Civil Rights Movement

What was the Civil Rights Movement?

•Mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States•Came to national prominence during the mid-1950s

Important EventsCivil Rights Movement

TIMELINE1863: Emancipation Proclamation1896: Plessy vs. Ferguson upholds “separate but equal”

1909: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) created

1919-1929: Harlem Renaissance blossoms

TIMELINE1954: Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka rules public school segregation unconstitutional

1955: Rosa Parks sparks sustained mass bus boycott

1956: Bus system desegregated1957: Little Rock Central High School controversy over public school integration

TIMELINE1960: Greensboro sit-in sparks widespread student sit-in campaign

1961: Freedom Rides: a series of political protests against segregation by blacks and whites who rode buses together through the American South. The Freedom Rides mark an era in which civil rights activity grows in scale and intensity.

1962: James Meredith admitted to University of Mississippi. His attendance spurred riots that culminated in the deaths of two people.

TIMELINEApril 16, 1963: Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” defended civil disobedience and warned that frustrated African Americans might turn to black nationalism. The events in Birmingham prompted President John F. Kennedy to introduce legislation that eventually became the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

August 28, 1963: The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which attracted over 200,000 participants. King delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech at the march.

1964: Martin Luther King Jr. awarded Nobel Peace Prize

TIMELINE1965: Malcolm X assassinated 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated Late 1960’s: NAACP and other groups face challenges from new militant organizations, such as the Black Panther Party.

1969:13 African American members of the U.S. House of Representatives form the Congressional Black Caucus “to promote the public welfare through legislation designed to meet the needs of millions of neglected citizens.”

Major FiguresCivil Rights Movement

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. • Baptist minister and social

activist • Led the civil rights movement in

the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.

• Rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963)

• Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964

Malcolm X• African American leader and

prominent figure in the Nation of Islam

• Advocated race pride and black nationalism in the early 1960s

• Black nationalism: sought to acquire economic power and to infuse among blacks a sense of community and group feeling. Many adherents to black nationalism wanted to create a separate black nation by African Americans.

• After his assassination, the widespread distribution of his life story—“The Autobiography of Malcolm X” (1965)—made him an ideological hero, especially among black youth.

Thurgood Marshall

• Lawyer, civil rights activist, and the first African American justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1967–91)

• As an attorney, he successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

Stokely Carmichael

• West-Indian-born civil-rights activist

• Leader of black nationalism in the United States in the 1960s

• Originator of rallying slogan, “black power.”

John F. Kennedy• Ran for office as a leading supporter of

Civil Rights Movement• Black voters helped him win election in

1960• At first only quietly supported Civil Rights

Movement while in office because he feared alienating southern Democrats

• Violence of Birmingham convinced him of the need to publicly endorse the movement

• Plans to push Civil Rights bill through Congress interrupted by his assassination

Lyndon B. Johnson

• Initially opposed Civil Rights Movement

• One of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest supporters after he assumed presidency in 1963

• Used issue of Civil Rights to establish himself as leader of the Democratic Party

• Pressured Congress to pass Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965

A Raisin in the SunBy Lorraine Hansberry

Important Info• Published in 1959• Focuses on a working-class black family in Chicago, late 1940’s • Based on Hansberry’s own experiences of racial harassment after her family moved into a white neighborhood Hansberry vs. Lee, 1940 Prior to the passage of the Fair Housing Act

Important Info•Premiered on Broadway on March 11th, 1959Hansberry did not expect play to do well

Received popular and critical acclaim

Nominated for four Tony Awards in 1960

Ran on for two yearsSeveral revivals and film/TV adaptations

“Harlem” By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

1.What does it mean when something is “deferred”?

2.What similes does Hughes use in this poem?

3.What dream do you think Hughes is describing?