The Civil Rights Movement in Words

& Pictures:The Fight Against Discrimination in

the 1950s & 1960s

Legal Segregation after WWII

Brown v. Board of Education: 1954 (Topeka, Kansas)

Supreme Court Case Overturns Plessy v.

Ferguson Ends “separate but

equal” schools Officially integrates

public schools though it will not be evenly enforced

Emmitt Till Murdered: 1955

14 year-old black boy from Chicago

whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi

Did not understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South

3 days later, 2 white men dragged him from his bed @ night, beat him brutally & shot him in the head

killers were arrested & charged with murder, but were acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury

Mother had open casket funeral

Rosa Parks & Bus Boycott: 1955

•By law, blacks had to sit in back of bus

•Parks not first to refuse, but she worked in NAACP

•Wanted polite treatment, no segregation, & black drivers

•Walked or car pooled

•Lasted Dec. 5, 1955 to Dec. 20, 1956

•Supreme Court ruled to end segregation

Little Rock Nine: 1957

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called National Guard to prevent nine African American students--"The Little Rock Nine"--from entering Central High School

Governor agreed to use the National Guard to protect the African American teenagers, but dismissed the troops

angry white mob jeered, threw bricks, beat several reporters & smashed school windows & doors

police evacuated the nine students President Eisenhower dispatched

paratroopers & put Arkansas National Guard under his command

"Little Rock Nine" finished the school year Next year, Governor closed all the high

schools, forcing the African American students to take correspondence courses or go to out-of-state schools

Lunch Counter Sit-Ins: 1960

•Feb. 1, 1960, the Greensboro Four sat at that whites-only lunch counter at the Woolworth Store in Greensboro, North Carolina•Challenged unwritten rules of segregation •four black youths — Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr. and David Richmond, were freshmen on academic scholarships at N.C. A&T State University •Inspired sit-ins across the south

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee Founded: 1960 Founded by college

age students, like Julian Bond

Organized movements to register voters, freedom rides, Mississippi Summer Project, March on Washington…

Freedom Rides: 1961

•Goal to test desegregation of bus terminal facilities, since buses had been desegregated •SNCC members organized•1st ride included John Lewis & others traveling form Washington, D.C. for New Orleans on two buses•South Carolina, a mob of 20 attacked the group•In Alabama, the buses tires were slashed & the bus was set on fire by a mob, rides continued on other buses

University of Mississippi Integration: 1962

Birmingham Campaign: 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, the

non-violent direct actions headed by King provoked the violence of local police under Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Conner.

Televised footage of blacks being attacked by dogs and with fire- hoses alerted the nation to the terrible conditions in the South, & ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Four Little Girls: 1963 Bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, resulted in the

death of four innocent black girls during Sunday School class Was the nadir of the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham City authorities, never sympathetic to blacks, did very little to

bring the bombers to justice. Not until 1977 was one of the bombers convicted.

Locally, the bombing brought the factional Civil Rights leaders together. Nationally, the bombing gave the movement not just a face, but four faces, four young, innocent faces.

Medgar Evers Killed: 1963 Black lawyer, helped open several NAACP chapters in

Mississippi, helped James Meredith get into Ole Miss Had witnessed lynching, was determined to change the

south, specifically his native Mississippi The night of a speech given by JFK promising help fight

for civil rights, Evers returned home after midnight from a series of NAACP functions. As he left his car with a handful of t-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go," he was shot in the back. His wife & children, who had been waiting up for him, found him bleeding to death on the doorstep.

FBI investigation uncovered a suspect, Byron de la Beckwith, who denied shooting Evers despite witnesses. Tried twice, but both trials ended in hung juries.

Sam Baily, an Evers associate, commented in Esquire that during those years "a white man got more time for killing a rabbit out of season than for killing a Negro in Mississippi."

March on Washington: 1963

•Goal was to rally support for jobs & freedom

•Occurred after much violence in Birmingham, Alabama

•Tried to do what A. Philip Randolph could not in 1941, march which was cancelled by FDR

•MLK jr. gave “I Have a Dream” speech

•Many feared riots, but was peaceful

Civil Rights Act of 1964 In 1964, while President Lyndon Johnson

was in office, Congress passed Public Law 82-352 (78 Stat. 241).

Forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, & firing.

Section 703 (a) made it unlawful for an employer to "fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions or privileges or employment, because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."

Title VII of the act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to implement the law.

Was able to be passed largely because of the assassination of JFK

3 Civil Rights Workers Disappear: 1964 Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner,

Andrew Goodman, & James Chaney, disappear in Neshoba County, Mississippi.

Michael Henry Schwerner, 24, a white member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Andrew Goodman, 20, a white Queens College student. James Earl Chaney, 21, a black plasterer and CORE member.

The three were volunteers traveling to Mississippi to aid in the registration of African American voters as part of the Mississippi Summer Project.

