ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF DELAY:
THE SHIFTING ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
IN AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS
by
Leif Erik Johnson
A Project
Presented to
The Faculty of Humboldt State University
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
In Education
May, 2012
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF DELAY:
THE SHIFTING ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
IN AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS
by
Leif Erik Johnson
Approved by the Master’s Project Committee:
_______________________________________________________________________
Delores McBroome, Major Professor
Date
_______________________________________________________________________
Gayle Olson-Raymer, Committee Member
Date
_______________________________________________________________________
Tom Cook, Committee Member
Date
_______________________________________________________________________
Eric Van Duzer, Graduate Coordinator
Date
_______________________________________________________________________
Jena Burgess, Vice Provost
Date
ABSTRACT
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF DELAY: THE SHIFTING ROLE OF THE
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN AFRICAN AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS
LEIF ERIK JOHNSON
One of the most tragic and moving stories in American history is the
prolonged quest to recognize the civil rights of African Americans. This story, of
both shame and hope, is captured in this project and presented as a one hundred year
struggle of national politics, state repression, and individual courage from the end of
the Civil War to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Students of history
are familiar with the names of civil rights heroes like Martin Luther King Jr. and
Rosa parks, but there remains a need to give a more comprehensive historical
perspective to students of how and why the struggles in the 1950s and 1960s began
and what role the federal government played in both the setbacks and successes of
the movement.
This project provides educators with a thorough history starting with
amending the Constitution during the Reconstruction period, the denial of those new
rights with the creation of Jim Crow laws, and after 100 hundred years of struggle
the final recognition of those Constitutional rights in the 1960s with national
legislation. Along with this historical perspective in the literature review is a
detailed lesson plan with an emphasis on analyzing primary documents. Through
this lesson plan students will understand the complex nature of federal and state
relations, alongside the power of social movements, and the importance of
iii
constitutionally protected civil rights in a democracy. Students will develop the
necessary critical thinking skills to examine primary documents and cultivate an
educated opinion on the difficult issues of race and government.
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my appreciation for the Teaching American History
(TAH) program without which I would not be receiving my Master’s Degree. It has
been a great experience to be a part of such an enriching program. Thank you to
Jack Bareilles for bringing TAH to Humboldt County. A thank you is also due to the
very excellent TAH professors Delores McBroome and Gayle Olsen-Raymer who
not only coached me through this project but illuminated me and many others to the
wonders of history every month in our TAH meetings. When everyone else was
sleeping in on Saturdays we were gathered around the PowerPoint expanding our
minds.
I would also like to thank all the professors in the Education Department at
Humboldt State. Every professor I have encountered there has been extremely
warm, gifted, and encouraging to me, which enabled me to not only complete this
project but enjoy it as well. These great professors include Eric Van Duzer, Ann
Diver-Stamnes, Patty Yancy, and my thesis advisor Tom Cook. I would also like to
say thank you to my mom and dad, Randi and Nels, for instilling in me from the very
beginning a desire to learn, with an appreciation for both education and history. I
have felt more than supported by you two over the years as I have advanced my
studies. I also have to thank and honor Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the folks at
Stony the Road We Trod for the inspiration, as well as all the civil rights heroes
mentioned in this project.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ v
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION....................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................. 4
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .................................................................................... 68
CHAPTER 4: CONTENT ................................................................................................ 77
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................... 109
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 113
APPENDICES ................................................................................................................. 117
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
The role of the federal government in our lives and society is nowadays a
divisive issue. Political debates in the United States often boil down to
disagreements over what the function of government should be. To understand
current political debates it is always important to have a historical knowledge of
whatever issue is being debated. One of the most significant roles of the federal
government has been its creation and enforcement of civil rights. However,
concerning the civil rights of African Americans the federal government has spent
far more time in the past ignoring those rights than actually enforcing them.
Beginning in 1865, with the end of the Civil War, the federal government through
amendments to the Constitution began to do away with the complete
disenfranchisement of African Americans that had been normal practice since the
inception of the United States. These reforms were only temporary as the 14th and
15th Amendments lay dormant for 100 years after they were first implemented due to
state segregation laws and a lack of federal enforcement.
Chapter Two presents a literature review which tells this story through the
perspectives of historians who have studied it. The literature review explains not
only the legal origins of civil rights during the Reconstruction period and how those
bold assertions of racial equality were denied but also of how through continual
struggle and federal recognition they were finally enforced in the 1960s.
1
2
Within those hundred years the literature review covers are the stories of those that
set up the system of white supremacy called Jim Crow, those who opposed it, and the
reactions of the federal government through it all.
The literature review begins
with a look at the Reconstruction period after the Civil War. The presidency of
Andrew Jackson and his conflicts with Radical Republicans in Congress are
analyzed to reveal the intense debate within the nation over what the rights of newly
freed slaves would be. The creation of the Ku Klux Klan to violently oppose these
new rights is examined alongside the federal government’s response under President
Grant. The review then investigates how the demise of Reconstruction led to the rise
of Jim Crow in the South with descriptions of the violence and oppression of Jim
Crow and how it was institutionalized by state law as well as Supreme Court
decisions. Chapter Two culminates with the work of groups like the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference to end Jim Crow and the federal government’s response
under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson.
Chapter Three presents a Methodology, which describes how and why I was
inspired to study this topic. The Methodology goes on to describe the research
question for this topic as well as what the research process looked like for this
endeavor. Concluding the chapter is an explanation of how the eleven day
curriculum for the project was created and a justification for its need in the
classroom.
3
Chapter Four contains the eleven day lesson plan that addresses the role of
the federal government in African American civil rights for 11th grade U.S. history
classes as well as for 12th grade government classes. This curriculum is broken
down into detailed day by day accounts of how the lessons are conducted. The state
standards covered in the lessons are listed as well as definitions for all academic
language used. The curriculum uses a blend of both teacher-centered lectures and
student-centered analysis of primary documents. The main goal of the curriculum is
to give students a comprehensive history of the struggle for African American civil
rights and to develop their critical thinking skills in the process.
Chapter Five is the Conclusion of the project and highlights the main points
of the research and curriculum. Chapter Five also seeks to illustrate the limitations
of this research project alongside the implications for further research in this field of
study.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
This literature review represents a broad overview of civil rights history with
an emphasis on the role that United States federal government played in both aiding
and denying African Americans’ demands for civil rights. To give a complete
picture of the political dispute over civil rights, the role of state governments in
opposition to federal power will be analyzed. This review does not attempt to be an
exhaustive study of civil rights literature especially since it takes into account events
spanning a 100 year period from the 1860s to the 1960s. The review starts with the
conception of civil rights protections during the Reconstruction period with its
contested goal of enfranchisement for recently freed slaves and ends with the
passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After describing the period of
Reconstruction and the political changes it brought, the review goes on to explain the
rise of Jim Crow and how it affected black residents of the South. The terror under
which black residents had to live during Jim Crow is discussed including mob
violence, lynching, race riots and daily humiliations. The lack of federal intervention
to stop or investigate racial violence is discussed with an emphasis on the role of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
4
5
The review goes on to describe the challenges to Jim Crow with particular
emphasis on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) and its successful role in challenging segregation with the Brown v. Board
decision in 1954. President Eisenhower’s decision to enforce that ruling is analyzed
as well as the Southern resistance to racial integration and the activists and students
who were challenging Jim Crow. Of particular concern in this review are the
policies of the federal government after Brown especially the presidencies of John
Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, which are often seen as great compatriots to the civil
rights movement (Brauer, 1977). To be sure, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson
took strong stands in favor of civil rights for all citizens, but their accomplishments
are contrasted with their suspicion and caution in dealing with civil rights activists as
well as political calculations concerning their Southern Democratic allies. These
dynamics are all highlighted in the second half of the review.
Given the scope of this research, it is inevitable that many people and events
that deserve attention have been left out. It would be impossible to cover everything
of importance that took place during the century upon which this review focuses, so I
have selected certain events that I consider to be of significant value for
understanding the evolving and shifting role the federal government has played in
protecting the civil rights of its black citizens. Since the majority of literature
reviewed for this project used the terms black and African American interchangeably
6
I have likewise used both terms in this review while leaving out the old fashioned
term negro unless it is quoted from a primary document.
This literature review along with the project as a whole has been created with
the emphasis that the teaching of civil rights history in the United States needs
improvement and is indeed a critical and vital part of the social science classroom.
This literature review describes the essential events a teacher will need to know in
order to effectively teach the story of African American civil rights and thus provides
background knowledge for any educator to teach the lesson plan that follows after
the review. Events in the review beginning with Reconstruction are described and
listed in chronological order over a 100 year period. This broad focus is necessary to
give a complete portrayal of the shifting role the federal government played in the
civil rights of African Americans.
Reconstruction
When the American Civil War ended in 1865 with the defeat and surrender of
the Confederacy, the United States could once again be united; however, many
obstacles had to be overcome (Foner, 2002). President Lincoln was assassinated
only days after the war ended, shocking the nation and bringing a vice president who
had major policy dissimilarities on race and reunion from the slain President into the
presidency (Foner, 2002). President Lincoln had only laid out brief post war plans,
and his ideas on race had been evolving before his assassination (Fitzgerald, 2007).
The course for the government was left open and uncharted with Lincoln’s sudden
7
death, and the nation stood at a crossroads. The leadership for reunifying the nation
fell into President Andrew Johnson’s hands as well as a Congress that often had
fundamental differences with the President (Franklin, 1994). This post war period
and reformation of the South and federal government after the Civil War is called
Reconstruction; it lasted until 1877 (Franklin, 1994).
Andrew Johnson’s presidency was embroiled in controversy, eventually
leading him to become the first President to be impeached in American history
(Foner, 2002). The controversial nature of the Johnson administration completely
revolved around the debates over Reconstruction (Fitzgerald, 2007). President
Johnson had a far different idea of how the former Confederate states should be
brought back into the Union than did Congressional Republicans. Behind each of
their differences over Reconstruction lay opposite conceptions of how the federal
government should operate especially with concern to the newly created rights for
African Americans (Foner & Brown, 2005).
When the South seceded in 1861, Andrew Johnson became the only Southern
Senator to stay loyal to the Union during the war. However, after the war, Johnson
favored a more lenient approach to bringing the Confederate states back into the
Union, leading some scholars to assert that Confederate leaders received some of the
most forgiving treatment in the history of post war settlements (Foner, 2002).
Presidential Reconstruction from 1865 to 1867 saw former Confederate leaders
elected to congress and strict Black Codes enacted across the South to deprive
8
freedmen of any new rights they might claim (Fitzgerald, 2007). This proved too
much for Radical Republicans in Congress to tolerate and there was a political
backlash against President Johnson. A new type of policy was ushered in: Radical
or Congressional Reconstruction which lasted until 1877 (Fitzgerald, 2007). Under
Republican direction, the federal government divided Southern states into military
districts and new elections were held that ensured African American men were
allowed to vote. Congress also created federal agencies like the Freedmen’s Bureau
that provided assistance to newly freed slaves (Foner, 2002).
A roadblock to expanding civil rights was President Johnson’s strong
prejudice toward African Americans (Fitzgerald, 2007). A former slave owner
himself, Johnson opposed expanding rights for blacks in any way aside from ending
slavery (Foner, 2002). Republicans insisted that the return of Confederate states to
the Union hinge on whether blacks would be enfranchised in the South and used
their control of Congress to push through comprehensive reforms that ensured the
equality of the races (Foner, 2002). These reforms included three new amendments
to the Constitution. The first and least controversial amendment passed in 1865,
which was the 13th Amendment and ended slavery. The 14th and 15th amendments to
the Constitution were passed in 1868 and 1870, guaranteeing African Americans’
citizenship, equal treatment under the law, and lastly all men’s right to vote
regardless of race (Foner, 2002). With new civil rights laws created, African
Americans were elected to federal and state legislatures for the first time in
9
American history (Fitzgerald, 2007). For a time former slaves received the same
rights as all other citizens and used their new political rights to run for office and
generally seek a better life for themselves (Franklin, 1994).
In opposition to these newly created freedoms for blacks were freshly formed
racist, vigilante groups that spread terror across the South (Chalmers, 1981). The
biggest vigilante group in the South was the Ku Klux Klan, which was organized and
started in Tennessee by Confederate veterans and quickly spread throughout the
South as a violent voice for white supremacy (Chalmers, 1981). This was of little
concern to President Johnson who wanted minimal federal intervention into Southern
states’ affairs (Chalmers, 1981). President Johnson’s opposition to Radical
Reconstruction eventually led to his impeachment and the election of Ulysses S.
Grant as President in 1868 (Franklin, 1994).
By 1868 the Ku Klux Klan was waging a well-organized violent campaign
across the South which targeted freed blacks and their white allies in the Republican
Party for attack and intimidation all across the former Confederacy (Chalmers,
1981). The Klan had a clear goal: to bring blacks back into submission and stop
Republicans from attaining or keeping any political power (Chalmers, 1981). Local
law enforcement was either unwilling or unable to stop the violence, which created a
vacuum for the Klan to operate in unimpeded (Chalmers, 1981). One of the worst
examples of white supremacist terrorism happened in Colfax, Louisiana in 1873
when 80 or perhaps 200 black residents were murdered by white vigilantes, many of
10
them after they had surrendered, with no intervention by any local authorities (Lane,
2009).
By the time of the 1873 massacre, Louisiana was already in a state of chaos
(Lane, 2009). The state had a contested election in 1872 with both the Republican
and Democratic Parties claiming victory and each party establishing parallel
governments (Lane, 2009). Violence and controversy followed and eventually
federal troops were brought in to restore order and defend the Republican governor
elect (Lane, 2009). Many black members of the Republican Party were elected to
high level political offices during Reconstruction (Fitzgerald, 2007). This was a
historic event across the South, but the election of black men to political power was
too much for those accustomed and inclined to keeping them in slavery and thus
retaliation followed (Kennedy, 1995). In the town of Colfax, black residents and
militia members had taken control of the Parish Courthouse in order to establish a
local seat of government, but most of them were murdered in the vigilante violence
that ensued (Lane, 2009). Violent events like this were not limited to Louisiana and
were replicated across the South during the Reconstruction period as the Klan used
violence and threats to restore white supremacy (Kennedy, 1995).
The federal government reacted strongly against Klan violence with Congress
passing three Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871 (Jeffreys-Jones, 2008). Part of the
Enforcement Acts, known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, allowed for more federal
intervention in the South to forcefully stop Klan terrorism (Jeffreys-Jones, 2008).
11
The Enforcement Acts also protected civil rights by making it a federal offense to
interfere with voter registration or voting (Jeffreys-Jones, 2008). This was important
and necessary because of the huge effort to disenfranchise new black voters across
the South (Kennedy, 1995).
These policies were all conducted under the administration of Ulysses S.
Grant who was elected in 1868 with a Republican Congress despite Klan violence to
prevent Republicans from voting (Fitzgerald, 2007). President Grant supported
Radical Reconstruction but lacked the patience to make its changes concrete (Foner,
2002). Grant ordered a crackdown on the Klan and hundreds of Klan members were
arrested (Jeffreys-Jones, 2008). The Klan was temporarily paralyzed by this new
federal pressure, but this was a short-lived setback for the Klan as many convictions
proved difficult in the South and Reconstruction came to an end in 1877 (Lane,
2009).
The U.S. Supreme Court even ruled against the federal prosecution of Klan
members in 1876 (Lane, 2009). With its decision in United States v. Cruikshank, the
Supreme Court overturned the convictions of those responsible for the Colfax
Massacre and declared the Ku Klux Klan Act unconstitutional (Lane, 2009). The
Supreme Court’s ruling in Cruikshank marked a retreat from federal enforcement of
civil rights, effectively empowering states to discriminate and Klan groups to
terrorize by prohibiting the federal government from intervening in most cases
(Foner & Brown, 2005). However, federal intervention against the Klan exhibited
12
the first instance of a federal agency doing police work in the states, demonstrating
how federal force could succeed against state negligence, and set a precedent for the
creation of the Bureau of Investigation in 1909 (Jeffreys-Jones, 2008).
Reconstruction was a time of drastic political contrasts that set up two very
different visions for the United States (Kennedy, 1995). The debate over how much
power the federal government should have over the states was never more poignant
than during Reconstruction (Foner, 2002). Most white Southerners wanted the
federal government to stay out of their business, and despite this hostility the federal
government for a time strongly limited state sovereignty in the old Confederacy
(Kennedy, 1995). As Reconstruction dragged on, the political will to keep federal
pressure on the South dried up (Fitzgerald, 2007).
The disputed election of 1876 ended Reconstruction (Franklin, 1994). A deal
was made to ensure Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes’ election if he would
discontinue Reconstruction (Franklin, 1994). This is known as the Compromise of
1877 and entailed a secret agreement in Congress to end the electoral impasse by
recognizing Hayes as the winner. In return for Democrats’ support, federal troops
were taken out of the South and Democrats received posts in the new administration
(Franklin, 1994). The Compromise of 1877 and termination of Reconstruction ended
federal protection for black civil rights in the South and ensured the oppression of
black southerners for another 100 years (Foner & Brown, 2005). Reconstruction was
a bold attempt at equality that ultimately did not succeed, leading some scholars to
13
describe it as a “Splendid Failure” (Fitzgerald, 2007, p. 1) and another to declare the
South the final victor of the Civil War (Kennedy, 1995).
The Civil War was a show of force by the federal government against
rebellious states, but Reconstruction was the first time the federal government used
troops in a period of peace to enforce federal laws and specifically to create and
safeguard the newly recognized civil rights of African-Americans, making it the first
time civil rights became an issue in American politics (Foner & Brown, 2005).
Three new amendments were added to the Constitution during Reconstruction that
changed how the U.S. government operated (Foner, 2002). With these new
amendments the federal government stood as a protector of freedoms instead of a
potential threat to citizens’ liberty (Foner & Brown, 2005). The 13th, 14th and 15th
Amendments expanded freedom in the U.S., but it would require a century of active
work by civil rights groups and forceful federal action to make these freedoms a
reality in the twentieth century (Foner & Brown, 2005).
The Reconstruction amendments transformed the Constitution from a
document primarily concerned with federal-state relations and the rights of property
into a vehicle through which members of vulnerable minorities could stake a claim to
freedom and seek protection against misconduct by all levels of government. In the
20th century, many of the Supreme Court’s most important decisions expanding the
rights of American citizens were based on the Fourteenth Amendment, perhaps most
14
notably the 1954 Brown ruling that outlawed school Segregation (Foner, 2009, p.
541).
Rise of Jim Crow
After the demise of Reconstruction, Southern states were left to make their
own policies regarding civil rights (Foner & Brown, 2005). Federal intervention
during Reconstruction had momentarily thwarted many state attempts to pass
restrictive race laws (Foner, 2002). After Reconstruction was abandoned by the
federal government, Southern states again passed strict Black Codes and racial
segregation became the norm in every former Confederate State. This deprived
black residents of their constitutional rights and left them with no protection from the
federal government (Foner & Brown, 2005). These policies became known as Jim
Crow and created a system of white supremacy in the South nearing slavery in its
inequality (Kennedy, 1995).
After Reconstruction was abandoned, the federal government not only gave
up its enforcement of African American civil rights, it gave official sanction to
Southern states’ right and ability to create a segregated society by dismissing the
federal government’s right to intervene in state affairs regarding racial discrimination
(Packard, 2002). In 1895 and 1896 the Supreme Court made two historic decisions
that firmly denied black appeals for justice. With its decision in Williams v.
Mississippi in 1895, the Supreme Court struck down an appeal to challenge
Mississippi’s successful methods to keep blacks from voting (Packard, 2002).
15
Beginning in 1890 and soon copied by most other Southern states, Mississippi added
poll taxes and literacy tests to their voting requirements (Packard, 2002). These laws
specifically left out any mention of race to avoid violating the 15th amendment, but
the intention behind these laws and in practice was to deprive black residents of the
right to vote (Packard, 2002). Literacy tests did not have a consistent standard to
measure success and were almost always applied discriminately to black voters while
illiterate white voters were often given a pass by subjective registrars (Packard,
2002). These laws were essentially endorsed by the federal government when in the
Williams case the Supreme Court ruled that voting issues were a state issue and not a
federal one (Packard, 2002). This decision and ones after it by the federal
government ensured that the 15th Amendment was not enforced until the Voting
Rights Act of 1965 was passed (Packard, 2002).
The practice of racial segregation was sanctioned by the United States
