The Civil Rights Movement in Texas

1. The Civil Rights Movement in Texas

2. What are Civil Rights? • Civil rights are the nonpolitical rights of a citizen • The rights of personal liberty guaranteed to US citizens by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution and by acts of Congress.

3. Examples of Civil Rights • Freedom of speech • Freedom of press • Freedom of assembly • The right to vote • Freedom from involuntary servitude • The right to equality in public places

4. What is Discrimination? • Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class.

5. Is There Any Law Against Discrimination? • Statutes have been enacted to prevent discrimination based on a person's race, sex, religion, age, previous condition of servitude, physical limitation, national origin, and in some instances sexual preference.

6. 14th Amendment • The State should not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

7. The Civil Rights Movement • Several reform movements have occurred in the United States • aimed at abolishing racial discrimination against Americans of color and restoring suffrage in Southern states.

8. What Led to the Civil Rights Movement? • After the end of reconstruction, Southern states implemented laws that promoted: • Racial segregation • Disenfranchisement • Exploitation • Violence against minorities (Blacks, Latinos, Asians)

9. Civil Rights Movement in Texas • Civil-rights campaigns in Texas are generally associated with the state's two most prominent ethnic minorities: • African Americans • Mexican Americans

10. Civil Rights Movement in Texas • Mexican Americans have made efforts to bring about improved political circumstances since the Anglo-American domination of Texas began in 1836. • African Texans have fought for civil rights since their emancipation from slavery in 1865.

11. Pre-Civil War Atrocities • In the 1850s, Tejanos faced expulsion from their Central Texas homes on the accusation that they helped slaves escape to Mexico. • They became victims of Anglo wrath around the Goliad area during the Cart War of 1857, as they did in South Texas in 1859 after Juan N. Cortina‘s capture of Brownsville.

12. The U.S. Civil War (1861–1865)

13. Freedom at Last • When President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1865, an entire race of people was freed. • Texas’ 1866 Constitutional Convention gave African-American men the right to sue or be sued, to contract and be contracted with, to acquire and transmit property, to obtain equal criminal prosecution under the law, and to testify orally in any case involving another African American.

14. Freedom at Last • Significantly, the 1866 Constitution did not allow African Americans to hold public office or to vote. • 11th Texas Legislature refused to ratify either the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, or the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to African Americans.

15. Freedom at Last • The legislature wanted to return Texas as much as possible to the way it was before the war and restrict the rights of African Americans.

16. Post-Civil War Violence in Texas • The 1880s, white men in East Texas used violence as a method of political control, and lynching became the common form of retaliation. • The Ku Klux Klan, the White Caps, law officials, and the Texas Rangers all acting as agents of white authority, regularly terrorized both Mexican Americans and black Texans.

17. Segregation Followed Emancipation • Freedmen found themselves barred from most public places and schools, and confined to certain residential areas of towns. • By the early twentieth century, such practices had been sanctioned by law.

18. Segregation Followed Emancipation • These statutes were not formulated with Tejanos in mind, but they enforced them through social custom nonetheless. • African and Mexican Americans faced terrorist tactics, literacy tests, the stuffing of ballots, and accusations of incompetence when they won office.

19. Poll-tax and Political parties • Institution of poll-tax, a fixed tax for every person regardless of income, was used to disenfranchise minorities and poor whites. • By the late 1920s, Texas politicians had effectively immobilized African Texan voters through court cases that defined political parties as private organizations which could exclude members.

20. Jim Crow Laws • Increased the segregation of the races. • Blacks and Hispanics attended segregated and inferior "colored" and "Mexican" schools. • In mid-1950s, the state legislature passed segregationist laws directed at blacks (and by implication to Tejanos), some dealing with education, others with residential areas and public accommodations.

21. Protests • African and Mexican Americans criticized segregationist policies and white injustices via their newspapers, labor organizations, and self-help societies. • The period between 1900 and 1930 saw continued efforts by minorities to break down racial barriers.

22. Protests • Much of the leadership on behalf of civil rights came from the ranks of the middle class. • Black leaders established a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Houston in 1912. • The association pursued the elimination of the white primary and other obstacles to voting, as well as the desegregation of schools, institutions of higher education, and public places.

23. Fight for Equality • Mexican and Black Texans continued their advocacy for equality during the depression era. • The black movement, for its part, won increased white support in the 1930s from the ranks of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and from such prominent congressmen as Maury Maverick.

24. Desegregation of Schools • The famous case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) produced the integration of schools, buses, restaurants, and other public accommodations. • The case of Sweatt v. Painter (1950) integrated the University of Texas Law School, and in its wake several undergraduate colleges in the state desegregated.

25. 1960s • During the 1960s both African Americans and Mexican Americans took part in national movements intended to bring down racial barriers. • Black Texans held demonstrations within the state to protest the endurance of segregated conditions.

26. 1960s: Black Power • In conjunction with the National March on Washington in 1963, approximately 900 protesters marched on the state Capitol. • Some segments of the black community flocked to the cause of “Black Power" and accepted violence as a means of social redress. However, Texas saw a lot less violence and destruction of property in comparison to some other states like Alabama.

27. Chicano Movement • Tejanos took part in the Chicano movement of the era, and some, especially youths, supported the movement's militancy, its denunciation of "gringos," and its talk of separatism from American society. • The movement declined by the mid-1970s.

28. Racial Equality • The federal government pursued an agenda designed to achieve racial equality, and Mexican and Black Texans both profited from this initiative. • The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, barred the poll tax in federal elections, and that same year Congress passed the Civil Rights Act outlawing the Jim Crow tradition.

29. Racial Equality • Texas followed suit in 1969 by repealing its own separatist statutes. • The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated local restrictions to voting and required that federal marshals monitor election proceedings.