CIVIL RIGHTS ACT

UNITS 11

BACKGROUND

§The 1950s and 1960s in the United States were a period of continued struggle for civil rights
and equality under the law.

§In 1954, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education made segregation in
public schools unconstitutional. Despite the landmark ruling, many states refused to follow
federal law

§In 1957, nine school children in Arkansas enrolled at Little Rock Central High, a segregated
white high school.

§Although the students were enrolled, federal troops were sent in to Little Rock to protect
them from an angry mob.

§That same year, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed. The act allowed for the
prosecution of anyone who denied someone their right to vote.

§Despite the progress made, significant inequalities still existed.

CONTRIBUTION OF KENNEDY TO CIVIL RIGHTS WHEN HE WAS SENATOR

On October 19, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., along with students, was protesting local
segregation ordinances in Georgia and was sent to jail for trespassing. King was sentenced to
six years imprisonment.

After hearing of King’s sentence, Senator Kennedy and his brother, Robert, called Georgia
governor, Ernest Vandiver, and petitioned King’s release. Senator Kennedy called Coretta
Scott King, King’s wife, to offer his help. Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy called the judge and
was able to convince him to release King. The Kennedys’ role in King’s release quickly
spread in the Black community. Senator John F. Kennedy won seventy percent of the Black
vote in November. The Black vote was key in Kennedy’s victory for the position of American
President.
ROLE OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY IN CIVIL RIGHTS AND SUPPORTING CIVIL
RIGHS ACT

§During his first few days in office, President Kennedy instructed his cabinet secretaries to
increase hiring of Black federal employees. He also requested an audit of diversity in federal
employment and pay grades, and called for initiatives to diversify the workforce.

§But Kennedy was reluctant to propose major civil rights legislation during his first term for
fear of losing the support of Southern Democrats, many of whom benefited from and
supported segregation policies.

§But after King organized the Birmingham Campaign where series of protests, from
community members and students seeking to dismantle the city’s discriminatory practices
was broadcasting live on television, Kennedy got shocked by what he saw and began to
rethink the federal government’s role in the Civil Rights Movement.

§He sent Burke Marshall to Birmingham to mediate negotiations between the campaign and
white southern business leaders. White segregationists responded violently, President
Kennedy readied 3,000 federal troops outside of Birmingham.

§As Kennedy learned to empathize with the Black community and continued to listen, the
more he believed Congressional action was critical. He insisted that civil rights legislation
must move forward that would ensure protection of every citizen’s rights.

§During the Kennedy administration, significant progress was made in the integration of
public schools and universities.

§In 1962, James H. Meredith Jr., an Air Force veteran, was repeatedly denied admission from
the University of Mississippi, due to his race. President Kennedy sent in the National guard
and federal troops to protect Meredith and ensure he was safely registered.

§In June 1963, Vivian Malone and James Hood arrived at the University of Alabama campus
to integrate the university. They were met by Governor Wallace blocking the door of the
schoolhouse, acting on his promise of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and
segregation forever.” President Kennedy intervened and federalized the Alabama National
Guard to force Wallace to comply.
§On the day that Governor Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, President Kennedy made a
televised address to the nation trying to unite the country around the need for civil rights
legislation.

§President Kennedy defined civil rights as not just a constitutional issue, but also a “moral
issue.” He also proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1963, which would provide protection of
every American’s right to vote under the United States Constitution, end segregation in public
facilities, and require public schools to be integrated.

§In order to try and ensure his bill’s passage, President Kennedy met with prominent Civil
Rights leaders to discuss the content of the bill. He also met with businessmen, religious
leaders, and others to build the bipartisan support the bill would need to pass.

§The bill struggled to move through Congress. Civil Rights leaders were worried that the bill
had stalled and organized The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that August.
Despite their best efforts, by November of 1963, the bill was stalled in debate.

§Two months later, an assassin shot and killed John F. Kennedy. His successor, President
Lyndon B. Johnson, pledged to carry on Kennedy’s work.

KENNEDY ADRESSES TO HE NATION

“One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their
heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice.
They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes
and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.” – President John
Fitzgerald Kennedy, June 11, 1963.

ROLE OF PRESIDENT LYNDON B JOHNSON IN PASSING THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL,

1964

§President Lyndon Johnson made the passage of slain President Kennedy’s civil rights bill his
top priority during the first year of his administration.

