahatchie River.
• His eye was gouged out, his head was crushed in,
  and he had a bullet in his brain.
• The corpse was nearly unrecognizable.

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The Civil Rights Movement

• Death of Innocence Reading

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Civil Rights Movement

• The Fight for Justice Begins

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Causes of the Movement

• 1776- A Dream Deferred
• World War II
• 14th Amendment
• Brown vs. Board of Education

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A Dream Deferred

• 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 sags
• like a heavy load.
• Or does it explode?

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Segregation in World War II

• When World War II began, 2.5 million
  African-Americans registered for the draft.
• African American soldiers served in the Army, Air
  Force, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard.
• But the armed forces were segregated.
• To resolve the contradiction, the black press
  called for The Double V Campaign
• A victory against Hitlers racism abroad and
  racial discrimination back home.
• When the war was ended, segregation should come
  to an end.
• African American soldiers fought for their
  country with one understanding
• Ending segregation would be one of the fruits of
  victory.

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The Civil Rights Movement

• The People

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Leaders

• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (SCLC) The top leader
  of the Civil Rights Movement. Won Nobel Peace
  Prize.
• Thurgood Marshall (NAACP) Lawyer who won the
  Brown v. Board of Education.
• James Farmer (CORE) Organized the Freedom Rides
  through the South.

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The Leaders

• Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth (SCLC) led the civil
  rights movement in Birmingham, Alabama.
• Rev. Jesse Jackson Convinced Chicago businesses
  to hire African-Americans. (Rainbow Coalition)
• A. Philip Randolph (Labor leader) Threatened to
  hold a March on Washington during World War II to
  protest discrimination in defense jobs. This
  prompted FDR to desegregate the defense
  industries. Was the symbolic head of the March on
  Washington, 1963.

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The Civil Rights Movement

• The Organizations

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NAACP

• (National Association for the Advancement of
  Colored People)
• It was the first organization to fight for civil
  rights.
• Formed in 1909 by W.E.B. Du Bois, it was a
  multiracial group that waged legal battles in
  court.
• Organizers set up branches in 50 major cities.
  But few in the South.
• During the Civil Rights era, it set up legal
  defense funds to aid jailed protesters.
• Thurgood Marshall, the lead attorney, won the
  landmark case Brown v. Board of Education.

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Early School Segregation Cases

• Sweatt v. Painter (1950)
• McLaurin v. Oklahoma State
• Regents for Higher Education (1950)
• Both provided a framework for the 1954 Brown v.
  Board of Education case

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Brown v. Board Origins

• Video clip

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Brown vs. Board of Education

• In this landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled
  unanimously that segregation in public schools
  was unconstitutional.
• The court orders that desegregation proceed "with
  all deliberate speed."
• This paved the way for desegregation of all
  public facilities.
• In 1967, Thurgood Marshall, the lead NAACP
  lawyer, became the first African American justice
  on the Supreme Court.

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Brown NAACPs Arguments

• The strategy the NAACP employed consisted of
  several arguments.
• First, the NAACP noted that the decision in
  Plessy v. Ferguson had misinterpreted the 14th
  Amendment.
• In Plessy, the Supreme Court had confirmed the
  legality of separate facilities for whites and
  blacks, provided that they were qual. In Brown,
  the plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to
  overturn the 1896 ruling.
• Second, the NAACP argued that the 14th Amendment
  not only prohibited discrimination on the federal
  level, but also on the state level.
• This gave federal courts the right to order state
  governments (and school boards) to
  integrateschools.

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• The NAACP also believed that the 14th Amendment
  did not guarantee the right of state governments
  to discriminate in the area of public education.
• The NAACP had already used this defense on other
  occasions, particularly in higher-education
  cases, and felt the same argument would be
  effective in K12 schools as well.
• Finally, in a departure from typical
  discrimination lawsuits, the NAACP attempted to
  prove that school segregation not only violated
  the provisions of the 14th Amendment, but also
  had an adverse psychological effect on children
  forced to attend all-black schools.
• The NAACP used testimony from noted child
  psychologists that substantiated claims that
  discrimination fostered a sense of inferiority in
  black children well beyond their school years.

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The Little Rock Nine

• According to the Supreme Court case Brown v.
  Board of Education, it was unconstitutional, and
  therefore illegal, to have segregated schooling.
• In 1957, nine African-American students were
  enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in
  Little Rock, Arkansas. Initially Arkansas
  Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas
  National Guard to stop the students from
  attending the school.
• In September, President Eisenhower intervened and
  sent federal troops and took the Arkansas
  National Guard out of the governors control.
• The students were escorted by these federal
  troops and entered school on September 25, 1957.

