Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

Chapter 29, Section #1

Postwar Changes Strengthen ProtestsAfrican-Americans:• Fighting for equality since Civil War•Goals:• Political Rights• Better Jobs• End to segregation

Postwar Changes Strengthen Protests (cont’d)

After the War:• Because of Hitler and Holocaust:• Racism is evil

• African-Americans fought for freedom in Europe• Wanted to fight for the same at home• More moved to cities where they made more

money and became more successful• Socially organized (work, churches, street)• More resources

Brown Overturns Plessy

• NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)• Oldest civil rights organization in U.S.

• 1896: Plessy v. Ferguson• Made segregation legal (“separate but equal”)• White schools better then Black schools (books, equipment, etc.)

• Brown v. Board of Education• 1954: Ruled the segregation was unconstitutional• Ended segregation in public schools

Little Rock 9• African-American students had to be protected by Army

Montgomery Bus Boycott

1955: Rosa Parks arrested• Did not give up seat to white person• Church members called for boycott of busesMontgomery Bus Boycott• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.• Organized car pools, rode bikes, walked• Violent reaction by whites got national attention• After 13 months, Supreme court ruled bus segregation

unconstitutional

Massive Resistance

• Many southern whites upset• Ku Klux Klan (KKK)• Beatings, arson, murder

• White Citizens Council• Middle and upper class white• Targeted African-Americans economically

and socially

Sit-Ins Energize the Movement

African-American college students:• Sit-in: Protest in which people sit in a place and refuse to move until

demands are met.• Lunch counters were segregated• Feb, 1960: Hundreds of protesters (including some whites) sat at

lunch counters across the south.• Protesters covered in ammonia, itching powder, burned with

cigarettes, beaten, arrested.• Ended segregation of lunch counters.