What does our country stand for?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
-The Declaration of Independence
July 4th, 1776
The Early Civil Rights Movement
Reconstruction Amendments
Segregation
Jim Crow Laws
The Great Migration
Early Civil Rights Groups
Times Are A Changing…
The Sparks the Lit the Fire
Civil Right Movement
The civil rights movement was a political, legal, and social
struggle to gain full citizenship rights for African Americans.
It has its roots in the abolitionist movement of the late 18th
and early 19th century.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s began as a challenge
to segregation, the system of laws and customs separating
African Americans and whites.
During this movement, individuals and civil rights
organizations challenged segregation and discrimination
with a variety of activities, including protest marches,
sit ins, boycotts, and refusal to abide by segregation laws.
Reconstruction Amendments
1864: The 13th amendment freed all
African Americans from slavery.
However, southern whites found ways
around this freedom by enacting the
BLACK CODES.
14th & 15th amendment were put into
place to counteract these codes
14th amendment gave all citizens
“equal protection under the law”
15th amendment prohibits any state
from denying citizens the right to vote
based on race, color, or creed.
Segregation
Segregation was an attempt
by many white Southerners to
separate the races in every
aspect of daily life.
Segregation was often called
the Jim Crow system, after a
minstrel show character from
the 1830s who was an African
American slave who embodied
negative stereotypes of African
Americans.
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws were a reaction
by southern states to the 14th
& 15th amendments. These
laws originally included the
denial of voting rights, known
as disenfranchisement.
Between 1890 and 1910, all
Southern states passed laws
imposing requirements for
voting such as literacy test &
poll taxes, but over time the
laws included many ways to
force segregation of races in
southern states.
Segregation
Segregation became common in
Southern states following the
end of Reconstruction in 1877.
These states began to pass
local and state laws that
specified certain public places
“For Whites Only” and others for
“Colored.”
African Americans had separate
schools, transportation,
restaurants, and parks, many of
which were poorly funded and
inferior to those of whites. Over
the next 75 years, Jim Crow
signs to separate the races went
up in every possible place.
Plessy v. Ferguson
“Separate but Equal”
In the late 1800s, African
Americans sued to stop separate
seating in railroad cars, states’
disenfranchisement of voters, and
denial of access to schools and
restaurants.
One of the cases against
segregated rail travel was Plessy
v. Ferguson (1896), in which the
Supreme Court of the United States
ruled that “separate but equal”
accommodations were
constitutional since they were of
equal quality.
The Great Migration
By 1910 each state that had been part of the
Confederacy had a complex and complete
system of Jim Crow laws in place. These
laws made African American second-class
citizens and led to intimidation and brutal
acts by the Ku Klux Klan to keep African
Americans in their place.
Between 1910 and 1930, hundreds of
thousands of African Americans migrated to
the North and West to escape the brutal and
economically depressed Rural South. They
hoped to take advantage of employment
opportunities in industry created by World
War I.
The Great Migration
Conditions in the North
Conditions for African Americans in the Northern states
were somewhat better, though up to 1910 only ten
percent of African Americans lived in the North.
Segregated facilities were not as common in the North,
but African Americans were usually denied entrance to
the best hotels and restaurants.
African Americans were usually free to vote in the North.
Perhaps the most difficult part of Northern life was the
economic discrimination against African Americans. At
the turn of the century, African Americans had to
compete with large numbers of recent European
immigrants for job opportunities, and they almost
always lost because of their race.
Civil Rights Organizations
In order to protest segregation an
the injustices they experienced,
African Americans created
national organizations.
The National Afro-American
League was formed in 1890 but
closed in 1908 due to lack of
funding.
In 1910, the National Urban
League was created to help
African Americans make the
transition to urban, industrial life.
This group is still around today
focusing on stopping the violence
in the inner city.
NAACP
W.E.B. Du Bois helped create
the Niagara Movement in
1905 and the National
Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) in 1909.
The NAACP became one of
the most important African
American organizations of the
twentieth century. It relied
mainly on legal strategies that
challenged segregation and
discrimination in the courts.
“The cost of liberty is less
than the price of repression.”
Times are a changing…
1920’-1930s: Harlem Renaissance: an
African American cultural movement which
centered around the Harlem neighborhood of
New York City.
Instead of more direct political means, African
American artists and writers used culture to
work for the goals of civil rights and equality.
1930’s: Great Depression: Hit African
Americans harder because many were
sharecroppers when agriculture prices were
at rock bottom or low industry workers whose
jobs were the first to go.
FDR’s New Deal helped millions of African
Americans by giving them relief money but
most of the jobs created by the New Deal
went to white Americans and so the African
American population couldn’t fully recover.
Times are a changing…
1940’s: WWII provides many
opportunities for African Americans
in war industry. African American
soldiers show great valor during the
war.
Many notice they are fighting for
freedoms in Europe that they are
denied at home.
1940-1950’s:Culture Shock for
Americans
Jackie Robinson becomes the first
African American in major league
baseball.
Popularity of Rock & Roll leads to a
break down in racial barriers.
The Sparks that lit the Fire!
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
Murder of Emmett Till (1955)
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956)