Freedom Riders
In the 1950s the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People was involved in
the struggle to end segregation on buses and trains. In 1952 segregation on inter-state railways
was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. This was followed in 1954 by a similar
judgment concerning inter-state buses. However, states in the Deep South continued their own
policy of transport segregation. This usually involved whites sitting in the front and blacks
sitting nearest to the front had to give up their seats to any whites that were standing.
African American people who disobeyed the state's transport segregation policies were
arrested and fined. On 1st December, 1955, Rosa Parks, a middle-aged tailor's assistant from
Montgomery, Alabama, who was tired after a hard day's work, refused to give up her seat to a
white man. After her arrest, Martin Luther King, a pastor at the local Baptist Church, helped
organize protests against bus segregation. It was decided that black people in Montgomery
would refuse to use the buses until passengers were completely integrated. King was arrested
and his house was fire-bombed. Others involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott also suffered
from harassment and intimidation, but the protest continued.
For thirteen months the 17,000 black people in Montgomery walked to work or obtained lifts
from the small car-owning black population of the city. Eventually, the loss of revenue and a
decision by the Supreme Court forced the Montgomery Bus Company to accept integration.
Transport segregation continued in some parts of the United States, so in 1961, a civil rights
group, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) began to organize Freedom Rides. After three
days of training in non-violent techniques, black and white volunteers sat next to each other as
they travelled through the Deep South.
James Farmer, national director of CORE, and thirteen volunteers left Washington on 4th May,
1961, for Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. Governor James Patterson commented that: "The
people of Alabama are so enraged that I cannot guarantee protection for this bunch of rabblerousers." Patterson, who had been elected with the support of the Ku Klux Klan added that
integration would come to Alabama only "over my dead body."
The Freedom Riders were split between two buses. They travelled in integrated seating and
visited "white only" restaurants. When they reached Anniston on 14th May the Freedom Riders
were attacked by men armed with clubs, bricks, iron pipes and knives. One of the buses was
fire-bombed and the mob held the doors shut, intent on burning the riders to death.
James Peck later explained what happened: "When the Greyhound bus pulled into Anniston, it
was immediately surrounded by an angry mob armed with iron bars. They set about the
vehicle, denting the sides, breaking windows, and slashing tires. Finally, the police arrived and
the bus managed to depart. But the mob pursued in cars. Within minutes, the pursuing mob
was hitting the bus with iron bars. The rear window was broken and a bomb was hurled inside.
All the passengers managed to escape before the bus burst into flames and was totally
destroyed. Policemen, who had been standing by, belatedly came on the scene. A couple of
them fired into the air. The mob dispersed and the injured were taken to a local hospital."
Freedom Riders 1
James Peck after being beaten at Anniston.
The surviving bus travelled to Birmingham, Alabama. A meeting of Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee decided to send
reinforcements. This included John Lewis, James Zwerg, and eleven others including two white
women. The volunteers realized their mission was extremely dangerous. Zwerg later recalled:
"My faith was never so strong as during that time. I knew I was doing what I should be doing."
Zwerg wrote a letter to his parents that stated that he would probably be dead by the time they
received it.
During the Freedom Riders campaign the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy was phoning Jim
Eastland “seven or eight or twelve times each day, about what was going to happen when they
got to Mississippi and what needed to be done. That was finally decided was that there
wouldn’t be any violence: as they came over the border, they’d lock them all up.” When they
were arrested Kennedy issued a statement as Attorney General criticizing the activities of the
Freedom Riders. Kennedy sent John Seigenthaler to negotiate with Governor James Patterson
of Alabama.. Harris Wofford, the president's Special Assistant for Civil Rights, later pointed out:
"Seigenthaler arrived in time to escort the first group of wounded and shaken riders from the
bus terminal to the airport, and flew with them to safety in New Orleans."
The Freedom Riders now traveled onto Montgomery. Zwerg later recalled: "As we were going
from Birmingham to Montgomery, we'd look out the windows and we were kind of
overwhelmed with the show of force - police cars with sub-machine guns attached to the
backseats, planes going overhead... We had a real entourage accompanying us. Then, as we hit
the city limits, it all just disappeared. As we pulled into the bus station a squad car pulled out - a
police squad car. The police later said they knew nothing about our coming, and they did not
arrive until after 20 minutes of beatings had taken place. Later we discovered that the instigator
Freedom Riders 2
of the violence was a police sergeant who took a day off and was a member of the Klan. They
knew we were coming. It was a set-up."
The passangers were attacked by a large mob. They were dragged from the bus and beaten by
men with baseball bats and lead piping. Taylor Branch, the author of Parting the Waters:
America in the King Years, 1954-63 (1988) wrote: "One of the men grabbed Zwerg's suitcase
and smashed him in the face with it. Others slugged him to the ground, and when he was dazed
beyond resistance, one man pinned Zwerg's head between his knees so that the others could
take turns hitting him. As they steadily knocked out his teeth, and his face and chest were
streaming blood, a few adults on the perimeter put their children on their shoulders to view the
carnage." James Zwerg later argued: "There was noting particularly heroic in what I did. If you
want to talk about heroism, consider the black man who probably saved my life. This man in
coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said 'Stop
beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious
when I left the hospital. I don't know if he lived or died."
According to Ann Bausum: "Zwerg was denied prompt medical attention at the end of the riot
on the pretext that no white ambulances were available for transport. He remained
unconscious in a Montgomery hospital for two-and-a-half days after the beating and stayed
hospitalized for a total of five days. Only later did doctors diagnose that his injuries included a
broken back."
Some of the Freedom Riders, including seven women, ran for safety. The women approached
an African-American taxicab driver and asked him to take them to the First Baptist Church.
However, he was unwilling to violate Jim Crow restrictions by taking any white women. He
agreed to take the five African-Americans, but the two white women, Susan Wilbur and Susan
Hermann, were left on the curb. They were then attacked by the white mob.
John Seigenthaler, who was driving past, stopped and got the two women in his car. According
to Raymond Arsenault, the author of Freedom Riders (2006): "Suddenly, two rough-looking
men dressed in overalls blocked his path to the car door, demanding to know who the hell he
was. Seigenthaler replied that he was a federal agent and that they had better not challenge his
authority. Before he could say any more, a third man struck him in the back of the head with a
pipe. Unconscious, he fell to the pavement, where he was kicked in the ribs by other members
of the mob. Pushed under the rear bumper of the car, his battered and motionless body
remained there until discovered by a reporter twenty-five minutes later."
Harris Wofford, the president's Special Assistant for Civil Rights, pointed out: "Seigenthaler
went to the defense of a girl being beaten and was clubbed to the ground; he was kicked while
he lay there unconscious for nearly half an hour. Again FBI agents present did nothing, except
take notes." Robert F. Kennedy later reported: "I talked to John Seigenthaler in the hospital and
said that I thought it was very helpful for the Negro vote, and that I appreciated what he had
done."
James Zwerg, who was badly beaten-up claimed from his hospital bed: "Segregation must be
stopped. It must be broken down. Those of us on the Freedom Ride will continue. No matter
Freedom Riders 3
what happens we are dedicated to this. We will take the beatings. We are willing to accept
death. We are going to keep coming until we can ride anywhere in the South."
The Ku Klux Klan hoped that this violent treatment would stop other young people from taking
part in freedom rides. However, over the next six months over a thousand people took part in
freedom rides. With the local authorities unwilling to protect these people, President John F.
Kennedy sent Byron White and 500 federal marshals from the North to do the job.