Supreme Court in 1896 with its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (Packard, 2002).
Homer Plessy, a mixed race creole, purposefully sat in the white section of a
Louisiana rail car and violated one of Louisiana’s segregation laws. This act of civil
disobedience was meant to be the basis for a legal challenge to segregation. The
litigants argued that racial segregation violated the 14th Amendment with its
guarantee of “equal protection under the law” (Packard, 2002, p. 77). The challenge
was, however, a failure as the Supreme Court ruled in a 7 to 1 verdict that racial
segregation was in fact constitutional. The Supreme Court explained that facilities
16
could be legally segregated as long as they were “separate but equal” (Packard, 2002,
p. 77). While segregated facilities were separate, they were anything but equal.
Facilities for blacks remained inadequate and second rate in comparison to those
established for whites (Packard, 2002).
Besides the legal restraints against African Americans that sprang up
throughout the South as part of Jim Crow, there were also unwritten laws that took
the form of mob violence (Dray, 2002). Starting in the late 1800s, lynching became
a common practice in the Southern states (Dray, 2002). Although lynching did occur
throughout the nation, and sometimes targeted white victims, the primary victims
were black and in most cases lynching served as a means of social control and
maintaining white supremacy by keeping black citizens obedient and in a position of
fear and weakness (Dray, 2002). Lynching was predominantly organized by mobs
seeking extra judicial punishment for perceived crimes and could include shootings,
hangings or even burning a victim at the stake (Dray, 2002). The exact number of
lynchings that took place in the United States is a topic of debate as many were not
reported or documented (Dray, 2002). The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), created in 1909, was the first and largest
organization to seek an end to Jim Crow, and specifically worked to bring attention
and action to this racial violence it called “the shame of America” (Dray, 2002). In
1912 the NAACP began an independent count of how many lynchings occurred
every year, and in 1921 began a long and fruitless effort to lobby congress to pass
17
anti-lynching legislation that would make lynching a federal crime (Tolnay & Beck,
1995). Southern Senators were able to filibuster any legislation that managed to
make it out of the House, and as a result no legislation against lynching was ever
passed (Tolnay & Beck, 1995).
Recent research reveals there were “2805 victims of lynch mobs killed
between 1882 and 1930 in 10 southern states. The scale of this carnage means that,
on the average, a black man, woman, or child was murdered nearly once a week,
every week, between 1882 and 1930 by a hate-driven white mob" (Tolnay & Beck,
1995, p. x). These statistics expose the very real terror that African Americans lived
with under the system of Jim Crow. Another form of organized violence that could
be considered lynching included “race riots” that took place across the South, as well
as the rest of the nation during the first half of the twentieth century (Tolnay & Beck,
1995). One of the most notorious of these “race riots” occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma
in 1921when rampaging whites ostensibly mad over the rape of a white woman
attacked the black section of town, burning, looting, and shooting at random with no
police intervention leaving 600 persons, mostly black, dead and thousands homeless
(Packard, 2002). Besides these incredible outbreaks of bloodshed, the Jim Crow
system produced non-lethal violence in the form of daily humiliations and threats for
African Americans with no legal recourse or ability to challenge them since there
was always the fear of even worse violence being leveled at them (Tolnay & Beck,
1995).
18
The well-publicized lynching of young Emmett Till in Mississippi during
1955 is sometimes said to have helped launch the modern civil rights movement with
new demands for justice in a younger generation of black activists (Williams, 1987).
In the summer of 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till boarded a train and left
Chicago to visit family members in Money, Mississippi. Unfamiliar with the social
codes of Jim Crow, Till is said to have gone out of his place by whistling at a white
women in a grocery store (Dray, 2002). At the heart of Jim Crow and the
rationalization for segregation was the protection of white women from black men,
which created situations like the Till case where even the mere impression of
personal encroachment on a white female could be a death sentence for a black male
(Packard, 2002). Upon hearing this news, the woman’s husband with an accomplice
abducted Till at night from his home, murdered him, and disposed of his body in the
Tallahatchie River which was later accidentally found by a man fishing in the river
(Dray, 2002). Unlike other murders of black men in the South, the murder of Till
produced wide condemnation for its brutality and the youth of its victim. Even
Mississippi Governor Hugh White denounced the murder and pledged a full
investigation (Dray, 2002).
Charges were brought against the men and Till’s great uncle Moses Wright
risked his own life identifying them as the culprits, but an all-white jury failed to
convict them (Dray, 2002). The all-white jury represented another tenant of Jim
Crow which essentially safe guarded whites from being prosecuted for crimes
19
against blacks since blacks were prevented from serving on juries in the South (Dray,
2002). This served a double purpose as the potential jury pool was made up of
registered voters and blacks in the South were prevented at every turn from
registering to vote (Packard, 2002). After the trial, the two men charged with the
murder admitted their guilt in an interview with Look magazine and lived the rest of
their days as free men though partly shunned by their community (Dray, 2002). The
NAACP petitioned the Justice Department to charge the murderers with conspiracy
or kidnapping charges, which they had already admitted to, and Till’s mother wrote
to President Eisenhower asking for federal prosecution. The Justice Department
declined, however, fearing a civil rights trial in Mississippi would be too difficult
and President Eisenhower remained silent on the topic (Dray, 2002).
Rise of the FBI and Federal Negligence
As stated earlier, the first instance of federal law enforcement occurred
during Reconstruction. During that period, the Justice Department was elevated to
its own independent federal agency with the Attorney General in charge (JeffreysJones, 2008). In 1909 the Bureau of Investigation (BI) was officially created as an
investigative agency within the Justice Department after being temporarily patched
together under President Roosevelt. A more cohesive agency was given the name
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1935 (Gentry, 1991). At the time of its
creation, there were few federal laws over which the FBI had jurisdiction as most
criminal acts remained under state authority (Jeffreys-Jones, 2008). As the federal
20
government grew in scope and power throughout the 20th century so did the FBI.
Overseeing this change and increasing authority was J. Edgar Hoover, the longest
serving director in Bureau history (Gentry, 1991).
J. Edgar Hoover was nominated as director of the BI in 1922 and stayed in
that position until his death in 1972 (Jeffreys-Jones, 2008). During his time as
director, Hoover developed a Bureau that often served as his personal fiefdom and
was willing to violate the civil liberties of Americans in the pursuit of what he saw as
subversive activity. Even before Hoover became director, he helped to organize the
Palmer Raids during the Red Scare of 1920 when he was head of the General
Intelligence Division of the Justice Department (O’Reilly, 1989). During this event,
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered the arrest and deportation of hundreds
of suspected radicals in the U.S. (O’Reilly, 1989). This government sanctioned and
publicly approved violation of civil liberties marked the beginning of Hoover’s
career and also accompanied a new Bureau trend to target as subversives not only
anarchists and communists but black Americans who made demands for equal rights
(O’Reilly, 1989).
“The epic Red Scare of the immediate post war years included a black scare.
Concluding that second-class citizens would have second-class loyalty, the FBI
dismissed every black resident as subversive, every criticism of American policy as
un-American” (O’Reilly, 1989, p. 12). One of the first black activists to be targeted
by the BI was Marcus Garvey. Born in Jamaica, Garvey made a name for himself in
21
Harlem as a Black Nationalist and leader of the United Negro Improvement
Association. Garvey was investigated by the BI and charged with mail fraud in 1922
resulting in a five year jail sentence and deportation to Jamaica in 1927 (O’Reilly,
1989). Other black leaders targeted by the Bureau as suspicious and closely
monitored included prominent activists such as W.E.B. Dubois who helped to launch
the NAACP, and A. Philip Randolph who by simply proposing a march on
Washington pressured President Franklin Roosevelt to ban racial discrimination in
the defense industries and later helped to organize the 1963 march on Washington
(O’Reilly, 1989). The espionage of the 1920’s set a precedent for increased federal
police powers as well as FBI surveillance of civil rights activists in the 1950s and
60s (O’Reilly, 1989).
FBI power increased during the 1930s under President Roosevelt. Under the
guise of fighting crime, Congress passed numerous crime bills in 1934 that enhanced
federal jurisdiction over certain crimes like kidnapping, bank robbery and
racketeering (O’Reilly, 1989). These issues were given increased scrutiny due to the
litany of notorious gangsters like John Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly during the
1930s (O’Reilly, 1989). Through these new crime bills, the FBI acquired new police
powers, including the ability to carry firearms for the first time, as well as a media
machine that launched Hoover and his agents into a newfound celebrity status
(O’Reilly, 1989). The FBI’s increased power and success against bank robbers and
gangsters stood in stark contrast to their unwillingness to combat the lynching of
22
black men by white vigilantes as well as other violence directed toward black
communities (O’Reilly, 1989).
In 1946, NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall complained to United States
Attorney General Tom Clark that the FBI had failed to produce any meaningful civil
rights enforcement or investigations especially in regards to the lynching of African
Americans (Dray, 2002). Marshall also lamented to NAACP director Walter White,
“I have no faith in either Mr. Hoover or his investigators and there is no use in my
saying I do” (Dray, 2002, p. 433). Hoover would defend the Bureau by pointing to
the lack of federal laws the FBI had to enforce in relation to lynching and mob
violence (Dray, 2002). The FBI did have federal laws they could enforce from the
Reconstruction era, but these were limited and hard to prosecute; it was not until
1957 that a civil rights bill effectively increased the power of the Justice
Department’s civil rights division (Dray, 2002).
The FBI under Hoover gave the threat of communism a much bigger priority
than any violence that targeted African Americans or their communities (O’Reilly,
1989). Since his work in the Palmer raids, Hoover was adamantly anti-communist
and pushed the FBI to dedicate itself to discovering any communist inspired activity
as well as infiltrating and breaking the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).
Hoover became convinced that communists were involved in black demands for
justice and sought to connect black protests with a larger communist conspiracy from
23
the defense of the Scottsboro Boys in 1931 to the March on Washington in 1963
(O’Reilly, 1989).
When nine black teenagers were falsely accused of raping two white women
and sentenced to death in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931, Hoover remained more
interested in the Communist Party’s defense of the young men than in their actual
guilt or innocence (O’Reilly, 1989). The Communist Party did in fact aide in the
defense of the Scottsboro boys and was one of the first activist groups to take the
radical position of defending black civil rights in the early part of the 20th century,
but black members or supporters of the communist party were always very limited in
number (Gentry, 1991). By the 1950s the CPUSA was mostly defunct since most
members had abandoned the party due to FBI harassment and disillusionment with
the Soviet Union (Gentry, 1991). Hoover insisted the communist party was still a
threat and continued a FBI Counter Intelligence program (COINTELPRO) against
them until his death in 1972 all the while seeing a communist conspiracy behind
black civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. (Gentry, 1991).
Challenges to Jim Crow and Growth of Modern Civil Rights Movement
There were many challenges to the system of Jim Crow but none were
successful until 1954 (Williams, 1987). The NAACP filed a lawsuit against several
segregated schools that were consolidated into one case and heard by the U.S.
Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (Williams, 1987). The Supreme
Court declared in Brown v. Board that segregated schools are unconstitutional,
24
overturning the “Separate but equal” doctrine previously enshrined into law by
Plessy v. Ferguson (Williams, 1987). While this victory was celebrated by civil
rights activists, an organized policy of Southern Resistance or Massive Resistance
was begun to prevent integration (Williams, 1987). The Supreme Court had made its
ruling, but Southern states, local officials, and some white residents refused to obey
the order (Branch, 1988). In direct opposition to Brown v. Board, Representatives
and Senators from southern states created and signed the Southern Manifesto, which
argued against forced integration (Williams, 1987). Lyndon Johnson, then a Senator
from Texas, was one of only three southern Senators who refused to sign the
Southern Manifesto (Dalleck, 1998). This open defiance of federal law by the
Southern Manifesto set up an inevitable confrontation between the federal and state
governments (Branch, 1988).
In 1957 President Eisenhower ordered federal troops into Little Rock,
Arkansas to enforce the desegregation of Central High against the wishes of
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus (Burk, 1984). Federal force became necessary
when Governor Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to turn black students
away and a mob of angry segregationists clustered around Central High prepared for
a confrontation (Burk, 1984). Previous to this, a federal court issued the
desegregation of Central High and nine black students, giving rise to the name Little
Rock Nine, were selected and agreed to attend the school (Beals, 1994). Resistance
to integration was immediate and intense as the families of the Little Rock Nine
25
received threatening phone calls, attacks on their homes, and upon going to Central
High were met by a violent mob intent on preventing their entrance. One of the
Nine, Melba Patillo Beals expressed the frustration of living in fear with little
protection as so many other black Southerners did under Jim Crow.
The integration debate made me feel much more vulnerable. Whites had
control of the police, the firemen, and the ambulances. They could decide
who got help and who didn’t. Even if the Ku Klux Klan ravaged one of our
homes, we couldn’t call the police for help. None of us was certain which of
our city officials wore civic uniforms by day and white sheets at night (Beals,
1994, p. 102).
While Dwight Eisenhower did not make civil rights a priority in his
administration, he was a firm believer in the rule of law and felt it his duty to enforce
the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board, as well as a federal court order
mandating integration at Central High (Burk, 1984). Amidst the crisis Eisenhower
explained that “mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decision of the courts,”
while Governor Faubus lamented federal intervention declaring, “We are now an
occupied territory” (Beals, 1994, p. 127). President Eisenhower was reluctant to
send federal troops into Arkansas and only did so once negotiations with the
Governor broke down (Burk, 1984). On orders from the President, the 101st
Airborne escorted the nine black students enlisted at Central High through the mob
26
outside and essentially served as bodyguards for them in the beginning of the school
year (Beals, 1994).
The intervention in Little Rock was a success for the civil rights movement
but its impact was limited (Williams, 1987). Even though the Little Rock Nine were
allowed to attend Central High they had to endure daily harassment from fellow
students for the remainder of the year with scant protection from administrators or
the federalized Arkansas National Guard that replaced the101st Airborne (Beals,
1994). Federal intervention succeeded in desegregating Central High temporarily
but Governor Faubus closed Central High the following year to protest integration,
and it was not integrated again until 1960 when two black students were allowed in
after continued NAACP litigation (Beals, 1994). Despite the Brown decision and the
showdown in Little Rock, most schools across the South remained segregated
(Williams, 1987). The federal intervention in Little Rock, however, did mark a
turning point in the federal enforcement of civil rights as it was the first time since
Reconstruction that federal troops were brought into the South to force defiant states
to obey federal law (Burk, 1984).
It was this issue of civil rights for African Americans that brought to the
forefront a constitutional crisis over state versus federal power (Burk, 1984). After
Eisenhower finished his term, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were both confronted
with enormous challenges concerning black civil rights. Though both men were
circumspect politicians, when confronted with crisis they eventually acted in favor of
27
civil rights, securing the success of the movement in the United States and leading
some scholars to label these actions a second Reconstruction (Brauer, 1977).
President Kennedy and Civil Rights
John Kennedy, like Dwight Eisenhower, came into office without making
civil rights a platform of his campaign (Bryant, 2006). Kennedy was personally in
favor of civil rights for blacks but was overly cautious and slow to make it a priority
of his political career (Bryant, 2006). The activists pushing for equality and the
violent backlash against them forced President Kennedy to act on civil rights
(Bryant, 2006). Without pressure from civil rights activists and the attention it
raised, President Kennedy would have been content to focus his attention on foreign
policy and avoid the controversial civil rights issues present in the early 1960s
(Bryant, 2006).
President Kennedy’s avoidance of civil rights was partly a political
calculation because Kennedy worried about alienating and losing Southern
Democrats who would oppose him if he embraced civil rights (Bryant, 2006). In
1948 when President Harry Truman supported a civil rights platform for the
Democratic party at their convention, Southern Democrats revolted and backed
South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond’s bid for President with the State’s
Rights Democratic Party, also known as the Dixiecrats, which managed to win the
electoral votes of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina (Stern, 1992).
President Kennedy did not want to see this conflict repeated, so it took a myriad of
28
demonstrations by the civil rights movement and violence against them to move
President Kennedy to action (Bryant, 2006).
Freedom rides.
The first civil rights crisis to rouse the Kennedy administration concerned the
Freedom Rides in 1961 (Arsenault, 2006). The Freedom Rides were organized by
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to test whether federal law was being
followed in Southern transit facilities. The U.S. Supreme Court in Morgan v.
Commonwealth of Virginia ruled that segregated interstate buses were
unconstitutional (Arsenault, 2006). Fourteen years after the Morgan decision in
1960, The Supreme Court ruled in Boynton v. Virginia that not only buses but their
facilities including restrooms and food service had to be desegregated (Arsenault,
2006). When the Freedom Rides started in 1961, almost no Southern facilities had
been desegregated (Arsenault, 2006). As with the Brown decision in education,
Southern states simply ignored the Supreme Court and federal law when it came to
desegregation (Arsenault, 2006). It took enforcement of the law by the federal
government to make desegregation a reality (Lewis & D’Orso, 1998).
After testing desegregation at segregated transit facilities from Washington,
D.C. to Georgia with only minor incidents, the Freedom Riders were met with mob
violence in Alabama (Branch, 1988). A bus was firebombed in Anniston and riders
were brutally attacked at the Greyhound Station in Birmingham (Branch, 1988). The
Birmingham Klan chapter conducted violence against the Freedom Riders with
29
support from the Birmingham police (May, 2005). In a prearranged agreement, Klan
members and others opposed to the Freedom Rides were allowed fifteen minutes of
violence before the Birmingham Police would show up to the bus station (May,
2005). This information was forwarded to the FBI before the incident by a Klan
informant named Gary Rowe who participated in the attack (May, 2005). Several
FBI agents were present but observed the event without intervention, following J.
Edgar Hoover’s philosophy that the Bureau was an investigative agency not a police
force (Bryant, 2006). The brutality against the Freedom Riders attracted
international media coverage and required a response from the Kennedy
administration (Stern, 1992).
The flare up over the Freedom Rides caught the Kennedy administration off
guard and frustrated the President and his brother, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy, as they both felt it was a distraction from their Cold War priorities (Bryant,
2006). President Kennedy had only been in office for several months and was
already facing pressure over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion when the Freedom Rides
began (Bryant, 2006). The Kennedy administration wanted the Freedom Riders to
halt their civil disobedience, leading activists to criticize the federal government
(Stern, 1992). As the head of the Justice Department, Robert Kennedy coordinated
the administration’s response to the Freedom Rides. After the violence in Alabama
took place, the Attorney General began talks with the governors of Alabama and
Mississippi to garner local protection for the Freedom Riders (Thomas, 2000).Robert
30
Kennedy also began conversations with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which began a
longstanding and sometimes tenuous relationship between the two (Arsenault, 2006).
Southern officials were not forthcoming and offered little to no protection for the
Riders. In this threatening atmosphere, the remaining CORE activists took the
Justice Department’s offer of a protected plane ride to New Orleans instead of
finishing the trip by bus (Lewis & D’Orso, 1998).
This departure did not stop the Freedom Rides. Organized by Diane Nash, a
new group of activists from the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) out of Nashville, Tennessee rallied to continue the Rides (Lewis & D’Orso,
1998). This group included future Georgia Congressman John Lewis. When they
first arrived in Birmingham they were arrested, taken back to Tennessee by
Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, and left by the
side of the road (Lewis & D’Orso, 1998). The activists were not dissuaded and
boarded another bus in the morning. At the insistence of the Justice Department,
Alabama Highway patrolmen escorted the bus to Montgomery (Lewis & D’Orso,
1998).
On May 19th the Riders were badly beaten at the bus stop in Montgomery
when their police escort suddenly abandoned them and an angry mob appeared
(Branch, 1988). John Lewis received several blows to the head while one of his
colleagues, William Barbee, was beaten so badly he remained paralyzed for life
(Lewis & D’Orso, 1998). Another one of the injured in the Montgomery melee was
31
Justice Department official John Sieganthaler, who was knocked unconscious while
trying to escort two Freedom Riders to safety (Branch, 1988). Sieganthaler was sent
down to Alabama by Robert Kennedy to monitor the situation and demonstrate to the
Riders that the federal government was interested in their safety (Bryant, 2006).
Again FBI agents observed the situation and took notes without intervening (Bryant,
2006). Governor Patterson showed no sympathy for the Freedom Riders and lacked
any desire to offer them protection declaring, “You can’t guarantee the safety of
fools” (Bryant, 2006, p. 268).
When the Freedom Riders and their supporters regrouped at the First Baptist
Church in Montgomery, an angry mob gathered outside. If not for the intervention
of a hastily organized group of federal Marshals to protect these congregants, a
massacre could have ensued (Branch, 1988). Dr. King and his fellow ministers
contacted Attorney General Robert Kennedy and pleaded for federal protection as no
Alabama authorities were present to prohibit mob violence (Stern, 1992). Robert
Kennedy was already pleading with Alabama officials to intervene so that federal
officials would not have to do so (Thomas, 2000). When the Attorney General did
not receive any support from local agencies, he reluctantly ordered in federal
marshals. For most of the night, these officers haphazardly kept the mob at bay, at
one point firing tear gas into the crowd that unintentionally drifted its way back into
the church (Branch, 1988). After spending a harrowing night in the church, the
Alabama National Guard and local police showed up under orders of Governor
32
Patterson to disperse the mob allowing congregants to be escorted out safely in the
morning (Branch, 1988).
The Freedom Rides continued into Mississippi under state police escort
(Branch, 1988). Upon their arrival in Jackson all the riders were arrested (Branch,
1988). Robert Kennedy had negotiated a deal with the Mississippi governor. In
exchange for local law enforcement protecting the riders from mob violence, the
Justice Department would not press for the release of Freedom Riders from prison
(Thomas, 2000). As a result the remaining Freedom Riders were sent to Parchman
Farm, a notoriously harsh prison in Mississippi (Lewis & D’Orso, 1998). According
to federal law and the Supreme Court, the Freedom Riders had broken no laws. The
Justice Department temporarily looked the other way while Southern states enforced
their own segregation laws in opposition to federal law (Dierenfield, 2004).
When Robert Kennedy asked the Freedom Riders to halt their activities
calling for a “cooling off period,” CORE leader James Farmer responded, “We’ve
been cooling off for one hundred years, if we got any cooler we’d be in a deep
freeze” (Dalleck, 1998, p. 30). The Freedom Rides continued throughout the
summer of 1961 as new activists boarded busses in the South and were arrested by
