CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

CIVIL RIGHTSMOVEMENT EYESON THE PRIZE

Lincoln’s Plan for Reconstruction • An easy and forgiving plan for the southern States • KKK formed • 13 Amendment • Abolished the institution of slavery • 14th Amendment • Equal protection and definition as citizens for African Americans

Radical Republicans • SOUTH SHOULD BE PUNISHED

Civil War Amendments • 13th –Ended slavery • 14th- Defined Blacks as Citizens • Women used this to help them for the right to vote • Assurance of equal protection of the law • 15th- Provided the right to Vote

1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson • The Supreme Court rules that minorities are allowed to be segregated in public places if the places are of equal standing. • The original case centered around whether separate train cars for whites and blacks were constitutional.

1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson • The issue soon extended to all parts of society including schools where segregation became the norm, especially in the South • These laws restricting the interaction between whites and blacks soon became known as Jim Crow

“JIM CROW” LAWS • From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws • So called after a black character in minstrel shows. • From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas • States could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race.

“JIM CROW” LAWS • The most common types of laws ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated • Sharecroppers • Rented land • Here is a sampling of laws from various states.

EXAMPLE OFJIM CROW LAWS • Education The schools for white children and the schools for negro children shall be conducted separately. Florida • Restaurants It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment. Alabama • Amateur Baseball It shall be unlawful for any amateur white baseball team to play baseball on any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of a playground devoted to the Negro race, and it shall be unlawful for any amateur colored baseball team to play baseball in any vacant lot or baseball diamond within two blocks of any playground devoted to the white race. Georgia • Hospital Entrances There shall be maintained by the governing authorities of every hospital maintained by the state for treatment of white and colored patients separate entrances for white and colored patients and visitors, and such entrances shall be used by the race only for which they are prepared. Mississippi

Ku Klux Klan1920’s • KKK grows rapidly after 1920 • Became a national organization with more members in the North and West than the south. • By 1925, perhaps 5,000,000 men • About every sixth male adult were members The KKK on Parade in Washington, DC, 1928

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/segregation_pops/1866_kkk.htmlhttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/segregation_pops/1866_kkk.html

1930’s • The NAACP and other groups begin a serious attack on segregation, especially in schools. • Several prominent cases involving equal college choices brought the issue of "equality" to the Court's mind. • States now had to offer truly equal facilities or integrate the existing ones.

1940’sWorld War II Segregation • World War II made many whites aware of the fact that segregation undermined American claims to exert moral leadership. • “An American Dilemma”-study that documented the social status and legal barriers that kept blacks in second class citizenship. Tuskegee Airmen

1954Brown vs. Board of Education • The NAACP and head lawyer Thurgood Marshall attack segregation head on, claiming that separate facilities are inherently unequal. • Using psychological and physical evidence, Marshall convinced the court of an unanimous decision. • The court overturned Plessy, the Jim Crow laws, and ordered the quick desegregation of all schools.

Brown vs. Board of Education • May 17, 1954, • In the case of Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme Court ended federally sanctioned racial segregation in the public schools. • The ruling unanimously stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." • A groundbreaking case, Brown overturned the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): • "separate but equal facilities" constitutional • Provided the legal foundation of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Mrs. Nettie Hunt sits on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court Building with her daughter Nickie holding a newspaper with the headline, "High Court Bans Segregation in Public Schools."

The Murder of Emmett Till • In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. • Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. • Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury.

The Murder of Emmett Till • Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. • The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. • Mother ordered an open casket at his funeral for the world to see what had happened to her son. • Till's death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. • Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

1955: MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT • On December 1, Rosa Parks, a 43-year-old black woman, refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama city bus to a white man. • Her arrest sparks a black boycott of the city buses. • Martin Luther King, Jr., a relatively unknown 26-year-old Baptist minister, becomes the spokesperson and organizer of the boycott and is catapulted into national prominence.

1955: MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT • Boycott worked • 65% drop in revenue • 381 days • Bus company integrated its seating on December 21 1956. • Boycott was the first major instance of black activism during the civil rights movement and mark the beginning of Kings rise as a civil rights leader. • In 1956, the Supreme Court declares that segregation on buses is unconstitutional, and buses throughout the U.S. are forced to desegregate.

A Black man is surrounded by white men threatening him with violence during the Montgomery bus boycotts.

ROSA PARKS Coretta Scott King

ROSA PARKS 1913-2005 October 25, 2005

1957: SCLC FOUNDED • Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and other southern black ministers found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring about the end of segregation. • The SCLC adopts nonviolent protest as the cornerstone of its strategy and builds alliances with local community organizations across the South • King heads the SCLC and builds it into a powerful civil rights organization

School Desegregation • Schools, especially in the south, were often resistant to desegregation • Local and state governments fought the federal regulations.

1957 Can you imagine armed troops blocking you from going to school? • The first major defiance by state governments of federal court orders ending school segregation occurred in September 1957 • Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the National Guard, ostensibly to prevent violence

1957Can you imagine armed troops blocking you from going to school? • But really to block a federal court order integrating Little Rock Central High School • When an injunction barred Faubus from blocking admission of nine black students and • He withdrew the guardsmen because • Rioting by whites erupted on September 23

Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas appeals to Little Rock voters to back his choice against integration. He holds a sign that reads, "Against Racial Integration of All Schools within the Little Rock School District."

Eisenhower vs Faubus • September 24, 1957 • Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Guard and dispatched 1,000 U.S. army troops to enforce the desegration injunction and keep order • Black students first entered the high school on September 25 and the crisis subsided

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT