Civil Rights, The Early Years

1. Civil Rights, The Early Years Integration and Equality

2. Civil Rights: The Long View • Building blocks? Trends towards justice?: • Ideals of equality, liberty, freedom • Ideals of integration, public space • Nonviolence • Consumer society • Obstacles?: • Inequality, discrimination in U.S. society (Jim Crow, marriage laws, education), ideas racial purity; lack of legal or govt. protection/aid

3. Major Goals

4. Major Goals • Integration • Schools • Workplaces • Military • Churches • Transportation • Public and private spaces • Economic advancement • Equality • Education • Voting rights • Treatment in public • Respect • Anti-discrimination • Equal opportunity

5. Major Goals • Empowerment • Integration into mainstream American life • Desegregation • Respect and self-respect • End of poverty • End of racism and other forms of discrimination • Mainstream Civil Rights Movement was part of liberal movement • Question: Could liberalism solve issues of civil rights, poverty, and injustice?

6. Factors in Success or Failure? • How to get support • Followers? • Political support? • Message? • Goals? • Strength of support? • Willingness to sacrifice? • Public perception • Opponents? • Money • Media coverage • Tactics

7. Factors in Success or Failure • Recruitment: good slogan, appealing • Persuasion • Get media attention • Inspire action/change • Clarity of goals • Good leadership • Delegation of power, responsibility • Money • Decide on methods of action: violence, nonviolence, etc. • Change minds

8. Positive Climate for Change • Liberal shift in politics and culture, optimism and nonconformity • Northern liberal support for racial equality • Jewish support b/c of immigrant, discrimination, and Holocaust experiences • JFK idealism • Cold War made it important for U.S. to prove to world that it was meeting its ideals – civil rights issue gave U.S. a black eye in world affairs

9. Obstacles • De jure and de facto segregation (Jim Crow) in south and parts of north – Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 • Failure of Operation Dixie, effort to organize unions in south in late 1940s • Solid South, conservative southern white Democratic Party • Massive Resistance, White Councils formed to oppose desegregation in 1950s • Fickle white supporters – how to keep them on board

10. Background Factors • Great Migration • WWII ideals – against Nazi racism • Returning black WWII veterans • Existing civil rights orgs and leaders • Strong church community • Growth in liberal white support • Cold War climate – had to prove superiority of U.S.

11. Early Victories • Fighting for Fairness, Equality, and Desegregation • Precedent: pressuring government to respond • A. Philip Randolph and black pressure politics • 1st March on Wash., Fair Employment rules during WWII • 1948 desegregation of the military • Jackie Robinson and desegregation of baseball, 1947 • Symbolic power of “America’s pastime”

12. Early Victories (continued) • Brown v. Board I & II, 1954, 1955 • Thurgood Marshall: segregated schools fostered sense of inferiority in black students • Left-of-center Supreme Court – New Deal appointees, moderate Republicans (Earl Warren) • Unanimous decision, but desegregation “with all deliberate speed”???? • Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957 • Little Rock 9 forced Ike & fed. govt. to act on civil rights, to use federal troops to protect students • Arkansas governor Orville Faubus opposed desegregation based on states rights rhetoric

13. Southern Manifesto, 1956 • Legislating from the bench • Judicial activism • Nothing about education in Constitution (14th Am.) • Strict constructionism • States rights • Destroying amicable relations between races • Outside meddlers

14. Southern Manifesto Document • Congressmen • Against Brown v. Board • States rights argument • Against activist judiciary • No justification for federal involvement in education – strict constitutionalism • Civil rights = chaos and confusion • No problem to begin with; civil rights = problem • Denial

15. Strong Black Organizations and Leadership • Strong black leadership in churches and civil rights organizations were necessary to movement • SCLC, MLK, Ella Baker, various church leaders • CORE, James Farmer, Bayard Rustin • SNCC, Ella Baker, Stokely Carmichael • NAACP • Unions, A. Philip Randolph • Northern black politicians • Links to northern white churches, politicians, Democratic Party, unions

16. Nonviolence and Black Christianity • MLK: Nonviolence as ideal and strategy • Combination of Christian ideals and Gandhian nonviolence • Christian belief of turning the other cheek, but used as nonviolent strategy of resistance, protest, and for positive change • Nonviolence as strategy to overcome armed violence of southern people and officials • Conscious targeting of segregated public spaces or denial of public services • Goal of creating wider public pressure • Media exposure – TV coverage of police brutality against nonviolent protesters

17. Nonviolence and Black Christianity (continued) • Different methods • Marches • Sit-downs, sit-ins • Mass jailings • Ideals: political and social problems had moral and religious underpinnings and solutions • Churches, SCLC, MLK: human equality under God, righteousness of their cause; inequality, desegregation were social and moral evils • Possibility of equality on earth, imagery and language of salvation, combined with realization of American ideals

18. Major Battles • Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1956 - NAACP and Rosa Parks targeted bus system, segregated public service; MLK joined boycott leadership • Student Sit-ins at lunch counters – started in Greensboro, NC in 1960 • SNCC founded as a result - student protesters • Freedom Rides, 1961 – desegregation of interstate commerce, violence spurred JFK to action

