SEM 4 (History)

10(A)(B)(C)(D) and 11 (A)(B)

*CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

*THE LEGAL CHALLENGE TO JIM CROW: BROWN VS
BOARD OF EDUCATION
*MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
*RISE OF MARTIN LUTHER KING. JR
*PASSING THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT, KENNEDY, LYNDON
JOHNSON AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS
*MARTIN LUTHER KING AND HIS CRITIQUES:
MALCOLM X AND THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT
- RIDDHI JOSHI
VISITING FACULTY (HISTORY)
INTRODUCTION • America, a continent discovered by the Italian explorer Amerigo
Vespucci in the 15th century was a land of tribals. It gradually
received migrants from all over the world and thus, a mixed race of
people started residing here. Many slaves from Africa were brought
here. As a result this gave rise to a huge Afro-American population
here. The term typically refers to descendants of enslaved black
people who are from the United States. African Americans constitute
the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States.
• During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious
English colonists secure American independence by defeating the
British in the American Revolution. With this came the Declaration of
Independence which stated that, “every citizen has the right to life
liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
• But, even after the American Revolution, black people continued to
be enslaved. Due to notions of white supremacy, they were treated as
second-class citizens. They were greatly exploited by the whites.
Thus, the blacks were in great oppression and misery.
• In the late eighteenth century, abolitionists were already working to
eliminate racial injustice and bring an end to the institution of
slavery.
• During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation, which was codified into law as the
Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The Thirteenth
Amendment officially outlawed slavery and went into effect in 1865.
• After the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction, the
passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments established a
legal foundation for the political equality of African Americans.
Despite the abolition of slavery and legal gains for African
Americans, racial segregation known as Jim Crow arose in the
South. The 14th Amendment (1868) gave African-Americans
citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) gave African-American
males the right to vote. However, this only remained on paper.
• Jim Crow segregation meant that Southern blacks would continue to
live in conditions of poverty and inequality, with white supremacists
denying them their hard-won political rights and freedoms.
 Types of Segregation
► de jure segregation ► de facto segregation
▪ Segregation by law ▪ Segregation without
►Common in the laws
South ►Common in the North
►Laws forbid ►Housing
African-Americans discrimination made
from attending the segregation in the
same church, using North. White
the same swimming community groups did
pool, eating in not allow non-Whites
restaurants, or to live in White
marrying White neighborhoods. Every
ethnic group had its
people.
own part of town.
Dallas Bus Station
Jim Crow Laws
Texas sign
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow Laws
Life for African Americans Nationwide
• Segregated from whites, either legally or through custom,
throughout the United States
• Employment – generally filled the lowest paid, least
desirable positions – “last hired, first fired”
• Standard of living – higher rates of illiteracy and poverty,
and shorter life expectancy, than whites
• Housing – fewer black than white homeowners
• World War II – following the defeat of Hitler and his racist
ideology, African Americans expected changes within the
United States
 Civil Rights Movement (1900-1950)
• 1905 – Niagara Movement begun by W.E.B. Du Bois, William
Monroe Trotter, and others – denounced the vocational training and
gradual progress espoused by Booker T. Washington
• 1909 – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) founded by Florence Kelley, Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams,
Ray Stannard Baker, and others – strategy involved using the court
system to challenge inequality and racism
• 1911 – Urban League formed to help poor black workers in cities
• 1920s – Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement and Universal
Negro Improvement Association
• 1930 – Nation of Islam founded by Elijah Muhammad
 Civil Rights Movement (1900-1950)
• 1941 – FDR ended discrimination in defense industries
• 1942 – Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) founded by
James Farmer and others – advocated nonviolent protests
• 1944 – Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma published
• 1946 – Committee on Civil Rights appointed by Harry
Truman
• 1947 – Major League Baseball desegregated when Jackie
Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers
• 1948 – Harry Truman desegregated the United States
military
 NAACP Legal Victories, 1950
• Sweatt v./s. Painter – all-black law school established
by Texas violated 14th Amendment because facilities
unequal
• McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents – University of
Oklahoma graduate student George McLaurin’s
constitutional rights violated when he was denied
equal access to the classrooms, dining hall, and
library
Desegregating the Armed Forces

