The Civil Rights Movement, 19551976

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The Civil Rights Movement, 1955-1976
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Discrimination and the NAACP

• The Early Years of the Civil Rights Movement

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Racial Discriminations in the 1890s

• Disfranchisement secret ballot, literacy tests,
  poll taxes, grandfather clauses, white primaries
• De Jure Segregation
• Illegal violence

Lynchings from 1860s to 1960s
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Why Disfranchisement?

• Black population more than doubled between 1860
  and 1910 4/5s lived in the South and constituted
  35 percent of the population there.
• The black population was growing faster than the
  white.
• Fear of poor whites and blacks forming a
  political alliance as in the Populist movement.
• Fear of black political involvement and black
  rule.

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Results

• Literacy tests were upheld by U.S. Supreme Court
  in 1898 in Williams v. Mississippi
• In Louisiana black voting fell by 99 percent from
  130,344 to 1,342
• Segregation followed without black resistance
• Segregation was upheld by U.S. Supreme Court in
  1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson.
• If African Americans protested, violence resulted

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Legal Segregation Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
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W.E.B. Du Bois and the Establishment of the
NAACP, 1909
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The First Stage of the Civil Rights Movement

• Legal Remedies

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World War II and the U.S. Supreme Court

• WWII helps a change of attitude over equality of
  rights. Compare Nazism to American racism.
  African Americans seek Double V.
• Growth of NAACP
• Creation of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),
  1942
• Smith v. Allwright, 1944
• Truman created Committee on Civil Rights and
  integrated the armed forces in 1948
• First attacks on segregation aimed at post
  graduate programs

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Sweatt v. Painter, 1950
Heman Sweatt registering for courses at the
University of Texas law school, Austin, 1950.
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McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher
Education, 1950
George W. McLaurin attends his first class at the
University of Oklahoma under segregated
conditions. College of Education
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Public Education 1935-1936

• Average per capita expenditure in the South for
  education
• White 37.87
• Black 13.09
• National Average 67.88

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Kenneth and Mamie Phipps Clark and the U.S.
Supreme Court
The Clarks
The Court
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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas,1954
The legal team-George E.C. Hayes, left, Thurgood
Marshall, center, and James M. Nabrit, right.
The Brown Family
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Resistance through White Citizens Councils

• Southern opponents of racial integration
  organized white citizens councils to obstruct the
  implementation of the 1954 decision by the U.S.
  SUPREME COURT to end school desegregation

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First Activist Stage

• 1950s

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The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956
Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and Rosa Parks
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Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
1957
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., founder of the SCLC.
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Student Activism 1960s
Students from North Carolina A and T College,
Greensboro, February 1, 1960
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Lunch Counter Sit-ins
Ronald Martin, Robert Patterson, and Mark Martin
stage sit-down strike after being refused service
at a Woolworth lunch counter, Greensboro, N.C.,
1960.
Ministers protest segregation outsidea Woolworths
in New York City
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F.W. Woolworth Sit-In, Greensboro, North
Carolina, 1960
John Salter, Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody at a
Sit- in
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Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
1960
John Lewis, Chairman of SNCC, speaking at the
Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington,
August 28, 1963
Ella Baker
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CORE and the Freedom Riders, 1961
Anniston, Alabama May 1961
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Violence to the Surface

• Riots on College campuses in South (100s injured)
• Fire-bombing of buses and churches
• NAACP official Medgar Evers (1963) murdered
  outside his home
• Freedom Rides 80 injured,
• 6 murdered

Medgar Evars
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Voter Registration Drives

• Begin in 1962 and continue through 1964 after
  passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Voter Registration Canvassing, 1964
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Trouble in Birmingham
Letter from Birmingham Jail, MLK, Jr.,
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Bombingham, 1963
A bomb that exploded during services at the 16th
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., killed
four young girls in September 1963.
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The March on Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963
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LBJ and Congress Finally Act

• 1964 Civil Rights Act
• Create EEOC
• (Title VII)

Signing the Civil Rights Act LBJ and MLK
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Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964
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Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, 1965
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Marchers Crossing Edmund Pettus Bridge -- Voting
Rights March to Montgomery
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Congress Continues to Act

• 1965 Voting Rights Act
• 24th Amendment to the Constitution
• Outlaws poll taxes

Signing the Voting Rights Act 1965 LBJ and MLK
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Urban Unrest
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Black Power
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MLK Assassination, April 4, 1968
MLK and other civil rights leaders at the
Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, where King
was assassinated.
James Earl Ray, MLKs assassin.
MLK's funeral procession in Atlanta, Georgia,
1968.
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The Kerner Commission
Pictures from race riots that occurred in major
American cities from 1965-1967, and prompted the
formation of the Kerner Commission in 1967.
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Mexican Americans and the Fight for Civil Rights
Education Politics Workers
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La Raza Unida
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Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union
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The Grape Boycott, 1968
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American Indian Movement
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Gay Rights Movement The Raid on Stonewall Inn,
Greenwich Village, 1969
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Environmental Movement Earth Day, 1970