§He enlisted the help of the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and key
members of Congress such as Senators Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen and
Representatives Emanuel Celler and William McCulloch (R- OH), to secure the bill’s
passage.

§He also asked for support from friend and mentor Senator Richard B. Russell, Jr., the leader
of the Southern Democrats in the Senate, who opposed the bill to the very end.

§Throughout the winter and spring of 1964, Johnson applied his formidable legislative
acumen and skills to push the bill through Congress. Republican Senator Dirksen, the Senate
minority leader, played a pivotal role in the passage of the act.

§On May 26, Senator Dirksen introduced the Compromise bill as a substitute for the original
version. He urged Republicans to support the bill as “an idea whose time has come.”

§On June 19, exactly one year after President Kennedy’s proposal, the compromise bill
passed the Senate by a vote of 73 to 27. House approval followed, and on July 2 President
Johnson signed the bill into law.

THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

§The law’s eleven sections prohibited discrimination in the workplace, public

accommodations, public facilities, and agencies receiving federal funds, and strengthened
prohibitions on school segregation and discrimination in voter registration.

§ It created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to ensure fair hiring practices,
and established a federal Community Relations Service to assist local communities with civil
rights issues.

§The bill also authorized the US Office of Education to distribute financial aid to
communities struggling to desegregate public schools

POPULAR RESISTANCE TO CIVIL RIGHTS LEGISLATION

§The period following the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 witnessed resistance to
the implementation of its measures. George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama,
campaigned heavily on anti-integration rhetoric and bemoaned the loss of “traditional”
American values, prefiguring the rise of the new social conservatism.
§Though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 included provisions to strengthen the voting rights of
African Americans in the South, these measures were relatively weak and did not prevent
states and election officials from practices that effectively continued to deny southern blacks
the vote. Moreover, in their attempts to expand black voter registration, civil rights activists
met with the fierce opposition and hostility of Southern white segregationists.

§On March 7, 1965, six hundred activists set out on a march from Selma, Alabama to
Montgomery to peacefully protest the continued violations of African Americans’ civil rights.
When they reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River, hundreds of deputies
and state troopers attacked them with tear gas, nightsticks, and electric cattle prods. The
event, which the press dubbed “Bloody Sunday,” was broadcast over television and splashed
across the front pages of newspapers and magazines, stunning and horrifying the American
public.

§President Johnson quickly became convinced that additional civil rights legislation was
necessary. A week after Bloody Sunday, on March 15, 1965, President Johnson delivered a
nationwide address in which he declared that “all Americans must have the privileges of
citizenship regardless of race. Johnson informed the nation that he was sending a new voting
rights bill to Congress, and he urged Congress to vote the bill into law. Congress complied,
and President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 6, 1965

VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

§The Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed barriers to black enfranchisement in the South,
banning poll taxes, literacy tests, and other measures that effectively prevented African
Americans from voting.

§The act eliminated the so-called literacy tests that had disqualified many voters.

§It also stated that federal examiners could enroll voters who had been denied suffrage by
local

officials.

§It authorized the US attorney general to send federal officials to the South to register black
voters in the event that local registrars did not comply with the law, and it also authorized the
federal government to supervise elections in districts that had disfranchised African
Americans.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 transformed patterns of political power in the South. By the
middle of 1966, over half a million Southern blacks had registered to vote, and by 1968,
almost four hundred black people had been elected to office.

MALCOLM X

§As the nation’s most visible proponent of Black Nationalism, Malcolm X’s challenge to the
multiracial, nonviolent approach of Martin Luther King, Jr., helped set the tone for the
ideological and tactical conflicts that took place within the black freedom struggle of the
1960s. Given Malcolm X’s abrasive criticism of King and his advocacy of racial separatism,
it is not surprising that King rejected the occasional overtures from one of his fiercest critics.

§Malcolm Little was born to Louise and Earl Little in Omaha, Nebraska, on 19 May 1925.
His father died when he was six years old—the victim, he believed, of a white racist group.
Following his father’s death, Malcolm recalled how some kind of psychological deterioration
hit his family pride. By the end of the 1930s Malcolm’s mother had been institutionalized,
and he became a ward of the court to be raised by white guardians in various reform schools
and foster homes.

