THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
Teaching it with Primary Sources
THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
• THE "LONG MOVEMENT" AS
VAMPIRE: TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL
FALLACIES IN RECENT BLACK
FREEDOM STUDIES
• Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and
Clarence Lang
• The Journal of African American
History, Vol. 92, No. 2 (Spring, 2007),
265-288
ANDREW JOHNSON AND
PRESIDENTIAL RECONSTRUCTION
BLACK CODES
• The Colored men . . . do hereby. . .
abide by the contract . . . We are to
labor for Perkins . . . from morning
until night six days in each week
from the first day of January 1866 to
31st day of December 1866 at any
work they or their agents may
require of us . . .
WHY THE NEED FOR A SECOND
RECONSTRUCTION
U.S. Supreme Court
Response
Congressional Protections
• Civil Rights Act (1866)
• Enforcement Act (1870)
• Force Acts (1875)
• Thirteenth Amendment
• Fourteenth Amendment
• Fifteenth Amendment
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Slaughterhouse Cases (1873)
Minor v. Happersett (1874)
U.S. v. Reese (1875)
U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876)
Hall v. DeCuir (1877)
Civil Rights Cases (1883)
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Williams v. Mississippi (1898)
Cumming v. Richmond Cty. Bd. of Ed (1899)
RESULT: JIM CROW AND
VIOLENCE
Really last night was one of the most scarey nights that we have
ever spent here. The streets were wild with the mob all day
yesterday and some thot that they would come out here at night
but I really was not afraid. We stayed at home and I slept with my
gun under my bed.
1906 Atlanta Race Riot
RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE? TO BEAR
ARMS?
. . . We must in some way, bridle the ownership of fire arms by the
malicious and ignorant Negro. . . It is an exception to not find one,
two or three fire arms in each cabin, and the lives of our best
citizens has no protection. . . . We have twenty five or fifty negroes
to one white man.
September 22, 1906 (during the Atlanta Race Riot)
Charles E. Cobb Jr., This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns
Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible (2014)
Akinyele Omowale Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in
the Mississippi Freedom Movement (2014)
WWII AND BLACK INSURGENCY
• . . . take a stand against Police
Brutality and Injustice . . . The
average Negro Veteran has given
about three years of his life to fight
Hitler and returns to find Hiterlism,
Racial Bigotry and White
Supremacy.
• Fighting for Democracy: Black
Veterans and the Struggle Against
White Supremacy in the Postwar
South (Princeton Studies in
American Politics: Historical,
International, and Comparative
Perspectives)
• by Christopher S. Parker
TRADITIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT
FREEDOM RIDES
RESISTANCE TO EQUAL
ACCOMMODATIONS
RESISTANCE
• Therefore, we want to advise you
that we have never accepted a
Negro guest at this Motel, that we
have not agreed with anyone to
accept Negro guests now or in the
future, and that it is our considered
and firm policy that we will not
accept Negro guests at this motel
at any time . . .
JULY 18, 1964
CIVIL RIGHTS ACT (JULY 2, 1964)
OCTOBER 6, 1964
• Cites 1875 U.S. v. Cruikshank as
reason to invalidate Civil Rights Act
(1964)
VOTING RIGHTS ACT 1965
AND THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES