Civil Rights
1950s -1960s
Civil Rights Big Four Civil Rights
Organizations
• NAACP 1909
• CORE Congress of Racial Equality 1942
• SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference
1957
• SNCC Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee 1960
Congress of Racial Equality CORE 1942
• Founded in 1942
• Non-Violent methods to create change
• Members made up of white and black
members for equality
1947 Desegregation of Baseball
• Brooklyn Dodgers sign Jackie
Robinson #42, UCLA graduate,
three-sport athlete and army
veteran
• First African American to play
baseball in Major League
Baseball
• Past: Played on a separate
Negro League
• First year was dangerous with
many threats
• Second year, Brooklyn loved
him
1947 Desegregation of Armed Forces
• President Truman fought to
desegregate the military
• US Military now fights together
as a complete military
• Take time to change the culture
of the military
• Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR’s wife
also helped to end segregation
• Korean War 1950-52: first war
where Americans fight together
in desegregated units
1947 Freedom Ride
• CORE organized a bus ride through the South to challenge
Jim Crow Laws
• In April 1947, sixteen people -- eight African Americans and
eight whites -- set off on a tour of cities in Virginia, North
Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. They traveled by bus
with the express purpose of challenging existing Jim Crow
laws.
• The freedom riders entered North Carolina on April 11 and
made stops in Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Greensboro,
and Winston-Salem. Bus drivers and police officers
challenged the passengers at nearly every stop, resulting in
arrests in Asheville and Chapel Hill.
http://www2.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/apr2005/
Freedom Riders
1954 Brown v Board of Education in
Topeka, Kansas
• The Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public
schools was unconstitutional
• Overturned Plessy v Ferguson 1896
• Thurgood Marshall argued for desegregation of public
schools in the Supreme Court
• Later, he would serve as the first African American
Supreme Court Justice
1957 Desegregation of Little Rock,
Arkansas
• By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to
attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High,
selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance
• Central High School in Littlerock was supposed to start out
desegregated
• Governor Faubus ordered the National Guard to monitor
the school on the first day of school September 3, 1957
• 9 blacks were denied entrance to the school by the
National Guard
• September 20th, Judge Davis ordered an injunction against
the governor
• About 1,000 townspeople kept the 9 blacks from entering
Little Rock Arkansas Nine
President Eisenhower
• On September 24, the
President ordered the
101st Airborne Division of
the United States Army to
Little Rock and federalized
the entire 10,000-member
Arkansas National Guard,
taking it out of the hands
of Faubus.
• Ernest Green was the first
African American to
graduate from Central High
School.
Montgomery Bus Boycotts
• Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King led a
bus boycott for about one year
ended when the Supreme Court
ruled that bus segregation was
unconstitutional.
• Dr. King was arrested (civil
disobedience) and paid a $500
fine or face 385 days in jail
• The 1955-56 Montgomery Bus
Boycott, a protest against
segregated public facilities in
Alabama, was led by Martin
Luther King Jr. and lasted for 381
days.
Rosa Parks
• Montgomery, Alabama 1955
• 43 year old Rosa Parks refused to give up her
seat to a white man in the front of the bus (civil
disobedience)
• Police arrived and arrested Mrs. Parks peacefully
1955 Emmett Till Case
• 14 year old Chicago boy Emmett Till said “Bye Baby”
to a white married lady in Mississippi while visiting
during the summer.
• The husband and brother of the wife picked up
Emmett in car and drove away.
• Body was beaten, shot, eye gouged out and barbed
wire placed around body and dumped in
Tallahatchie River
• Body of Till was photographed to show the world
how bad it is in the South
Both men were found not guilty by an
all white, male jury
• President Eisenhower ordered 1,000 US Army
101st Airborne and 10,000 National
Guardsmen to open the school to all students
and protect the 9 blacks
• Supremacy of Constitution: United States
Military over State National Guard
Martin Luther King Jr.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. was an
American clergyman, activist,
humanitarian, and leader in
the African-American Civil
Rights Movement. He is best
known for his role in the
advancement of civil rights
using nonviolent civil
disobedience
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference SCLC
• In 1957, Dr. King was elected president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC), an organization designed to provide
new leadership for the now burgeoning civil
rights movement.