Robert Kennedy was a close friend of Governor John Patterson of Alabama. Kennedy explained
in his interview with Anthony Lewis: “I had this long relationship with John Patterson (the
governor of Alabama). He was our great pal in the South. So he was doubly exercised at me –
who was his friend and pal – to have involved him with suddenly surrounding this church with
marshals and having marshals descend with no authority, he felt, on his cities… He couldn’t
understand why the Kennedys were doing this to him.”
During the summer of 1961 freedom riders also campaigned against other forms of racial
discrimination. They sat together, in segregated restaurants, lunch counters and hotels. This
was especially effective when it concerned large companies who, fearing boycotts in the North,
began to desegregate their businesses.
Robert Kennedy petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to draft regulations to
end racial segregation in bus terminals. The ICC was reluctant but in September 1961 it issued
the necessary orders and it went into effect on 1st November. However, James Lawson, one of
the Freedom Riders, argued: "We must recognize that we are merely in the prelude to
revolution, the beginning, not the end, not even the middle. I do not wish to minimize the gains
we have made thus far. But it would be well to recognize that we have been receiving
concessions, not real changes. The sit-ins won concessions, not structural changes; the
Freedom Rides won great concessions, but not real change."
As with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the conflict at Little Rock, the Freedom Riders gave
world publicity to the racial discrimination suffered by African Americans, and in doing so,
helped to bring about change.
Freedom Riders 4
Primary sources:
(1) I. F. Stone, I. F. Stone's Weekly (4th June, 1962)
Norman Thomas, spoke if them as "secular saints" - this handful of young Negroes in their teens
and early twenties. They and a few white sympathizers as youthful and devoted as themselves
have begun a social revolution in the South with their sit-ins and their Freedom Rides. Never has
a tinier minority done more for the liberation of a whole people than these few youngsters of
C.O.R.E. (Congress for Racial Equality) and S.N.C.C. (Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee).
(2) James Peck, a member of the Freedom Rides, wrote about his experiences in Alabama on
14th May, 1961, in his book, Freedom Rider (1962)
When the Greyhound bus pulled into Anniston, it was immediately surrounded by an angry mob
armed with iron bars. They set about the vehicle, denting the sides, breaking windows, and
slashing tires. Finally, the police arrived and the bus managed to depart. But the mob pursued in
cars. Within minutes, the pursuing mob was hitting the bus with iron bars. The rear window was
broken and a bomb was hurled inside. All the passengers managed to escape before the bus burst
into flames and was totally destroyed. Policemen, who had been standing by, belatedly came on
the scene. A couple of them fired into the air. The mob dispersed and the injured were taken to a
local hospital.
(3) Frederick Leonard was an African American travelling on a Freedom Rides bus that was
stopped by a white mob in Montgomery, Alabama.
Jim Zwerg was a white fellow from Madison, Wisconsin. He had a lot of nerve. I think that is
what saved me because Jim Zwerg walked off the bus in front of us. The crowd was possessed.
They couldn't believe that there was a white man who would help us. They grabbed him and
pulled him into the mob. Their attention was on him. It was as if they didn't see us.
(4) James Zwerg was badly injured and left in the road for over an hour. White ambulances
refused to take him to hospital. Afterwards he was interviewed in hospital by reporters.
Segregation must be stopped. It must be broken down. Those of us on the Freedom Ride will
continue. No matter what happens we are dedicated to this. We will take the beatings. We are
willing to accept death. We are going to keep coming until we can ride anywhere in the South.
Freedom Riders 5
(5) James Farmer was the director of the Congress of Racial Equality and was the main
organizer of the Freedom Rides. In Plaquemine, Louisiana, Farmer was surrounded by a
white mob who claimed they intended to lynch him.
I was certain I was going to die. What kind of death would it be? Would they mutilate me first?
What does it feel like to die? Then I grew panicky about the insurance. Had I paid the last
installment? My wife and little girls - how would it be for them? Well, damn it, if I had to die, at
least let the organization wring some use out of my death. I hoped the newspapers were out
there. Plenty of them. With plenty of cameras.
(6) William Mahoney, a student at Howard University, was a freedom rider and was eventually
arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and was imprisoned in Parchman Penitentiary. He wrote
about his experiences for Liberation Magazine.
At our first stop in Virginia I was confronted with what the Southern white has called "separate
but equal." A modern rest station with gleaming counters and picture windows was labelled
"White," and a small wooden shack beside it was tagged "Colored." The colored waiting room
was filthy, in need of repair, and overcrowded. When we entered the white waiting room Frank
Hunt was promptly but courteously, in the Southern manner, asked to leave. Because I am a fairskinned Negro I was waited upon. I walked back to the bus through the cool night trembling and
perspiring.
The Montgomery bus station was surrounded by Army jeeps, trucks, and the National Guard in
battle gear. We found the people from the Christian Leadership Council who had been sent to
meet us and drove away cautiously, realizing that the least traffic violation would be an excuse
for our arrest.
Once across the (Mississippi) state line we passed a couple of police cars, which began to follow
us. At our first stop the station was cordoned off a block in every direction. A police officer
jumped on the bus and forbade anyone to move. One woman, who was a regular passenger,
frantically tried to convince the police that she was not involved with us. After checking her
ticket the police let her get off.
As we rolled toward Jackson, every blocked-off street, every back road taken, every change in
speed caused our hearts to leap. Our arrival and speedy arrest in the white bus station in Jackson,
when we refused to obey a policeman's order to move on, was a relief.
Freedom Riders 6
(8) James Farmer, interviewed by C. David Heymann for his book, A Candid Biography of
Robert F. Kennedy (1998)
The Kennedys meant well, but they did not feel it. They didn't know any blacks growing up there were no blacks in their communities or going to their schools. But their inclinations were
good. I had the impression in those years that Bobby was doing what had to be done for political
reasons. He was very conscious of the fact that they had won a narrow election and he was afraid
that if they antagonized the South, the Dixiecrats would cost them the next election. And he was
found to be very, very cautious and very careful not to do that. But we changed the equation
down there, so it became dangerous for him not to do anything.
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The plan was…simplicity itself. In any sane, even half-civilized society it would have been
completely innocuous, hardly worth a second thought or meriting any comment at all. CORE
would be sending an integrated team—black and white together—from the national’s capital to
New Orleans on public transportation. That’s all. Except, of course, that they would sit randomly
on the buses in integrated pairs, and in the stations they would use waiting room facilities
casually, ignoring the white/colored signs. What could be more harmless…in any even
marginally healthy society?
—Stokely Carmichael
Freedom Riders 7
Birmingham Campaign, 1963-64
In the spring of 1963, activists in Birmingham, Alabama launched one of the most influential
campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement: Project C, better known as The Birmingham
Campaign. It would be the beginning of a series of lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall
and boycotts on downtown merchants to protest segregation laws in the city.
Over the next couple months, the peaceful demonstrations would be met with violent attacks
using high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs on men, women and children alike -- producing
some of the most iconic and troubling images of the Civil Rights Movement. President John F.
Kennedy would later say, "The events in Birmingham... have so increased the cries for equality
that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them." It is considered
one of the major turning points in the Civil Rights Movement and the "beginning of the end" of
a centuries-long struggle for freedom.
Fifty years ago, they braved police dogs and fire hoses to march against segregation.
The Birmingham Campaign ended with a victory in May of 1963 when local officials agreed to
remove "White Only" and "Black Only" signs from restrooms and drinking fountains in downtown
Birmingham; desegregate lunch counters; deploy a "Negro job improvement plan"; release
jailed demonstrators; and create a biracial committee to monitor the agreement. Desegregation would
take place slowly over the next few months coupled with violent attacks from angry segregationists,
including the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church that killed four young girls. Learn more
about some of the events that followed the campaign and the city's continued push for integration.
