The Modern Civil Rights Movement, Social Critics, and Nonconformists

1
The Modern Civil Rights Movement, Social Critics,
and Nonconformists
2
Address to First Montgomery Improvement
Association

• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a leader in
  the Civil Rights movement.
• He gained prominence in the 1950s after the
  Montgomery bus boycott began.
• He gave this speech the day Rosa Parks was
  arrested.
• He discusses the civil rights of all people.

3
The Birth of a New Nation

• Dr. King delivered this sermon at Dexter Avenue
  Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama on April 7,
  1957.
• He speaks about Africa and the many struggles
  African countries went through to get their
  independence from other countries like Great
  Britain.
• He then compares this to the struggle of
  African-Americans to gain freedom in the United
  States.
• Dr. King discusses his dedication to the
  principles of non-violence.

4
Give Us the Ballot

• Dr. King gave this address at the Prayer
  Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C. on May
  17, 1957.
• It is about African-Americans gaining the right
  to vote that was supposed to be guaranteed to
  them with the passage of the 13th Amendment after
  the Civil War.
• Dr. King says that if the African Americans are
  given the right to vote, they will no longer have
  to bother the federal government with their civil
  rights.

5
Supreme Court Rejects Plea Of City

• In June a federal court ruled segregated seating
  unconstitutional, and the case went on appeal to
  the U.S. Supreme Court.
• The United States Supreme Court later decided
  that the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring
  segregated buses unconstitutional.
• The boycott of the buses had lasted for 381 days.

6
Statement on Ending the Bus Boycott

• This speech was given by Dr. Martin Luther King
  Jr. after the court ruled that segregation laws
  were unconstitutional.
• His statement officially ended the Montgomery Bus
  Boycott in Alabama.
• African-Americans could now sit where they wanted
  to on the bus.
• There was no longer a black and white
  section.

7
Brown v. Board of Education

• This landmark decision of the United States
  Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson
• It declared once and for all the separate is not
  equal.
• Te decision was handed down on May 17, 1954.
• This victory paved the way for integration and
  the Civil Rights Movement.

8
Integration of Central High School

• LRCHS was the focal point of the Little Rock
  Integration Crisis of 1957.
• Nine black students, known as the Little Rock
  Nine, were denied entrance to the school in
  defiance of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling
  ordering integration of public schools.
• This provoked a showdown between the Governor and
  President Dwight D. Eisenhower that gained
  international attention.
• It was the first fundamental test of the national
  resolve to enforce black civil rights in the
  years following the Brown decision.

A National Guard Member sits outside of Central
High School during the integration.
9
House Un-American Activities Committee

• HUAC was an investigative committee of the US
  Senate.
• In 1947 HUAC investigated alleged communist
  infiltration of the motion picture industry.
• Hearsay, innuendo, and rumor were perfectly
  acceptable forms of evidence.
• HUAC decided the Fifth Amendment did not apply in
  its hearings so those refusing to testify,
  branded the Hollywood Ten, were imprisoned for
  contempt.
• Through pressing witnesses to name names, HUAC
  claimed to have identified 324 communists working
  in the motion picture industry.

Ronald Reagan testifies to HUAC.
10
Senator Joseph McCarthy

• Elected to the Senate from Wisconsin in 1946.
• Rabid anti-communist and alleged communist
  infiltration into the American government.
• On 20 February 1950, McCarthy made a six hour
  Senate speech claiming that the Democratic Party
  had been engaged in twenty years of treason.
• In 1952, the Republicans gained control of the
  Senate.
• The Republicans named McCarthy as Chairman of the
  Senate Sub-Committee on Investigations.

