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 John F. Kennedy
(1917-
(1917- 1963)
1963)
- He never lost an election.
- in 1946 he ran for Congress.
- President from January 1961 until his
assassination in November 1963.
- He was the youngest man and the first
Roman Catholic ever elected to the
presidency of the United States.
- Supported the Civil rights movement , but
was only somewhat successful in passing his
New Frontier domestic policies.
Jackie Kennedy Onassis
(1929-
(1929- 1994)
1994)
- First Lady of the United States ( 1961 – 1963).
- Is remembered as one of the most influential and
admired First Ladies in American history.
- She spoke French, Spanish, and Italian.
- She created the White House Historical
Association, the White House Fine Arts
committee, and a position for a White House
curator; she established the White House as a
museum; and she enlisted the help of various art
collectors and designers who furnished the White
House with American art and antique furniture.
Rosa Parks (1913 – 2005)
She was a civil rights activist who refused to
surrender her seat to a white man on a
segregated bus in Alabama.

- In 1943 Parks became a member of the

Montgomery chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), and she served
as its secretary until 1956.

- On December 1, 1955, she was arrested for

refusing to give her bus seat to a white man,
a violation of the city’s racial segregation
ordinances.

- Parks became known as the “mother of the

civil rights movement.”
 James Meredith and
and Ole Miss (1933)

- He was the only person known to attend Ole Miss

and graduate Ole Miss as a African American.

- In 1966 James started a march through Mississippi

called “March Against Fear”.

- James claimed that African Americans in the state

were to exercise the rights conferred on them by the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
 Ralph Ellison Invisible Man
- Published in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African Americans early in the twentieth
century.

- Summary: Invisible Man is the story of a young black man from the South who
does not fully understand racism in the world. Filled with hope about his future, he
goes to college, but gets expelled for showing one of the white benefactors the real
and seamy side of black existence. He moves to Harlem and becomes an orator for
the Communist party, known as the Brotherhood. In his position, he is both
threatened and praised, swept up in a world he does not fully understand. As he
works for the organization, he encounters many people and situations that slowly
force him to face the truth about racism and his own lack of identity. As racial
tensions in Harlem continue to build, he gets caught up in a riot that drives him to a
manhole. In the darkness and solitude of the manhole, he begins to understand
himself - his invisibility and his identity. He decides to write his story down (the
body of the novel) and when he is finished, he vows to enter the world again.

Won:
- The U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953.
- In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man 19th on its list of the 100 best English-
language novels of the 20th century.
 Martin Luther King and the March on
- Washington
He was born on January 15,
1929, in Atlanta, Georgia.

- Through his activism, he played

a pivotal role in ending the legal
segregation of African-American
citizens in the South and other
areas of the nation, as well as the
creation of the Civil Rights Act of
1964 and the Voting Rights Act
of 1965.
- Received the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1964.
- Took place on August 28,
1963, and was a high point
in the Civil Rights
Movement.
- The purpose of this march
was to bring pressure on the
congress to pass the
presidents bill.

- King was assassinated in April
1968, and continues to be
remembered as one of the most
lauded African-American leaders
in history
- The march was supported by others such as
white liberal, labor, and religious groups that
constituted the civil rights coalition.
- it’s best remembered as the event where Dr
King delivered his “I have a Dream” speech.
 Medgar Evers (1925
(1925 –– 1963)
1963)

- He organized voter-registration efforts and economic

boycotts, and investigated crimes perpetrated against
blacks.

- After work as an insurance salesman, Evers soon

became involved in the Regional Council of Negro
Leadership (RCNL). 