PBS
http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/explore/civil-rights-movement-birmingham-campaign/#.UzQvoIXeQpc
Birmingham 1
Birmingham 2
In April 1963 Martin Luther King went to Birmingham, Alabama, a city where public facilities
were separated for blacks and whites. King intended to force the desegregation of lunch counters
in downtown shops by a non-violent protest.
Birmingham was one of the most challenging places to demonstrate for civil rights. George
Wallace, the new Governor of Alabama, did not like integration, the bringing together of
different racial groups. Birmingham was also a stronghold for the Ku Klux Klan that had been
responsible for 18 bombings in the city. Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor, the man in charge of police and
firemen, supported the Ku Klux Klan when they attacked black ‘freedom fighters’.
King wanted to gain full national attention for events in Birmingham. He hoped that President
Kennedy would be forced to intervene.
The protests began at segregated lunch counters and the protesters were repeatedly arrested.
Others marched in protest to the city hall. They were arrested and further marching was banned.
King was arrested after leading another march. From jail he wrote a letter saying that people
have a moral duty to disobey unjust laws.
King was released and the protest continued to grow. The plan was to use high school children as
protesters, get them to fill up the city’s prisons and shame the city on a national level. On 2 May
police arrested over a thousand young people aged 6-18 years. The next day more children
joined the protest. This time ‘Bull’ Connor ordered the police to use clubs and dogs on the
marchers and instructed firemen to get rid of the crowds with high-pressure water hoses.
As the protests continued, the images of police brutality shocked the world and gained a lot of
sympathy for the civil rights movement. After pressure from President Kennedy and his brother,
the Attorney General, Birmingham shops and businesses finally agreed on 10 May to
desegregate all rest rooms, lunch counters, fitting rooms and drinking fountains, and to hire more
black workers. The President started to push for a new Civil Rights law.
National Archives.gov.uk
Birmingham 3
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was used as a meeting-place for civil rights
leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. Tensions
became high when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on
Racial Equality (CORE) became involved in a campaign to register African American to vote in
Birmingham.
On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise
Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon
afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins
(14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday
school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.
Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Only a
week before the bombing he had told the New York Times that to stop integration Alabama
needed a "few first-class funerals."
A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed
the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged
with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October,
1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a sixmonth jail sentence for having the dynamite.
The case was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected attorney general of Alabama. He requested
the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the
organization had accumulated a great deal of evidence against Chambliss that had not been
used in the original trial.
In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
bombing. Now aged 73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Chambliss died in an Alabama prison on 29th October, 1985.
Spartacus Educational is a free online encyclopedia offering essays and other educational material on a wide
variety of historical subjects. It is used by history teachers and students.
Birmingham 4
March on Washington 1963
In 1963 leaders of the civil rights movement decided to organize what became known as the
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Bayard Rustin was given overall control of the
march and he managed to persuade the leaders of all the various civil rights groups to
participate in the planned protest meeting at the Lincoln Memorial.
The decision to appoint Bayard Rustin as chief organizer was controversial. Roy Wilkins of the
NAACP was one of those who was against the appointment. He argued that being a former
member of the American Communist Party made him an easy target for the right-wing press.
Although Rustin had left the party in 1941, he still retained his contacts with its leaders such as
Benjamin Davis.
Wilkins also feared that the fact that Rustin had been imprisoned several times for both
refusing to fight in the armed forces and for acts of homosexuality, would be used against him
in the days leading up to the march. However, Martin Luther King and Philip Randolph insisted
that he was the best person for the job.
Wilkins was right to be concerned about a possible smear campaign against Rustin. Edgar
Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, had been keeping a file on Rustin for
many years. An FBI undercover agent managed to take a photograph of Rustin talking to King
while he was having a bath. This photograph was then used to support false stories being
circulated that Rustin was having a homosexual relationship with King.
This information was now passed on to white politicians in the Deep South who feared that a
successful march on Washington would persuade President Lyndon B. Johnson to sponsor a
proposed new civil rights act. Storm Thurmond led the campaign against Rustin making several
speeches where he described him as a "communist, draft dodger and homosexual".
Most newspapers condemned the idea of a mass march on Washington. An editorial in the New
York Herald Tribune warned that: "If Negro leaders persist in their announced plans to march
100,000-strong on the capital they will be jeopardizing their cause. The ugly part of this
particular mass protest is its implication of unconstrained violence if Congress doesn't deliver."
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28th August, 1963, was a great success.
Estimates on the size of the crowd varied from between 250,000 to 400,000. Speakers included
Philip Randolph (AFL-CIO), Martin Luther King (SCLC), Floyd McKissick (CORE), John Lewis
(SNCC), Roy Wilkins (NAACP), Witney Young (National Urban League) and Walter Reuther (AFLCIO). King was the final speaker and made his famous I Have a Dream speech.
1963 March on Washington 1
Primary sources:
(1) Philip Randolph, speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (28th
August, 1963)
We are not an organization or a group of organizations. We are not a mob. We are the
advance guard of a massive moral revolution for jobs and freedom. The revolution
reverberates throughout the land, touching every city, every town, every village where
blacks are segregated, oppressed and exploited. But this civil rights demonstration is not
confined to the Negro; nor is it confined to civil rights; for our white allies knew that they
cannot be free while we are not. And we know that we have no future in which six million
black and white people are unemployed, and millions more live in poverty. Those who
deplore our militancy, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact
supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of
social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tensions than enforcing
racial democracy.
(2) Roy Wilkins, speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (28th August,
1963)
For nine years our parents and their children have been met with either a flat refusal or a
token action in school desegregation. The Civil Rights Bill now under consideration in the
Congress must give new powers to the Justice Department to enable it to speed the end of
Jim Crow schools, North and South.
Now, my friends, all over this land and especially in parts of the Deep South, we are beaten
and kicked and maltreated and shot and killed by local and state law-enforcement officers.
The Attorney General must be empowered to act on his own initiative in the denial of any
civil rights, not just one or two, but any civil rights in order to wipe out this shameful
situation.
Just be your presence here today we have spoken loudly and eloquently to our legislature.
When we return hoome, keep up the speaking by letters and telegrams and telephone and,
wherever possible, by personal visit. Remember that this has been a long fight. We were
reminded of it by the news of the death yesterday in Africa of Dr. W. E. B. DuBois. Now,
regardless of the fact that in his later years Dr. DuBois chose another path, it is
incontrovertible that at the dawn of the twentieth century his was the voice that was calling
to you to gather here today in this cause. If you want to read something that applies to
1963 go back and get a volume of The Souls of Black Folk by DuBois published in 1903.
1963 March on Washington 2
(3) John Lewis, speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (28th August,
1963)
We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of. For hundreds and
thousands of our brothers are not here. They have no money for their transportation, for they are
receiving starvation wages or no wages, at all.
In good conscience, we cannot support the administration's civil rights bill, for it is too little, and
too late. There's not one thing in the bill that will protect our people from police brutality.
This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses, for
engaging in peaceful demonstrations.
The voting section of this bill will not help thousands of black citizens who want to vote. It will
not help the citizens of Mississippi, of Alabama, and Georgia, who are qualified to vote, but lack
a 6th Grade education. "One man, one vote," is the African cry. It is ours, too.
We are now involved in revolution. This nation is still a place of cheap political leaders who
build their careers on immoral compromise and ally themselves with open forms of political,
economic and social exploitation. What political leader here can stand up and say, "My party is
the party of principles"? The party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is
also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party?