11
McCarthy Hearings

• In the Senate Sub-Committee for Investigations,
  Senator McCarthy applied the methods of HUAC to
  the American government, military, and defense
  industry.
• According to McCarthys own numbers, his
  investigations drove 400 suspected communists
  from the American government, though, in reality,
  few were guilty of anything more than liberal
  politics or associations

12
Opposition to McCarthyism

• Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from
  Maine, criticized his tactics as being
  detrimental to individual freedom.
• In March 1954, McCarthy began to investigate
  Annie Lee Moss, a middle aged African American
  woman who worked for the Army Signal Corps.
• For this, Moss lost her job with the Army, was
  dragged before McCarthys hearings, and publicly
  interrogated on national television.
• Senator Symington pointed out that there were
  four Annie Lee Mosses listed in the Washington
  D.C. phonebook and that there was no indication
  that this was the proper one.

Margaret Chase Smith
13
The Feminine Mystique

• Throughout the 1950s and 60s, womens rights
  activists continued to blow the whistle on the
  problems and inequities in society.
• In her book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
  showed the hidden side of a housewife, one that
  is
• Bored
• Uninspired
• screaming for change
• This was a very different image of what
  advertisements, television, and society in
  general portrayed.

14
Equal Pay Act of 1963

• The issue of equal pay became one of the main
  focal points for the second stage of the womens
  movement.
• Arguments were made to the Senate regarding
  unfair wages for retail clerks.
• In passing the bill, Congress denounced sex
  discrimination for the following reason
• It depresses wages and living standards for
  employees necessary for their health and
  efficiency
• prevents the maximum utilization of the available
  labor resources
• tends to cause labor disputes, thereby burdening,
  affecting, and obstructing commerce
• burdens commerce and the free flow of goods in
  commerce
• constitutes an unfair method of competition.

15
Shirley Chisholm

• Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American
  women elected to Congress.
• Chisholm acknowledged the strides being made in
  regards to discrimination based on race,
• But she called attention to the fact that gender
  discrimination is so ingrained in society few
  leaders fail to realize the full weight of the
  issue.
• Chisholm also argues for the passage of the Equal
  Rights Amendment that Congress had failed to pass
  for years.

16
Counter Culture

• During the 1950s a counterculture emerged.
• They were called the Beat Generation when the
  term beatnik was coined.
• Some time during the 1960s, the "Beat Generation"
  gave way to "The Sixties Counterculture."
• With this came a change in the terminology
  referring the members of the counterculture from
  "Beatnik" to "hippie".
• This group questioned American society and was
  seen in the literature, art and songs written by
  the Beatniks.
• Jack Kerouac was the most famous beat writers.
• His 1957 On the Road helped to define the
  generation.

17
Media Citations

• Slide 2 http//www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/images/
  br0119s.jpg
• Slide 3 http//www.bu.edu/marshplaza/photos/yeste
  rday6.jpg
• Slide 4 http//www.stanford.edu/group/King/public
  ations/speeches/graphics/call.jpg
• Slide 5 http//www.africanaonline.com/montgomery.
  htm
• Slide 6 http//www.loc.gov/exhibits/civilrights/c
  r-exhibit.html
• Slide 7 http//www.historicaldocuments.com/Thurgo
  odMarshalletal.jpg
• Slide 8 http//www.centralhigh57.org/rifle.htm
• Slide 9 http//www.authentichistory.com/1950s/spe
  eches/images/19471023_Reagan_HUAC.jpg
• Slide 10 http//chawedrosin.files.wordpress.com/2
  007/03/mccarthy.jpg
• Slide 11 http//www.yale.edu/yale300/democracy/ma
  y1text/images/McCarthyandCohen.jpg
• Slide 12 http//www.senate.gov/artandhistory/hist
  ory/resources/graphic/large/MargaretCSmith.jpg
• Slide 13 http//www.commondreams.org/headlines06/
  images/0205-01.jpg
• Slide 14 http//www.brookings.edu/gs/cps/ga/image
  s/kennedy_equalpayact.jpg
• Slide 15 www.utexas.edu/lbj/news/spring2005/chish
  olm.html
• Slide 16 http//www.writing.upenn.edu/afilreis/5
  0s/kerouac-jack.jpg