§Malcolm joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) while serving a prison term in Massachusetts on
burglary charges. Shortly after his release in 1952, he moved to Chicago and became a
minister under Elijah Muhammad, abandoning his “slave name,” and becoming Malcolm X
(Malcolm X, “We Are Rising”). By the late 1950s, Malcolm had become the NOI’s leading
spokesman.

§Although Malcolm rejected King’s message of non-violence he respected King as a “fellow-

leader of our people,” sending King NOI articles as early as 1957 and inviting him to
participate in mass meetings throughout the early 1960s. Although Malcolm was particularly
interested that King hear Elijah Muhammad’s message, he also sought to create an open
forum for black leaders to explore solutions to the “race problem”

§In the spring of 1964, Malcolm broke away from the NOI and made a pilgrimage to Mecca.
When he returned he began to combine religious leadership and political action.
§Although King told reporters that Malcolm’s separation from Elijah Muhammad “holds no
particular significance to the present civil rights efforts,” he argued that if “tangible gains are
not made soon all across the country, we must honestly face the prospect that some Negroes
might be tempted to accept some oblique path [such] as that Malcom X.

ORGANIZATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN UNITY

§Malcolm’s primary concern was to establish ties with the black activists he saw as more
militant than King. He met with a number of workers from the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC), including SNCC chairman John Lewis and Mississippi
organizer Fannie Lou Hamer.

§Malcolm saw his newly created Organization of African American Unity (OAAU) as a
potential source of ideological guidance for the more militant veterans of the southern civil
rights movement. At the same time, he looked to the southern struggle for inspiration in his
effort to revitalize the Black Nationalist movement.

§In January 1965, he revealed in an interview that the OAAU would “support fully and
without compromise any action by any group that is designed to get meaningful immediate
results”. Malcolm urged civil rights groups to unite, telling a gathering at a symposium
sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality: “We want freedom now, but we’re not going
to get it saying ‘We Shall Overcome.’ We've got to fight to overcome”.

§On 21 February 1965, just a few weeks after his visit to Selma, Malcolm X was
assassinated. King called his murder a “great tragedy” and expressed his regret

§He asserted that Malcolm’s murder deprived the world of a potentially great leader”.
Malcolm’s death signalled the beginning of bitter battles involving proponents of the
ideological alternatives the two men represented.

BLACK POWER MOVEMENT

§By 1966, the civil rights movement had been gaining momentum for more than a decade, as
thousands of African Americans embraced a strategy of nonviolent protest against racial
segregation and demanded equal rights under the law.

§But for an increasing number of African Americans, particularly young Black men and
women, that strategy did not go far enough. Protesting segregation, they believed, failed to
adequately address the poverty and powerlessness that generations of systemic discrimination
and racism had imposed on so many Black Americans.

§Inspired by the principles of racial pride, autonomy and self-determination expressed by

Malcolm X (whose assassination in 1965 had brought even more attention to his ideas), as
well as liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Black Power movement
that flourished in the late 1960s and ‘70s argued that Black Americans should focus on
creating economic, social and political power of their own, rather than seek integration into
white-dominated society.

§Crucially, Black Power advocates, particularly more militant groups like the Black Panther
Party, did not discount the use of violence, but embraced Malcolm X’s challenge to pursue
freedom, equality and justice “by any means necessary.”

§The emergence of Black Power as a parallel force alongside the mainstream civil rights
movement occurred during the March Against Fear, a voting rights march in Mississippi in
June 1966.

§The march originally began as a solo effort by James Meredith, who had become the first
African American to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962. He had set out in early
June to walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, a distance of more than 200
miles, to promote Black voter registration and protest ongoing discrimination in his home
state.

§But after a white gunman shot and wounded Meredith on a rural road in Mississippi, three
major civil rights leaders—Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC), Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) and Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to
continue the March Against Fear in his name.

§In the days to come, Carmichael, McKissick and fellow marchers were harassed by
onlookers and arrested by local law enforcement while walking through Mississippi.
Speaking at a rally of supporters in Greenwood, Mississippi, on June 16, Carmichael (who
had been released from jail that day) began leading the crowd in a chant of “We want Black
Power!”

