Australian Curriculum links
Historical knowledge Topic code
and understanding
The US Civil Rights
ACDSEH105
movement and its
influence on Australia
Elaborations
Historical skills
Outlining the Freedom
Rides in the US, how
they inspired Civil Rights
campaigners in Australia,
and how they became
a turning point in the
Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander people’s
struggles for rights and
freedoms
Identify and locate relevant sources,
using ICT and other methods
Develop texts, particularly
descriptions and discussions that
use evidence from a range of sources
that are referenced
Select and use a range of
communication forms (oral, graphic,
written) and digital technologies
Timeline
1863
President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring all slaves to be free.
1896
Landmark Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson, holds that racial segregation is constitutional,
paving the way for the repressive ‘Jim Crow’ laws in southern US states.
1909
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in New
York, led by W.E.B. Du Bois. For the next half-century, the NAACP would serve as the country’s most
influential African-American civil rights organisation.
1915
The Grandfather Clause, which restricted African-American voting registration, is repealed.
1919
A series of race riots occurs in Chicago, leaving thirty-eight people dead.
1954
The Supreme Court bans segregation in US public schools in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
1955
In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat for a white man, causing a successful
bus boycott by the African-American community.
Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African-American boy, is murdered for whistling at a white woman.
Rights and Freedoms
Produced by HTAV. © Alister McKeich 2013
1
1957
The Little Rock Central High School Board votes in favour of school integration; however, the
governor of Arkansas attempts to prevent nine African-American students from entering the school.
This is eventually overruled.
1960
Four African-American students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College stage a
sit-in at a lunch counter where they are refused service because of their race. The Student Non-violent
Co-ordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed.
1961
Student volunteers called Freedom Riders begin testing state laws prohibiting racial segregation on
US buses and railway stations.
1962
James Meredith becomes the first African-American student to enrol at the University of Mississippi.
1963
Dr Martin Luther King Jr is arrested and gaoled during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham,
Alabama. He writes his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail,’ advocating non-violent civil disobedience.
During protests in Alabama, the Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor uses police
dogs and fire hoses on African-American protesters.
The head of the Mississippi NAACP is murdered outside his house.
Governor Wallace stands in the schoolhouse door of the University of Alabama before being forced by
President John F. Kennedy to allow African-American students to enrol.
Thousands gather for the March on Washington, where Dr King gives his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
A Birmingham African-American church is bombed, resulting in four deaths.
1964
A poll tax, used to prevent African-Americans from voting, is outlawed with the 24th Amendment to
the Constitution.
The Civil Rights Act forbids racial discrimination.
Civil rights workers James E. Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman are murdered by
white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan.
1965
Malcolm X splits off from Elijah Muhammad’s Black Muslims and is assassinated in retaliation.
Dr King leads a fifty-four-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to support AfricanAmerican voter registration.
The Watts Riots occur in Los Angeles, resulting in looting, burning and thirty-four deaths.
Influenced by the US Freedom Rides, Charles Perkins leads a bus tour through north-western New
South Wales in support of Aboriginal rights. The action demonstrates the extent of discrimination
against Aboriginal people in country towns, including refusal of service in shops and segregated
cinemas, swimming pools, hotels and clubs.
2
Produced by HTAV. © Alister McKeich 2013
Rights and Freedoms
1966
The Black Panthers are founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland, California.
1967
More race riots occur in Detroit and New York, the worst in US history. Forty-three people die.
1968
Martin Luther King Jr is murdered by James Earl Ray – riots break out in 125 cities.
President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental
and financing of housing.
1969
Members of the Aborigines Advancement League in Australia call for the removal of non-Aboriginal
people from positions of power in the organisation.
1970
As part of a move towards organisations controlled by Indigenous people, the Redfern Aboriginal
Legal Service is established in Sydney.
