Taking on Segregation Chapter 21, Section 1 Notes

Objectives • Explain how legalized segregation

deprived African Americans of their rights as citizens

• Summarize civil rights legal activity and the response to the Plessy and Brown cases

• Trace MLK, Jr’s civil rights activities, beginning with the Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Describe the expansion of the civil rights movement

Main Idea and Terms/Names •Activism and a series of Supreme Court decisions advanced equal rights for African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s

•Thurgood Marshall •Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka •Rosa Parks •Martin Luther King, Jr. •Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) •Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) •Sit-in

The Segregation System • Civil Rights Act of 1875

– Outlawed segregation – Supreme Court overturned it in 1883

• Plessy v. Ferguson – “separate but equal” did not violate the

14th amendment (equal treatment) – Allowed Southern states to pass Jim

Crow laws (separating the races) – Allowed restrictions on inter-race

contact

Civil Rights Movement • WW2 set the stage for the civil rights

movement – Opened new job opportunities – One million African Americans served

• Came home and fought to end discrimination

– During the war, civil rights organizations fought for voting rights and challenged Jim Crow laws

Challenging Segregation in Court • Campaign led by the NAACP

– Focused on inequality between separate schools that states provided

• Thurgood Marshall argued many of these cases

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka – Marshall’s most stunning victory – Supreme Court struck down segregation in

public schools as a violation of 14th amendment

– To be implemented “with all deliberate speed”

Reaction to Brown

• Official reaction was mixed • Within a year, 500 school districts

had desegregated • Some areas resisted

– Reappearance of KKK – Governor of Georgia – “Georgia will

not comply”!

Crisis in Little Rock

• State had been planning for desegregation • Governor Faubus ordered the National

Guard to turn away the “Little Rock Nine” – the 9 African American students who would

integrate Little Rock Central High • A Federal judge ordered Faubus to let the

students attend the school • Eisenhower placed the National Guard under

federal control to watch the 9 attend school • A year later, Faubus shut down the high

school

Montgomery Bus Boycott • African Americans were impatient with

the slow speed of change – Took direct action

• 1955 – Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and was arrested • JoAnn Robinson suggested a boycott

of the buses • Leaders of the African American

community formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) – Elected 26 yr old Martin Luther King to

lead

Montgomery Bus Boycott • Dr. King made a passionate speech

and filled the audience with a sense of mission

• African Americans boycotted the buses for 381 days and filed a lawsuit – Organized car pools – Walked long distances

• 1956 – Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation

Martin Luther King, Jr. • MLK called his nonviolent resistance

“soul force” • Influences

– Jesus – love one’s enemies – Henry David Thoreau – concept of civil

disobedience (refusal to obey an unjust law)

– A. Philip Randolph – massive demonstrations

– Gandhi – non violent resistance

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) • SCLC founded in 1957 by MLK and

other civil rights leaders • Purpose – carry on nonviolent

crusades against discrimination • Used protests and demonstrations • Helped organize a student protest

group (SNCC) – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – Challenge the system!

Movement Spreads • Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

staged the first sit-in in 1942 – African Americans would sit at

segregated lunch counters and refuse to leave until they were served

• 1960 – students in North Carolina staged a sit-in at a lunch counter – Television crews covered the protest – African Americans were non-violent, but

white resistance was not • Movement spread across nation (sit-

ins in 48 cities)

The Triumphs of a Crusade

Chapter 21, Section 2 Notes

Objectives

• Identify the goal of the freedom riders • Explain how civil rights activism forced

President Kennedy to act against segregation

• State the motives of the 1963 March on Washington

• Describe the tactics tried by civil rights organizations to secure the passage of the Voting Rights Act

Main Idea and Terms/Names

• Civil Rights activists broke through racial barriers. Their activism prompted landmark legislation.