We won't stop now. All of the forces of Eastland, Barnett, Wallace, and Thurmond won't stop
this revolution. The time will come when we will not confine our marching to Washington. We
will march through the South, through the Heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue
our own "scorched earth" policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground - nonviolently. We shall
fragment the South into a thousand pieces and put them back together in the image of
democracy. We will make the action of the past few months look petty. And I say to you, WAKE
UP AMERICA!
(4) Walter Reuther, speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (28th
August, 1963)
I am here today with you because with you I share the view that the struggle for civil rights and
the struggle for equal opportunity is not the struggle of Negro Americans but the struggle for
every American to join in.
For 100 years the Negro people have searched for first-class citizenship and I believe that they
cannot and should not wait until some distant tomorrow. They should demand freedom now.
Here and now.
It is the responsibility of every American to share the impatience of the Negro American. And
we need to join together, to march together, and to work together until we have bridged the
moral gap between American democracy's noble promises and its ugly practices in the field of
civil rights. American democracy has been too long on pious platitudes and too short on practical
performances in this important area.
1963 March on Washington 3
(5) Martin Luther King, speech, I Have a Dream (28th August, 1963)
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and
tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its
creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the
sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
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.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not
be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream
today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor
having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification," one day right
there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white
boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be
made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made
straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be
able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able
to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go
to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village
and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day
when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at
last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
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1963 March on Washington 4
Civil Rights Act of 1964
In the 1960 presidential election campaign John F. Kennedy argued for a new Civil Rights Act.
After the election it was discovered that over 70 per cent of the African American vote went to
Kennedy. However, during the first two years of his presidency, Kennedy failed to put forward
his promised legislation.
The Civil Rights bill was brought before Congress in 1963 and in a speech on television on 11th
June, Kennedy pointed out that: "The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the
section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high
school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of
completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much
chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a
year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as
much."
Kennedy's Civil Rights bill was still being debated by Congress when he was assassinated in
November, 1963. The new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a poor record on civil
rights issues, took up the cause. His main opponent was his long-time friend and mentor,
Richard B. Russell, who told the Senate: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any
movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and
amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states." Russell organized 18 Southern Democratic
senators in filibustering this bill.
However, on the 15th June, 1964, Richard B. Russell privately told Mike Mansfield and Hubert
Humphrey, the two leading supporters of the Civil Rights Act, that he would bring an end to the
filibuster that was blocking the vote on the bill. This resulted in a vote being taken and it was
passed by 73 votes to 27.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters,
restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also required employers to provide equal employment
opportunities. Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was evidence of
discriminated based on color, race or national origin.
The Civil Rights Act also attempted to deal with the problem of African Americans being denied
the vote in the Deep South. The legislation stated that uniform standards must prevail for
establishing the right to vote. Schooling to sixth grade constituted legal proof of literacy and the
attorney general was given power to initiate legal action in any area where he found a pattern
of resistance to the law.
1964 Civil Rights Act 1
Primary sources:
John F. Kennedy
Speech promoting the Civil Rights Act of 1964
June 11, 1963
(Modified)
Every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to
be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the
case….
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the
Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the
question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal
opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we
want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat
lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to
the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials
who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life
which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the
color of his skin changed and stand in his place? …
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the
slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet
freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and
economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts,
will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.
We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people…It cannot
be left to increased demonstrations in the streets…It is time to act in the
Congress, in your State and local legislative body and, above all, in all of
our daily lives.
But there are other necessary measures which only the Congress can
provide….In too many communities, in too many parts of the country,
wrongs are inflicted on Negro citizens and there are no remedies at law.
Unless the Congress acts, their only remedy is in the street.
I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all
Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—
hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments….
1964 Civil Rights Act 2
(2) Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1976)
In the spring of 1964, only four months after he became president, Lyndon Johnson had spoken at the
campus of the University of Michigan, and there he sketched the outline for a program intended to go
beyond the "Kennedy legacy". The climate that made it possible for a president to adopt such large
ambitions and to succeed in enacting so many of his proposals was the product of converging
circumstances. The shock of Kennedy's death, the civil rights movement, an emerging awareness of the
extent and existence of poverty, a reduction of threatening tensions between the United States and the
Soviet Union, all helped Americans to focus public attention and perceptions on the problems of their
own country.
(3) Exchange between Allen Ellender of Louisiana and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota (11th
March, 1964)
Allen Ellender: The Senator from Minnesota (Hubert Humphrey) has not lived in the South. The situation
does not exist in the state of Minnesota that has existed in the South. In some counties in the state of
Mississippi, the ratio of Negroes to white is 3 to 1.
Hubert Humphrey: I appreciate that...
Allen Ellender: I am frank to say that in many instances the reason why the voting rights were not
encouraged is that the white people in those counties are in the minority are afraid they would be
outvoted. Let us be frank about it.
Hubert Humphrey: It is a fact, is it not, that the large numbers of colored people who are citizens of the
United States, many of whom are called upon to perform all the duties of citizenship, in peace and war,
are denied the right to register and thereby denied the right to vote.
Allen Ellender: That has been done in many places.
(4) Richard B. Russell, speech in the Senate on his opposition to the Civil Rights Act (18th June,
1964)
I am proud to have been a member of that small group of determined senators that since the 9th of March
has given ... the last iota of physical strength in the effort to hold back the overwhelming combination of
forces supporting this bill until its manifold evils could be laid bare before the people of the country.
The depth of our conviction is evidenced by the intensity of our opposition. There is little room for
honorable men to compromise where the inalienable rights of future generations are at stake. . . .
Mr. President, the people of the South are citizens of this Republic. They are entitled to some
consideration. It seems to me that fair men should recognize that the people of the South, too, have some
rights which should be respected. And though, Mr. President, we have failed in this fight to protect them
from a burgeoning bureaucracy that is already planning and organizing invasion after invasion of the
South... our failure cannot be ascribed to lack of effort. Our ranks were too thin, our resources too scanty,
but we did our best. I say to my comrades in arms in this long fight that there will never come a time
when it will be necessary for any one of us to apologize for his conduct or his courage.
1964 Civil Rights Act 3
(5) Lyndon Baines Johnson, interviewed in 1968.
The trick was to crack the wall of separation enough to give the Congress a feeling of
participation in creating my bills while exposing my plans at the same time to advance
congressional opposition before they even saw the light of day. My experience in the National
Youth Administration (NYA) taught me that when people have a hand in shaping projects, the
projects are more likely to be successful than the ones simply handed down from the top. As
Majority Leader in the Senate I learned that the best guarantee to legislature success was a
process by which the wishes and views of the members are obtained ahead of time and whenever
possible, incorporated into the early drafts of the bill.
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Congress and the Civil Rights Act of 1964
“There is another reason why we dare not temporize with the issue
which is before us. It is essentially moral in character. It must be
resolved. It will not go away. Its time has come.”
Senate Minority Leader Everett M. Dirksen supporting the move to end debate on the Civil Rights bill,
June 10, 1964
In the 1950s and 1960s, a wave of protest aimed at ending discrimination and segregation
against African Americans, especially in the South, brought civil rights to the forefront of
national debate. Civil rights had its champions in Congress, but they had to work to surmount
institutional impediments in the House and Senate to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of
1964.
House opposition to the Civil Rights bill took the form of keeping it bottled up in the House
Rules Committee. In the Senate, opponents attempted to talk the bill to death in a filibuster.
In early 1964 supporters overcame the Rules Committee obstacle by threatening to send the
bill to the floor without committee approval. The Senate filibuster was overcome through the
floor leadership of Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the support of President Lyndon
Johnson, and the efforts of Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois, in convincing
Republicans to support the bill.