§The refrain stood in sharp contrast to many civil rights protests, where demonstrators
commonly chanted “We want freedom!”
§Though this phrase had been used among other Black activists before, Stokely Carmichael
was the first to use it as a political slogan in such a public way. The events in Mississippi
“catapulted Stokely into the political space last occupied by Malcolm X,” as he went on TV
news shows, he came to be written about a lot under the headline “Black Power Prophet.”

§Carmichael’s growing prominence put him at odds with King, who acknowledged the
frustration among many African Americans with the slow pace of change but didn’t see
violence and separatism as a viable path forward.

§With the country mired in the Vietnam War, (a war both Carmichael and King spoke out
against) and the civil rights movement King had championed losing momentum, the message
of the Black Power movement caught on with an increasing number of Black Americans.

§In the aftermath of King’s murder, a mass outpouring of grief and anger led to riots in more
than 100 U.S. cities. Later that year, one of the most visible Black Power demonstrations took
place at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where Black athletes John Carlos and
Tommie Smith raised black- gloved fists in the air on the medal podium.

§By 1970, Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) had moved to Africa,
and SNCC had been supplanted at the forefront of the Black Power movement by more
militant groups, such as the Black Panther Party, the US Organization, the Republic of New
Africa and others, who saw themselves as the heirs to Malcolm X’s revolutionary philosophy.

§Black Panther chapters began operating in a number of cities nationwide, where they
advocated a 10- point program of socialist revolution (backed by armed self-defense). The
group’s more practical efforts focused on building up the Black community through social
programs (including free breakfasts for school children).

§Many in mainstream white society viewed the Black Panthers and other Black Power groups
negatively, dismissing them as violent, anti-white and anti-law enforcement.

§Like King and other civil rights activists before them, the Black Panthers became targets of
the FBI’s counterintelligence program, or COINTELPRO, which weakened the group
considerably by the mid- 1970s through such tactics as spying, wiretapping, flimsy criminal
charges and even assassination.

LEGACY OF BLACK POWER MOVEMENT

§Even after the Black Power movement’s decline in the late 1970s, its impact would continue
to be felt for generations to come.

§With its emphasis on Black racial identity, pride and self-determination, Black Power
influenced everything from popular culture to education to politics, while the movement’s
challenge to structural inequalities inspired other groups (such as Chicanos, Native
Americans, Asian Americans and LGBTQ people) to pursue their own goals of overcoming
discrimination to achieve equal rights.

§The legacies of both the Black Power and civil rights movements live on in the Black Lives
Matter movement.

§Though Black Lives Matter focuses more specifically on criminal justice reform, it channels
the spirit of earlier movements in its efforts to combat systemic racism and the social,
economic and political injustices that continue to affect Black Americans.

SECOND WAVE FEMINISM

§The Second Wave of feminism is usually demarcated from the 1960s to the late 1980s. It
was a reaction to women returning to their roles as housewives and mothers after the end of
the Second World War. The men that had to leave the workforce to join the defense forces had
returned and women were fired from their positions and replaced by men.

§38 percent of American women who worked in the 1960s were largely limited to jobs as
teachers, nurses or secretaries. Women were expected to quietly resume their lives as loyal
and subjugated wives.

§Housewives were estimated to spend an average of 55 hours a week on domestic chores.

However, after having worked and been independent of male dominance during the war,
women didn’t want to resume these roles and this brought about the Second Wave of
feminism.

§This movement was initially concentrated in the United States of America and then spread
to other Western countries. While the First Wave was largely concerned with the suffragette
struggle for the vote, the Second Wave focused more on both public and private injustices.
§Issues of rape, reproductive rights, domestic violence and workplace safety were brought to
the forefront of the movement and there was widespread effort to reform the negative and
inferior image of women in popular culture to a more positive and realistic one.

§Women created their own popular culture and the movement spread through feminist films,
music, books and even restaurants.

§This movement was triggered by the publishing of Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine
Mystique, a renowned feminist text credited for daring to break social conventions regarding
the portrayal of women.

§This text was considered ground-breaking and became a landmark in the history of
feminism. The Feminine Mystique discussed “the problem that has no name”: the general
unhappiness of American women in the 1960s and 70s.

§Friedan highlights the fault of the advertising industry and education system in restricting
women to the household and menial tasks that result in a loss of identity and individuality.

§This book reached women all over the United States of America who were touched by it.
Thousands of white middle-class women were thus drawn to the feminist cause, marking the
start of the Second Wave of feminism.