• Served as president until 1968
Greensboro Sit-In
• The Greensboro sit-ins were
a series of nonviolent
protests in Greensboro,
North Carolina in 1960
which led to the Woolworth
department store chain
reversing its policy of racial
segregation in the Southern
United States.
1961 Freedom Rides
• Repeat 1947 trip
• Bus with blacks and whites
rode through the South to
talk with southern leaders
• Bus was fire bombed and
passengers were beaten by a
white crowd in Anniston,
Alabama
March on Washington 1963
• March for freedom and jobs for all men
• The march which drew over a quarter-million
people to the national mall. It was at this
march that Dr. King delivered his famous “I
Have a Dream” speech
1968
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s less than thirteen
years of nonviolent leadership ended abruptly
and tragically on April 4th, 1968, when he was
assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in
Memphis, Tennessee
Malcolm X
• Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little and also known
as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
• African-American Muslim minister and human
rights activist
• 1946 joined the Nation of Islam while in jail for
larceny and breaking and entering
• Did not trust the whites and was tired of
waiting for rights and freedom
• Preached armed resistance which went
against King and was tired of Nation of Islam
• February 1965, shortly after arguing with the
Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three
of its members.
Black Panthers 1966-1982
• Founded by Bobby Seale and
Huey Newton
• Formed to protect black
neighborhoods from police
brutality and profiling
• Marxist socialist ideas
• Tired of white oppression
• Started Black Power doctrine
“Black Power Movement”
• Malcolm X, Black
Panthers and Cicil
Rights led to more
ideas of self-help and
black power
Stokley Carmichael
• Stokely Carmichael was a black
activist active in the 1960s
American Civil Rights Movement
• Marched with King
• Honorary Representative of the
Black Panthers
• Carmichael became critical of civil
rights leaders who called for the
integration of African Americans
into existing institutions of the
middle-class mainstream.
Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee SNCC
• Shaw University Ella Baker
1960
• Student organized civildisobedience
• Sit-ins
• Protests
• March on Washington
James Meredith
• In 1962, he was the first
African-American student
admitted to the segregated
University of Mississippi
• Included in JFK’s inaugural
speech in 1961
• His goal was to put pressure
on the Kennedy
administration to enforce
civil rights for African
Americans
George Wallace
• Served as governor of
Alabama
• Segregationist and did not
support integration
• Ran for third party president
in 1964, 1968 and 1972
• Shot in 1972 by an assassin
and was paralyzed for life
• Changed ideas and was
against racism and
segregation
Earl Warren
• Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
• Warren Commission (Select Committee that
investigated JFK’s assassination
Civil Rights Act of 1964
• President Johnson signed
into law
• Great Society
• Outlawed major forms of
discrimination against racial,
ethnic, national and religious
minorities, and women.
24th Amendment
• January 1964
• End to Poll taxes and literacy tests
• Aggressive amendment to stop
disenfranchisement in the South which kept
blacks from voting
Voting Rights Act of 1965
• President Johnson signed into law
• The Act prohibits states and local
governments from imposing any "voting
qualification or prerequisite to voting
• Banned literacy tests and other measures that
barred blacks from voting from Jim Crow Laws
Cassius Clay “ I am the Greatest”
• One of the Greatest Boxers
• 1964 won the World Heavy-Weight
Championship at 22
• 1965 Joined the Nation of Islam
and converted
• Changed name to Muhammad Ali
• 1967 drafted and refused based on
religion, arrested, charged and
stripped of Boxing title and license
• 1971 Supreme Court reversed title
and he fought again winning the
title again in 1974 & 1978
Muhammad Ali “ The Greatest”