Civil Rights Movement II, 19605

1
Civil Rights Movement II, 1960-5

• KEY THEMES ISSUES
• 1. Organizations of Mass Struggle
• SNCC, CORE SCLC
• 2. Methods of Mass Struggle
• nonviolent direct action
• voter registration drives
• 3. Federal responses
• Eisenhower Kennedy Johnson

2
Sit-ins Birth of SNCC

• Greensboro, NC, Feb, 1 1960
• Gboro AT students
• White violence vs students public sympathy
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• seminary roots
• John Lewis
• gradually became more secular
• grass roots community organizing/empowerment
• Voter registration

3
Freedom Rides, 1961

• Congress of Racial Equality start in DC, May 4
  1961
• Boynton decision, 1960
• White Violence Rock Hill, SC
• Anniston Birmingham, Ala
• Bull Connor
• SNCC resume rides Montgomery more violence
• Mass arrests in Jackson, Miss
• JFK/RFKs role

John Lewis Jim Zwerg
4
Limits of Nonviolence, Albany, 61-2

• SNCC project, 1961
• Albany Movement
• William Anderson
• SCLC/MLK accidentally join
• shrewd opposition
• Laurie Pritchett
• meets nonviolence protest with nonviolent
  policing
• jails not overcrowded
• refuses to leave MLK in jail
• no crisis, little publicity, no federal
  intervention

5
Birmingham, 1963

• Strong local activist tradition
• Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
• SCLC action well-planned timed
• Easter economic leverage
• Birmingham white community disunited
• Businessmen want change
• 2 rival administrations
• Connor vs Boutwell
• Movement gets dramatic media images
• mass arrests white brutality
• Violence compels federal Intervention
• RFK Burke Marshall

6
Voting Rights, 1

• Voter Education Project, 1961-
• Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964
• Bob Moses, NV interracialism
• SNCC ( CORE)
• FBI vs KKK
• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
• Atlantic City Democratic Convention
• Fannie Lou Hamer
• Liberal/LBJ betrayal
• Waveland Retreat
• Bob Moses rejects interracialism

7
Voting Rights, 2 Selma, 1965

• SNCC v SCLC Tensions
• White Selma disunited
• Joseph Smitherman
• Jim Clark vs Wilson Baker
• Bloody Sunday, March 7 1965
• MLK March March 9, 1965
• Selma to Montgomery March, March 21 1965
• LBJ Voting Rights Act of 1965

8
Conclusions

• 1. In the early 1960s, nonviolent direct action
  was the most effective means to dramatize civil
  rights abuses, win popular support , ultimately,
  federal action.
• 2. Federal govt. initially responded to the civil
  disorder which accompanied black protest, but
  only belatedly addressed the deeper causes of
  that protest.
• 3. The Atlantic City/MFDP affair suggested limits
  to white liberal supports for black aspirations.
• 4. SNCC, CORE and the SCLC each had different
  approaches to the freedom struggle. This caused
  friction, but until 1965 those tensions were
  muted.
• 5. By 1965, the movement had destroyed statutory
  segregation and disenfranchisement in the South.