The Civil Rights Movement

1. The Civil Rights Movement FOCUS QUESTION: How did African Americans challenge segregation after World War II?

2. First Advance Highlander Folk School • Founded in 1932 by activist Myles Horton • Originally trained labor activists in the South & Appalachia • In 1950s, played critical role in the Civil Rights Movement • Famous attendees include: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Septima Clark, & many others

3. Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 • Supreme Court case that overturns Plessy v. Ferguson • School segregation is unconstitutional Biggest Problem:Many people don’t follow this ruling!

4. School Desegregation • By 1955, white opposition in the South had grown into massive resistance. Strategy: persuade all whites to resist compliance with the desegregation orders. • Tactics included: firing school employees who were willing to integrate, closing public schools rather than desegregating, and boycotting all integrated public education.

5. School Desegregation • Virtually no schools in the South integrated their schools after the Brown decision. • In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus defied a federal court order to admit nine African American students to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. • President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce desegregation.

6. “Little Rock Nine”, 1957President Eisenhower sends 11,000 federal troops to desegregate the high schoolhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnK6STv6xGk

7. School Desegregation • As desegregation continued, the membership of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) grew. • The KKK used violence or threats against anyone who was suspected of favoring desegregation or African American civil rights. • Ku Klux Klan terror, including intimidation and murder, was widespread in the South during the 1950s and 1960s, though Klan activities were not always reported in the media.

8. Montgomery Bus Boycott & Rosa Parks, 1955 • Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL • Starts the Montgomery Bus Boycott & is the “spark” of the Civil Rights Movement!

9. The Montgomery Bus Boycott • When Parks refused to move, she was arrested. • The local NAACP, led by Edgar D. Nixon, recognized that the arrest of Parks might rally local African Americans to protest segregated buses. Woman fingerprinted. Mrs. RosaParks, Negro seamstress, whose refusal to move to the back of a bus touched off the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.; LC-USZ62-109643

10. The Montgomery Bus Boycott • Montgomery’s black community had long been angry about mistreatment on city buses by rude and abusive white drivers. • The community had previously considered a boycott of the buses and overnight, one was organized. • The bus boycott was an immediate success, with almost unanimous support from the African Americans in Montgomery.

11. Greensboro Sit Ins, 1960 • Four black college students Jibreel Khazan (Ezell Blair Jr.), Franklin Eugene McCain,Joseph Alfred McNeil& David Leinail Richmondrefused to give up their seat at a “whites-only” lunch restaurant. • Started a sit-in movement across the country!

12. Sit-Ins • This was not a new form of protest, but the response to the sit-ins spread throughout North Carolina, and within weeks sit-ins were taking place in cities across the South. • Many restaurants were desegregated in response to the sit-ins. • These protests clearly demonstrated clearly that young African Americans were determined to reject segregation. Sit in in Mississippi

13. SNCC • In April 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, to help organize and direct the student sit-in movement. • King encouraged SNCC’s creation, but the most important early advisor to the students was Ella Baker, who worked for both the NAACP and SCLC. • SNCC went on to organize the Freedom Rides & the Freedom Ballot in Mississippi, risking and some losing their lives Ella Baker

14. Freedom Riders, 1961 • Groups of both white and black college students who rode buses through the south. They were attacked by mobs but did not quit.

15. Different Philosophies • What is a philosophy or strategy? • Think back to Booker T. Washington and WEB DuBois, what was each man’s strategy? • Is it possible to have different philosophies but still have the same goal?

16. Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X

17. Civil Disobedience or Non-Violence Civil Disobedience: refusing to obey unjust government or laws Examples: Martin Luther King Jr., Boycotts, Sit-Ins Organizations: Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), NAACP

18. Black Nationalism(Armed Resistance) • Black Nationalism: Called for black pride and a message of self-reliance and self-protection. Equality “by any means necessary” • Examples: Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) • Organizations: Black Panthers

19. Black Panthers • Felt nonviolence wasn’t working • More radical, militant, and confrontational – openly resisted police & carried guns • Sought justice, economic & political power “We been saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start saying now is black power.” - Stokely Carmichael

20. March on Washington, August 1963 “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.“

21. Second Wave of Movement: Political Changes • Think about it: • What political rights did African Americans have in the 1950s? • How were they denied these rights by some whites?

22. Civil Rights Act • 1964, LBJ was President • Influenced by “I Have a Dream” speech • Outlaws discrimination & gives all Americans equal access to public facilities • Culmination of sit-ins & freedom rides

23. Voting Rights Act • 1965 (LBJ was President) • Outlaws literacy tests • More African Americans able to register to vote

24. Third Wave: Violence and Resistance • Think About It: • Why might some whites be unhappy with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act?

25. Violence and Resistance • Race riots in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark • Blacks and whites fighting each other- the police come to break it up • White backlash: George Wallace for President