Civil Rights Movement
Civil Rights Movement—outline
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The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
Civil Rights Movement—outline
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee
 Sit-ins
 Freedom Summer
 Success
 Other ethnic movements
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Civil Rights Movement—outline







The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
The preexisting conditions—
outline
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The preexisting conditions
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Separate but equal
Sharecropping
Disenfranchisement
White terrorism
NAACP
“Separate but equal”
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Separate schools were anything but equal
◦ E.g.,Yazoo City, Mississippi, in the late 1950s spent
 $245 per white child
 $3 per black child
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If a black woman went shopping, she was forbidden to try on
her new dress.
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If a black father sought food for his family, you would have to
enter the restaurant that door.
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Black men and women were never greeted with respectful
titles of some of the politeness: instead of “Mr. Nelson” it
was “Billy,” instead of “Mrs. Mayberry,” it was “Jan.”
Sharecropping
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The new form of racial despotism
◦ blacks were forced back onto Southern
plantations to a new system of (informal)
slavery called sharecropping
◦ Blacks were kept in dirt-floor poverty
through a system of unending debt.
Disenfranchisement
Black men won the right to vote with the
ratification of the 15th amendment in
1870
 Women won suffrage rights in1920
 However, black women and men were
disenfranchised by dozens of backhanded
tactics
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Disenfranchisement
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When blacks went to the courthouse to register, they were told
that they had to own property or that they needed to be
accompanied by whites, who could vouch for their character.
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Some were forced to take complicated literacy tests requiring
them to copy down and explain portions of the state’s
Constitution.
◦ Others were posed more humiliating questions: “How many feathers
are on a chicken?” “How many bubbles are on a bar of soap?”
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As a result, most Southern blacks were not registered to vote.
◦ For example, in 1960 fewer than 2% of Mississippi’s black adults were
registered to vote.
White terrorism
Racial domination was safeguarded by
ongoing, systematic, and virtually
unchallenged white terrorism.
 Blacks literally were beaten, raped, and
strangled into submission.
 Between 1930 and 1950, 33 blacks (that
we know of) were lynched in Mississippi.
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Emmett Till
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who had
traveled to Mississippi to visit relatives.
 Till whistled at a white woman on August 24, 1955.
He was dead two days later.
 White men broke into his relative’s home, kidnapped
Emmett, beat him, cut off his testicles, shot him, and
tossed him into the Tallahatchie River.
 It has been said that Emmett Till’s murder galvanized
and energized many Americans, black and white, to
participate in the Civil Rights Movement.

Emmett Till, 1955
NAACP
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The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.
◦ The dominant black protest organization that
preceded the modern civil rights movement
◦ Founded in 1909 my black and white
intellectuals.
◦ Formal bureaucratic organization based in
New York that did battle with racial
domination primarily in the courts
NAACP
Won several Supreme Court cases that
dismantled legal barriers preventing blacks from
voting.
 Launched education programs targeting white
America.
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◦ The NAACP produced press releases, speeches,
pamphlets, and a magazine (The Crisis)
 Depicted nonwhite people as realistic, reasonable, and
intelligent human beings.
 The NAACP supported works that displayed and praised the
accomplishments of nonwhite scholars, artists, and writers.
Opposition to the NAACP
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At midcentury, precisely the time when the NAACP began fighting
for the integration of public schools, whites launched a coordinated
attack that would eventually bring the organization to its knees.
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In 1956, most Southern state legislatures demanded that the
NAACP release its membership lists.
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Sociologist Aldon Morris writes, “The intention was clear. If the
NAACP yielded to this pressure and revealed its members’
addresses, the members would suffer economic reprisals, violence,
and other forms of repression. It was clear that the organization
could be destroyed by exposing its members.”
Opposition to the NAACP
The NAACP refused to capitulate and, as
a result, was outlawed in several southern
states.
 Cruel acts of terror were visited on
NAACP leaders, such as Medgar Evers,
Mississippi’s first NAACP field secretary,
who was fatally shot in the back on the
steps of his home.
 The weakening of the NAACP seem to
strengthen the new kind of political
protest
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Civil Rights Movement—outline
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The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
The Modern Civil Rights
Movement
The Civil Rights Movement is a collection of
organizations and people who carried out
political acts aimed at dismantling the white
power structure by abolishing racial segregation,
nonwhite disenfranchisement, economic
exploitation.
 The inspiration of the Civil Rights Movement
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◦ The modern Civil Rights Movement drew inspiration,
strength, and strategy from that “black organizing
tradition,” one that runs from slave revolts, through
reconstruction, and through the tumultuous 60s.
Civil Rights Movement—outline
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The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
Direct action

Civil rights organizing shifted from:
◦ a model based on legal action to one based on direct
action
 Wage wars, not only in the courtrooms, but also in the streets,
at segregated lunch counters, and from the inside of jail cells.
◦ a bureaucratic organization to community-based
groups
 One that involved not just intellectuals and lawyers but
ordinary people.
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Based in the South where racial domination was
most overt and bloody
Civil Rights Movement—outline
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




The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
Black veterans
Black veterans asked, “How can my
country criticize racism abroad but not at
home?”
 Many black soldiers, among them Medgar
Evers, return to their communities
determined to stand up against racial
injustice.
 They found support in the Double V
Campaign – “Victory at home; victory
abroad”
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Civil Rights Movement—outline
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



The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
Black preachers

The black church served as the
institutional hub of the movement.
◦ The church was relatively isolated from the
white power structures that gripped the rest
of society.
◦ It housed in mass of blacks, who, under its
roof, could voice their problems and needs in
a safe space.
◦ It was financially independent. Preachers did
not have to worry about losing their jobs if
they caused a stir.
Black preachers

The black church would produce some of
the most outspoken critics of white
domination.
◦ For example, a young preacher from Atlanta,
bearing the name of a revolutionary who had
come for him: Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil Rights Movement—outline
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

The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

Rosa Parks, in
defiance of Alabama
segregation laws,
refused to relinquish
her bus seat to a
white man.
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
One of the first major demonstrations of the
Civil Rights Movement.
 Martin Luther King Jr. was volunteered to head
the Montgomery Improvement Association, a new
organization formed to support the boycott.
 Hundreds of Montgomery’s blacks supported the
boycott, refusing to ride on the segregated buses.
 Helped to bring about a Supreme Court ruling,
handed down on November 15, 1956, outlawing
racial segregation on buses

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
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Trained hundreds of black activists in the
teachings and tactics of nonviolent
resistance
◦ Focusing their energy on systemic racism,
embedded in social institutions, rather than
on individual people with racist beliefs
Inspired other blacks to engage in direct
confrontation with racial domination
through public and persistent protest
 Organized black clergy as a political force
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Civil Rights Movement—outline







The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC)
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Founded in 1957
The SCLC would serve as the key
organization of the Civil Rights struggle.
◦ It would organize many mass demonstrations,
marches, boycotts, and rallies.
◦ It would also help to run Citizenship Schools
 Mini-courses that taught blacks to read so they
could pass restrictive voting tests
Civil Rights Movement—outline
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee
 Sit-ins
 Freedom Summer
 Success
 Other ethnic movements

Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee

SNCC (founded in 1960) incorporated
into one organization hundreds of
politically mobilized young people, many
whom were college students.
Civil Rights Movement—outline
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee
 Sit-ins
 Freedom Summer
 Success
 Other ethnic movements

Sit-ins (1960)

Among the first major demonstrations invented and
orchestrated by students were sit-ins.
◦ On February 1, 1960, four black freshman at Greensboro’s
North Carolina agricultural and technical College took seats at a
“whites only” lunch counter at the local Woolworth’s
department store.
◦ They were not served, though they repeatedly (and politely)
asked for a menu and remained on their stools until closing time.
◦ The following day, 24 students took seats at the counter.
◦ By the end of the week, there were more students who wanted
to sit-in than there were seats to hold them.
Greensboro Woolworth’s department
store (1960)
Sit-ins

The Greensboro events sparked a
national movement.
◦ Hundreds of high school and college students
stages sit-ins all around the South.
◦ Many were jailed and beaten for doing so.

By the summer of 1960, many cities had
desegregated their lunch counters.
Freedom Rides (1961)
Civil Rights Movement—outline
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee
 Sit-ins
 Freedom Summer
 Success
 Other ethnic movements

Freedom Summer
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In the summer of 1964, 1000 volunteers, most of them white college
students, were trained in nonviolent tactics and sent to Mississippi in a
massive project known as Freedom Summer.
Freedom Summer
The volunteers lived with black families,
and worked towards two important goals:
 Increasing voter registration
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◦ Many blacks registered to vote
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Bringing quality education to Mississippi’s
poorest areas through the establishment
of Freedom Schools
◦ The Freedom Schools attracted between
3000 and 3500 students
Freedom Summer
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The volunteers of the summer came faceto-face with what had victimized
Mississippi’s black population for years
◦ By the end of Freedom Summer
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4 volunteers had been killed
4 critically wounded
80 beaten
1000 arrested
37 churches bombed
30 homes burned
Civil Rights Movement—outline
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee
 Sit-ins
 Freedom Summer
 Success
 Other ethnic movements

Success

The Civil Rights Act of 1964
◦ Outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex or national
origin in hotels, theaters, transportation, restaurants, and the workplace.
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965
◦ The most significant victories of civil rights movement.
◦ The act prohibited voter discrimination, outlawed literacy tests, and
gave the federal government power to oversee voter registration.
◦ As a result, for the first time in their lives – a full century after the fall
of slavery – blacks were able to participate in American democracy.
 E.g., only 5% of black Mississippians were registered to vote in 1964, 24% were
registered in 1968
Civil Rights Movement—outline
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee
 Sit-ins
 Freedom Summer
 Success
 Other ethnic movements

Inspired other ethnic movements
American Indian Movement (founded
1968)
 Mexican-American-led movements
 Asian-American activism
 Arab-American mobilization
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◦ Six-Day War of 1967
American Indian Movement
American Indian Movement (founded 1968) -- property seizures – Bureau of Indian
Affairs (1972), Alcatraz (1969-1971)
Mexican-American-led movements
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“What really counts is labor: the human
beings who torture their bodies, sacrifice
their youth, and numb their spirits to
produce this great agricultural wealth—a
wealth so vast that it feeds all of America
and much of the world. And yet the men,
women, and children who are the flesh
and blood of this production often do not
have enough to feed themselves.” —
César Chávez (1979, Rufino Contreras
eulogy)
César Chavez (1979)

What was their reward for
their service and their
sacrifice? When they
petitioned for a more just
share of what they
themselves produced, when
they spoke out against the
injustice they endured, the
company answered them
with bullets; the company
sent hired guns to quiet
Rufino Contreras.
Asian-American activism
Third World Liberation Front strike (1968-1969)
Civil Rights Movement—outline







The preexisting conditions
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Direct action
Black veterans
Black preachers
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Southern Christian leadership conference
(SCLC)
Civil Rights Movement—outline
Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee
 Sit-ins
 Freedom Summer
 Success
 Other ethnic movements