- - He was assassinated outside of his Mississippi home in

1963, and after years of on-again, off-again legal
proceedings, his killer was sent to prison in 1994. In
2017, President Barack Obama designated Evers' home
a national historic landmark.
Civil rights activist Medgar Evers served as the
first state field secretary of the NAACP in
Mississippi until his assassination in 1963.
Jim Crow - Were state and local laws that enforced racial
Laws segregation in the Southern United States.
- Named after a black minstrel show character,
the laws—which existed for about 100 years,
from the post-Civil War era until 1968—were
meant to marginalize African Americans by
denying them the right to vote, hold jobs, get
an education or other opportunities.
- Segregated waiting rooms in bus and train
stations were required, as well as water
fountains, restrooms, building entrances,
elevators, cemeteries, even amusement-park
cashier windows.
 -  Was the  Governor of Mississippi from 1960 to 1964.

Governor Ross -  Member of the Dixiecrats, Southern Democrats who

supported racial segregation.
Barnett  (1987 – 1989) - In 1962, Barnett tried to prevent the enrollment of James
Meredith at the University of Mississippi. 
 KKK (Ku Klux Klan)

- The Ku Klux Klan, was born in 1865 in

Pulaski, Tennessee, as a private club for
Confederate veterans.
- The KKK grew into a secret vigilante society
terrorizing black communities and seeping
through white Southern culture, with members
at the highest levels of government and in the
lowest echelons of criminal back alleys.

1st Klan 1865–1871

2nd Klan 1915–1944
3rd Klan 1946
NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
- Was established in 1909

- Is America’s oldest and largest civil rights

organization.

- Formed in New York City by white and black

activists, partially in response to the ongoing
violence against African Americans around the
country.

- During the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s,

the group won major legal victories, and today the
NAACP has more than 2,200 branches and some
half a million members worldwide. 
 The space age

• IT is 1963. The Space Age they’re calling it. 

• A man has circled the earth in a rocketship. 
• They’ve invented a pill so married women don’t
have to get pregnant. 
• A can of beer opens with a single finger instead of
a can opener. 
 Birmingham bombing

- The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an

act of white supremacist terrorism which occurred
at the African-American 16th Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday,
September 15.
- Four members of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter
planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a
timing device beneath the steps located on the east
side of the church.
AMERICANS
USED
LYNCHING'S TO
TERRORIZE AND
CONTROL BLACK
PEOPLE
1. Where did most blacks live?
■ In the south of the country. 
2. What was the Second Great Migration that occurred between 1940-1970? 
■ Was the migration of more than 5 million African Americans from the South to the Northeast,
Midwest, and West. It began in 1940, through World War II, and lasted until 1970.
3. Why did blacks move to the North in such numbers?
■ The economy, jobs, and racial discrimination remained top factors for black migration to the
North.
4. What kinds of work were typical for blacks in the South? Why?
■ Agriculture or domestic labor because of segregation.
5.  What were the Jim Crow laws?
o No person shall require any white female to nurse in wards or rooms in which negro men
are placed. 
o It shall be unlawful for a white person to marry anyone except a white person. Any marriage in
violation of this section shall be void. 
o No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls.
o The officer in charge shall not bury any colored persons upon ground used for the burial of white
persons. 
o Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to
be used by the race first using them.
o Negroes and whites are not allowed to share the water fountains, movie houses, public restrooms,
ballparks, phone booths, circus shows. 
o Negroes cannot use the same pharmacy or buy postage stamps at the same window 
o The Board shall maintain a separate building on separate grounds for the instruction of all blind
persons of the colored race.
o Lunch counters, the state fair, pool tables, hospitals. Number forty-seven I have to read twice, for
its irony. 
o The Board shall maintain a separate building on separate grounds for the instruction of all blind
persons of the colored race. 
6.  How did this affect the daily lives of blacks, especially in the South?
■ These laws were to be applied precisely in the south. However, this led to substantial black
populations moving to the cities and, as the decade progressed, white city dwellers demanded
more laws to limit opportunities for African Americans.
7.  What violence or threat of violence affected blacks? What was the black response?
■ Segregation, racism and the prohibition of making a normal life affect blacks in many ways. They
created and promoted organizations to protect themselves and marches to make noise about the
heinous events that were happening.
8.  How did blacks resist the violence of racism?
■ the Black masses” were cognizant of their rights to such an extent that Southern states and
municipalities were forced to constantly rework segregation laws.