II: Challenging Segregation

1. II: Challenging Segregation Events which pressured the federal government to end segregation and ensure voting

2. Started in Greensboro, NC @ Woolworth’s lunch counter Mostly college students Ella Baker instrumental in coordinating efforts on a national scale = … A. The Sit-in Movement

3. 4. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) • Goals: desegregation and voter registration in rural areas • Mississippi Burning

4. Jailed and beaten for urging AA to register to vote Helped form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) Goal? To allow more AA as delegates in the Democratic party ****************************** 5. Fannie Lou Hamer

5. B. Freedom Rides 1. Began with CORE organization 2. Goal: Test desegregation ruling on interstate bus routes and terminals 3. JFK makes deal w/Gov: a. no violence in Ms and b. Riders can be arrested

11. Bus #2

14. KKK at terminal

15. Supporter of the CRM AG RFK help get MLK out of jail after demonstration c. Slow to respond once in office – need Southern Democrats to help pass bills d. ICC to desegregated interstate buses and terminals 4. Kennedy and Civil Rights

16. James Meredith & Ole Miss

17. Need to get JFK to respond MLK – “most seg. city in the U.S.” Bull Connor, Safety commissioner/mayor candidate Responds with harsh force Televised Kennedy finally acts w/ Civil Rights Acts of 1964 Violence in Birmingham, Ala.

18. “I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters;…when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in the air-tight cage of poverty;…when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking:…”Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”…then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.” Birmingham, AlabamaLetter from MLK

28. “I say, segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” - George Wallace, Gov. of Alabama, 1963 Medgar Evers;NAACP, veteran, assassinated by de la Beckwith Pres. Kennedy orders Wallace to desegregate U of Ala The Civil Rights Act of 1964

30. C. March on WashingtonAugust 28, 1963 • goal: to persuade congress to pass Kennedy’s civil rights bill • Equal education for all/law suits by federal gov’t • video • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk

31. Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Passed while Pres. LB Johnson in office • Illegal to discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, and gender in employment and public facilities. • EEOC – bans employment discrimination based on race, religion, gender, and national origin

32. The Struggle for Voting Rights • Selma Campaign (Alabama 1965) • 50% of population were AA - Only 3% registered voters • Voter-registration drive organized in hopes of violent response by whites so that Johnson’s admin. would pass voting act.

33. Bloody Sunday: Alabama state troopers attack civil-rights demonstrators outside Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

37. Voting Rights Act 1965 • Got rid of literacy test • Agents of the Federal gov’t could register voters • Registered African American voters tripled in the South; in Selma = 10-60%/4 yrs. 4. Voting and discrimination addressed, now on to social and economic equality = poverty issues