The FBI recovered their bodies, which had been buried in an earthen dam, 44 days later. The Neshoba County deputy sheriff and 16 others, all Ku Klux Klan members, were indicted for the crime; 7 were convicted.

Freedom Summer: 1964 A highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register

blacks to vote during the summer of 1964 organized by members of CORE and SNCC

Thousands of civil rights activists, many white college students from the North, went to Mississippi & other Southern states to try to get southern states to enforce the 15th Amendment

Workers organized the Mississippi Freedom Party (MFDP) which challenged the seating of the delegates representing Mississippi's all white Democratic Party

Workers also established 30 "Freedom Schools" to address the racial inequalities in Mississippi's educational system

Workers & citizens involved were targets of violence; 37 black churches and 30 black homes & businesses were firebombed or burned during that summer, & the cases often went unsolved; 1,000 black & white volunteers arrested, & at least 80 beaten by white mobs or racist police officers

The summer's most infamous act of violence was the murder of three young civil rights workers, a black volunteer, James Chaney, and his white coworkers, Andrew Goodman & Michael Schwerner

24th Amendment Passed: 1964

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Selma to Montgomery March: 1965

•For voting rights

•in Alabama, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was set upon with violence when the marchers crossed the Edmund Petus Bridge

•Local police used billy clubs, tear gas, cattle prods, and beat the marchers to show their resistance to voter rights & the freedom to petition for those rights on "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965.

Viola Liuzzo Killed: 1965

Mrs. Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a white civil rights worker from Detroit, Michigan, was gunned down while driving some black marchers back to Selma, Alabama on March 25, 1965.

Malcolm X Assassinated: 1965 Born Malcolm Little, he later became "Detroit

Red" & "New York Red" - a hustler, drug pusher, pimp, con man & head of a Boston robbery ring. Spent time in prison, became (Minister) Malcolm X, spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Later became El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, an advocate for oppressed peoples.

Malcolm preached a militant gospel of self-defense & nationalism that terrified many whites & disturbed, yet also inspired, black Americans. After travels to Africa & Mecca, he returned with a deeper understanding of Islam & a new willingness to accept white allies.

Under attack from the Nation of Islam & under surveillance by the FBI, Malcolm X was assassinated at age 39 while delivering a speech. Who killed him & why remains a mystery to this day, 40 years after his assassination.

Watts Riots: 1965 Los Angeles's South Central neighborhood

became a battleground police officer pulled over motorist Marquette

Frye & his brother, suspecting Marquette of driving drunk. While officers questioned them, a crowd of onlookers formed. His mother arrived, a struggle ensued & all 3 members of the Frye family were arrested. After the police left the scene, the crowd & tension escalated and sparked the riots, which lasted 6 days. More than 34 people died, 1,000 wounded, and an estimated $50 - $100 million in property damage.

Watts Labor Community Action Committee report issued by the Commission concluded that the riots were caused by the high jobless rate in the inner city, poor housing, & bad schools

Riots in Detroit, Newark, New Jersey: 1967 From July 14th to July 17th, violence in

Newark claimed 23 lives and destroyed over 10 million dollars of property. A mere six days later, Detroit experienced a similar fate, resulting in the deaths of 43 people & the destruction of an estimated 22 million dollars of property damage over a five day period.

Both "riots" were sparked by police activity in predominantly black neighborhoods, but the underlying causes were quite complex, including police brutality, persistent poverty, & a lack of political representation for African American residents, as well as local opposition to the Vietnam War.

Government 1sts: 1966-1967 Edward Brooke, R-Massachusetts,

elected first black U.S. senator in 85 years.

Thurgood Marshall first black to be named to the Supreme Court.

Carl Stokes (Cleveland) and Richard G. Hatcher (Gary, Indiana) elected first black mayors of major U.S. cities.

Kerner Commission: 1967 "Pillage, looting, murder and arson have

nothing to do with civil rights," President Lyndon B. Johnson told the nation, after deadly riots

Johnson formed a commission of business, political & civil rights leaders to investigate the nation's ethnic tensions; Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner to chair the commission

Report concluded that racism & economic inequality had caused the riots & that the problem was not only overt discrimination but also chronic poverty, high unemployment, poor schools, inadequate housing, lack of access to health care, & systematic police bias and brutality.

The report's most famous passage warned that the United States was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal." 

Martin Luther King, Jr: 1968 Was an eloquent Baptist minister in

Atlanta & leader who promoted non-violent means (learned from Gandhi) to achieve civil-rights reform & was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

Was made a hero by the bus boycott. Wrote the 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail" & led a massive march on Washington DC where he delivered his now famous, "I Have A Dream" speech.

On April 4, 1968, King, age 39, was shot by James Earl Ray while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was turning his attention to a nationwide campaign to help the poor at the time of his assassination, which was set to begin in Chicago.

Received a national holiday in 1985