• Executive Order
9981 signed July
1948
 The Dixiecrats
• States’ Right Democratic
Party
– Formed in 1948 as an
offshoot of the Democratic
Party
• Opposed to Truman’s Civil
Rights policies
• Wanted to uphold
segregation and Jim Crow
• Started split of the South
from the Democratic Party
Brown v. Board of Education
 The Case
• 1951, NAACP lawyer Thurgood
Marshall begins to fight
segregation in schools
• Linda Brown wanted to attend an
all white school
• Marshall argued that their 14th
amendment rights were violated
• “Equal protection” = equal
educational opportunities
 The Decision (1954)
• Unanimous decision led by Earl Warren
• Overturns Plessy v. Ferguson
• "Separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal. It has no place in public
education.”
• Brown II (1955) – schools must be
integrated “with all deliberate speed”
 The Response
• 80% of Southerners were
against Brown decision
• Southern Manifesto – 101
Congressmen signed that the
decision was a contradiction to
the Constitution
• Due to the strong opposition to
decision from whites, and
desegregation moved slowly
 Crisis in Little Rock
• 9 African-American student enroll at
Central High in 1957
• Gov. Faubus orders the National Guard to
keep them out
Elizabeth Eckford tries to integrate Central High
• Finally Eisenhower sends 1,000 troops
to Little Rock to protect the students
and integrate Central High
• The next year all Little Rock schools
closed
• The Civil Rights Movement was a mass popular movement to secure for
African Americans equal access to and opportunities for the basic privileges
and rights of U.S. citizenship. Although the roots of the movement go back
to the 19th century, it peaked in the 1950s and 1960s.
• African American men and women, along with whites, organized and led
the movement at national and local levels.
• They pursued their goals through legal means, negotiations, petitions, and
nonviolent protest demonstrations. The Civil Rights Movement was largest
social movement of the 20th century in the United States.
• It involved the support and participation of people who became
international leaders. It influenced the modern women's rights movement
and the student movement of the 1960s and many other movements in the
years to come.
• Born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, second child of
Martin Luther King Sr., a pastor, and Alberta Williams King, a
former school teacher.
• A gifted student, King attended segregated public schools and at the
age of 15 was admitted to Morehouse College, where he studied
medicine and law.
• King then enrolled in a graduate program at Boston University,
completing his coursework in 1953 and earning a doctorate in
systematic theology two years later.
• While in Boston he met Coretta Scott, a young singer from
Alabama whom he wed in 1953 and settled in Montgomery,
Alabama, where King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church. They had four children:
• From here on, his life changed completely as he joined the civil
rights movement. Inspired by the philosophy of Mahatma
Gandhi, he gave a new direct to the civil rights movement.
 MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
• On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a
Montgomery bus and was arrested. Activists coordinated a bus
boycott that would continue for 381 days, placing a severe economic
strain on the public transit system and downtown business owners.
They chose Martin Luther King, Jr. as the protest’s leader and
official spokesman.
• By the time the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating on public buses unconstitutional in
November 1956, King—heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the activist Bayard
Rustin—had entered the national spotlight as an inspirational proponent of organized,
nonviolent resistance.
• King had also become a target for white supremacists, who firebombed his family home that
January.
 SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE
• Emboldened by the boycott’s success, in 1957 he and other civil
rights activists—most of them fellow ministers—founded the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a group
committed to achieving full equality for African Americans through
nonviolent protest.
• The SCLC motto was “Not one hair of one head of one person
should be harmed.” He would remain at the helm of this influential
organization until his death.
• In his role as SCLC president, Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled across the country and around
the world, giving lectures on nonviolent protest and civil rights as well as meeting with
religious figures, activists and political leaders.
• During a month-long trip to India in 1959, he had the opportunity to meet family members and
followers of Gandhi, the man he described in his autobiography as “the guiding light of our
technique of nonviolent social change.” King also authored several books and articles during
this time.
 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC)
• Offshoot of SCLC that led civil disobedience
campaigns for students
• Founded in 1960
 Sit-Ins
• Effective new strategy for integration
• SNCC targeted lunch counters across
the South
• Feb. 1, 1960 1st sit-in began in Greensboro,
NC at Woolworth’s
• Led to 70,000 students for 18 months
participating in sit-ins and boycotts
D. Kennedy and Civil Rights
 Freedom Rides
• May 1961
CORE retests
bus interstate
travel
• Goal was to be
arrested to
make federal
government
enforce the
law
• Met with severe resistance once they
entered Alabama
• Many were beaten while the police
watched
• Then they were arrested
• Kennedy forced to act
• Sends federal marshals to
protect the riders, but does
not stop them from being
arrested or force integration
• Trying not to anger the
Southern Democrats
• Robert Kennedy (the AG)
petitions the ICC to issue an
order for integration in
November 1961
 Showdown in Birmingham, AL (1963)
• Most racially divided city
in the South
• 1963 Birmingham closed
parks, playgrounds, pools,
and golf courses to avoid
desegregation
• MLK decided to begin a
campaign there to bring
segregation to the
national attention
 LETTER FROM • In 1960 King and his family moved to Atlanta,
his native city, where he joined his father as co-
BIRMINGHAM JAIL pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
• This new position did not stop King and his
SCLC colleagues from becoming key players in
many of the most significant civil rights battles of
the 1960s.
• Their philosophy of nonviolence was put to a
particularly severe test during the Birmingham
campaign of 1963, in which activists used a
boycott, sit-ins and marches to protest
segregation, unfair hiring practices and other
injustices in one of America’s most racially
divided cities.
• 50 were arrested on Good Friday.
 • Arrested for his involvement on April 12, King penned
the civil rights manifesto known as the “Letter from
Birmingham Jail,” an eloquent defense of civil
disobedience addressed to a group of white clergymen
who had criticized his tactics.