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The Civil Rights Movement

• SCLC, MLK, Montgomery, SNCC, CORE, the strategy

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SCLC

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• Formed in 1957 by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and
  other African American ministers.
• Dr. King became its first president.
• It began as a coalition of black churches to
  fight segregation in the South.
• It became an umbrella organization that
  coordinated direct action across the South.
• Its main objective was to coordinate nonviolent
  protests throughout the South.
• It provided leadership for all the major actions
  Birmingham, Selma, and the March on Washington.

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The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Parkss arrest provided the catalyst for a
  boycott of Montgomery buses. The origins of the
  bus boycott actually predated Rosa Parks arrest.
  
• The brainchild of E.D. Nixon, head of the local
  NAACP as well as an officer in the Brotherhood of
  Sleeping Car Porters union, the plan was
  originally to use the arrest of 15-year-old
  Claudette Colvin as the event that would spark
  the boycott.
• However, since Colvin was also charged with
  assault, the boycotts organizers searched for a
  more suitable symbol.
• Rosa Parks, a respected figure in Montgomerys
  black community, fit the bill.

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• In order to effectively organize and conduct the
  boycott, Nixon and others met at a local Baptist
  church, where they formed the Montgomery
  Improvement Association.
• Since several black ministers had already refused
  to support the boycott, the MIA appointed Martin
  Luther King Jr. (the churchs pastor) as
  president.

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• As the boycott spread throughout Montgomery,
  blacks found other ways to get to school or work.
  
• Most walked, while others rode bicycles or
  hitchhiked to their destination. Some blacks
  carpooled.
• When local car insurance companies threatened to
  cancel the policies of carpoolers, the famous
  insurance house Lloyds of London offered to
  insure their vehicles.
• Black taxicab drivers supported the boycott by
  charging blacks ten-cent fares (the typical bus
  fare), instead of the usual 45-cent fare, even
  after city officials threatened to fine any
  driver who undercharged.
• In some instances, white housewives picked up and
  drove their black maids to and from work
  however, it is unclear if they supported the
  boycott or simply wanted to make sure that their
  maids put in a full day of work.

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The Boycott White Resistance

• Some joined the White Citizens Council
• Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathys homes
  were fire bombed
• Boycotters physically attacked
• Some boycotters were arrested

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SNCC

• Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
• Founded in 1960 by college students at all-black
  Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
• It was an organization exclusively for young
  African Americans.
• After the first Greensboro sit-in, SNCC launched
  sit-ins throughout the South.
• Its young leaders became famous
• John Lewis, head of SNCC from 1963 to 1966,
  became a famous Congressman from Georgia.
• Julian Bond became a state legislator in Georgia.
• Stokely Carmichael launched the Black Power
  movement in 1966.

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Congress of Racial Equality

• Formed in 1942 in the middle of World War II.
• Led by James Farmer, an African American, this
  multiracial group was dominated by whites..
• In 1960, CORE began sending Northern college
  students - 1,000 black and white volunteers - on
  bus trips throughout the South.
• As they rode through Southern states, they
  stopped at Greyhound bus stations and tried to
  use the restaurants and restrooms.
• Their goal was to test new federal laws
  prohibiting segregation in interstate travel
  facilities.
• The first group of "freedom riders were attacked
  by a mob in Alabama that set their bus on fire.

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White Citizens Councils

• The first White Citizens Council was born in
  Mississippi just after Brown v. Board of
  Education.
• It was an all-white group that opposed
  integration. It believed in white supremacy.
• In 1956, 100 Southern Congressmen issued The
  Southern Manifesto, calling upon Southern whites
  to oppose
• desegregation.
• Every Southern governor opposed desegregation. As
  a result, these groups sprung up in every white
  community in the South.
• Most held the same philosophy as the Ku Klux
  Klan They opposed the Supreme Court, federal
  government, and desegregation.
• They used violence against African Americans.
• They attacked individuals, like James Meredith.
• They attacked groups, like the Freedom Riders.
• The average member carried a baseball bat.

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The Strategy

• a. Legal action
• Lawyers filed lawsuits - in federal courts,
  against the Southern states.
• Upholding the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court
  always ruled in their favor.
• b. Direct action
• Massive demonstrations, boycotts, sit-ins to
  protest unfair state laws and practices.
• c. A publicity campaign
• To show on TV how unfair discriminatory laws
  were.
• They appealed to Americans' sense of fair play.
• d. Shame
• To show Americans how un-American life was in
  the South.
• To show white Southerners how un-Christian they
  were being.
• At that time, the South was known as the Bible
  Belt.
• People cared about being good Christians.

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The Results

• The impact of the new legislation
• Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Civil Rights Act of 1968
• The Civil Rights movement spread to Northern
  cities
• Model for other struggles in the U.S
• Model for struggles around the world