Why was

direct action
an effective
strategy
among civil
rights
activists?

Resistance to Brown
LITTLE ROCK NINE
1957
NAACP attempted to
register black
students at all white
high schools in
several So. cities
AK governor Orval
Faubus called AK
Natl Guard
Eisenhower forced to
use fed authority

Direct Action - Non-Violent Protest

Montgomery Bus Boycott 1955
42 yr old Rosa Parks arrested
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. organizes boycott in
Montgomery ONE YEAR
Pressures courts to integrate public transport

One of MLKs First Addresses,

Montgomery, AL 1955
I will face intimidation, and everything else, along with these other
stalwart fighters for democracy and for citizenship. We don't mind it,
so long as justice comes out of it. And I've come to see now that as
we struggle for our rights, maybe some of them will have to die. But
somebody said, if a man doesn't have something that he'll die for, he
isn't fit to live.

Prominent Civil Rights Organizations

SCLC: Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
- f. 1957 (MLK, Jr. was its first president)
Tried to involve black church/southern black communities in
non-violent forms of direct action protest

CORE (Congress
of Racial Equality)
f. 1942
Pioneered the SitIn Movement

Freedom Rides
organized by CORE
and SNCC

SNCC (Student Non-Violent

Coordinating Committee
f. 1960 by Ella Baker at Shaw University
Organized across college campuses, involving
many students in direct action protests
Played major role in sit-ins, freedom rides,
voter registration drives

Letters from a Birmingham Jail

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a
situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to
negotiation we have not made a single gain in civil rights
without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably,
it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their
privileges voluntarily We know through painful experience
that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must
be demanded by the oppressed.
- Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963

Birmingham Campaign 1963

For one year, boycotts of downtown businesses business
profits dropped by 40%
Supported by local pastors
Sit-ins (modeled on the first Greensboro, NC sit-ins) at
libraries and lunch counters
Voter registration drives

Birmingham Campaign 1963

Results:
Shut down the city and drew the worlds attention to racial
segregation in the South
Wreaked havoc for the JFK admin.
Paved the way for the creation of the Civil Rights Act, which
would be written during the JFK amin.
Front page of the NY Times,

March on
Washington
1963

Front page of the NY Times,