local officials (Arsenault, 2006). In September of 1961, under pressure from the
Kennedy Administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) declared
segregated transit facilities were illegal and ordered all segregated signs to come
down (Arsenault, 2006). Most of the signs were removed in interstate transit
33
facilities, but the South remained a bastion of segregation in the early 1960s (Branch,
1988). Within a year of the Freedom Rides another crisis over civil rights in the
South struck the Kennedy administration.
Ole Miss.
James Meredith’s decision to challenge segregation and become the first
black student to attend the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) in Oxford resulted in
a showdown between the federal government and the state of Mississippi during the
Fall of 1962 (Branch, 1988). Meredith sought and received the legal support of the
NAACP and its Field Secretary in Mississippi, Medgar Evers, to challenge his
exclusion from Ole Miss. The legal challenge was successful and the U.S. Supreme
Court, eight years after its Brown decision, affirmed Meredith’s right to attend Ole
Miss (Branch, 1988). The state of Mississippi and white supremacist vigilantes tried
unsuccessfully to prevent Meredith from attending Ole Miss (Rosenberg & Karabell,
2003). Meredith explained his goals and outlook pending the conflict.
I was firmly convinced that only a power struggle between the state and the
federal government could make it possible for me or anyone else to
successfully go through the necessary procedures to gain admission to the
University of Mississippi. I was also sure that only the recognition of the
authority of the federal government would insure a successful completion of
a course of study once admitted to the university. The election of President
34
Kennedy provided the proper atmosphere for the development of such an
atmosphere (Meredith, 1966, p.51).
The Kennedy brothers both preferred dialogue with Southern politicians over
the use of force (Thomas, 2000). Attorney General Kennedy and eventually
President Kennedy conducted behind the scenes negotiations with Mississippi
Governor Ross Barnett to work out a deal for Meredith’s enrollment (Thomas,
2000). The Kennedy administration wanted to avoid sending any federal troops into
Mississippi. The Attorney General tried earnestly to gain Governor Barnett’s
cooperation through their many phone conversations (Thomas, 2000). Many
schemes were thought up, including federal marshals drawing their weapons on
Barnett and forcing him to admit Meredith (Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003). Barnett
wanted to please his segregationist base by opposing integration but also felt
somewhat inclined to obey federal orders (Thomas, 2000). Thus, in public Governor
Barnett played the role of a die-hard segregationist, declaring the federal court
ordered integration of Ole Miss “our greatest crisis since the war between the states”
(Dierenfield, 2004, p. 72). The final plan agreed upon was to secretly bring in
Meredith and have Barnett express surprise to the public that he had been duped by
the federal government (Thomas, 2000).
Barnett proved to be a bad partner and never fully cooperated with the
President or Attorney General. The Kennedy administration was thus caught off
guard when a riot broke out on campus over Meredith’s arrival on September 30th
35
(Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003). While the riot erupted President Kennedy, unaware,
gave a speech to the nation calling for national unity and praising Meredith’s
peaceful enrollment (Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003). Amidst the crisis Barnett
declared, “I call on Mississippians to keep the faith and courage. We will never
surrender” (Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003, p. 79).
Both students and staunch segregationists from out of town gathered on and
around the Ole Miss campus in anticipation of Meredith’s integration (Stern, 1992).
Meredith was taken to a dormitory and intended to register the next day. He was
protected by 200 federal Marshals. The Marshals came under attack by the mob that
had gathered and were quickly overwhelmed. No local law enforcement was ever
summoned to assist in keeping the peace (Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003). The
Kennedy administration ordered in troops to prevent what seemed could be a very
public lynching (Thomas, 2000). Two men died, and 160 Marshals were injured in
the riot, which included sniper fire and lasted all night before 20,000 soldiers were
brought into Oxford, Mississippi to restore order (Stern, 1992). Not wanting to
inflame local tensions further, Robert Kennedy had soldiers segregated, keeping
black soldiers off campus, a tactic that Eisenhower used in the Little Rock crisis
(Dierenfield, 2008). This federal resegregation was condemned by James Meredith
and ended after it was made known to the national public (Meredith, 1966).
36
Ross Barnett, having directly violated a federal court order, avoided arrest only
because the Kennedy administration feared a heavy backlash (Rosenberg & Karabell,
2003).
James Meredith finished his term at Ole Miss, ignoring the constant
harassment he received and graduated in 1963 (Meredith, 1966). For their part in
Meredith’s integration, the Kennedy administration was vilified throughout
Mississippi and the rest of the South (Dierenfield, 2008). A sign of the federal state
conflict was embodied on bumper stickers reading “Federally Occupied Mississippi”
that became popular across the state (Dierenfield, 2008). The crisis at Ole Miss was
another reminder to the Kennedy administration of the explosive nature of the civil
rights issue and the lack of agreement between the state and federal level over racial
issues (Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003).
Birmingham.
It took the dramatic showdown in Birmingham, Alabama to finally move
President Kennedy into proposing national civil rights legislation during 1963 (Stern,
1992). Birmingham had been called one of the most segregated cities in America
(Mann, 1996). It had also received the nickname of Bombingham for all the attacks
on black neighborhoods and churches that occurred throughout the years and
remained unsolved (McWhorter, 2001). After unsuccessful protests in Albany,
Georgia, and with the encouragement of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Dr. King and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) decided to make a showdown in
37
Birmingham during April of 1963 (McWhorter, 2001). The planned protests
received the name of Project C, with C standing for confrontation. The SCLC
wanted to oppose segregation head on with civil disobedience and believed a
dramatic confrontation would attract the necessary national attention to make the
movement a success (McWhorter, 2001). Activists took to the streets of downtown
Birmingham and were met with a heavy police presence. After many arrests and
demonstrations black adults grew leery of more protests, arrests, and the economic
uncertainty they brought (McWhorter, 2001).
With the initial suggestion and help of SCLC minister James Bevel, children
were organized and enthusiastically took to the streets of Birmingham to challenge
segregation and white supremacy (McWhorter, 2001). Under the leadership of
Eugene “Bull” Connor, the Birmingham police and fire department used very
abrasive tactics to break up the protests, arresting thousands in the process.
Protestors were met with the brute force of high powered fire hoses, German
Shepherds, and cattle prods (McWhorter, 2001). This was all captured by journalists
and broadcasted on the nightly news and morning newspapers. John Kennedy, like
most Americans, was shocked to see the abuse of peaceful protestors by a police and
fire department (Stern, 1992).
President Kennedy debated whether or not to bring in troops to Birmingham
as he had done in Oxford the past year (Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003). The President
decided not to intervene forcefully, but his administration worked behind the scenes
38
to help negotiate a deal between protestors and city officials (McWhorter, 2001). A
deal was reached on May 10th to desegregate downtown facilities, hire token black
workers in department stores, and call off protests (Williams, 1987). The next day a
bomb exploded at A.D. King’s house and another one at the Gaston Motel where
Martin Luther King had stayed (Williams, 1987). What the assailants did not know
was that Dr. King left Birmingham the day before the bombs exploded. After the
failed attacks, a riot broke out amongst angry black residents, which was a departure
from the previously non-violent demonstrations (McWhorter, 2001). Even with a
deal on the table, racial tensions in Birmingham remained high and the
confrontations helped President Kennedy realize he needed to take a proactive stand
on civil rights instead of just responding to different crises (Rosenberg & Karabell,
2003).
Toward a civil rights bill.
One month after the Birmingham deal, President Kennedy appeared on
national television to propose civil rights legislation on June 11, 1963 (Rosenberg &
Karabell, 2003). Robert Kennedy was the only one of John Kennedy’s advisors to
encourage action on civil rights legislation (Thomas, 2002). Besides his brother’s
advice, President Kennedy was also motivated by events in Alabama on June 11th to
take to the airwaves. The catalytic event occurred when Alabama Governor George
Wallace arrived at the University of Alabama earlier that day to block the entrance of
black students Vivian Malone and Jimmy Hood (Carter, 2000). A federal court order
39
authorized their attendance to the previously segregated university. Determined to
enforce federal rule, the Kennedy Administration federalized the Alabama National
Guard and hoped another disaster like the confrontation at Ole Miss would not occur
(Carter, 2000).
In a prepared speech and made for media event, Wallace stood by a podium
in front of Foster Auditorium and lambasted the federal government for its
usurpation of states’ rights declaring, “I do hereby denounce and forbid this illegal
and unwarranted action by the central government” (Carter, 2000, p 149). Standing
in front of Wallace and eagerly awaiting his submission was Deputy Attorney
General Nicholas Katzenbach who served the defiant Governor a Presidential cease
and desist order. Even after Katzenbach’s order, it would take the military command
of recently federalized National Guard General Henry Grahm for Wallace to end the
show and disperse (McWhorter, 2001). Before leaving Wallace reiterated his defiant
tone, “Alabama is winning the fight against federal interference because we are
awakening the people to the trend of military dictatorship” (Carter, 2000, p. 150).
Wallace left having staged his symbolic resistance to the federal government’s
integration policy and successfully created a national image for himself (Carter,
2000).
President Kennedy decided that day to present a strong message on civil
rights to the nation even if it hurt him politically (Thomas, 2002). He announced to
the nation he was going to send legislation to Congress and described the problem in
40
very grand terms, “We are confronted primarily with a moral problem. It is as old as
the scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution. . . And this nation, for all its
hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free”
(McWhorter, 2001, p. 464). President Kennedy also expressed his concern over the
lack of progress in civil rights over the last century, “One hundred years of delay
have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons,
are not fully free” (Carter, 2000, p. 153). Over the course of the summer and fall
Kennedy’s proposed civil rights legislation lingered in Congress while opponents of
civil rights lined up to voice their criticism and suspicions in grandiose terms (Mann,
1996).
In July Southern politicians appeared before the Senate Commerce
Committee to voice their outrage (Carter, 2000). Governor Wallace utilized this
opportunity to describe a dark future if federally enforced civil rights laws passed,
“You should make preparations to withdraw all our troops from Berlin, Vietnam, and
the rest of the world because they will be needed to police America” (Carter, 2000,
p. 158). Wallace like many southern politicians also made use of an alleged
connection between communism and black civil rights, “I personally resent the
actions of the federal government . . . fawning and pawing over such people as
Martin Luther King and his pro-communist friends and associates” (Carter, 2000, p.
158). To counter this backlash civil rights groups began to mobilize support for civil
rights legislation.
41
The March on Washington for Jobs and Justice was organized by the major
civil rights groups in the U.S., the NAACP, Urban League, SNCC, CORE, SCLC,
and it became a rallying cry of support for civil rights legislation (Stern, 1992).
President Kennedy feared the march would scare congressmen from voting for the
bill and at first urged civil rights leaders including Dr. King to call off the protest
(Rosenberg & Karabell, 2003). Civil rights activists were, however, in no mood to
wait or be patient. Dr. King argued it would be much worse if black Americans were
not allowed a peaceful venue to express their frustrations (Stern, 1992). President
Kennedy, demonstrating his evolution on civil rights, warmed to the idea of a march
as it came closer to August (Bryant, 2006). Always image conscious and seeking to
use the march to his advantage, Kennedy urged organizers to tone down their
rhetoric and implore their supporters to endorse Kennedy’s legislation (Bryant,
2006).
Washington, D.C. was prepared for the worst on August 16th. Local military
bases were on high alert, D.C. police were mobilized on every corner in the business
district alongside national guardsmen to prevent looting, and the FBI stationed
hundreds of agents on rooftops and throughout the crowd to monitor the rally
(Bryant, 2006). The FBI also conducted a huge investigation into any black activists
that might cause trouble or any white hate groups that might try to disrupt the march
(Bryant, 2006). In addition, liquor stores were closed for the first time since
prohibition throughout D.C. for twenty four hours. Lead organizer Bayard Rustin
42
cooperated with federal officials, eager to make sure the march was a success and
stayed peaceful (Bryant, 2006). Federal micromanagement of the march included
holding the march on Wednesday to avoid any “weekend mischief,” changing the
venue from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial to enhance crowd management,
starting the march earlier so participants would leave before dark, allowing a Justice
Department official to work alongside the march organizers, and even having
another official stand by the stage ready to cut the microphone and put on a Mahalia
Jackson album if a speaker were to say anything too radical (Bryant, 2006).
The most radical speaker of the day turned out to be the young SNCC leader
John Lewis, whose original speech was changed at the last minute by the strong
urging of other march organizers (Lewis & D’Orso, 1998). In the original draft,
Lewis pledged to take the non-violent civil rights army and march through the South
like Sherman had done during the Civil War. It was deemed too provocative and
Lewis altered his speech to sound more moderate only after A. Philip Randolph
strongly urged him to, though his speech still held much criticism for the federal
government and Kennedy’s proposed civil rights bill (Lewis & D’Orso, 1998).
Dr. King closed the march with what would become his most famous speech
stating, “I Have a Dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering
with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed
into an oasis of freedom and justice” (Williams, 1987, p. 205). President Kennedy
watched King’s entire speech on television in the oval office and remarked that King
43
was “damn good” (Bryant, 2006, p. 10). After the march concluded, Kennedy met
with the lead march organizers which included King, Lewis, Randolph, Foreman,
Andrew Young, and Bayard Rustin. The march was a success and remained
completely peaceful as 200,000 black and white citizens gathered to promote racial
equality in the largest peaceful protest in American history at that point (Bryant,
2006). Despite the large multi-racial attendance, peacefulness of the march, and its
broadcast to the nation, poverty remained a problem for black communities, violence
was still used to intimidate activists, and Kennedy’s civil rights bill languished in
Congress (Lewis & D’Orso, 1998).
Nearly three weeks after the March on Washington’s soaring rhetoric and
peaceful demonstration took place, violence again broke out in Birmingham
(McWhorter, 2001). Situated on the corner of Kelly Ingram Park, the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church had been the staging ground for many civil rights protests in
Birmingham. On Sunday morning September 15th, the church was quiet until a Klan
devised explosion killed four young girls who were getting ready for the 11 o’clock
service. Birmingham was again thrown into chaos as civil rights leaders feared a
race war could break out even as the nation widely condemned what they saw as a
senseless attack (McWhorter, 2001). Dr. King and Rev. Shuttlesworth both called
for the Kennedy Administration to send in troops to Birmingham (Bryant, 2006).
President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were against such a show of force by the
federal government and wanted local officials to handle security. None the less
44
under pressure from the Attorney General, the FBI began an investigation and
quickly located the prime suspects in the bombing (Bryant, 2006).
The FBI conducted a rigorous investigation into the murders and identified
the prime suspects but never arrested anyone (Anderson, 2008). The main suspects
in the case were detained by Alabama state police on charges of dynamite
possession. This was possibly a move to keep the federal pursuit against them from
following through (O’Reilly, 1988). The suspects were let go after receiving six
month sentences, and the FBI gave up its pursuit of them, causing many in the black
community to lose any faith or trust they had in the Bureau (Anderson, 2008). It
would not be until 1977 when the first of the suspects in the bombing, Robert
Chambliss, was arrested and charged for the murder (Anderson, 2008). His
accomplices Thomas E. Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry were convicted in 2001
and 2002 and all three died in prison of natural causes (Anderson, 2008). The
director of the FBI during these tumultuous years of civil rights protest was J. Edgar
Hoover. During his tenure, Hoover was one of the most powerful men in the federal
government, giving his policies a direct impact on the movement for civil rights
(Branch, 1988).
J. Edgar Hoover and Civil Rights
For all their movement toward support of civil rights, the Kennedy
Administration remained wary of the movement and its apparent spokesman Dr.
King in particular (Branch, 1988). These suspicions were derived from political
45
caution as well as secret information delivered to the White House by the FBI
(Branch, 1988). J. Edgar Hoover sent information derived from Bureau
investigations to the White House that characterized the civil rights movement as
communist inspired and Dr. King as having direct communication with communist
agents (Stern, 1992). Hoover not only delivered negative information on King to the
President, but made an effort to spread the information into other government
agencies and media outlets but never found any newspapers willing to print what
they considered too private of information (Garrow, 1981). This was all part of a
concerted effort by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. as well as the civil rights movement as a whole and derived from Hoover’s
personal disregard for both (Garrow, 1981).
J. Edgar Hoover officially justified his suspicions of Dr. King over his
contact with Stanley Levinson, a New York lawyer and former associate of the
Communist Party (Garrow, 1981). King and Levinson developed a close friendship
over their mutual support for civil rights. Levinson became a close advisor to King,
which Hoover discovered from a wiretap the FBI placed in Levinson’s office
(Garrow, 1981). On June 22, 1963 President Kennedy took Dr. King out to the
White House Rose Garden and personally warned him he was being monitored and
to abandon all communication with Levinson (Garrow, 1981). This occurred only
after Robert Kennedy’s pleas to King about Levinson’s dangers were ignored
(Garrow, 1981). At the same time, President Kennedy also asked King to
46
discontinue work with SCLC employee Jack O’Dell who Hoover categorized as a
communist agent (Garrow, 1981). King recognized the seriousness of the situation
and agreed to let Jack O’Dell go but remained in contact with Levinson through his
lawyer Clarence Jones. For his help in this situation Jones received an Attorney
General approved FBI wiretap on his home and office (Branch, 1988).
The FBI’s Mobile, Alabama office started keeping a record on Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 though it mostly
focused on the organization he worked with, the Montgomery Improvement
Association (Garrow, 1981). Beginning in 1957, the FBI began a file on the newly
created Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which King helped to
organize along with Ralph Abernathy and other ministers favorable to civil rights
activism (Garrow, 1981). The FBI’s interest and efforts to investigate King and the
SCLC started in earnest beginning in 1962 as the Freedom Rides attracted Bureau
attention and King began to take center stage as a national civil rights leader
(Garrow, 1981). J. Edgar Hoover lobbied Attorney General Robert Kennedy to
approve wiretaps of Dr. King’s office which Kennedy approved in 1963 (Garrow,
1981).
Some scholars speculate Robert Kennedy might have approved this wiretap
out of a fear Hoover could release information he had on President Kennedy’s sexual
affairs (Branch, 1988). Other speculation includes that the espionage was approved
out of a desire the Kennedys had to stay up to date on the activities of King and any
47
new protests he might be organizing (Branch, 1988). Regardless of the reasons why
the Justice Department approved wiretaps, 1963 marked an escalated and more
exhaustive effort by the FBI to investigate not only Dr. King but many of his
advisors in the SCLC as well as a growing list of civil rights leaders (Branch, 1988).
By the end of 1963, the FBI had permission to wiretap not only King’s home and
offices but also any hotels he might stay in (Gentry, 1991).
Hoover was convinced the March on Washington would be filled with
communist agents and expected the worst (Gentry, 1991). Even after the march was
conducted peacefully and with wide public support, Hoover saw malevolent forces at
work. “Hoover did not welcome a giant march for freedom by a race he had known
over a long lifetime as maids, chauffeurs, and criminal suspects, led by a preacher he
loathed” (Branch, 1988, p. 903). When Deputy Director of Intelligence William C.
Sullivan reported to Hoover there was a negligible trace of any communist influence
in the March on Washington he was heavily reprimanded (Branch, 1988). Hoover
insisted on the complete loyalty of all his employees and firmly believed communists
were working to manipulate the black civil rights struggle and thus Sullivan changed
his opinion and told his boss what he wanted to hear (Branch, 1988). According to
Sullivan’s revised report and Hoover’s predisposed opinion, the civil rights
movement was indeed a subversive force with communist influences and Dr. King
was “the most dangerous negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of
communism, the negro, and national security” (Gentry, 1991, p. 528).
48
Some scholars suggest Hoover may have become personally antagonistic
toward King after the Bureau received public criticism from King for its handling of
the protests the SCLC staged in Albany, Georgia in 1962 (Garrow, 1981). King and
the SCLC criticized the FBI for what they perceived as favoritism for Southern
police officers over the protection of civil rights activists (Garrow, 1981). Hoover
was always very defensive of the FBI and took any criticism of the Bureau
personally (Gentry, 1991). After making calls to the SCLC office in Atlanta to talk
with King, Bureau officials were unable to contact him or receive a returned phone
call leaving a sense of bitterness with the Director (Garrow, 1981). In a meeting
with female journalists on November 18, 1964, Hoover acknowledged that King had
ties to communists and called King the “most notorious liar in America” (Garrow,
1981, p. 122). Not wanting to begin a public feud with the Director, King issued a
press release explaining his criticism and sought a meeting with Hoover to discuss
their disagreements (Garrow, 1981).
I was appalled and surprised at your reported statement maligning my
integrity. What motivated such an irresponsible accusation is a mystery to
me. I have sincerely questioned the effectiveness of the FBI in racial
incidents, particularly where bombings and brutalities against Negroes are at
issue, but I have never attributed this merely to the presence of Southerners in
the FBI. This is a part of a broader question of federal involvement in the
protection of Negroes in the South and the seeming inability to gain
49
convictions in even the most heinous crimes perpetrated against civil rights
workers. It remains a fact that not a single arrest was made in Albany, Ga.,
during the many brutalities against Negroes. Neither has a single arrest been
made in connection with the tragic murder of the four children in
Birmingham (Garrow, 1981, p. 122-123).
Under pressure from President Johnson, Hoover set up a meeting with King
to talk out their disagreements (Gentry, 1991). The meeting was attended by Hoover
and his lieutenant Cartha DeLoach as well as King and his advisors Andrew Young
and Ralph Abernathy. By most accounts the meeting was very cordial and everyone
was polite to each other (Garrow, 1981). However, the FBI campaign against King
and the civil rights movement only intensified in 1964 while the Johnson
Administration gave its approval. Derogatory FBI memos on King continued to
make their way to Johnson’s desk just like they did Kennedy’s (Garrow, 1981).
Beginning in 1964 the FBI shifted its campaign against King from mere
surveillance to an active plot to discredit King as a leader with a focus on his private
life (Garrow, 1981). King’s hotel rooms were consistently bugged by the FBI
wherever he traveled. In November of 1964 the Bureau, most likely initiated by
William C. Sullivan, sent an anonymous package to the SCLC office in Atlanta
enclosing an audio tape of King’s alleged sexual affair in a FBI bugged hotel room
alongside an insulting letter addressed to King which seemed to encourage him to
commit suicide, “You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it
50
before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation” (Gentry, 1991, p.
572). King and his associates immediately suspected the FBI was behind the
package. This information had a huge impact on King, causing him to privately sink
into a depression knowing the FBI was out to break him (Gentry, 1991).
The Bureau’s efforts to discredit King and cause his downfall had an impact