1971
Dennis Walker and Sam Watson open the Australian chapter of the Black Panthers in Brisbane, based
on the US left-wing and anti-racism organisation of the same name. They monitor police activity and
the number of Indigenous young white men imprisoned.
1972
The Aboriginal tent embassy is established outside Parliament House, Canberra, to lobby for land
rights.
1992
Race riots occur in Los Angeles after the police who beat African-American man Rodney King are
acquitted.
The High Court of Australia hands down its landmark decision, Mabo v. Queensland (No 2),
overturning the concept that Australia was terra nullius (‘empty land’) when the British arrived and
finding that native title exists over certain lands.
2008
Barack Obama is the first African-American to be elected US president.
Rights and Freedoms
Produced by HTAV. © Alister McKeich 2013
3
Introduction
As the Civil Rights movement in the United
States gathered strength throughout the
1960s and protests flared in other parts of the
world, Australia began to experience similar
struggles and conflicts for rights and freedoms,
particularly in regard to Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander (ATSI) people. While some
methods of protest (such as Freedom Rides
and Black Power) were directly influenced by
the US Civil Rights movement, others (like the
Wave Hill Walk-off ) were inspired by workers’
movements in countries like France. Yet others,
such as the Aboriginal tent embassy in Canberra,
emerged entirely from Australian conditions.
countries. After World War II, long-standing
colonial empires were threatened and much of
Africa and Asia gained independence. In Cuba,
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro led a successful
revolution in 1959, while Algeria saw armed
revolution against its French colonisers. In
France, students protested against the old order
and embraced socialism. In several countries
the Vietnam War brought human rights and US
military aggression into the spotlight.
It was in this international context of emerging
human, social and political rights that
Indigenous Australians became more radicalised
in the 1960s.
From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s there was
great social upheaval in industrialised Western
DID YOU KNOW?
During the Vietnam War, African-American soldiers made up 12.6 per cent of American
soldiers despite comprising only eleven per cent the population.1
1. James Willbanks, Vietnam War: The Essential Reference Guide (California: ABC-CLIO, 2013).
4
Produced by HTAV. © Alister McKeich 2013
Rights and Freedoms
US Civil Rights movement
In many southern states of the US,
discriminatory laws, known as ‘Jim Crow’ laws,
segregated society according to race from the
1870s onwards. This included having separate
schools and other public places such as cafes,
toilets and water fountains for white people and
African-Americans. The northern states did not
have formal segregation but there were informal
social barriers to equal participation in work
and politics. The standard of living of AfricanAmericans was far lower than that of white
Americans.
The US Civil Rights movement peaked during
the late 1960s, when massive protests – which
included people from a range of backgrounds
– helped to repeal segregationist laws in the
South, give voting rights to African-Americans
and raise awareness of social problems. The
Vietnam War, in which African-American men
were conscripted and killed at a proportionally
greater rate than other Americans, also brought
inequality and disadvantage to the fore.2
The US movement included a number of highprofile court cases and civil disobedience
demonstrations, such as boycotts, sit-ins and
marches. (For the most part these were nonviolent.) Notable achievements during this time
were the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964,
which outlawed discrimination based on ‘race,
color, religion, or national origin’ in employment,
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Key leaders
Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Rosa
Parks were prominent figures in the US Civil
Rights era – each had a different style and
emphasis.
King was a Baptist minister who advocated for
non-violent civil disobedience in the form of
boycotts, marches and sit-ins. His tactic of nonphysical resistance eventually demonstrated to
the world the brutality of the US Government,
as police used dogs, batons and water cannons
to break up protests. King is famous for his
oratory, in particular the ‘I have a Dream’ speech,
made during the March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom in 1963. The following year
he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his
leadership in the fight for racial equality. King
was assassinated on 4 April 1968 in Memphis,
Tennessee.