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the
oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in
a direct-action campaign that was ‘well-timed’ in the view of those who have not
suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the
word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This
"Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our
distinguished jurists, that justice too long delayed is justice denied." -- Martin
Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail
• SCLC began using children in a “Children’s Crusade”
• Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor attacked the
children
• Images shown on national television
• Public is outraged
• Non-violence ends – riots begin in
Birmingham
• Justice Dept
intervenes and
negotiations begin
• Several bombings
• 3,000 federal troops sent to end violence
• Two sides agree to end campaign and begin
integration of business/stores
JFK Announces a Civil Rights Bill
• June 11 – JFK
announces that he
will send a Civil
Rights Bill to
Congress
 March on • Later that year, Martin Luther King, Jr. worked
with a number of civil rights and religious
Washington (1963) groups to organize the March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom, a peaceful political rally
designed to shed light on the injustices African
Americans continued to face across the country.
• Meet to show support for JFK’s Civil Rights
bill.
• Held on August 28 and attended by some
200,000 to 300,000 participants, the event is
widely regarded as a watershed moment in the
history of the American civil rights movement
and a factor in the passage of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964.
 I HAVE A DREAM • The March on Washington culminated in King’s
most famous address, known as the “I Have a
Dream” speech, a spirited call for peace and
equality that many consider a masterpiece of
rhetoric.
• Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial—a
monument to the president who a century earlier
had brought down the institution of slavery in the
United States—he shared his vision of a future in
which “this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal.'”
• The speech and the march cemented King’s reputation at home and abroad; later that
year he was named “Man of the Year” by TIME magazine and in 1964 became the
youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mississippi: Freedom Summer Project
• June of 1964, SNCC
wants to register black
voters
• Less than 5% of the
African-American
community was
registered
• Over 900 volunteers
(mainly white college
students) went to the
South to try to register
voters
• Violence
– 6 brutally murdered
– 80 beatings
– 35 shootings
– 30 bombings
– Over 1,000 arrests
• Registered over 60,000 African-
Americans
March from Selma to Montgomery
• Poor black voter turnout in 1964 election
• SCLC tried to register voters
• March 7, 1965: protest march from
Selma to Montgomery
• Were violently attacked by the police
• March 9, 1965 – 2nd march attempted
led by MLK
• Ordered by the courts to not march
• LBJ announces a plan to pass legislation
protecting African-American voters
• March 21 – 3rd march will make it to
Montgomery
 Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Authorized federal supervision of voter registration
• Outlawed all literacy & other discriminatory tests for
voter registration
 Affirmative Action (1965)
• Executive Order 11375
• Policies that take race, ethnicity, or gender
into consideration in an attempt to promote
equal opportunity or increase ethnic
diversity
• Results: more minorities enroll in college
 End of Affirmative Action
• Began a “reverse discrimination”
• Regents of the University of California v.
Bakke (1978)
– Ruled against affirmative action programs that
set a rigid quota for minority admissions
• California Prop 209 (1996) ended affirmative
action in CA
 Thurgood Marshall
• June 1967 – LBJ
appoints Marshall to
the Supreme Court
 Nation of Islam
• Religious
organization that
was in favor of
black separatism
• Malcolm X
became a leader
in the early
1960’s
• Encouraged armed
resistance “by any
means necessary” to
break white
domination
• Gave it a violent turn