but were unable to stop his popularity or prominence as a national civil rights leader
(Garrow, 1981). When King was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1964, Hoover privately
complained “King could well qualify for the top alley cat prize” (Garrow, 1981, p.
120). Hoover wanted to prevent King from receiving the Nobel as well as prevent
his meeting with dignitaries, so the Bureau delivered derogatory information to
government officials to no avail. The director also unsuccessfully attempted to
prevent King’s meeting with the Pope in the Vatican and expressed his frustration
writing in a note, “I am surprised the Pope gave audience to such a degenerate”
(Garrow, 1981, p. 121). By the end of 1965, the Bureau grew frustrated with its
efforts to discredit King and settled on a policy of simply collecting information on
his activities (Garrow, 1981).
President Johnson continued to use Hoover’s FBI for espionage purposes and
even enjoyed the personal and scandalous material he received from the FBI on King
and other public figures (Garrow, 1981).
Race, like power, blinds before it corrupts, and Hoover saw not a shred of
merit in either King or Levison. Most unforgivable was that a nation founded
51
on Madisonian principles allowed secret police powers to accrue over forty
years, until real or imagined heresies alike could be punished by methods less
open to correction than the Salem witch trials. The hidden spectacle was the
more grotesque because King and Levison both in fact were the rarest heroes
of freedom, but the undercover state persecution would have violated
democratic principles even if they had been common thieves (Branch, 1988,
p. 919).
President Johnson and Civil Rights
Lyndon Johnson came to the presidency in a way he never expected or
desired when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963
(Dalleck, 1998). After Kennedy’s death Vice President Johnson quickly took the
oath of office while flying back to Washington, D.C. After assuming office,
President Johnson wasted no time in renewing Kennedy’s call for a civil rights bill in
Congress (Kotz, 2006). This came as a surprise to many in the civil rights movement
and Washington. Johnson was from Texas and as Senate Majority Leader he had
worked to defang the civil rights bills that passed in the 1950s (Kotz, 2006). Though
not vocal in public, Johnson was personally against segregation and had seen the
negative effects of racism on poor blacks and Latinos in Texas (Dalleck, 1998).
President Johnson also saw the changing political climate and felt it was politically
wise to push for a civil rights bill while the nation connected it with the recently
martyred President and the great public sympathy they had for him (Dalleck, 1998).
52
Only five days after the assassination, Johnson urged Congress to honor
President Kennedy’s legacy by passing the Civil Rights Bill (Rosenberg & Karabell,
2003). Johnson worked hard to find bipartisan support for the bill and used his
power in masterful attempts to coax not only Republicans but Southern Democrats
into voting for it. Southern Democrats proved to be the most adamant opponents and
overwhelmingly voted against the bill, yet segregation was a losing issue on the
national level in 1964 (Mann, 1996). On July 2, 1964, after arduous effort on the
part of the President and his allies, Congress passed the historic Civil Rights Act that
banned discrimination based on race or sex in employment and public
accommodations (Mann, 1996). After Johnson had signed the bill, he correctly
predicted to his aide Bill Moyers, “I think we just delivered the South to the
Republican Party for a long time to come” (Dallek, 1998, p.120).
Although widely celebrated by civil rights proponents and their allies in
Congress, the bill did little to protect voting rights, and to President Johnson’s
chagrin, activists continued to make demands for enforcement of the 15th
Amendment as they continued demonstrations (Mann, 1996). President Johnson was
dismayed since he expected civil rights activists to completely support him and hold
their criticism until after the 1964 election (Mann, 1996).
Freedom summer.
In the summer of 1964, known as Freedom Summer, activists from SNCC,
CORE and the NAACP organized actions to fulfill voting right for African
53
Americans in the South (Stern, 1992). The whole south was targeted for voter
registration and education, but Mississippi became one of the key battlegrounds
(Branch, 1988). Mississippi had always been one of the most violently segregated
states in the nation. Civil Rights activists risked their lives working in Mississippi
(Kotz, 2006). Medgar Evers, the director of the Mississippi NAACP, had been
assassinated in front of his Jackson home in 1963, the same day Kennedy addressed
the nation in support of a civil rights bill (Williams, 1987). Mississippi also lagged
behind every other state in black voter registration with only 6.9% of black residents
registered to vote in 1961 (Kotz, 2006). Freedom Summer unleashed a violent
backlash in Mississippi and had reverberations into the entire political system of the
United States (Kotz, 2006).
Activists for the voting rights project knew their actions would provoke
retaliation in Mississippi. Some organizers hoped that any violence that broke out
would force the federal government to act (Stern, 1992). Bob Moses and other black
activists had already been working in Mississippi since 1962 to register black
residents. These efforts were supported by the federal government but received no
protection or great assistance even as activists were threatened, attacked and even
murdered (Stern, 1992). For this reason white college students were recruited during
Freedom Summer in the hopes that white northerners and the federal government
might pay more attention to the tragic nature of black life in Mississippi (Stern,
54
1992). The predicted violence and public awareness occurred when three civil rights
workers went missing on June 21st in rural Mississippi (Kotz, 2006).
James Chaney, a black Mississippian, and two of his white colleagues in
CORE from New York, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had traveled to
Philadelphia, Mississippi to investigate a church arson (Kotz, 2006). The church had
been burned down in retaliation for its hosting of Freedom Summer education and
registration activities (Kotz, 2006). On their way back, the activists were pulled over
and taken into custody by the Neshoba County Sheriff who released them in the
middle of the night in a planned arrangement with the local Klan (Kotz, 2006). All
three were murdered, but it would take six weeks of an exhaustive federal
investigation to find their bodies and the truth. As predicted, the disappearance of
two white activists attracted significant national attention (Kotz, 2006).
President Johnson ordered former CIA director Allen Dulles to Mississippi to
survey the situation. Dulles reported to Johnson that Mississippi officials were
disdainful of the civil rights activists and not willing to provide any serious
investigation since Senator James Eastland and Governor Johnson of Mississippi
both claimed the activist’s disappearance was a prank (Kotz, 2006). Under pressure
from Johnson, J. Edger Hoover traveled to Jackson and announced the opening of a
new FBI office there as well as an in-depth federal investigation (Gentry, 1991). FBI
agents covered the area and thousands of sailors from a nearby naval base were
brought in for a rigid search of the area without success except for the discovery of
55
two black bodies from previous murders which remained unsolved (Kotz, 2006).
Money proved to be the deciding factor in the investigation when after receiving a
payment from the FBI a local Klan member gave up the names of those involved in
the murder and the location of the activists’ bodies buried deep beneath an earthen
dam (Gentry, 1991).
On December 4, 1964 FBI agents arrested 19 men involved in the conspiracy
to kill the civil rights activists. Of those arrested were Neshoba County Sheriff
Lawrence Rainey and his Deputy Cecil Price who initially arrested Schwerner,
Chaney, and Goodman (Dray, 2002). There was no action or desire by the state of
Mississippi to put the men on trial, so the Justice Department filed charges against
them; however, a Mississippi Judge dismissed FBI evidence against them and the
Justice Department withdrew their charges (Dray, 2002). It would take several
appeals and a Supreme Court decision to allow the case to go back to trial (Dray,
2002). In 1966 the case went back to Judge Harold Cox’s courtroom and eventually
seven men were found guilty of depriving the three murdered activists of their civil
rights. The three main culprits indicted included Deputy Price, Klan leader Sam
Bowers, and the actual shooter Alton Wayne Roberts. None of the men found guilty
ever served more than six years (Dray, 2002). Judge Cox later explained, “They
killed one nigger, one Jew, and a white man. I gave them all what I thought they
deserved” (Kotz, 2006, p. 187).
56
Under new pressure from President Johnson to fight the Ku Klux Klan, the
FBI opened up a counter intelligence program (COINTELPRO) against the Klan that
lasted until 1971 (Gentry, 1991). This COINTELPRO was entitled White Hate and
would include covert operations to infiltrate and disrupt Klan activity marking the
first time since Reconstruction that federal law enforcement took a serious interest in
stopping Klan actions (Gentry, 1991). Preferred tactics by agents in this operation
included setting up fake Klan groups to divide membership, cultivating informants,
creating division in Klan groups by spreading rumors, and even trying to disrupt
Klan members’ home life by mailing letters to their spouses alleging unfaithfulness
and theft of Klan funds (Gentry, 1991). The White Hate COINTELPRO averaged
about 40 actions annually during its time of operation but paled in comparison to the
FBI’s COINTELPRO against the Communist Party which averaged around 100
actions per year (Gentry, 1991).
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
Freedom Summer received a lot of attention but was unable to register a
significant number of new voters given the obstacles it was up against and activists
remained energized to continue the fight (Kotz, 2006). Given the inability of African
Americans to vote in Mississippi the state Democratic Party remained completely
white in 1964 (Kotz, 2006). To protest the exclusion of black voters in Mississippi
and the all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention, activists formed
the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). The MFDP went to the
57
Convention in Atlantic City and lobbied for their delegation to be seated. Their plea
was strongly opposed by all Southern Democrats and President Johnson was
instantly troubled that the convention might be thrown into turmoil (Kotz, 2006).
President Johnson was shocked that civil rights activists would challenge him after
he worked so hard to pass the Civil Rights Act. Johnson supported their cause but
believed he would alienate all the Southern Democrats if he seated the Freedom
delegates and thus hurt his chances for reelection (Kotz, 2002). The Mississippi
activists were in no mood to compromise especially after the murder of three of their
colleagues Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner and the continued repression of the
black vote in Mississippi (Kotz, 2006).
Johnson’s paranoia led him to order the FBI to conduct wiretaps and other
espionage on the MFDP and their allies including Dr. King in order to know their
plans and strategy for the convention (Kotz, 2006). Johnson also began to partly
believe some of the memos J. Edgar Hoover had been sending him regarding
communist influence on Dr. King and other civil rights activists (Kotz, 2006). Vice
Chairmen of the MFDP Fannie Lou Hamer testified to the convention giving a blunt
description of how bad conditions in Mississippi were for blacks and finished on a
dire note, "If the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America"
(Williams, 1987, p. 241).
Johnson sent his would be vice presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey to
negotiate with the MFDP. Pressure was applied on the activists to back down and
58
accept a symbolic presence at the convention but they refused (Kotz, 2006).
Eventually an agreement was made to seat two of the Freedom delegates with the
regular Mississippi delegates. The regular Mississippi delegates as well as the
Alabama delegation walked out of the convention but to Johnson’s satisfaction the
rest of the Southern factions stayed loyal. There was also a split in the MFDP with a
contingent that did not accept the compromise and saw the token two Freedom
delegates allowed as insulting (Kotz, 2006). They, along with SNCC, staged protests
outside of the Convention and would leave angry and frustrated feeling that working
within the system to accomplish justice was not a viable option for them (Kotz,
2006).
Toward a voting rights bill.
President Johnson started the year of 1965 reluctant and unsure if he wanted
to push for a voting rights bill in congress. He worried if it would be possible to pass
another civil rights bill in Congress and did not want to be seen as too overhanded
than he already was in dealing with Southern states (Dalleck, 1998). Personally,
Johnson wanted to see more voter registration among blacks and hoped that the
ballot box would provide the main vehicle to the empowerment that blacks had
lacked for so long (Dalleck, 1998). However, the 1964 Civil Rights Act did
relatively little to ensure the voting rights of racial minorities, and the work to
register new black voters in 1964 during Freedom Summer produced a violent
backlash but no significant gains in registration or political power for black residents
59
of the South (Dalleck, 1998). Johnson’s ambivalence quickly changed as events in
Alabama attracted national attention to the issue of voting rights (Dalleck, 1998).
The fight for voting rights found its tipping point in the small town of Selma,
Alabama where in 1965 less than one percent of black residents were registered to
vote and statewide only nineteen percent of black residents were registered (Dalleck,
1998). The SCLC and Dr. King decided to make a stand for voting rights in Selma
in 1965. Local activists had been working to register black residents since the 1950s
with little success and a lot of resistance, and activists from SNCC had also been
pushing for voting rights in Dallas County since 1963 (Dalleck, 1998).
Black
residents who attempted to register were often met and either intimidated or arrested
by Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark whose attitude was well represented by the
button he often wore on his uniform, “never,” in response to demands for black civil
rights (Dalleck, 1998). Similar to Bull Connor in Birmingham, Jim Clark became a
symbol of official Southern racism and his brutality backfired as national sympathy
was created in response to his harassment of potential black voters (Dalleck, 1998).
On January 2, 1965 Dr. King indicated his intentions as well as that of SCLC
and SNCC when he addressed Selma’s African Methodist Episcopal church, “We
will seek to arouse the federal government by marching by the thousands to the
places of registration” (Dalleck, 1998, p. 213.) Soon thereafter demonstrations took
place in Selma with black residents lining up to vote only to be denied and in some
cases beaten and arrested (Williams, 1987). The catalyst for a Voting Rights March
60
happened on February 28th when a peaceful protest in Marion, adjacent to Selma,
was attacked by local police, sheriffs and state troopers (Williams, 1987). In the
unrest, Marion resident Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot and killed by an Alabama state
trooper as he tried to defend his mother from attack (Williams, 1987).
After Jackson’s death, SCLC minister James Bevel called for a march to
Montgomery in order to take their grievances to Governor Wallace (Williams, 1987).
Dr. King spoke at Jackson’s funeral where he criticized the federal government for
not “protecting the lives of its citizens seeking the right to vote,” and on March 3rd,
King announced plans for a march from Selma to Montgomery to support action on
voting rights and to protest the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson (Williams, 1987, p.
267). Governor Wallace banned the march, but it commenced nonetheless on March
7th with 600 demonstrators present but without King who was in Atlanta amid
concerns over death threats (Dalleck, 1998).
The demonstration on March 7th became known as Bloody Sunday when on
that day marchers crossed the Edmond Pettus Bridge outside of Selma and were met
by a surge of Jim Clark’s deputies and Alabama state troopers (Williams, 1987).
The demonstrators were ordered to disperse and within two minutes police charged
into them lashing with clubs, firing tear gas, and horse mounted officers chasing
them back into town. This was all caught on film and camera by journalists and
made headlines across the nation (Williams, 1987). President Johnson criticized the
brutality and announced he was going to send a voting rights bill to Congress in the
61
next week (Dalleck, 1998). President Johnson also wanted to halt further violence in
Alabama and urged King to delay another march while a federal court order
prohibited all marches temporarily (Dalleck, 1998). Dr. King led another march but
decided to abide by the federal court order and turned around after leading a brief
prayer on the other side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Violence would continue
against activists when Boston minister James Reeb was attacked by local thugs as he
walked through Selma and beaten so badly he died in the hospital the next day
(Williams, 1987).
President Johnson pushed hard against Governor Wallace to end the violence
and open the way for blacks to vote in Alabama. Wallace came to Washington to
meet with Johnson in the Oval Office and received a very personal three hour dose of
the “Johnson treatment” (Dalleck, 1988, p. 216). Wallace remarked afterward,
“Hell, if I’d stayed in there much longer, he’d have had me coming out for civil
rights” (Dalleck, 1998, p. 217). Johnson was reluctant to make too strong a show of
federal force for fear of playing into the hands of Southern politicians already critical
of federal intervention, but he felt he must act and was feeling pressure from civil
rights groups to protect marchers (Dalleck, 1998). On March 21st the Voting Rights
March from Selma to Montgomery began. Governor Wallace asked for federal help
citing a lack of state funds to provide proper safety, and Johnson nationalized part of
the Alabama National Guard ordering them to provide security for the march
62
(Dalleck, 1998). Johnson also ordered 2,000 Army troops, 100 FBI agents, and 100
federal Marshals to monitor the area (Williams, 1987).
The march from Selma to Montgomery lasted five days and around 25,000
people were in attendance for the final arrival and rally in Montgomery on March
25th as the voting rights bill was before Congress (Williams, 1987). Expressing the
impact of the march Congressman Emanuel Cellar stated, “The climate of public
opinion throughout the nation has so changed because of the Alabama outrages, as to
make assured the passage of this solid bill – a bill that would have been
inconceivable a year ago” (Williams, 1987, p. 282-283). During the Rally, Dr. King
addressed the crowd and a group of eight leaders attempted to take a petition to the
governor but were denied entrance to the capitol (Williams, 1987).
Although the march took place peacefully with plenty of military protection,
activists remained vulnerable as they made their way home after the rally (May,
2005). Birmingham Klan members hoped to stage attacks on protestors but were
halted by the level of security around the march and waited until after the troops had
dispersed (May, 2005). One of the drivers who volunteered to give rides back to
Selma was Viola Liuzzo who left her family in Michigan to participate in the voting
rights march. After dropping off one group of passengers at Brown Chapel, she
headed back to Montgomery with a local black teenager Leroy Morton who had
participated in the march. As Liuzzo drove down the highway, a car full of
Klansmen pulled up next to her and shot into the car killing her (May, 2005). She
63
was possibly chosen for attack because of her Michigan license plates or the fact that
a white women was riding in the same car as a black man (May, 2005). Leroy
Morton was unharmed and ran for help after the car crashed on the side of road,
possibly surviving further attack by pretending to be dead himself when the Klan
members pulled alongside the crashed automobile (May, 2005).
One of the Klan members inside the assassins’ vehicle that night was an FBI
informant named Gary Thomas Rowe Jr. who phoned in his account of the murder to
the Bureau after he parted ways with his Klan companions (May, 2005). The
information Rowe provided led to the arrest of his three accomplices within 24 hours
after the murder. President Johnson was very pleased with FBI Director Hoover’s
work and appeared on national television with him to condemn the murder as well as
push for a new anti-KKK bill in Congress to crush the Klan.
Mrs. Liuzzo went to Alabama to serve the struggle for justice. She was
murdered by the enemies of justice, who, for decades, have used the rope and
the gun, the tar and the feathers, to terrorize their neighbors. They struck by
night, as they generally do. For their purposes cannot stand the light of day.
My father fought them in Texas. I have fought them all my life because I
believe them to threaten the peace of every community where they exist. I
shall continue to fight them because I know their loyalty is not to the United
States but to a hooded society of bigots. . . If Klansmen hear my voice today,
64
let it be both an appeal – and a warning – to get out of the Klan now and
return to a decent society (May, 2005, p. 172).
State murder charges were brought against the three men but they were
acquitted after an all-white jury failed to convict them (May, 2005). Federal charges
were brought against the men for violating the civil rights of Viola Liuzzo, and they
were convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison while Rowe was given immunity
for his work as an informant (May, 2005). Rowe’s reputation as well as the FBI’s
came under fire when Congress began investigating the Bureau’s COINTELPRO
activities (May, 2005). Two Freedom Riders, Walter Bergman and James Peck,
successfully sued the FBI for the permanent injuries they sustained from violence the
FBI could have prevented. The Liuzzo family sued the FBI in 1980 blaming Rowe
for the murder of Viola Liuzzo, but their case was dismissed, and the family was
ordered to pay the government’s legal fees of 80 million dollars (May, 2005). They
avoided having to pay the fees only after a public outcry against the penalty (May,
2005).
The voting rights march as well as the violence perpetrated against its
participants galvanized the nation and Congress into sympathy with the calls for an
end to voting discrimination (Branch, 2006). President Johnson signed the Voting
Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965. This legislation made it a crime to
discriminate against American citizens trying to vote and gave the federal
government the ability to enforce its provisions. After nearly one hundred years of
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delay since the 15th Amendment was passed in 1870, the voting rights of African
Americans were clearly protected and enforced by the federal government with the
passage of the Voting Rights Act (Branch, 2006).
Conclusion
This literature review has sought to highlight some of the main events that
demonstrate the shifting role the federal government has played in enshrining,
ignoring, and protecting the civil rights of its black citizens. It is not meant to be an
all-inclusive review of all literature or all events concerning the black freedom
struggle but one that shows how over the course of 100 years the federal government
moved full circle from first establishing the rights of freed slaves, giving up
enforcement of those rights, and then finally in the 1960s accepting its responsibility
as enforcer of civil rights over negligent states. This review also made note of the
importance of social movements to affect change. Without the work of groups like
the NAACP or SCLC and many other committed activists and organizations, the
federal government would not have acted when it did. This review was not able to
illustrate in full detail all the activists that deserve credit for their work in civil rights.
In concern for time, space, and the scope of this project many important activists
were left out. The work of many government officials was also left out. However,
this review provides a comprehensive background to those wishing to familiarize
themselves with the topic for the first time.
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I chose to end the review with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it
represented the culmination of 100 years of blood, sweat, and tears to ensure the
United States was a true republic where its citizens had a say in governance.
However, 1965 was not the end of the civil rights movement or even the end of
inequality. Three years later, in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated and
although there has been much progress since his death, the nation remains at odds
with its ideal of equality for all. That, however, remains a topic for another project.
For this review, it works to end on the passage of the Voting Rights Act as it stands
as a real symbol and turning point in the 100 year quest for civil rights.
The intention of this literature review and project is to promote a better
understanding of the role the federal government had and continues to have in
enforcing civil rights. This is an important topic to be taught in the classroom.
Without knowledge of the federal government’s reluctance to challenge state
government’s Jim Crow laws, it is impossible for students to fully understand why it
took 100 years for the United States to finally protect the constitutional rights of
black citizens and enforce the 14th and 15th Amendments. This review also seeks to
explicitly highlight the horrors of Jim Crow to give teachers and students an
authentic perception of the critical and impatient demands activists were making and
the need for federal action.
The next chapter discusses the methodology used to research the material
covered in this literature review as well as the inspiration to study this topic. It also
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discusses the methods used to create a curriculum for educators to effectively teach
the federal government and civil rights.
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
Introduction
I owe the inspiration for this project to a trip I took to Alabama during the
sweltering summer of 2009. The purpose of my travel was to participate in the civil
rights history workshop Stony the Road We Trod, which brought me to some of the
epicenters of civil rights agitation and backlash in Alabama. I attended lectures by
civil rights veterans and visited key sites in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma.
This was the first time I had visited the South, and it easily destroyed many of my
preconceived notions of that part of the country. I even had the honor of meeting a