19. Major Battles • Birmingham protests, 1963, Bull Connor’s violence spurred JFK TV broadcast against racism and segregation • March on Washington, 1963, MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, garnered public support • M on W and JFK assassination = push for 1964 Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination in employment, equal access to public accommodations and schools • Freedom Summer, 1965, murders of volunteers, marches, voter registration in south, Selma march • Created pressure for Voting Rights Act of 1965 and 24th Const. Amend., both outlawed barring of black voters

20. Civil Rights and the Democratic Party: Sympathies and Tensions • Case Study: MS Freedom Democrats and the 1964 Democratic Convention, Atlantic City, NJ • Fannie Lou Hamer, sharecropper turned SNCC civil rights activist • Went to SNCC meeting, tried to register to vote, kicked off plantation, beaten • Became fundraiser for SNCC and ran for Congress in MS, black votes not counted

21. Hamer and MS Freedom Democrats challenged all-white MS Democratic Party and delegates to 1964 Dem. Convention • Failed to get seated, but spurred Voting Rights Act and changes within Democratic Party

22. 1960 Presidential Election • JFK = Blue = 49.7% • Nixon = Red = 49.5%

23. 1964 Presidential Election • LBJ = Blue = 61.1% • Goldwater = Red = 38.5%

24. Presidential Civil Rights • Pushed by civil rights movement • Liberals attempted to live up to ideals (Truman, JFK, LBJ) • Eisenhower, detached, but was pushed to act at Little Rock • JFK, overly cautious, was pushed to protect protesters; optimism became spur to action • LBJ, believed in racial equality • Pushed for Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965)

25. LBJ’s Great Society & War on Poverty • Attention to “the other America” – those who had not been able to share in postwar affluence: poor, working poor, African Am., Appalachia • LBJ used JFK assassination as reason to pursue social goals, continue JFK’s legacy • Great Society and War on Poverty: set of social programs to complete the New Deal • Empowerment – Comm. Action Programs, Headstart, Legal Services, VISTA • Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security expanded (“welfare”), public housing • Affirmative Action rules, 1968 • Community Action Programs used by blacks to fight for political and social problems, not always the form or kind liberal whites wanted

26. Conclusions • Successes: framing of civil rights as moral, ethical problem, full attainment of American ideals • Attainment of legal desegregation and voting rights • Pushed Democratic Party to become party of civil rights, justice, and equality • Decrease in poverty rate, 1960-1970, 23% to 15% • Programs: Medicaid, Medicare, Headstart, Affirm.A. • Continuing Issues: • Would de facto desegregation and civil rights be attained in north or south? • Would Democratic coalition remain intact? • What impact would Vietnam War have on civil rights and American politics?

27. Civil Rights, Further Issues • Black Power, Stokely Carmichael: • Black unification to achieve civil rights – why? • Questioned integration • Questioned nonviolence • Take a stand, fight back

28. Civil Rights, Further Issues • Malcolm X:

29. The New Left: Port Huron Statement, 1962

30. Jerry Rubin, ‘Self-Portrait of a Child of Amerika,’ 1970 I am a child of Amerika. If I'm ever sent to Death Row for my revolutionary "crimes," I'll order as my last meal: a hamburger, french fries and a Coke. I dig big cities. I love to read the sports pages and gossip columns, listen to the radio and watch color TV. I dig department stores, huge supermarkets and airports. I feel secure (though not necessarily hungry) when I see Howard Johnson's on the expressway. I groove on Hollywood movies‑even bad ones. I speak only one language‑English.

31. I love rock 'n' roll. I collected baseball players' cards when I was a kid and wanted to play second base for the Cincinnati Reds, my home team. I got a car when I was sixteen after flunking my first driver's test and crying for a week waiting to take it a second time. I went to the kind of high school where you had to pass a test to get in. I graduated in the bottom half of the class. My classmates voted me the "busiest" senior in the school. I had short, short, short hair. I dug Catcher in the Rye. I didn't have pimples.

32. I became an ace young reporter for the Cincinnati Post and Times‑Star. "Son," the managing editor said to me, "someday you're going to be a helluva reporter, maybe the greatest reporter this city's ever seen." I loved Adlai Stevenson. My father drove a truck delivering bread and later became an organizer in the Bakery Drivers' Union. He dug Jimmy Hoffa (so do I). He died of heart failure at fifty‑two. My mother had a college degree and played the piano. She died of cancer at the age of fifty‑one. I took care of my brother, Gil, from the time he was thirteen. I dodged the draft. I went to Oberlin College for a year, graduated from the University of Cincinnati, spent 1 1/2 years in Israel and started graduate school at Berkeley.

33. I dropped out. I dropped out of the White Race and the Amerikan nation. I dig being free. I like getting high. I don't own a suit or tie. I live for the revolution. I'm a yippie! I am an orphan of Amerika.

34. Common Enemies or Targets?

35. Major Goals • Empowerment • Integration into mainstream American life • Desegregation • Respect and self-respect • End of poverty • End of racism and other forms of discrimination • Mainstream Civil Rights Movement was part of liberal movement • Question: Could liberalism solve issues of civil rights, poverty, and injustice?

36. Factors in Success or Failure • Recruitment: good slogan, appealing • Persuasion • Get media attention • Inspire action/change • Clarity of goals • Good leadership • Delegation of power, responsibility • Money • Decide on methods of action: violence, nonviolence, etc. • Change minds