Signed into law, on July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation in
businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in
employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and
public schools.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/treasures_of_congress/text/page24_text.html
1964 Civil Rights Act 4
Voting Rights Act, 1965
In 1964 the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) and the the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP)
organised its Freedom Summer campaign. Directed by Robert Moses, its main objective was to
try an end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. Volunteers
from the three organizations decided to concentrate its efforts in Mississippi. In 1962 only 6.7
per cent of African Americans in the state were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the
country. This involved the formation of the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP). Over 80,000
people joined the party and 68 delegates, led by Fannie Lou Hamer, attended the Democratic
Party Convention in Atlantic City and challenged the attendance of the all-white Mississippi
representation.
CORE, SNCC and NAACP also established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi.
Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy
of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these
schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head
Start.
A group of student volunteers waiting for buses to take them to Mississippi (1964)
Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African
Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were
firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers and three
men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux
Klan on 21st June, 1964. This attempt to frighten others from joining the campaign failed and
by late 1964 over 70,000 students had taken part in Freedom Summer.
In July 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. The legislation attempted to deal with the
problem of African Americans being denied the vote in the Deep South. The legislation stated
Voting Rights Act 1
that uniform standards must prevail for establishing the right to vote. Schooling to sixth grade
constituted legal proof of literacy and the attorney general was given power to initiate legal
action in any area where he found a pattern of resistance to the law.
The following year, President Lyndon Baines Johnson attempted to persuade Congress to pass
his Voting Rights Act. This proposed legislation removed the right of states to impose
restrictions on who could vote in elections. Johnson explained how: "Every American citizen
must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many places in this country men
and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes."
Although opposed by politicians from the Deep South, the Voting Rights Act was passed by
large majorities in the House of Representatives (333 to 48) and the Senate (77 to 19). The
legislation empowered the national government to register those whom the states refused to
put on the voting list.
When Johnson signed the 1965 Civil Rights Act he made a prophecy that he was “signing away
the south for 50 years.” This proved accurate. In fact, the Democrats have never recovered the
vote of the white racists in the Deep South.
Just before his assassination in 1968, Robert Kennedy forecast that the United States would
have a “Negro president” in 40 years. This prediction came true when Barack Obama was
elected in November 2008. However, his Republican rival, John McCain, won the former
Confederate states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, South Carolina,
North Carolina and Tennessee.
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President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act as Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders look on.
Voting Rights Act 2
"By the way, what's the big word?"
Bill Mauldin, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1964)
Primary sources:
(1) In 1964, 650 members of the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee went to
Mississippi to help African Americans register to vote. One student wrote to his parents
explaining what happened in the county of Milestoon when they attempted to help blacks
register.
We got about 14 Negroes to go to the court house with the intention of registering to vote.
Sheriff Smith greeted the party with a six shooter drawn from his pocket, and said "Okay, who's
first?" Most of the Negroes remained cautiously quiet. After several seconds a man who had
never before been a leader stepped up to the Sheriff, smiled and said, "I'm first, Hartman
Turnbow". All registration applications were permitted to be filled out and all were judged
illiterate. The next week, Turnbow's house was bombed with Molotov cocktails. When the
Turnbows left the burning house, they were shot at. A couple of days later, Turnbow was
accused of having bombed his own house which wasn't insured. Sheriff Smith was the one
witness against them. Mr. Turnbow was convicted.
Voting Rights Act 3
(2) In 1964, eleven civil rights campaigners were murdered in Mississippi. This included the
murders of two white men, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Michael Schwerner's
wife made a statement to newspapers on the murders.
My husband, Michael Schwerner, did not die in vain. If he and Andrew Goodman had been
Negroes, the world would have taken little notice of their deaths. After all, the slaying of a Negro
in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my husband and Andrew Goodman were white that
the national alarm had been sounded.
(3) Lyndon Baines Johnson, speech on the Voting Rights Act (15th March, 1965)
Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet the harsh fact is that in many
places in this country men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes.
Every device of which human ingenuity is capable has been used to deny this rights. The Negro
citizen may go to register only to be told that the day is wrong, or the hour is late, or the official
in charge is late, or the official in charge is absent. And if he persists and he manages to present
himself to register, he may be disqualified because he did not spell out his middle name or
because he abbreviated a word on his application. And if he manages to fill out an application he
is given a test. The register is the sole judge of whether he passes his test. He may be asked to
recite the entire constitution, or explain the most complex provisions of state laws. And even a
college degree cannot be used to prove that he can read and write. For the fact is that the only
way to pass these barriers is to show a white skin. This bill will strike down restrictions to voting
in all elections - federal, State, and local - which have been used to deny Negroes the right to
vote.
(4) Lyndon Baines Johnson, speech at Howard University (4th June, 1965)
At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's
unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at
Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as
Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man - a man of God - was killed.
This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great
phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: "All men are
created equal" - "Government by consent of the governed" - "Give me liberty or give me death".
And those are not just clever words and not just empty theories. In their name Americans have
fought and died for two centuries.
Experience has clearly shown that the existing process of law cannot overcome systematic and
ingenious discrimination. No law that we now have on the books can ensure the right to vote
when local officials are determined to deny it. Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed
to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote. This bill will strike down restrictions to voting in
all elections - federal, state, and local - which have been used to deny Negroes the right to vote.
Voting Rights Act 4
Race Riots, 1965
Watts Riots
Background
The Watts Riot, which raged for six days and resulted in more than forty million dollars worth of
property damage, was both the largest and costliest urban rebellion of the Civil Rights era. The
riot spurred from an incident on August 11, 1965 when Marquette Frye, a young African
American motorist, was pulled over and arrested by Lee W. Minikus, a white California Highway
Patrolman, for suspicion of driving while intoxicated. As a crowd on onlookers gathered at the
scene of Frye's arrest, strained tensions between police officers and the crowd erupted in a
violent exchange. The outbreak of violence that followed Frye's arrest immediately touched off
a large-scale riot centered in the commercial section of Watts, a deeply impoverished African
American neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. For several days, rioters overturned and
burned automobiles and looted and damaged grocery stores, liquor stores, department stores,
and pawnshops. Over the course of the six-day riot, over 14,000 California National Guard
troops were mobilized in South Los Angeles and a curfew zone encompassing over forty-five
miles was established in an attempt to restore public order. All told, the rioting claimed the
lives of thirty-four people, resulted in more than one thousand reported injuries, and almost
four thousand arrests before order was restored on August 17. Throughout the crisis, public
officials advanced the argument that the riot was the work outside agitators; however, an
official investigation, prompted by Governor Pat Brown, found that the riot was a result of the
Watts community's longstanding grievances and growing discontentment with high
unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Despite the reported
findings of the gubernatorial commission, following the riot, city leaders and state officials
failed to implement measures to improve the social and economic conditions of African
Americans living in the Watts neighborhood.
Civil Rights Digital Library http://crdl.usg.edu/events/watts_riots/?Welcome&Welcome
Race Riots 1
Other Areas Affected
As the word of the South Los Angeles violence was flashed almost continuously by all news
media, the unrest spread. Although outbreaks in other areas were minor by comparison with
those in South Central Los Angeles, each one held dangerous potential. San Diego, 102 miles
away, had three days of rioting and 81 people were arrested. On Friday night, there was rioting
in Pasadena, 12 miles from the curfew zone. There, liquor and gun stores were looted and
Molotov cocktails and fire bombs were thrown at police cars. Only prompt and skillful handling
by the police prevented this situation from getting out of control.
Pacoima, 20 miles north, had scattered rioting, looting, and burning. There was burning in
Monrovia, 25 miles east. On Sunday night, after the curfew area was quiet, there was an
incident in Long Beach, 12 miles south. About 200 guardsmen and Los Angeles police assisted
Long Beach police in containing a dangerous situation which exploded when a policeman was
shot when another officer's gun discharged as he was being attacked by rioters. Several fires
were set Sunday night in the San Pedro-Wilmington area, 12 miles south.