man I consider equally as courageous and significant as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
When I met Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham, he was nearing the end of
a long and monumental life in a city once called the most segregated in America.
Birmingham today is a much different city than it was in the 1960s and this progress
is creditable to Reverend Shuttlesworth. I felt truly privileged to have met him and
knew I would do my part to incorporate activists like him as well as the back roads I
traveled on into my lessons and work as an educator. This trip was an eye-opening
experience and deeply moved me. Upon coming home, I began reading as much as I
could on the topic of the modern civil rights movement, and it became a topic of
great importance to me.
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As I continued my participation in the North Coast Teaching American
History program and gained the opportunity to earn a Master’s Degree I knew
immediately what subject I wanted to study but needed more of a focus than just the
topic of the civil rights movement. As a student of political science, I have always
been interested in how government works and decided to place my focus on the role
of the federal government in both recognizing and ignoring black civil rights. The
federal government is of course a massive institution with a myriad of occupants
throughout the years, so I paid attention to those I considered to have made key
decisions regarding civil rights. I decided to take a broad outlook and focus on the
changes during the movement years of the 1950s and 60s but with a historical lens to
understand how the nation got to that point starting from the precedents set during
the Reconstruction period. It was necessary to take this approach in order to give a
complete picture of the role of the federal government and in order to develop a
curriculum that truly enhanced students’ comprehension of the movement and
government response.
Research Questions
In witnessing popular culture and the nightly news I have noticed some
confusion on this topic. An example of this confusion came from a debate, some
might say controversy, that took place during the 2008 Democratic primary in which
candidate Hilary Clinton stated that “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when
President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act. It took a President to get it done”
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(Wheaton, 2008). This brought up anger that activists like King were not being
given enough credit for the hard work they did to force the government into action
(Wheaton, 2008). While this incident has mostly passed from people’s minds and
Hilary lost the primary (though not for this skirmish), the same questions remain.
How much credit does the federal government deserve for passage of civil rights
legislation? Do civil rights activists deserve more credit since they motivated the
government to act? Who in the government deserves the most credit, and who
deserves the most blame? What are the crucial events that led to that successful
occasion in 1964? With this attention in the news and apparent lack of consensus, I
decided more knowledge was needed on the topic. I wanted to explore this topic
more and develop a lesson plan to enhance student understanding of the politics of
civil rights and how the government responds to the demands of social movements.
My research has led me to believe that there is no simple answer to these
questions. Instead, like most topics in history it is complex and deserves analysis
and multifaceted answers. The fact is that the federal government played a changing
and evolving role in the struggle and realization of black civil rights in the United
States from the end of slavery to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. At
times the federal government played the role of the enforcer and at other times
turned a blind eye to the injustices that African Americans faced on a daily basis
from private terrorist groups or state sponsored discrimination. My research ends on
a hopeful note when the federal government eventually reacted to the social upheaval
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over civil rights and enacted legislation in 1964 and 1965 to ban racial discrimination
and ensure voting equality.
Research Process
I decided to begin my research during the Reconstruction period.
Reconstruction serves as the perfect lens to understand and view the long debate and
struggle over civil rights in the United States. During Reconstruction the federal
government embarked on a radical experiment to create civil rights for African
Americans by passing the 13th , 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution which
ended slavery, ensured equality before the law, and prohibited racial discrimination
in voting. For a time those previously relegated to living in slavery were legally
equal to their former masters. This was only temporary as Reconstruction ended in
1877 and the federal government gave up its enforcement of the 14th and 15th
Amendments for almost the next century. For a time historians blamed the failure of
Reconstruction on the supposed ineptness of newly enfranchised African Americans
and the greediness of Northern Carpetbaggers who wished to enrich themselves at
the South’s expense (Foner & Brown, 2005).
It is no coincidence that this historical view came during the height of racial
segregation in the United States and was finally challenged following the upheaval
of the civil rights movement. One of the most significant historians to challenge this
view is Eric Foner. His work Reconstruction: America’s unfinished revolution was
first published in 1988 and established a positive view of the work done during
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Reconstruction to amend the Constitution and expand freedom in the United States.
This was the first book I decided to read for my research and alongside his other
work, Foner provided me with great insight into the conception of civil rights during
Reconstruction and its influence on later rulings and actions during the days of the
modern civil rights movement.
I later learned that one of the authors and historians to inspire Foner was John
Hope Franklin, an African American Scholar and professor who passed away in
2009. I chose to read Franklin’s Reconstruction After the Civil War which was first
published in 1961 and one of the first books to challenge the status quo on
Reconstruction. Another excellent scholar of the Reconstruction period is Michael
Fitzgerald who authored Splendid Failure: Postwar Reconstruction in the American
South. Fitzgerald takes the title from a quote from W.E.B. Dubois describing
Reconstruction. The intent of Dubois’ quotation is to note that it is a remarkable fact
that Reconstruction was even attempted given its lofty goals of equality. So the
focus is on the positive fact that such an endeavor was begun and not the negative
fact that it eventually failed or was given up. These three scholars gave me a broad
overview of the main events of Reconstruction.
In response to the civil rights gains of Reconstruction there was a backlash.
Terrorist groups arose during Reconstruction to intimidate African Americans and
deny them their new found freedoms. The biggest and longest lasting of these
groups was the Ku Klux Klan. I chose to study their origin during Reconstruction as
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well as their long campaign of terror against black citizens of the South. I was also
interested in how the federal government went after the Klan during Reconstruction
but then essentially gave up on prosecution until forced to by the public outcry over
the violence of the 1960s. Of particular concern in my research after Reconstruction
was the close relationship many law enforcement officers had with the Klan.
Included in my literature review and lesson plan are the collusions of Bull Connor
with the Klan in Birmingham during the Freedom Rides as well as the Neshoba
County Sheriffs with the Klan in the murder of three civil rights workers in
Philadelphia, Mississippi. I was also interested in how the FBI, after prodding from
President Johnson, decided to create a COINTELPRO on the Klan and bring them
down through infiltration and sabotage. I think these issues pose great questions for
classroom discussion on the role of law enforcement as well as understanding just
how serious the obstacles to black freedom were in the United States.
It was an easy decision for me to begin researching Reconstruction as it was
the natural origin of civil rights for blacks in the United States, but it was a much
harder decision to figure out what events I would research leading up to the 1960s.
There were nearly 100 years of important history to cover, and I could not possibly
cover it all. After studying U.S. history personally, and through the Teaching
American History program, I had developed a good understanding of the subject
previous to my current research. With this prior knowledge and new research into
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more scholarship, I was able to narrow down my focus to what I considered to be the
most pivotal events for this subject.
At the center of my attention was the role of the federal government, but to
understand that role fully I had to find out what role state government played in civil
rights. The close of Reconstruction marked the end to federal enforcement of civil
rights and with the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson a federal sanction of racial
segregation. I explored the rise of Jim Crow and the lack of federal attention to the
crimes of lynch mobs and other hateful forces that kept African Americans,
especially in the South, from realizing their constitutional rights as well as from a
safe and prideful existence. Of particular concern was the lack of FBI investigation,
and congressional action in the face of documented racial violence and lobbying
from the NAACP. Recent scholarship has unveiled this violent and tragic segment
of American history that many would rather forget. The truth is that lynchings and
mob violence were a reality well into the 1960s. The need for immediate racial
justice in the 1960s cannot be understood without looking at the brutal legacy of
extra judicial murders across the United States, most significantly in the South.
Justification of Curriculum
As mentioned earlier, I have witnessed how this issue could be
misunderstood in the general public. Another startling instance occurred when The
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a report called Teaching the
Movement: The State of Civil Rights Education in the United States 2011 that was
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highly critical of how most states teach civil rights in the classroom
(www.splcenter.org). After reviewing the history standards created by each state
addressing what schools need to teach, the SPLC gave an average grade of an F for
the civil rights history that states require. This included California where I have been
studying and teaching. The SPLC found that with the current standards in place
students come away lacking a full and complete picture of the civil rights movement.
The SPLC found that too often students’ knowledge boils down to three simple facts,
Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and the “I have a dream” speech. The civil rights
movement of the 1950s and 60s is of course much more complex than that. After
learning only these three facts students will not understand the real horrors of Jim
Crow or know the multitude of activists besides Parks and King that made a
difference. Civil rights history can and should demonstrate to students in a strong
way the nature of citizenship and government as well as what social movements can
accomplish even against tremendous odds.
Reading this report from the SPLC I was struck with the strong need for more
thorough civil rights education in our social science classes. With this in mind I set
out to write a lesson plan based on the research I did for this project. The lesson plan
is based on a combination of teacher-centered lectures to introduce students to the
topic with each lecture accompanied by primary documents that give students eye
witness accounts to all the subjects they study. Students develop the skills necessary
to analyze primary documents and form educated opinions on the issues covered.
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An important goal is for students to understand the function of government and how
everyday people participate in democracy. Students become better equipped to
engage themselves in civic functions after the lesson. Aside from the politics
learned, students develop a deeper understanding and background to the often
contentious issue of race in the United States.
Conclusion
It is clear the civil rights movement brought on long needed and delayed
progress to the United States. The power of the federal government was needed to
finally enforce the civil rights that activists were demanding and Southern states
were denying. Because of the actions of regular people to demand justice and the
sympathetic ears of government officials like Justice Earl Warren and Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson progress was made. This is a fascinating tale of both bravery
and wickedness. It is one of the most vital stories in American history and thus
needs to be taught well and effectively in our social science classrooms. It is a
complex tale of politics, oppression, and the power of everyday people to change
their society. The curriculum presented in the next chapter is made to bring these
issues alive, give students a comprehensive knowledge of the topic as well as give
teachers new ideas and effective tools to deliver the curriculum.
CHAPTER FOUR
CONTENT
Introduction to the teacher
This 11-day lesson plan was created for high school students as an in depth
introduction to the role the federal government has played in both protecting and
ignoring the civil rights of African Americans alongside the social movements that
demanded these rights and the state governments and vigilantes that denied them. It
is developed primarily for an 11th grade U.S. history class but can also be used for a
12th grade American government class. It will take eleven days to finish this lesson
plan but can easily be shortened or stretched out if a teacher desires to fill in more
details or take less time. The lesson plan begins with an overview of the topic and
what will be taught, followed by the California grade level standards that the lesson
addresses. After that the lesson plan outlines what students should understand by
studying this lesson, the academic language used and the prior content knowledge
needed for the lesson to be effective. Concluding and making up most of this
section is a detailed description of each of the 11 days included in the lesson plan.
Teachers are encouraged to read and use the literature review in chapter two for all
the background knowledge needed to teach this curriculum.
Overview
This 11-day lesson primarily addresses the changing and evolving role the
federal government played in creating, ignoring, and enforcing the civil rights of
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African Americans from the Reconstruction period to the civil rights reforms of the
1960s. A theme throughout this lesson concerns what the role of government should
be alongside the conflict between state and federal governments. The power and
ability of social movements to induce political reform is also analyzed. The
curriculum begins during the time of Reconstruction, which occurred after the
American Civil War ended when reforms were made to alter the former Confederate
states and bring them back into the Union. Of particular concern are the 13th, 14th,
and 15th Amendments to the Constitution passed during Reconstruction which ended
slavery, ensured equal protection under the law, and made it illegal to deny a man the
right to vote because of his race. In opposition to these reforms were newly created
vigilante groups like the Ku Klux Klan as well as Southern state governments that
were opposed to giving African Americans their civil rights.
With the end of Reconstruction, the federal government relinquished its role
of civil rights enforcement, and Southern states developed a stringent system of
racial segregation called Jim Crow that denied black residents their constitutional
rights. It was almost a century later that the federal government under Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson, pushed to action by civil rights activists, took a supportive
view of civil rights and passed legislation to ensure racial equality with the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This curriculum addresses in
detail the labor and bloodshed that came before these legislative victories could
occur.
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Events that receive specific attention in this lesson are the Reconstruction
period, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, life under Jim Crow, the Brown v. Board
decision, the integration of Central High in Little Rock, the Freedom Rides in 1961,
the integration of Ole Miss by James Meredith, the protests in Birmingham during
1963, the efforts to register black voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, the
espionage the FBI conducted on civil rights leaders as well as the KKK, and the civil
rights policies of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.
Grade Level and Standards
This lesson plan is designed for 11th grade U.S. history but it can also be used
in a 12th grade American government class. The California Social Studies standards
for 11th and 12th grades are listed below.
11th grade U.S. history
11.5.2 Analyze the international and domestic events, interests, and philosophies that
prompted attacks on civil liberties, including the Palmer Raids, Marcus Garvey's
"back-to-Africa" movement, the Ku Klux Klan, and immigration quotas and the
responses of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Anti-Defamation
League to those attacks.
11.10 Students analyze the development of federal civil rights and voting rights.
11.10.4 Examine the roles of civil rights advocates (e.g., A. Philip Randolph, Martin
Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer, Rosa Parks),
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including the significance of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
and "I Have a Dream" speech.
11.10.5 Discuss the diffusion of the civil rights movement from the churches of the
rural South and the urban North, including the resistance to racial desegregation in
Little Rock and Birmingham, and how the advances influenced the agendas,
strategies, and effectiveness of the quests of American Indians, Asian Americans,
and Hispanic Americans for civil rights and equal opportunities.
12th grade U.S. government
12.2 Students evaluate and take and defend positions on the scope and limits of
rights and obligations as democratic citizens, the relationships among them, and how
they are secured.
12.10 Students formulate questions about and defend their analyses of tensions
within our constitutional democracy and the importance of maintaining a balance
between the following concepts: majority rule and individual rights; liberty and
equality; state and national authority in a federal system; civil disobedience and the
rule of law; freedom of the press and the right to a fair trial; the relationship of
religion and government.
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Goals
1. Students will understand how the Constitution was amended during
Reconstruction to add the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.
2. Students will be able to comprehend the specific changes these amendments
made to the U.S. government and how they relate to the civil rights of
African Americans.
3. Students will learn how the end of Reconstruction and lack of federal
enforcement lead to the rise of a segregated Jim Crow South.
4. Students will comprehend the changing role the federal government played in
temporarily ignoring but then recognizing and protecting the civil rights of
African Americans.
5. Students will understand the antagonism between state and federal
governments over civil rights especially in regards to segregation.
Objectives
1. Students will analyze the ways in which Jim Crow laws oppressed African
Americans as well as the leaders and groups who worked to end Jim Crow.
2. Students will answer important questions concerning social movements and
the methods they use to provoke change, the pros and cons of increased
police powers alongside issues of privacy, the function of government,
federal vs. state power, and civil rights.
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3. Students will develop critical thinking skills and the ability to analyze
primary documents.
Academic Language
This lesson includes an extensive use of academic language. A list of terms
needed for comprehension is listed below.
1. Civil Rights: The freedoms or rights an individual has based on his/her
citizenship or residency in a particular state. In the U.S., individual rights are
protected by the Constitution and legislation passed in Congress. Examples
of protected civil rights include the right to free speech in the First
Amendment, the right to vote regardless of race in the Fifteenth Amendment
and the right not to be discriminated based on race in the Civil Rights Act of
1964.
2. White supremacy: a system or belief that people of the white race or
European origin are superior to all other races and thus deserve power and
control over them.
3. Vigilante: Someone who acts outside of the law to enforce his/her own form
of justice.
4. KKK: The Ku Klux Klan was formed after the American Civil War by
Confederate Veterans in Tennessee. This organization quickly spread across
the South as a violent voice for white supremacy. Its members used violence
and threats to intimidate black residents into submission as well as keep the
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Republican Party out of power in the South. There are still active Klan
groups today though not as powerful as they used to be.
5. Impeachment: The first step Congress can take to remove a President from
Office as described in the Constitution.
6. Segregation: A system developed in the Southern United States that
separated black and white citizens from each other in public facilities such as
schools, hospitals, pools, and businesses.
7. Jim Crow: A system of racial segregation developed in the Southern United
States after Reconstruction ended which lasted until the end of the 1960s.
Jim Crow was created and maintained to ensure that African Americans
remained second class citizens.
8. Federal government: The three branches of the United States government
consisting of the Executive, Congress, and the Supreme Court as well as
various federal district and appellate courts.
9. Jurisdiction: The power or control over certain activities or places as
described by law; usually in reference to law enforcement or other
government agencies.
10. Lynching: The extra judicial murder of someone usually at the hands of a
group or mob of people. In the Jim Crow South, lynching became an act of
violence and intimidation specifically targeting African Americans.
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11. Civil Disobedience: The non-violent refusal to obey a law that is considered
unjust.
12. Communism: An economic system where the government controls the means
of production i.e. all forms of employment.
13. Activist: Someone who works for political or social reform.
14. Wiretap: A recording device that can be used to record conversations and
activities on the phone or in a particular room that it is placed in.
15. NAACP: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. It was founded in 1909 by
W.E.B. Dubois and other activists intent on advancing the civil rights of
African Americans. The primary strategy of the NAACP was and is a legal
one focusing on lobbying Congress and filing lawsuits with the most famous
and successful suit leading to the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board
which ruled segregation in schools unconstitutional.
16. SCLC: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed in 1957
by Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy and other ministers and activists
who favored forceful political action for black civil rights. SCLC played a
prominent role in protests in Albany, Georgia in 1962, Birmingham, Alabama
in 1963, the March on Washington, and the Selma voting rights march in
1965. Prominent leaders and activists included James Bevel, Hosea
Williams, and Andrew Young
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17. SNCC: The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was formed in
1960 by college students involved in the sit in actions of that year. Officially
SNCC started in Raleigh, North Carolina with the help of SCLC Executive
Secretary Ella Baker with the interest of creating a youth led organization to
help in non-violent civil disobedience to combat segregation. SNCC played a
large role in the Freedom Rides, March on Washington, Freedom Summer
and voting education projects across the South but became mostly defunct by
the end of the 60s. Prominent leaders and activists included John Lewis,
Diane Nash, Julian Bond, and Stokely Carmichael.
18. CORE: the Congress of Racial Equality was founded in 1942 by James
Farmer and advocated non-violent direct action to protest segregation.
CORE gained fame with its organization of the Freedom Rides in 1961.
Prior Content Knowledge
This lesson plan was designed so that students will need only minimal prior
knowledge before conducting it. Since the lesson plan begins with Reconstruction, it
would be helpful for students to have a basic understanding of the Civil War and
how it ended. After Reconstruction, the lesson explains Jim Crow’s growth as well
as its demise with a broad overview of the topic given. Even though this lesson
provides essential information for understanding the civil rights movement and both
government opposition and support, it skips over some events and persons that can
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be helpful to a fuller understanding of the subject if a teacher decides to expand any
of the lessons.
Resources Needed
1. Teachers need access to a computer with internet and a projector for all the
websites mentioned in the lesson.
2. Excerpt from Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody first published in
1969 by New Dial Press (newer additions work just as well). A shorter version
of Moody’s writing is available in Eyes on the Prize by Juan Williams.
3. Excerpt from Melba Patillo Beals’ memoir Warriors Don’t Cry pages 126 to 145,
Published by Washington Square Press in 1994.
4. Excerpt from Carolyn Maull McKinstry’s While the World Watched. The needed
excerpt occurs on pages 75-92 in the edition published in 2011 by Tyndale House
Publishers.
5. Excerpt from John Lewis’ memoir Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the
Movement. The needed excerpt occurs on pages 335 to 349 in the edition
published by Simon and Schuster in 1998.
6. Students need notebooks to write down answers to prompts.
7. Final assessment of students, available in Appendix G
Day One - Introduction to Reconstruction Period

