Civil Rights Movement
Ch 27: 1945 – 1975
Early Civil Rights Actions
• Under Pres Truman
– Appointed a Committee on Civil Rights
• Recommended several actions but Congress refused them
– Used Executive Order to desegregate the military
• Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers
– 1st African American to play Major League Baseball
• Faced harassment & death threats to play
• Viewed by some as step in the right direction
Brown v. Board of Ed., Topeka, KS
• Supreme Court Case overturned Plessy v.
Ferguson, 1896
– unanimous decision
– Said “separate but equal” was inherently unequal
– Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote decision
– Thurgood Marshall – lawyer for NAACP & Linda
Brown
• 1955, Court added that schools be
desegregated “with all deliberate speed”
• In response, the KKK staged a revival
1955
• Emmitt Till, 14, from Chicago
– Visited family in Mississippi
– Kidnapped, beaten, shot & body dumped in river
– Supposedly whistled at a white woman
– 2 whites are found not guilty by all-white jury
• Bragged about the murder later
• Montgomery Bus Boycott began
– Rosa Parks’ arrest & Dr. King’s leadership led to
success of boycott 13 months later
Civil Rights Leading Organizations
• National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP)
– Est. in 1910, Key leaders: Dr. DuBois, Roy Wilkins
– 1st worked to stop lynchings, then provided legal
services; always – non-violent methods of protest
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
– Est. in 1957, Dr. King – 1st President
– Stressed non-violent methods of protest
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC
– Est. 1960, encouraged young to join movement
– Became more radical under Stokely Carmichael
Little Rock Nine
• Central High School in Little Rock, AK
– All-white school ordered to be desegregated in 1957
• Gov. Orval Faubus blocked federal order
• Eisenhower sent in US Army to protect the 9
students
– President proved enforcement powers
• Daily they faced angry white crowds & even
received death threats
Greensboro Sit – In
• North Carolina Woolworth’s store
• Started with 4 students from NC A&T College
– Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, &
Ezell Blair, Jr.
• Daily sat at segregated lunch counter
– Faced crowds, taunts, hit, coffee dumped on them
– 6 months later finally were served
• Inspired other sit – ins around the country
– Became effective method to end segregation at
public places (parks, theatres, libraries, pools)
1961-62
• Freedom Rides, Summer 1961
– Bus trips throughout South to test desegregation
after Boynton v. Virginia, 1960 Supreme Court case
• Attacked by mobs, firebombed
– Organized by SNCC & the Congress of Racial Equality,
CORE (est. 1942, smaller organization to fight
discrimination; also non-violent)
• James Meredith & Ole Miss – University of Miss
– Gov Ross Barnett fought integration
– 1962, Kennedy sent in Army to stops riots on campus
& to protect Meredith
1963 – Pivotal Year
• Birmingham, AL protests
– Dr. King arrested – wrote “Letter from Birmingham
Jail” on non-violent methods
– Eugene “Bull” Connor orders use of fire hoses &
dogs to break up protests; images shown on TV!
• Murder of Medgar Evers, NAACP, Jackson, Miss
– Killed in front of his home
– Bryan De La Beckwith, 2 trials ended w/ hung juries
• 30 years later finally convicted
March on Washington
• August 28, 1963, Washington DC
• 250,000 people marched on the Mall area
– To Lincoln Memorial
– For equality, jobs, & support proposed Civil Rights Act
that Pres Kennedy also wanted
• International TV showed peaceful event
• Dr King’s “I have a Dream” Speech – key event
– Others: John Lewis/ SNCC; A. Philip Randolph,
Rosa Parks, Charlton Heston
– Music: Marian Anderson, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter,
Paul, & Mary; & many others
Positive News after March
• Dr. King won the Nobel Peace Prize
• 24th Amendment ratified – no more poll taxes
– 11 southern states had been using poll taxes
• Pres Johnson signed Civil Rights Act of 1964
– Prohibited discrimination based on race, religion,
ethnicity
• strongest Civil Rights law since Reconstruction
– Also reaffirmed Federal gov’t right to enforce it
• Some will argue it only passed because of JFK’s death
Not all news is good…
• Bomb explodes in a Birmingham, AL church
– Killed 4 girls attending Sunday school, Sept 1963
– FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover actually blocked
investigation
– 1 convicted in 1972, 1 died, 1 in 2001 & last in 2002
• Miss – 3 voter registration workers murdered
– Bodies found 6 weeks later in an earthen dam –Aug ’64
– Ringleader Edgar Ray Killen convicted in 2005
• Feb ‘65, Malcolm X murdered for becoming less
radical in beliefs, had broke w/ Nation of Islam
– 3 assassins from the Nation of Islam were convicted
March from Selma, AL
• To demonstrate support for voting rights &
registration – organized by SCLC
• Aim to march to Montgomery
• Gov. George Wallace
• Stopped at Pettus Bridge by Police
• “Bloody Sunday” – 50 marchers are hurt after
police use tear gas, whips & clubs
• Finally Aug, Congress passed Voting Rights Act of
1965
– Prohibits poll taxes, literacy tests & other restrictions
Violence Grew
• Aug 1965 – Watts Riots in CA
– 6 days of race riots in predominately Black
neighborhood of Los Angeles
– Killed 34, $200 million in damages
• Rise of the Black Panthers – militant organization
– Founders: Huey Newton & Bobby Seale, 1966
– Called for African Americans to get weapons for a
violent revolution for liberation
– Resulted in many clashes w/ police & court cases
• July ‘67 – Race riots in Newark, NJ & Detroit
Loving v. Virginia, 1967
• Mildred Jeter married Richard Loving in 1958
– In Washington DC, but lived in Virginia
• Virginia arrested them for violating the law
– Anti-miscegenation statute – banned inter-racial
marriages
• Found guilty & sentenced to 1 yr, suspended if
they moved from VA, not to return for 25 yrs
• Supreme Court overturned the case, 9-0
– All racial restrictions on marriage unconstitutional
Dr. King’s Assassination
• Apr 4, 1968
• Memphis, TN; balcony of motel room
• James Earl Ray – career criminal & open racist
– Caught in London 2 months later
– plead guilty = life in prison
• 3 days later recanted confession & claimed his
innocence for rest of his life (d. 1998)
• Riots broke out in 125 cities across US
– Pres Candidate Robert Kennedy called for calm
• RFK also assassinated in June ’68 by Sirhan Sirhan
President Johnson’s Leadership
• 1965 Executive Order on affirmative action
– Requires gov’t contractors to hire minorities
• Kerner Commission
– National advisory board
– Proclaimed that US was becoming two societies; 1
black & 1 white that was separate & unequal
• Civil Rights Act of 1968
– Prohibited discrimination in sale, rental, &
financing of housing