Was There a Pre-established Plan?
After a thorough examination, the Commission has concluded that there is no reliable evidence
of outside leadership or pre-established plans for the rioting. The testimony of law enforcement
agencies and their respective intelligence officers supports this conclusion. The Attorney
General, the District Attorney, and the Los Angeles police have all reached the conclusion that
there is no evidence of a pre-plan or a pre-established central direction of the rioting activities.
This finding was submitted to the Grand Jury by the District Attorney.
This is not to say that there was no agitation or promotion of the rioting by local groups or
gangs which exist in pockets throughout the south central area. The sudden appearance of
Molotov cocktails in quantity and the unexplained movement of men in cars through the areas
of great destruction support the conclusion that there was organization and planning after the
riots commenced. In addition, on that tense Thursday, inflammatory handbills suddenly
appeared in Watts. But this cannot be identified as a master plan by one group; rather it
appears to have been the work of several gangs, with membership of young men ranging in age
from 14 to 35 years. All of these activities intensified the rioting and caused it to spread with
increased violence from one district to another in the curfew area.
The Grim Statistics
The final statistics are staggering. There were 34 persons killed and 1,032 reported injuries,
including 90 Los Angeles police officers, 136 firemen, 10 national guardsmen, 23 persons from
other governmental agencies, and 773 civilians. 118 of the injuries resulted from gunshot
wounds. Of the 34 killed, one was a fireman, one was a deputy sheriff, and one a Long Beach
policeman.
144 Hours in August 1965 http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/cityinstress/mccone/part4.html
Race Riots 2
Race Riots 3
Race Riots 4
Civil Rights Digital Library http://crdl.usg.edu/events/watts_riots/?Welcome&Welcome
Race Riots 5
Black Power Movement, 1966-75
On 17th June, 1966, Stokely Carmichael, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), spoke at a rally in Greenwood, Mississippi, and argued for Black Power.
Carmichael defined this as "a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their
heritage, and to build a sense of community".
Carmichael also advocated that African Americans should form and lead their own
organizations and urged a complete rejection of the values of American society. Some civil
rights groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People
(NAACP) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), rejected Carmichael's ideas and
accused him of black racism.
Stokely Carmichael also adopted the slogan of "Black is Beautiful" and advocated a mood of
black pride and a rejection of white values of style and appearance. This included adopting Afro
hairstyles and African forms of dress.
When Carmichael denounced United States involvement in the Vietnam War, his passport was
confiscated and held for ten months. When his passport was returned, he moved with his wife,
Miriam Makeba, to Guinea, West Africa, where he wrote the book, Stokely Speaks: Black Power
Back to Pan-Africanism (1971).
Primary sources:
(1) Marcus Garvey, School of African Philosophy (1937)
It must be the mission of all Negroes to have pride in their race. To think of the race in the
highest terms of human living. To think that God made the race perfect, that there is no one
better than you, that you have the elements of human perfection and as such you must love
yourselves. Love yourselves better than anyone else. All beauty is in you and not outside of you,
for God made you beautiful. Confine your affection, therefore, to your own race and God will
bless you and men will honour you.
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Black Power 1
(2) Marcus Garvey, Aims and Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1937)
Africa is the motherland of all Negroes, from where all Negroes in slavery were taken against
their will. It is the natural home of the race. One day all Negroes hope to look to Africa as the
land of their vine and fig tree. It is necessary, therefore, to help the tribes who live in Africa to
advance to a higher state of civilization.
The Negro should not have but one nation, but work with the hope that these independent nations
will become parts of the great racial empire. It is necessary, therefore, to strengthen the hand of
every free and independent Negro state so that they may be able to continue their independence.
Every community where the Negro lives should be developed by him in his own section, so that
he may control that section or part of the community. He should segregate himself residentially
in that community so as to have political power, economic power, and social power in that
community.
(3) Cleveland Sellers was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His
autobiography, The River of No Return, was published in 1973.
We had our first major trouble with the police on June 17, in Greenwood. It began when a
contingent of state troopers arbitrarily decided that we could not put up our sleeping tent on the
grounds of a black high school. When Stokely attempted to put the tent up anyway, he was
arrested. Within minutes, word of his arrest had spread all over town. The rally that night, which
was held in a city park, attracted almost three thousand people - five times the usual number.
Stokely, who'd been released from jail just minutes before the rally began, was the last speaker.
He was preceded by McKissick, Dr. King and Willie Ricks. Like the rest of us, they were angry
about Stokely's unnecessary arrest. Their speeches were particularly militant. When Stokely
moved forward to speak, the crowd greeted him with a huge roar. He acknowledged his
reception with a raised arm and clenched fist.
Realizing that he was in his element, with his people, Stokely let it all hang out. "This is the
twenty-seventh time I have been arrested - and I ain't going to jail no more!" The crowd
exploded into cheers and clapping.
"The only way we gonna stop them white men from whuppin' us is to take over. We been saying
freedom for six years and we ain't got nothin'. What we gonna start saying now is Black Power!"
The crowd was right with him. They picked up his thoughts immediately.
"BLACK POWER!" they roared in unison.
Black Power 2
(4) Stokely Carmichael, New York Review of Books (22nd September, 1966)
One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up to now there has been no national
organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban
ghetto. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an
audience of liberal whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young
blacks. None of its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to. In a
sense, I blame ourselves - together with the mass media - for what has happened in Watts,
Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Omaha. Each time the people in those cities saw Martin Luther
King get slapped, they became angry; when they saw four little black girls bombed to death, they
were angrier; and when nothing happened, they were steaming. We had nothing to offer that they
could see, except to go out and be beaten again. We helped to build their frustration.
An organization which claims to be working for the needs of a community - as SNCC does must work to provide that community with a position of strength from which to make its voice
heard. This is the significance of black power beyond the slogan.
Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to
their questions about it. We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two
problems: they are poor and they are black. All other problems arise from this two-sided reality:
lack of education, the so-called apathy of black men. Any program to end racism must address
itself to that double reality.
(5) Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power (1966)
According to its advocates, social justice will be accomplished by "integrating the Negro into the
mainstream institutions of the society from which he has been traditionally excluded." This
concept is based on the assumption that there is nothing of value in the black community and that
little of value could be created among black people. The thing to do is to siphon off the
"acceptable" black people into the surrounding middle-class white community. The goals of
integrationists are middle-class goals, articulated primarily by a small group of Negroes with
middle-class aspirations or status.
There is no black man in the country who can live "simply as a man." His blackness is an everpresent fact of this racist society, whether he recognizes it or not. It is unlikely that this or the
next generation will witness the time when race will no longer be relevant in the conduct of
public affairs and in public policy decision-making.
"Integration" as a goal today speaks to the problem of blackness not only in an unrealistic way
but also in a despicable way. It is based on complete acceptance of the fact that in order to have a
decent house or education, black people must move into a white neighborhood or send their
children to a white school. This reinforces, among both black and white, the idea that "white" is
automatically superior and "black" is by definition inferior. For this reason, "integration" is a
subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy.
Black Power 3
(6) Floyd McKissick, Programs for Black Power (1968)
We should remember that the Black Power Movement attempts to secure power for Black
Americans in six specific areas; in other words, it seeks to achieve power for Black people in six
different ways; These are: (1) The growth of Black political power. (2) The building of Black
economic power. (3) The improvement of the self-image of Black people. (4) The development
of Black leadership. (5) The attainment of Federal law enforcement. (6) The mobilization of
Black consumer power.