Introduction: The lesson begins with an introduction to
Reconstruction using the digital timeline available at
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www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/timeline.html. During
this time, Congress passed the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments which
abolished slavery, established equality of the law, and the right to
vote regardless of race. In opposition to these new rights for
African Americans were white supremacist vigilante groups like
the KKK. The contents and context of the Amendments and the
nature of freedom are discussed alongside the antagonism
between President Andrew Johnson and Radical Republicans in
Congress and the election and presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.

Hook: Begin class by projecting a question on the board for
students to answer in their notebooks: “What are civil rights, and
what are some examples of them?”

Transition: After students have been given enough time to write
down their thoughts, begin a class discussion by asking for
volunteers to share their answers. After a brief discussion, begin
the Reconstruction timeline starting with the definition of civil
rights as “the rights and freedoms citizens have as protected in the
U.S. Constitution.” Begin to explain how the Constitution
expanded freedom and civil rights with the 13th, 14th and 15th
Amendments.
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
Lesson Content: The primary focus of this lesson is to give
students a basic understanding of the Reconstruction period and
how the Constitution was amended to guarantee the civil rights of
African Americans. Use the timeline to explain the main points of
Reconstruction.

Illustrate that despite the gains made in Reconstruction for
African Americans there was a huge effort by groups like the Ku
Klux Klan to maintain white supremacy and prevent blacks from
practicing their civil rights.