"The white people should thank Dr. King

for holding black people in check."
 Stokely Carmichael
• Was the leader of SNCC in the late
1960’s
• Became disillusioned with the slow
progress being made
• Believed in “Black Power”
– Self-reliance
– Self-sufficiency
• Transformed SNCC into
an all black organization
 Black Panthers (1966)
• Black Panther Party
for Self-Defense
• Huey Newton & Bobby
Seale
• Believed in armed
defense against police
and white brutality
• Became a
paramilitary group
• Monitored the local
police to protect
from brutality
• Continuously raided
by police & FBI
• Jail time was their
downfall
 • The events in Selma deepened a growing rift between Martin
ASSASINATION Luther King, Jr. and young radicals who repudiated his
nonviolent methods and commitment to working within the
established political framework.
• As more militant black leaders such as Stokely Carmichael
rose to prominence, King broadened the scope of his activism
to address issues such as the Vietnam War and poverty among
Americans of all races. In 1967, King and the SCLC
embarked on an ambitious program known as the Poor
People’s Campaign, which was to include a massive march
on the capital.
• On the evening of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. He was fatally shot while
standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, where King had traveled to support a sanitation
workers’ strike. In the wake of his death, a wave of riots swept major cities across the country, while
President Johnson declared a national day of mourning.
• James Earl Ray, an escaped convict and known racist, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced
to 99 years in prison. He later recanted his confession and gained some unlikely advocates, including
members of the King family, before his death in 1998.
 • After the assassination of King, emotionally-charged looting
LEGACY and riots followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson
administration to push through additional civil rights laws.
• The Fair Housing Act thus, became a law on April 11, 1968,
just days after King’s assassination. It prevented housing
discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion.
It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights
era.
• After years of campaigning by activists, members of Congress
and Coretta Scott King, among others, in 1983 President
Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a U.S. federal holiday in
honor of King.
• Thus, his birthday became a national holiday, creating an annual opportunity for Americans to
remember him and his contribution.
• Observed on the third Monday of January every year, Martin Luther King Day was first
celebrated in 1986.
CONCLUSION • Of all the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, the role of Martin
Luther King Junior is the most important. He led the movement for a
long time and inspired people all around the world.
• He is always remembered as a visionary leader who was deeply
committed to achieving social justice through nonviolent means.
• His life and way of directing the movement made the world realize the
power of Non-violence.
• Today he is widely celebrated as one of the great prophetic leaders of
the later twentieth century, and his name still inspires those who follow
his call for Justice. He once said; - If physical death is the price I must
pay to free my brothers and sisters from the permanent death of the
spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive.'
• His contributions led to the development of the black community, participation in the great military
conflicts of the United States, the elimination of racial segregation, and the civil rights movement which
sought political and social freedom.
• In 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States.
• The Blacks thus, owe a lot to him. He can never be forgotten even in the centuries to come.