It is incontrovertible that these important ideals must pass beyond mere rhetoric. Programs must
be initiated and relentlessly pursued in order to develop the wide organizational base necessary
to achieve our ultimate goal of equality in American life.
(7) Malcolm X, Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
The teachings of Mr. Muhammad stressed how history had been "whitened" - when white men
had written history books, the black man simply had been left out. Mr. Muhammad couldn't have
said anything that would have struck me much harder. I had never forgotten how when my class,
me and all those whites, had studied seventh-grade United States history back in Mason, the
history of the Negro had been covered in one paragraph.
This is one reason why Mr. Muhammad teachings spread so swiftly all over the United States,
among all Negroes, whether or not they became followers of Mr. Muhammad. The teachings
ring true - to every Negro. You can hardly show me a black adult in America - or a white one,
for that matter - who knows from the history books anything like the truth about the black man's
role. In my own case, once I heard of the "glorious history of the black man", I took special pains
to hunt in the library for books that would inform me on details about black history.
(8) Malcolm X, Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
The American black man should be focusing his every effort toward building his own
businesses, and decent homes for himself. As other ethnic groups have done, let the black
people, wherever possible, patronize their own kind, and start in those ways to build up the black
race's ability to do for itself. That's the only way the American black man is ever going to get
respect. One thing the white man never can give the black man is self-respect! The black man
never can be become independent and recognized as a human being who is truly equal with other
human beings until he has what they have, and until he is doing for himself what others are doing
for themselves.
The black man in the ghettoes, for instance, has to start self-correcting his own material, moral
and spiritual defects and evils. The black man needs to start his own program to get rid of
drunkenness, drug addiction, prostitution. The black man in America has to lift up his own sense
of values.
I'm right with the Southern white man who believes that you can't have so-called "intergration",
at least not for long, without intermarriage increasing. And what good is this for anyone?
Black Power 4
(9) Whitney Young, speech at CORE conference in Columbus, Ohio (6th July, 1968)
Brothers and sisters, I come to this convention believing that the goals and objectives we have in common
are far greater than those on which we may differ. The Urban League believes strongly in that
interpretation of black power which emphasizes self-determination - pride - self respect - participation
and control of one's destiny and community affairs.
(10) C. L. R. James, speech on Black Power in London in 1967.
Black Power. I believe that this slogan is destined to become one of the great political slogans of our time.
Of course, only time itself can tell that. Nevertheless, when we see how powerful an impact this slogan
has made it is obvious that it touches very sensitive nerves in the political consciousness of the world
today. This evening I do not intend to tell you that it is your political duty to fight against racial
consciousness in the British people; or that you must seek ways and means to expose and put an end to
the racialist policies of the present Labour government. If you are not doing that already I don't see that
this meeting will help you to greater political activity. That is not the particular purpose of this meeting
though, as you shall hear, there will be specific aims and concrete proposals. What I aim to do this
evening is to make clear to all of us what this slogan Black Power means, what it does not mean, cannot
mean; and I say quite plainly, we must get rid, once and for all, of a vast amount of confusion which is
arising, copiously, both from the right and also from the left. Now I shall tell you quite precisely what I
intend to do this evening. The subject is extremely wide, comprising hundreds of millions of people, and
therefore in the course of an address of about an hour or so, we had better begin by being very precise
about what is going to be said and what is not going to be said.
But before I outline, so to speak, the premises on which I will build, I want to say a few words about
Stokely Carmichael: I think I ought to say Stokely because everybody, everywhere, calls him Stokely
which I think is a political fact of some importance. The slogan Black Power, beginning in the United
States and spreading from there elsewhere, is undoubtedly closely associated with him and with those
who are fighting with him. But for us in Britain his name, whether we like it or not, means more than that.
It is undoubtedly his presence here, and the impact that he has made in his speeches and his
conversations, that have made the slogan Black Power reverberate in the way that it is doing in political
Britain - and even outside of that, in Britain in general. And I want to begin by making a particular
reference to Stokely which, fortunately, I am in a position to make. And I do this because on the whole in
public speaking, in writing (and also to a large degree in private conversation), I usually avoid, take great
care to avoid placing any emphasis on a personality in politics.
I was reading the other day Professor Levi-Strauss and in a very sharp attack on historical conceptions
prevalent today, I saw him say that the description of personality, or of the anecdote (which so many
people of my acquaintance historically and politically live by) were the lowest forms of history. With
much satisfaction I agreed; I have been saying so for nearly half a century. But then he went on to place
the political personality within a context that I thought was misleading, and it seemed to me that in
avoiding it as much as I have done, I was making a mistake, if not so much in writing, certainly in public
speech. And that is why I begin what I have to say, and will spend a certain amount of time, on one of the
most remarkable personalities of contemporary politics. And I am happy to say that I did not have to wait
until Stokely came here to understand the force which he symbolizes.
I heard him speak in Canada at Sir George Williams University in March of this year. There were about
one thousand people present, chiefly white students, about sixty or seventy Negro people, and I was so
struck by what he was saying and the way he was saying it (a thing which does not happen to me
politically very often) that I sat down immediately and took the unusual step of writing a letter to him, a
political letter. After all, he was a young man of twenty-three or twenty-four and I was old enough to be
his grandfather and, as I say, I thought I had a few things to tell him which would be of use to him and,
through him, the movement he represented.
Black Power 5
Loving v. Virginia, 1967
Loving Decision: 40 Years of Legal Interracial Unions
National Public Radio
June 11, 2007
This week marks the 40th anniversary of a seminal moment in the civil rights movement: the
legalization of interracial marriage. But the couple at the heart of the landmark Supreme Court
case of Loving v. Virginia never intended to be in the spotlight.
On June 12, 1967, the nation's highest court voted unanimously to overturn the conviction of
Richard and Mildred Loving, a young interracial couple from rural Caroline County, Va.
That decision struck down the anti-miscegenation laws — written to prevent the mixing of the
races — that were on the books at the time in more than a dozen states, including Virginia.
'They Just Were in Love'
Richard Loving was white; his wife, Mildred, was black. In 1958, they went to Washington, D.C.
— where interracial marriage was legal — to get married. But when they returned home, they
were arrested, jailed and banished from the state for 25 years for violating the state's Racial
Integrity Act.
To avoid jail, the Lovings agreed to leave Virginia and relocate to Washington.
For five years, the Lovings lived in Washington, where Richard worked as a bricklayer. The
couple had three children. Yet they longed to return home to their family and friends in
Caroline County.
That's when the couple contacted Bernard Cohen, a young attorney who was volunteering at
the ACLU. They requested that Cohen ask the Caroline County judge to reconsider his decision.
"They were very simple people, who were not interested in winning any civil rights principle,"
Cohen, now retired, tells Michele Norris.
"They just were in love with one another and wanted the right to live together as husband and
wife in Virginia, without any interference from officialdom. When I told Richard that this case
was, in all likelihood, going to go to the Supreme Court of the United States, he became wideeyed and his jaw dropped," Cohen recalls.
Road to the High Court
Cohen and another lawyer challenged the Lovings' conviction, but the original judge in the case
upheld his decision. Judge Leon Bazile wrote: "Almighty God created the races white, black,
Loving v. Virginia 1
yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. ... The fact that he
separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
As Cohen predicted, the case moved all the way up to the Supreme Court, where the young
ACLU attorney made a vivid and personal argument:
"The Lovings have the right to go to sleep at night knowing that if should they not wake in the
morning, their children would have the right to inherit from them. They have the right to be
secure in knowing that, if they go to sleep and do not wake in the morning, that one of them, a
survivor of them, has the right to Social Security benefits. All of these are denied to them, and
they will not be denied to them if the whole anti-miscegenistic scheme of Virginia... [is] found
unconstitutional."