§Another demarcation of this stage was through legislative measures. The Food and Drug
Administration approved an oral contraceptive pill, made available in 1961 that was an
important step towards letting women develop careers instead of being forced into family life.

§The Kennedy administration also set up a Presidential Commission on the Status of Women,
which was chaired by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. A report released by the
commission on gender inequality recommended paid maternity leave, access to education and
good childcare to help women.

§An organization called Women Strike for Peace mobilized 50,000 women in 1961 to protest
against nuclear bombs and tainted milk.

§Women became more involved in protests and advocacy for equality by creating local, state
and federal feminist organizations.

§Legislature like the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
were significant measures taken to achieve greater equality for the sexes.
NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN(NOW)

§In 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was created, with Betty Friedan
named the first President. The founding statement of NOW demanded the removal of all
barriers to “equal and economic advance” and declared “the true equality for all women” as
its aim.

§The NOW, under Betty Friedan, tried to enforce more work opportunities for women but
there was fierce opposition to this demand. The opposition argued that at that time, male
African Americans, who were heavily discriminated against by the white population were in
greater need of employment than middle-class white women. As a result, Friedan stepped
down from the presidency in 1969.

§The legal victories of the movement post-NOW creation were extensive. A 1967 Executive
Order gave full affirmative action rights to women. A 1968 order made sex-segregated help
wanted ads for employment illegal, thus drastically decreasing female exclusion from the
workforce.

§The Women’s Educational Equity Act of 1972 and 1974 provided greater educational
equality. Title X of 1970 addressed health and family planning, and the Equal Credit
Opportunity Act of 1974 and Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 were all notable reforms.

§The outlaw of marital rape by all states in 1993 and the legalization of no-fault divorce
greatly reduced the dependence of wives on their husbands and gave them the tools to live
healthier lives.

§In 1975, a law requiring military academies to admit women was passed and the image of
women as simply “domestic goddesses” was altered.

§All these successes were impressive, and many believed that the objective of female
liberation had been achieved.

POPULAR FEMINIST LEADERS OF SECOND WAVE

1. Many ambitious and resourceful feminist leaders like Betty Friedan (already discussed
about her) arose during this wave and became forerunners of the Second Wave.
2. A young journalist, Gloria Steinem, became a feminist leader when her writing about the
Playboy Club and its chauvinist elements gained popularity with women. She was a staunch
advocate for legalizing abortions and federally funding daycares.

3. In 1969, feminist writer Kate Millet wrote Sexual Politics about how patriarchy invaded
sexual discourse and led to gender oppression. She stated that discrimination began with
gender and then occurred between race and class.

4. Another writer that had an impact still felt today was Carol Hanisch. Her essay, The
Personal is Political, argued that even the most private aspects of life like housework and
gender roles are politically relevant for women and must be brought into the public sphere.
The slogan, The Personal is Political is used often today at rallies and demonstrations
advocating women’s rights.

TYPES OF FEMINISM

§As a whole, the Second Wave can be characterized by a general feeling of solidarity among
women fighting for equality. It also saw the creation of several types of feminism.

§Radical feminism was prevalent, which involved the complete elimination of male
supremacy and challenging of all gender roles.

§Socialist feminism was also a form of feminism created post the Second World War. Like
Marxism, it acknowledged the oppressive nature of a capitalist society and saw a connection
between gender and racial discrimination.

§Eco-feminism was widely recognized. It related environmental justice and care with
women’s rights and liberation.

SHORTCOMINGS OF THE SECOND WAVE

§While the Second Wave was a hugely successful movement that comprised many legal and
cultural victories leading to greater equality, it had its shortcomings.

§ At the time in the United States, the movement against racism was active too. Women of
colour found themselves to be under-represented by the feminist movement.

§Prominent feminists were white middle-class women who wrote feminist theory centred
around their own experiences and troubles. While there were many black, Latina, Asian and
Native American members of the movement, they felt excluded from the narrative and
ignored. The agenda of the leading white feminists were often a contrast to theirs.

§Many women felt that it was unwise to discuss gender equality without taking into
consideration racial inequality too.

§This gap between white and POC (People of Colour) feminists (black women) motivated
women of colour to form their own organizations to represent their interests in the movement.
One such organization was the Third Women’s World Alliance.