• Freedom riders • James Meredith • Civil Rights Act of

1964 • Freedom Summer • Fannie Lou Hamer • Voting Rights Act

of 1965

Freedom Riders • Civil Rights activists would ride

busses to test the Supreme Court decision that banned segregation on buses and in bus terminals

• Provoking a violent reaction to force the JFK administration to enforce the law

• Riders were tormented and beaten

Freedom Riders

• Newspaper coverage and the violence provoked JFK to send federal marshals to protect the riders

• Segregation in all interstate travel facilities was banned

Integrating Ole Miss • Air Force Veteran James Meredith won a federal court case that allowed

him to enroll in the all-white University of Mississippi (Ole Miss)

• Governor Ross Barnett refused to let him register

• Kennedy ordered federal marshals to escort Meredith

• Riots broke out and resulted in 2 deaths • Federal officials accompanied Meredith

to class to protect him

Birmingham • Strictly enforced its segregation • Reputation for racial violence • Reverend Shuttlesworth, MLK, and the

SCLC tested their non-violence • MLK and others were arrested during a

nonviolent demonstration – MLK wrote Letters from a Birmingham Jail

Marching in Birmingham

Kennedy Takes a Stand

• June 11, 1963 – JFK sends troops to force Gov. Wallace to desegregate the U of Alabama

• He demanded that Congress pass a civil rights bill

• Hours later Medgar Evers, an NAACP secretary was murdered

• A new militancy developed – “Freedom Now!”

March on Washington • To show support for

JFK’s civil rights bill, a march on Washington was formed

• Aug. 28, 1963, 250,000 people assembled in Washington

• MLK gave his “I have a Dream” speech – Appeals for peace and

harmony

Violence Persists

• Two weeks after the I have a Dream speech, four girls were killed in a Birmingham church

• Two months later, JFK is assassinated • LBJ pledges to carry out JFK’s work

– Passes Civil Rights Act of 1964 – Prohibited discrimination – Gave equal access to public

accommodations

Fighting for Voting Rights

• CORE and SNCC worked to register as many African-American voters as possible – Project is known as Freedom Summer – Attempt to influence Congress to pass

as voting rights bill • College Students were trained to help

the project • Met with resistance and violence

A New Political Party

• African Americans needed a political voice

• SNCC organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

• Fannie Lou Hamer spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 1964 – Support poured in for the MFDP – Civil Rights leaders compromised with

the Democratic Party (MFDP got two seats in Congress)

Selma Campaign

• SNCC led a voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama

• After a demonstrator was shot, MLK organized a 50 mile march to Montgomery

• Mayhem broke out and TV crews caught police beating and gassing marchers

• Johnson presented a voting rights act and gave marchers federal protection

Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Eliminated literacy tests • Local officials could not deny

suffrage • The percentage of African American

voters tripled in the south

New Directions • Objectives: • List some of the factors responsible

for discontent among some African Americans

• Explain what new philosophies were developed by African Americans to deal with discontent

New Leadership

• Civil Rights has slow gains

• African Americans adopt a new, more radical approach to fight racial prejudice

• Willingness to use violence to protect themselves and to achieve just treatment

Black Muslims

• Founded in the 1930’s by Elijah Muhammad

• Embraced Islam • Preached black

nationalism which pushes for separation from whites to create their own nation

Northern Segregation • De facto segregation– Exists by practice and custom Harder to fight - De jure segregation Segregation by law Urban violence: race riots took place in Harlem, Watts (L.A.), Chicago, etc…

Malcolm X

• Very gifted speaker for the Nation of Islam

• “Stop singing and start swinging”

• Became more moderate and was assassinated in 1965

Black Power

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) becomes more radical

• SNCC embraces black power • Violent acts will be justified and

preached racial distinctiveness • Split the Civil Rights Movement • Ballots or Bullets

Black Panthers • Militant black power group • Used confrontations to force equal rights • Large riots in the North and South • Investigated by Kerner Commission and

ghettos create riot situations

Assassination of MLK

• MLK assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968

• James Earl Ray admitted to the assassination

Riots in Response

• One week of riots in response to this assassination

Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement

• Kerner Commission – cause of urban violence was white racism

• Civil Rights Act of 1968 - ended discrimination in housing

• Affirmative Actions – making special efforts to hire minorities (quotas)