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was a Muslim
minister from the Nation of Islam (led by the
‘prophet’ Elijah Muhammad). He took the
Rights and Freedoms
Above: Dr Martin Luther King Jr at the
March on Washington, 1963.
surname ‘X’ in place of Little to highlight the
fact that many African-Americans had had their
names imposed by slave-owners in previous
generations. Malcolm X’s father – like King, a
Baptist minister – was rumoured to have been
killed by white supremacists, and Malcolm spent
time in foster care and eventually prison, where
Produced by HTAV. © Alister McKeich 2013
5
he converted to Islam. Although Malcolm X’s
views changed over time, he is probably best
known for his public speaking ability, radical
ideas regarding African-American separatism
(as opposed to integration) and for calling
on African-Americans to react to racism and
oppression ‘by any means necessary.’ Malcolm
X was assassinated on 21 February 1965 in
Manhattan, New York.
On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to
give up her seat on a bus for a white man,
violating Alabama law which required ‘coloured’
passengers to give up their seats if the ‘white’
section of a bus was full. Parks’ act of civil
disobedience was an important step in the
development of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,
through which African-Americans eventually
brought an end to segregation on public buses.
Above: Malcolm X, 1964.
Above: Rosa Parks, 1955.
DID YOU KNOW?
Rosa Parks wrote, ‘People always say that I [refused to] give up my seat because I was tired,
but that isn’t true. … The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.’
2. Willbanks, Vietnam War, 5.
6
Produced by HTAV. © Alister McKeich 2013
Rights and Freedoms
Methods of protest
Sit-ins
One technique used to highlight racial
segregation in US shops, cafes and other sites
was the ‘sit-in,’ which involved protesters sitting
on the ground or floor in a group. One of the
most successful cases was the series of sit-ins
held in Nashville, Tennessee in 1960, which led
to the desegregation of lunch counters. The sit-in
was used in Australia also, including in anti–
Vietnam War protests.
Freedom Rides
In 1960 the US Federal Government declared
that the segregation of interstate buses and
trains was unconstitutional. However, in many
southern states these laws were not enforced,
and segregation continued. Students of different
races challenged this in 1961 by riding on public
buses together, with serious consequences. The
main bodies behind these Freedom Rides were
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and
Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee
(SNCC). In some southern states, Freedom
Riders were beaten and police protection was
minimal. The action brought national attention
to the ongoing segregation in the South and
inspired similar action elsewhere.
Marches
The Civil Rights movement was known for its
political rallies and street marches. One of the
largest was the March on Washington for Jobs
and Freedom in 1963, which called for civil and
economic rights for African-Americans. On 28
August, up to 300 000 people descended on the
Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC and heard
Martin Luther King Jr (leader of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference) give his
famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. Although the
march was not universally supported (most
notably by Nation of Islam leader Malcolm
X), the significance and impact of the March
on Washington and King’s speech, as well as
the involvement of popular singers such as
Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, is believed to have
contributed to the passing of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
DID YOU KNOW?
The US Freedom Rides in 1961 influenced a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous
students in New South Wales to undertake a similar protest in 1965.
Rights and Freedoms
Produced by HTAV. © Alister McKeich 2013
7
Source 13: ‘I Have a Dream’ Speech
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was
to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be
guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’ It is obvious
today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of colour are
concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad
check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’
Extract from Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s speech to the March on Washington, 28 August 1963.
Activity 14
1. Read Source 13.
2. Watch the better-known part of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at www.youtube.com/
watch?v=nFcbpGK9_aw.
3. Note down the key points raised by King in his speech.
4. What point does King make about promises made by the American Declaration of Independence
(1776) and Constitution (1787)?
5. Discuss the significance of the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop to the speech. What is Lincoln
best remembered for?
6. The speech is noted for its use of the three rhetorical techniques of ethos (moral authority),
pathos (emotion) and logos (logic). Note down examples of each of these from the speech. Might
King’s role as a Baptist minister have affected the first two in particular?
8
Produced by HTAV. © Alister McKeich 2013
Rights and Freedoms