Ulysses S. Grant was elected President after Andrew Johnson and
took a more aggressive stance against the recently formed Ku
Klux Klan that was terrorizing blacks and Republicans in the
South.

During Grant’s Presidency, the United States Congress held
hearings to investigate Klan terrorism in 1883. Read the
testimony of Mrs. Selina Wallis to Congress available at
www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/education_lesson6_proc.html and
originally recorded in Senate Report 512. This reports the
violence her family faced because of their efforts to vote in
Mississippi.
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
Read the document New Orleans Mass Meeting from 1888.
Reverends in New Orleans produced this statement to make public
the brutality and inequality that blacks were forced to live under in
Louisiana and across the South. It is also available at this website,
www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/education_lesson6_proc.html

Conclusions: Conclude the lecture with an emphasis on the fact
that when Reconstruction ended the federal government gave up
its enforcement of African American’s civil rights which allowed
a system of strict racial segregation to develop in the South.

Assessment: There is a test on this lesson on the last day of the
unit. It is always a good idea to randomly ask students questions
throughout the lecture to check their comprehension and to elicit
responses on the material.
Day Two - Rise of Jim Crow and Life Under Segregation

Introduction: This lesson explains what Jim Crow was and how
this system of racial segregation developed in the Southern United
States. A connection is made between the rise of Jim Crow and
the abandonment of Reconstruction whereby the federal
government gave up its enforcement of the 14th and 15th
Amendments. Life for African Americans under Jim Crow is
analyzed as well as important legal decisions, such as Plessy v.
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Ferguson in 1896, which saw the federal government sanction
racial segregation as long as it was “separate but equal.”

Hook: Begin class with a question on the board: “What was Jim
Crow, and from where did the name come?” Have them write
down their answers in their notebooks and then start a class
discussion over students’ responses.

Transition: After the discussion, begin the lecture on Jim Crow’s
origins and what exactly it entailed for those that lived under it.

Lesson Content: This lesson gives students a basic
understanding of what Jim Crow was and how it affected black
residents of the South.

After the Civil War, Southern states passed Black Codes that saw
African Americans lose most of their constitutional rights in the
South. Read a copy of the Mississippi Black Codes from 1865.
Explain to students that Congressional Reconstruction temporarily
blocked these Black Codes but when Reconstruction was ended,
Democrats took control of Southern States and immediately put
them back into effect. These Black Codes are available at
www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section4/section4_black
codes.html
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
Illustrate to students that even though Black Codes were
temporarily blocked, they came back in the form of Jim Crow
laws. Use the interactive map on this website,
www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/themap/index.html, to show students
the Jim Crow laws for each Southern state.

Explain to students the Supreme Court decision, Williams v.
Mississippi, in 1895 which ruled that voting issues were to be
determined by states and not the federal government. Discuss
how this decision allowed states to discriminate against black
voters without any federal intervention.

Explain to students the Supreme Court verdict in Plessy v.
Ferguson which ruled that racial segregation was legal as long as
it was “separate but equal.” Explain how Homer Plessey was
trying to challenge segregation and that the Supreme Court
essentially declared the federal government in support of racial
segregation with its decision.

Conclusion: Explain to students that with the Williams and
Plessy decisions the federal government relinquished its
enforcement of civil rights to the state level which in the South
meant Jim Crow was allowed to function without federal
interference.
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Day Three – The Violence of Jim Crow

Introduction: This lesson will illustrate to students the violence
that was used to maintain white supremacy, especially in the
South. The use of lynching to create a climate of fear among
black residents will be analyzed and end with the killing of
Emmett Till in 1954 as observed by Ann Moody in Mississippi.

Hook: Show students the video introduction to the website
Without Sanctuary which is narrated by the author James Allen.
This website provides a history of lynching photography in the
U.S. You must warn students that the content is disturbing and
that they can look away if they must. Teachers should use
discretion and choose what images and stories they want to use
from the website www.withoutsanctuary.org.

Transition: Have students write down their thoughts after
viewing the video and then continue lecture on life under Jim
Crow. If a classroom has access to computers, students can even
post their thoughts onto the website’s blog instead of writing them
down in their notes.

Lesson Content: Explain to students how the Jim Crow system
utilized violence and intimidation to keep black residents afraid
and under control. Those that were brave enough to speak out
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against injustice were often beaten, arrested or worse yet
murdered.

After exploring Without Sanctuary, move the lecture back to how
the NAACP worked to raise awareness over lynching as well as
lobbied Congress to pass anti-lynching legislation. Explain that
Congress never passed anti-lynching legislation because Southern
Senators opposed any legislation supporting black civil rights.
Emphasize this point by reading NAACP Director Walter White’s
letter to the Senate [Appendix A].

End the lecture with the story of Emmett Till and how the
lynching of such an innocent young man helped to launch the
Modern Civil Rights Movement. Read excerpt from Anne
Moody’s book Coming of Age in Mississippi. Focus on Moody’s
response to the murder of Emmett Till. An excerpt is available in
Juan Williams’ Eyes on the Prize on page 56 or for a longer
version in Coming of Age on pages 127-132. Use discussion
questions for discussion or as an assignment [Appendix B].

Conclusion: Discuss Moody’s reaction to the Till killing with an
emphasis on her despair that she could be killed just because she
was black. Illustrate to students that this despair represented what
life was like under Jim Crow.
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Day Three - Challenges to Jim Crow and Federal Enforcement

Introduction: Students will learn about the NAACP and its
successful challenge to racial segregation in education with the
Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision in 1954. The
harrowing experience of the Little Rock Nine in integrating
Central High will be analyzed by reading an excerpt from Melba
Patillo Beals’ memoir Warriors Don’t Cry.

Hook: Show students the photograph of Elizabeth Eckford
[Appendix C] being harassed by an angry white mob outside
Central High, and ask them to write down their thoughts about
what they think is happening and why.

Transition: Initiate a class discussion based on what students
have written down. After eliciting student input briefly explain to
students the story of Elizabeth Eckford and the Little Rock Nine.
Explain that this integration was made possible by the decision in
Brown v. Board.

Lesson Content: Students will learn the story of Linda Brown
and the NAACP’s litigation to help her integrate the all-white
school in Topeka, Kansas. Explain to students how this case as
well as other similar cases were used in the Brown v. Board
decision that ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional.
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
Explain to students that massive resistance against the Brown v.
Board ruling took place across the South. Southern politicians
and leaders refused to integrate their schools. One of those
Southern politicians was Arkansas Governor Orvall Faubus who
publicly resisted integration in Little Rock. This forced President
Eisenhower into a confrontation with the Governor when he sent
troops to escort the nine black students into Central High in Little
Rock.

Students will understand just how difficult it was to integrate an
all-white school by reading chapters 12 and 13 from Melba Patillo
Beals’ book Warriors Don’t Cry describing her experiences at
school and the harassment she faced. Use questions found in
Appendix D for discussion or as an assignment after the reading.
Explain to students that after the first year of integration at Central
High the Governor shut the school down rather than have it
integrated. It would not be until 1960 that two black students
were again allowed into Central High due to continued NAACP
litigation.

Conclusions: After reading Beals’ memoir, have students write
down in their notebook how they would feel if they had to go
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through what the Little Rock Nine had to go through and if they
think they could endure it.

Assessment: There will be a test at the end of the unit. Students
will also turn in their notebooks for a check to see if they have
been completing prompts as specified.
Day Four - President Kennedy and the Freedom Rides

Introduction: This lesson provides an explanation of the
Freedom Rides of 1961, which became the first national civil
rights demonstration to force President Kennedy’s attention and
action on the issue of segregation and black civil rights. Students
will be watching the PBS documentary Freedom Riders which
provides personal interviews with those involved as well as
primary images of the events and is available for viewing at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/watch

Hook: Post this question on the board for students to answer in
their notebooks: For what are you willing to risk your life? Give
them five to seven minutes to write down their thoughts. Have
them share with a partner sitting next to them and then with the
class if they choose to.

Transition: After discussion, begin lecture on the Freedom Rides
and how activists risked their lives for their cause.
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
Lesson Content: Discussion of President Kennedy’s election and
the use of civil disobedience in the civil rights movement
beginning with sit-ins and freedom rides.

Watch first 30 minutes of PBS documentary Freedom Riders.

Students answer questions [Appendix E] about the film as they
watch.

Conclusion: Allow students some time to complete questions
that have been covered so far in the video. You can choose to go
over the questions with students or allow them to answer them on
their own. Explain to students that they will be continuing the
film the next day of class.

Assessment: Students will be turning in their movie questions to
be graded when the movie is finished.
Day Five – The Freedom Rides Continued

Introduction: Students will finish the lesson on the Freedom
Rides. They will be able to understand the violence that was used
against the riders by Southern vigilantes with the support of local
law enforcement. Students will also understand how the Freedom
Rides pushed the federal government under President Kennedy to
act forcefully for the first time to enforce civil rights. Students see
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the impact the Freedom Rides had on the rest of the civil rights
movement.

Hook: Project the quote, “Can’t you get your friends off those
god damned busses. Stop Them.” This is a quote from President
Kennedy to Justice Department aide Harris Wofford. Ask
students to write down why they think President Kennedy would
say something like this.

Transition: Discuss with students how President Kennedy was
reluctant to take a strong stance on civil rights because he was a
careful politician and did not want to anger Southern Democrats
who he needed for support. Discuss how the goal of the Freedom
Riders was to force the federal government to take a stance.

Lesson Content: Continue watching the film Freedom Riders.
Students will continue to answer their questions as they watch the
film.

Conclusion: Leave 10 minutes at the end of the period to discuss
the film with students, answer any questions, or give students time
to finish writing their answers.

Assessment: Students will turn their movie questions in either
after the movie is done or the next day to be graded.
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Day Six - The Integration of Ole Miss and the Birmingham Campaign

Introduction: Students will learn about James Meredith’s
integration of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). The full
powers of Mississippi were brought out to prevent Meredith from
attending and a conflict between the state and federal government
ensued. The Kennedy administration stepped in to support
Meredith. A theme of this lecture is the conflict between state and
federal government that was very apparent during the civil rights
movement. After the crisis at Ole Miss, begin an introduction to
the confrontation in Birmingham, Alabama and what events led
up to it. Focus on the extreme nature of segregation in
Birmingham as well as the key leaders on both sides of the
confrontation i.e. Dr. King, Fred Shuttlesworth and Eugene “Bull”
Connor.

Hook: Have students answer the questions, “Who has more
power the state or federal government? Why? What happens if
they disagree?” You can also get a more basic discussion by
asking, “What are the different roles of federal and state
governments?”

Transition: Start discussion about state and federal governments
and then begin with the crisis at Ole Miss regarding Meredith’s
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enrollment and the subsequent conflict between Mississippi and
Kennedy administration.

Lesson Content: Read a quote from James Meredith’s memoir
Three Years in Mississippi where he discusses his decision to
enroll in Ole Miss based on the election of President Kennedy. “I
was firmly convinced that only a power struggle between the state
and the federal government could make it possible for me or
anyone else to successfully go through the necessary procedures
to gain admission to the University of Mississippi. I was also sure
that only the recognition of the authority of the federal
government would insure a successful completion of a course of
study once admitted to the university. The election of President
Kennedy provided the proper atmosphere for the development of
such an atmosphere” (Meredith, 1966, p. 51).

Explain how a riot broke out at Ole Miss over Meredith’s
enrollment. It would take around 20,000 soldiers brought in by
the Kennedy administration to restore order.

Transition to Martin Luther King’s activism in Albany, Georgia
and briefly explain how protests there were not effective. Explain
that Dr. King with the encouragement of Fred Shuttlesworth
decided to bring his organization, the SCLC to Birmingham,
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Alabama. Birmingham was considered the most segregated city
in the United States and the SCLC wanted to stage what they
called Project C, which stood for confrontation.

Provide background information on Fred Shuttlesworth and his
activism in Birmingham.

Explain who Eugene “Bull” Connor was and how his brutality as
Public Safety Commissioner caused the nation and President to
sympathize with the civil rights movement and its demands.

Conclusion: Explain to students how the crisis at Ole Miss they
studied today along with the crisis in Birmingham they will study
the next day forced President Kennedy to give attention to civil
rights issues.

Assessment: Students will be tested at end of unit.
Day Seven - Freedom Struggle in Birmingham 1963

Introduction: This day of the lesson will wrap up the protests in
Birmingham with the May tenth agreement between business
leaders and civil rights leaders. The main focus will be on what
life was like for African Americans in Birmingham and the
bombing of the16th Street Baptist Church as recollected by
Carolyn McKinstry. It is important to note that the confrontation
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in Birmingham pushed President Kennedy into supporting a civil
rights bill.

Hook: Begin class with a slide that shows a young man being
attacked by a German Shepherd police dog in Birmingham
[Appendix F]. This is one of the most famous photographs taken
during the Birmingham movement by photographer Bill Hudson
and captures high school student Walter Gadsen as a police dog
lunges at him. Ask students to write down in their notebooks
what they think is happening in this photo and why.

Transition: Have students share what they have observed in the
picture then begin lesson on the Birmingham protests and violence
during 1963.

Lesson Content: Read as a class Carolyn McKinstry’s first-hand
account of life in Birmingham and the bombing of the 16th Street
Baptist Church. This occurs on pages 75 through 92 in her book
While the World Watched.

Conclusion: Have students answer questions [Appendix G] for
the reading and then turn them in.
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Day Eight – Wallace in the School House Door, Kennedy’s Civil Rights Speech

Introduction: The confrontation in Birmingham pushed
President Kennedy into supporting a civil rights bill. Kennedy
finally made his supportive stance public after Alabama Governor
Wallace symbolically and temporarily blocked the entrance for
two black students Vivian Malone and James Hood to the
University of Alabama.

Lesson Content: Go over the confrontation between Justice
Department officials and Governor Wallace at the University of
Alabama.

Listen to President Kennedy’s speech he gave to the nation the
same day of Wallace’s symbolic stand for segregation at the
University. The speech and text are available at
www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcivilrights.htm

Give students hand out [Appendix H] on what they would do if
they were President Kennedy. This sheet will ask students to
analyze three key events including the Freedom Rides, Ole Miss
and Birmingham. Students will write down what they would have
done in President Kennedy’s shoes in each of these situations.
104

Conclusion: If time permits have students share their answers to
the assignment and discuss that a quality of a good leader is the
ability to respond and make wise decisions during a crisis.

Assessment: Students will turn in their completed assignment
What Would You Do?
Day Nine - Freedom Summer and Democratic National Convention of ‘64

Introduction: This lesson will cover the efforts by activists to
register voters during Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the violence
against them, as well as the attempt to seat the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City.
Students will read and listen to testimony by Fannie Lou Hamer at the
convention describing the repercussions she faced in Mississippi for
trying to vote.

Hook: Begin class with a question on the board for students to
answer in their notebooks. The question should read “How many
bubbles in a bar of soap?” Give students enough time to write down
answers then discuss. Try to get students to realize there is no right
answer to the question without directly telling them.

Transition: After a brief discussion, explain to students that this was
a question asked of potential black voters in the South to register and
thus represented an obstacle that kept black southerners from voting.
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Next, show students a voter registration form from 1965 in Alabama,
available at
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/sources/ps_march.html.
Tell them to take the test and do the best they can. After students
have struggled to complete the test for five minutes, ask students what
they thought about the test and whether they or anyone they know
could pass the test and why.

Lesson Content: Explain Freedom Summer and the obstacles black
Mississippians faced when trying to vote. Also explain the murder of
three activists in Neshoba County, Mississippi as well as the founding
of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

Explain to class that after Freedom Summer a political party was
formed called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in order to
have a more representative group of delegates go to the Democratic
convention in Atlantic City where President Johnson was to be
officially nominated by the Democratic Party. Be sure to explain to
students how party conventions work and that the MFDP was formed
because the all-white Democratic Party delegation from Mississippi
supported segregation even though President Johnson opposed it.

Introduce students to MFDP leader and Mississippi sharecropper
Fannie Lou Hamer. Listen to audio of Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony
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to the DNC in Atlantic City. She describes her efforts to register to
vote in Mississippi and the violence that was used against her in
retaliation. This speech is available at
www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/fannielouhamercredentialscom
mittee.htm. Students will follow along on written text [Appendix I].

Conclusion: Discuss the speech with students and explain that as
extraordinary and terrifying as Fannie Lou Hamer’s story was, it was
a common experience in the South for African Americans to face such
violence when trying to vote.
Day Ten - Selma, Voting Rights March and Voting Rights Act in Congress

Introduction: This lesson will address the protests in Selma that
came to be known as the voting rights march and explain how the
conflicts in Selma helped to urge Congress to pass the Voting Rights
Act in 1965. Students will be reading a primary document from John
Lewis who was an important activist in SNCC and participated in
what became known as Bloody Sunday.

Hook: Begin class with a short video clip about “Bloody Sunday”
when the police attacked protestors on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, Alabama. This is available on YouTube by typing in Freedom
Bridge or at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW1i-R39AAk.
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
Transition: Discuss video and what happened on Bloody Sunday
and begin lecture on Selma’s voting rights march.

Lesson Content: Explain the efforts of black residents in Dallas
County to vote through efforts by Dallas County Voter’s League and
SNCC along with the resistance they met from local leaders like
Sheriff Clark, White Citizens’ Councils, and literacy tests. Explain
the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson and how Martin Luther King and
SCLC became involved leading up to Bloody Sunday.

Read section of John Lewis’ memoir Walking With the Wind
concerning Bloody Sunday which occurs on pages 335 to 349. Use
questions for discussion or as an assignment [Appendix J].

Explain how the march eventually went through with federal
protection and ended with a rally in Montgomery

Explain the death of Violla Luizzo by local Klansmen and how an
FBI informant within the Klan led to their arrests.

Conclusion: End the lecture with the passage of the Voting Rights
Act in 1965. This was a momentous occasion that brought federal
enforcement to end the voting discrimination that had been sanctioned
for the last 100 years.

Assessment: There will be a test on the whole two week lesson the
following day in class.
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Day Eleven - Reflection

Introduction: Students are given an exam [Appendix K]. The first
part is filled with short answer questions; the second half is an openended essay. It is up to teacher’s discretion if students can use their
notes.

Lesson Content: Students have the whole period to complete the
test. It is to be quiet until everyone is done. Students will need to
bring their own paper to write on as well as their own writing utensil.