After the ruling — now known as the "Loving Decision" — the family, which had already quietly
moved back to Virginia, finally returned home to Caroline County.
But their time together was cut short: Richard Loving died in a car crash in 1975. Mildred
Loving, who never remarried, still lives in Caroline County in the house that Richard built. She
politely refuses to give interviews.
Richard and Mildred Loving gave their name to the landmark Supreme Court ruling that struck down
anti-miscegenation laws in more than a dozen states.
Loving v. Virginia 2
Richard Loving poses with his son, Donald, in 1965.
Loving v. Virginia 3
Opinion
WARREN, C.J., Opinion of the Court
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory
scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the
basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the
Fourteenth Amendment. [n1] For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those
constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the
Fourteenth Amendment.
The two statutes under which appellants were convicted and sentenced are part of a
comprehensive statutory scheme aimed at prohibiting and punishing interracial marriages. The
Lovings were convicted of violating § 258 of the Virginia Code:
Leaving State to evade law. -- If any white person and colored person shall go out of this State,
for the purpose of being married, and with the intention of returning, and be married out of it,
and afterwards return to and reside in it, cohabiting as man and wife, they shall be punished as
provided in § 20-59, and the marriage shall be governed by the same law as if it had been
solemnized in this State. The fact of their cohabitation here as man and wife shall be evidence of
their marriage.
While the state court is no doubt correct in asserting that marriage is a social relation subject to
the State's police power, Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888), the State does not contend in its
argument before this Court that its powers to regulate marriage are unlimited notwithstanding the
commands of the Fourteenth Amendment. Nor could it do so in light of Meyer v. Nebraska, 262
U.S. 390 (1923), and Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942). Instead, the State argues that
the meaning of the Equal Protection Clause, as illuminated by the statements of the Framers, is
only that state penal laws containing an interracial element [p8] as part of the definition of the
offense must apply equally to whites and Negroes in the sense that members of each race are
punished to the same degree. Thus, the State contends that, because its miscegenation statutes
punish equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage, these
statutes, despite their reliance on racial classifications, do not constitute an invidious
discrimination based upon race. The second argument advanced by the State assumes the validity
of its equal application theory. The argument is that, if the Equal Protection Clause does not
outlaw miscegenation statutes because of their reliance on racial classifications, the question of
constitutionality would thus become whether there was any rational basis for a State to treat
interracial marriages differently from other marriages. On this question, the State argues, the
scientific evidence is substantially in doubt and, consequently, this Court should defer to the
wisdom of the state legislature in adopting its policy of discouraging interracial marriages.
Because we reject the notion that the mere "equal application" of a statute containing racial
classifications is enough to remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment's
proscription of all invidious racial discriminations, we do not accept the State's contention that
these statutes should be upheld if there is any possible basis for concluding that they serve a
rational purpose. The mere fact of equal application does not mean that our analysis of these
statutes should follow the approach we have taken in cases involving no racial discrimination
Loving v. Virginia 4
where the Equal Protection Clause has been arrayed against a statute discriminating between the
kinds of advertising which may be displayed on trucks in New York City, Railway Express
Agency, Inc. v. New York, 336 U.S. 106 (1949), or an exemption in Ohio's ad valorem tax for
merchandise owned by a nonresident in a storage warehouse, Allied Stores of Ohio, [p9] Inc. v.
Bowers, 358 U.S. 522 (1959). In these cases, involving distinctions not drawn according to race,
the Court has merely asked whether there is any rational foundation for the discriminations, and
has deferred to the wisdom of the state legislatures. In the case at bar, however, we deal with
statutes containing racial classifications, and the fact of equal application does not immunize the
statute from the very heavy burden of justification which the Fourteenth Amendment has
traditionally required of state statutes drawn according to race.
The State argues that statements in the Thirty-ninth Congress about the time of the passage of the
Fourteenth Amendment indicate that the Framers did not intend the Amendment to make
unconstitutional state miscegenation laws. Many of the statements alluded to by the State
concern the debates over the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which President Johnson vetoed, and the
Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27, enacted over his veto. While these statements have some
relevance to the intention of Congress in submitting the Fourteenth Amendment, it must be
understood that they pertained to the passage of specific statutes, and not to the broader, organic
purpose of a constitutional amendment. As for the various statements directly concerning the
Fourteenth Amendment, we have said in connection with a related problem that, although these
historical sources "cast some light" they are not sufficient to resolve the problem;
[a]t best, they are inconclusive. The most avid proponents of the post-War Amendments
undoubtedly intended them to remove all legal distinctions among "all persons born or
naturalized in the United States." Their opponents, just as certainly, were antagonistic to both the
letter and the spirit of the Amendments, and wished them to have the most limited effect.
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 489 (1954). See also Strauder [p10] v. West
Virginia, 100 U.S. 303, 310 (1880). We have rejected the proposition that the debates in the
Thirty-ninth Congress or in the state legislatures which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment
supported the theory advanced by the State, that the requirement of equal protection of the laws
is satisfied by penal laws defining offenses based on racial classifications so long as white and
Negro participants in the offense were similarly punished. McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184
(1964).
The State finds support for its "equal application" theory in the decision of the Court in Pace v.
Alabama, 106 U.S. 583 (1883). In that case, the Court upheld a conviction under an Alabama
statute forbidding adultery or fornication between a white person and a Negro which imposed a
greater penalty than that of a statute proscribing similar conduct by members of the same race.
The Court reasoned that the statute could not be said to discriminate against Negroes because the
punishment for each participant in the offense was the same. However, as recently as the 1964
Term, in rejecting the reasoning of that case, we stated "Pace represents a limited view of the
Equal Protection Clause which has not withstood analysis in the subsequent decisions of this
Court." McLaughlin v. Florida, supra, at 188. As we there demonstrated, the Equal Protection
Clause requires the consideration of whether the classifications drawn by any statute constitute
an arbitrary and invidious discrimination. The clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth
Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the
States. Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 71 (1873); Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303,
Loving v. Virginia 5
307-308 (1880); Ex parte Virginia, 100 U.S. 339, 334-335 (1880); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S.
1 (1948); Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 U.S. 715 (1961). [p11]
There can be no question but that Virginia's miscegenation statutes rest solely upon distinctions
drawn according to race. The statutes proscribe generally accepted conduct if engaged in by
members of different races. Over the years, this Court has consistently repudiated "[d]istinctions
between citizens solely because of their ancestry" as being "odious to a free people whose
institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality." Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S.
81, 100 (1943). At the very least, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications,
especially suspect in criminal statutes, be subjected to the "most rigid scrutiny," Korematsu v.
United States, 323 U.S. 214, 216 (1944), and, if they are ever to be upheld, they must be shown
to be necessary to the accomplishment of some permissible state objective, independent of the
racial discrimination which it was the object of the Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate. Indeed,
two members of this Court have already stated that they
cannot conceive of a valid legislative purpose . . . which makes the color of a person's skin the
test of whether his conduct is a criminal offense.
McLaughlin v. Florida, supra, at 198 (STEWART, J., joined by DOUGLAS, J., concurring).
There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination
which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages
involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own
justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. [n11] We have consistently
denied [p12] the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of
race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial
classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.
II
These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the
Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been
recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free
men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and
survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S.
190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial
classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle
of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens
of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of
choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the
freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot
be infringed by the State.
These convictions must be reversed. It is so ordered.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/388/1#writing-USSC_CR_0388_0001_ZO
Loving v. Virginia 6