Assessment: Students will be assessed on how many answers they
got right as well as their ability to construct an evidence backed
argument in the essay section. Students will also be assessed on the
notes they have taken which they will turn in with the test.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSIONS
The struggles and accomplishments of the civil rights movement forever
changed the role of the federal government in American life. With new legislation
passed by Congress in 1964 and 1965, the 14th and 15th Amendments were enforced
by the federal government after a 100 year delay. It is important for students to
know the impact social movements like this have had on political reform as well as
the role the federal government has played in both enforcing and denying African
Americans their civil rights. This project has set out to provide a history of the
crucial events of the 100 year struggle for civil rights alongside a lesson plan that
will allow educators to give students the knowledge they need to understand the
topic and the skills to evaluate primary documents as well as to develop an educated
opinion on the complicated issues and themes of race and the role of government in
our society.
Creating the Curriculum
The main goal of this project was to not only stress the importance of civil
rights and political history in the classroom but to develop a curriculum that would
help to implement those ideals. This project has brought together a myriad of
existing research to create a curriculum and comprehensive historical perspective.
The goal being to give educators a better understanding of the shifting role of the
federal government in African American civil rights as well as to give the tools
109
110
needed to bring that knowledge into the classroom. While the curriculum created
covers a broad swath of time and subjects, it weaves them together in a coherent
fashion with an emphasis on analyzing primary documents.
Limitations of the Curriculum
The lessons created in this project are highly dependent on both technology
and access to recommended readings. With this there will be inevitable limitations
in implementing the curriculum for some educators. The curriculum assumes that
educators will have access to computers, internet, and a well-stocked library which is
of course not always the case, as some teachers must make do with limited resources.
When that is the case some educators will find their ability to use this curriculum
limited due to the need for technology and access to the books mentioned. With this
in mind it is still highly recommended that educators read and use the books
mentioned in the curriculum in their classrooms as they represent some of the best
primary sources to illuminate this period in history and are academically accessible
to the adolescent mind.
It should also be noted that this project has for practical reasons only focused
on the civil rights of one ethnic group. In the history of civil rights, the African
American struggle is known to have influenced other groups to seek their own
recognition and pursue their own goals of civil rights. These struggles include those
of Native Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans, gays and lesbians, as well as
those with disabilities, among many others. It is important for educators to link these
111
common struggles and fights among different groups for civil rights as part of the
American experience and something the United States has been trying to cope with
since its inception. This will provide a broad understanding for students of the role
of social movements in a democratic society and how governments play a role in
both responding to demands and enforcing and creating laws. This will also help to
give students a sense that there is always more work to be done to protect civil rights
and that when studying history the events learned are not isolated episodes of the
long gone past but tools to guide our present thinking as well as ongoing themes and
issues we still deal with.
Recommendations for Further Research
This project has utilized an already vast and well researched data base of
information that exists on the civil rights movement and federal policies. This
includes countless books, articles, and videos that have been made on the topic and
were thoroughly consumed and employed by the author. This is not to say that more
research cannot be done but to simply acknowledge the wealth of information
available to the public on this issue. As the humble author of this project I wish I
was revealing groundbreaking new information to the academic community but
acknowledge that was neither the intention nor the outcome of this project. The goal
of this project was to demonstrate the importance of civil rights history and to
provide both insight and new ideas for educators to bring this history into their
classroom. I would like to recommend that this endeavor is continued as more work
112
needs to be done to enhance both civil rights curriculum and student’s understanding
of the role of the federal government. As the SPLC has correctly pointed out many
states have set low standards for their civil rights history in the classroom. This is of
course a vital topic and needs to be taught and taught effectively for our students to
comprehend the world they live in. An understanding of history is necessary to
comprehend current events and controversies especially ones dealing with race and
politics.
I would like to point out one new body of research that has caught my eye
and relates closely to the goals of this project. In her fresh perspective on the
American Justice system, The New Jim Crow; Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander takes a hard look at how the current penal
system unfairly targets young black men. To me this is where new research and
writing on the topic of civil rights should be headed and also demonstrates the need
for effective teaching of civil rights history and federal policies in the classroom. In
order for students as well as adults to understand current race relations and
government policies it is important for them to understand civil rights history and
that legislation in the 1960s ended some discrimination but did not forever end the
issues of inequality in the U.S. I would thus like to end my project by again
encouraging more effective teaching in the social science classroom with critical
thinking skills as well as more scholarship along the lines of what Michelle
Alexander has done with The New Jim Crow.
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Theoharis, A., & Cox, J. (1988). The boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the great American
inquisition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Thomas, E. (2000). Robert Kennedy: His life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Tolnay, S., & Beck, E. (1995). A festival of violence: An analysis of Southern
lynchings, 1882-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Williams, J. (1987). Eyes on the prize: America's civil rights years, 1954-1965.
New York, NY: Viking.
Wheaton, S. (2008, January 07). Clinton’s civil rights lesson. Retrieved from
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/civilrights
APPENDIX A
EXCERPT FROM WALTER WHITE’S LETTER TO THE SENATE
December 1, 1922
Source: NAACP Papers, Library of Congress
“In view of the fact that the fight on the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill centers on the
question of constitutionality, I want to present to you as a friend of the Bill certain
facts which will, I believe, adequately answer such objections.
One of the statements made is that if the Federal Government has the power to
legislate for the punishment of lynching, it has the power to legislate for the
punishment of murder and other crimes committed in the various states. It appears
that this latter power the Federal Government would naturally have if the states
proved themselves unable or unwilling to deal with the crime of murder or any other
infraction of the law which threatens the safety of the national government.
But the analogy is not a true one. Lynching is murder, but it is also more than
murder. In murder one or more individuals take life, generally for some personal
reason. In lynching a mob sets itself up in place of the state and its actions in place
of due process of law to mete out death as punishment to persons accused of crime.
It is not only against the act of killing that the Federal Government seeks to
exercise its power through the proposed anti-lynching law but against the act of the
mob in arrogating to itself the functions of the State and substituting its actions for
the due processes of law guaranteed by the Federal Constitution to every person
accused of crime. In murder the murderer merely violates the law of the State. In
lynching, the mob arrogates to itself the powers of the State and the functions of the
government. It apprehends, accuses, tries, condemns and executes be meting out
death as a punishment
– a very different thing from a murder.
This Bill is aimed against lynching not only as murder but as anarchy – anarchy
which the States have proven themselves powerless to cope with. The States deal
more or less effectively with the crime of murder, but it is not unreasonable to
estimate that no less than 250,000 persons have taken part in lynchings, and it is
known that not ten of them have ever been punished. The argument that the Dyer
Bill is unconstitutional made by its opponents is not tenable.
The constitutionality of the Dyer Bill has been affirmed by the Attorney General
of the United States and by Judge Guy D. Goff of the Department of Justice, and by
the Judiciary Committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Further the Senate has been petitioned to pass the measure by forty-seven lawyers
and jurists including two former attorneys general of the United States, and by
nineteen State Supreme Court justices and many other eminent citizens.”
117
118
APPENDIX B
QUESTIONS FOR COMING OF AGE IN MISSISSIPPI
Chapter 10, pages 127- 135
Name:
1.
What does Anne Moody’s mother mean by the “Evil Spirit”? Why do you
think she told Anne that it was an evil spirit that killed those men?
2. How did Anne hear about the death of Emmett Till? How did she react?
3. How did Anne’s mother respond to her questions about Emmett Till?
4. Why do you think that Anne’s mother told her not to mention Emmett Till
around Mrs. Burke (the white lady she worked for)?
5. What kind of work did Anne do for Mrs. Burke?
6. Explain what Mrs. Burke said to Anne about Emmett Till.
7. After Mrs. Burke confronts Anne about Till’s death Anne expressed her
frustration, “Before Emmett Till’s death I had known the fear of hunger, hell,
and the devil. But now there was a new fear known to me – the fear of being
killed just because I was black.” Explain how this was part of the Jim Crow
system.
8. What do you think Mrs. Burke and her friends were saying about the
NAACP?
9. What does Anne find out about the NAACP from her teacher Mrs. Rice?
10. Why doesn’t Mrs. Rice want Anne to tell anybody about their discussions
concerning the NAACP?
119
APPENDIX C
[http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entrydetail.aspx?entryID=721#]
Explain what is happening in this picture?
Be as descriptive as possible and explain why.
120
APPENDIX D
QUESTIONS FOR WARRIORS DON’T CRY
Chapters 12 and 13
Name:
1. Explain why the 101st Airborne was sent into Little Rock, Arkansas.
2. On page 127 Melba describes President Eisenhower as worried that
“Gloating communists abroad were using school integration riots to
misrepresent the United States and undermine its prestige and influence
around the globe.” What do you think Eisenhower meant when he talked
about this? What was the connection between the Cold War and civil rights
struggles in the U.S.?
3. President Eisenhower is quoted on page 127 as declaring, “Mob rule cannot
be allowed to override the decision of the courts.” What did he mean by this?
4. In response to President Eisenhower’s decision to send in the 101st Airborne,
Arkansas Governor Faubus declared, “We are now an occupied territory.”
What did he mean by that? What other event in American history had
evoked the same reaction from Southern politicians?
5. Who showed up at the Beals’ house in the middle of the night? What did
they want?
6. Describe the morning Melba returns to Central High with the 101st soldiers.
How did she feel that morning before she got to school?
7. Explain who Danny was and what his relationship with Melba was? How did
he act and how did Melba feel about him?
8. What was Melba’s 1st class like? What was her teacher’s reaction to students
harassing her?
9. Explain what happened when Melba went to the restroom.
10. Describe the actions some white students took to be nice to Melba and the
other black students. What repercussions did white students who were
perceived as being nice to the Little Rock Nine face?
11. Describe in detail what Melba’s day was like at Central High.
12. Why do you think Melba and the Little Rock Nine faced so much harassment
even with the protection of armed soldiers?
13. Melba wrote in her diary that night, “The President didn’t send those soldiers
just to protect me but to show support for an idea – the idea that a governor
can’t ignore federal laws.” Describe what she meant by that.
14. Describe your reaction to reading this excerpt. How would you have felt if
you were Melba? Would have gone back to school at Central High the next
day? Why or why not?
121
APPENDIX E
QUESTIONS FOR FREEDOM RIDERS
Name:
1. Describe the goals and actions of the Freedom Riders.
2. What is non-violent civil disobedience?
3. Describe in detail what happened to the Freedom Riders in Anniston,
Alabama?
4. Who was Gary Thomas Rowe?
5. Who was J. Edgar Hoover? What was his reaction to the Freedom Rides?
6. Who was Bull Connor? What arrangement did he have with the Ku Klux
Klan in Birmingham?
7. What was Governor of Alabama John Patterson’s reaction to the Freedom
Rides?
8. Describe in detail what happened to the Freedom Riders in Birmingham,
Alabama?
9. Discuss the initial reaction of the Kennedy Administration to the Freedom
Rides.
10. What happened to the original Freedom Rides after the violence in
Birmingham?
11. Who was Diane Nash? What did her group in Nashville decide to do? Why?
12. What happened to the group of Freedom Riders from Nashville when they
got to Birmingham?
13. What did Attorney General Bobby Kennedy do to protect the Freedom
Riders?
14. What happened to the Riders when they got to Montgomery, Alabama?
122
APPENDIX F
[http://digitaljournal.com/image/96576]
What is happening in this picture?
Be descriptive and explain why.
123
APPENDIX G
QUESTIONS FOR WHILE THE WORLD WATCHED
Chapter 6 and 7, Pages 75-92
Name:
1. “And so this afternoon in a real sense the four little girls who died have
something to say to each of us in their death. . . They have something to say
to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic
practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing
northern Democrats.” What is it that Dr. King thinks the four little girls
killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing have to say to the federal
government?
2. How did Carolyn McKinstry describe what happened to Sarah Collins (Addie
Collins’ sister) during and after the bombing?
3. On page 78 Dr. King is quoted as saying, “Indeed this tragic event may cause
the white South to come to terms with its conscience.” What did he mean?
Was he right?
4. According to Carolyn McKinstry how did the black community of
Birmingham talk about the bombing after the funeral? Why do you think that
was?
5. Describe the story McKinstry relates about her Grandmother, Mama Lessie.
6. At the end of the story how does McKinstry end up relating to her
Grandmother?
7. Explain how and why McKinstry’s opinion of white women changed.
8. How did President Kennedy react to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing?
9. Describe what the FBI first did in Birmingham after the bombing and how
McKinstry felt about that? What eventually happened with the investigation?
124
APPENDIX H
WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Name:
President Kennedy and Civil Rights
Put yourself in President Kennedy’s shoes and write down your thoughts about what
you would do as President in each situation. Explain your decisions and justify why
you would make them.
1. Freedom Rides, 1961
Situation: Young black and white activists from the group CORE board
public busses and ride into the Deep South. While federal courts have ruled
that racial segregation is unlawful in public transportation most Southern
states still uphold segregation in public facilities. Vigilantes attack the
freedom riders in Alabama and no local authorities are willing to protect the
activists. President Kennedy is counting on keeping the support of Southern
Democrats who support segregation but as President is supposed to enforce
federal law.
2. Ole Miss, 1962
Situation: Federal courts have sided with black student James Meredith who
wants to attend the all-white University of Mississippi in Oxford. This is
happening eight years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board that
segregated schools are unconstitutional. President Kennedy is focused on
foreign policy and the threat of communism and hopes that the Governor will
simply follow the court order. The Governor of Mississippi is a Democrat in
the same party as President Kennedy but openly says he wants to keep
Meredith out. Segregationists from all over Mississippi are gathering around
Oxford to show their opposition to integration and could turn violent.
3.
Birmingham, 1963
Situation: Dr. Martin Luther King along with his organization the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and local ministers like Reverend
Fred Shuttlesworth are staging protests to desegregate what was at that time
commonly called the most segregated city in the U.S., Birmingham,
Alabama. The Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor is a strong
segregationist and uses force to disperse peaceful protestors.
125
APPENDIX I
TESTIMONY OF FANNIE LOU HAMER
To DNC Convention Atlantic City, August 22, 1964
Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs.
Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville,
Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and
Senator Stennis.
It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twentysix miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become
first-class citizens. We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway
Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the
time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held
up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to
Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the
wrong color.
After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and
Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had
worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there
by my children, who told me the plantation owner was angry because I had
gone down -- tried to register.
After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner
was raising Cain because I had tried to register. And before he quit talking
the plantation owner came and said, "Fannie Lou, do you know -- did Pap tell
you what I said?"
And I said, "Yes, sir."
He said, "Well I mean that."
Said, "If you don't go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to
leave." Said, "Then if you go down and withdraw," said, "you still might
have to go because we're not ready for that in Mississippi."
And I addressed him and told him and said, "I didn't try to register for you. I
tried to register for myself."
I had to leave that same night.
On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the
home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were
shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also, Mr. Joe McDonald's house was shot in.
126
And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop;
was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental
Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery
County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people
-- to use the restaurant -- two of the people wanted to use the washroom.
The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out.
During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window
and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened.
And one of the ladies said, "It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of
Police ordered us out."
I got back on the bus and one of the persons had used the washroom
got back on the bus, too. As soon as I was seated on the bus, I saw when they
began to get the five people in a highway patrolman's car. I stepped off of the
bus to see what was happening and somebody screamed from the car that the
five workers was in and said, "Get that one there." And when I went to get in
the car, when the man told me I was under arrest, he kicked me.
I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left
some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was
placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was
placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams. I could hear the
sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, "Can
you say, 'yes, sir,' nigger? Can you say 'yes, sir'?"
And they would say other horrible names.
She would say, "Yes, I can say 'yes, sir.'"
"So, well, say it."
She said, "I don't know you well enough."
They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to
pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.
And it wasn't too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these
men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. And
I told him Ruleville. He said, "We are going to check this." And they left my
cell and it wasn't too long before they came back. He said, "You are from
Ruleville all right," and he used a curse word. And he said, "We're going to
make you wish you was dead."
I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two
Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to
take the blackjack. The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the
127
State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face. And
I laid on my face, the first Negro began to beat me.
And I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my
hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio
when I was six years old.
After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State
Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.
The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State
Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat to sit on my feet -to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got
up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.
One white man -- my dress had worked up high -- he walked over and
pulled my dress -- I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.
I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.
All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class
citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question
America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave,
where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our
lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in
America?
Thank you.
Source: Americanrhetoric.com
128
APPENDIX J
QUESTIONS FOR WALKING WITH THE WIND
Chapter 16, Bloody Sunday, Pages 335-349
Identify these groups and people:
SNCC and SCLC:
Hosea Williams, Andy Young and James Bevel:
Sheriff Jim Clark:
1. Explain how John Lewis described the town of Selma, Alabama.
2. Explain what the reaction was among activists in Selma to the news that Dr.
King would not participate in the march.
3. How did John Lewis feel about Dr. King not being in Selma on that day?
4. How did John Lewis describe the march when it first started? Who was
there? What was the mood like?
5. Describe what the marchers saw when they crossed the Edmund Pettus
Bridge.
6. Why is this day called Bloody Sunday? How did this peaceful march turn
violent? What happened?
7. How do you think the protestors and victims of police violence stayed
peaceful when there was a desire by many to get their guns and strike back?
8. What point was John Lewis trying to make when he spoke after the march
saying, “I don’t know how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam. I
don’t know how he can send troops to the Congo. I don’t know how he can
send troops to Africa, and he can’t send troops to Selma, Alabama.”
9. According to John Lewis what affect did the news reports on the violence in
Selma have on American viewers across the nation?
10. Explain how the 2nd march and Bloody Sunday created disagreement among
civil rights activists in SNCC and SCLC
11. How did the events in Selma affect national attention to the issue of voting
rights?
129
APPENDIX K
HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS TEST
Name:
1. What did the 13th Amendment do?
2. What did the 14th Amendment do?
3. What did the 15th Amendment do?
4. What was the Ku Klux Klan and what was their mission.
5. Explain What Black Codes were? Give an example.
6. Explain how Reconstruction ended and why.
7. Explain what the Supreme Court ruled in Williams v. Mississippi.
8. Explain what the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson.
9. Explain what Jim Crow was.
10. What were the goals of the NAACP and what did it stand for?
11. Explain what the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education.
12. How did Southern politicians react to the ruling in Brown?
13. Who was the Governor of Arkansas that opposed integration in 1954?
14. Explain what happened at Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas during 1954.
15. What were the Freedom Rides?
16. How did President Kennedy React to the Freedom Rides?
17. Who was the director of the FBI during the Freedom Rides?
18. Who was James Meredith, and what is he known for?
19. In what way did President Kennedy help James Meredith?
20. Who was Fred Shuttlesworth? What did he do?
21. What happened at the 16th St. Baptist Church in September 1963?
22. What happened at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama in 1964?
23. What two pieces of legislation did President Johnson sign into law?
Essay Portion:
Using evidence to support your point describe the problem of lynching in the early
20th century and what the NAACP’s response to it was alongside the response of the
federal government.
Using evidence to support your point describe the evolution of President Kennedy on
the issue of civil rights. Describe how his policies and priorities changed over time
and what events were instrumental in the shift.