The Civil Rights Movement in Texas

1
The Civil Rights Movement in Texas
2
What are Civil Rights?

• Civil rights are the nonpolitical rights of a
  citizen
• The rights of personal liberty guaranteed to US
  citizens by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the
  US Constitution and by acts of Congress.

3
Examples of Civil Rights

• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of press
• Freedom of assembly
• The right to vote
• Freedom from involuntary servitude
• The right to equality in public places

4
What is Discrimination?

• Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an
  individual are denied or interfered with because
  of their membership in a particular group or
  class.

5
Is There Any Law Against Discrimination?

• Statutes have been enacted to prevent
  discrimination based on a person's race, sex,
  religion, age, previous condition of servitude,
  physical limitation, national origin, and in some
  instances sexual preference.

6
14th Amendment

• The State should not deprive any person of life,
  liberty, or property, without due process of law
  nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction
  the equal protection of the laws.

7
The Civil Rights Movement

• Several reform movements have occurred in the
  United States
• aimed at abolishing racial discrimination against
  Americans of color and restoring suffrage in
  Southern states.

8
What Led to the Civil Rights Movement?

• After the end of reconstruction, Southern states
  implemented laws that promoted
• Racial segregation
• Disenfranchisement
• Exploitation
• Violence against minorities (Blacks, Latinos,
  Asians)

9
Civil Rights Movement in Texas

• Civil-rights campaigns in Texas are generally
  associated with the state's two most prominent
  ethnic minorities
• African Americans
• Mexican Americans

10
Civil Rights Movement in Texas

• Mexican Americans have made efforts to bring
  about improved political circumstances since the
  Anglo-American domination of Texas began in 1836.
  
• African Texans have fought for civil rights since
  their emancipation from slavery in 1865.

11
Pre-Civil War Atrocities

• In the 1850s, Tejanos faced expulsion from their
  Central Texas homes on the accusation that they
  helped slaves escape to Mexico.
• They became victims of Anglo wrath around the
  Goliad area during the Cart War of 1857, as they
  did in South Texas in 1859 after Juan N.
  Cortinas capture of Brownsville.

12
The U.S. Civil War (18611865)
13
Freedom at Last

• When President Lincolns Emancipation
  Proclamation took effect in 1865, an entire race
  of people was freed.
• Texas 1866 Constitutional Convention gave
  African-American men the right to sue or be sued,
  to contract and be contracted with, to acquire
  and transmit property, to obtain equal criminal
  prosecution under the law, and to testify orally
  in any case involving another African American.

14
Freedom at Last

• Significantly, the 1866 Constitution did not
  allow African Americans to hold public office or
  to vote.
• 11th Texas Legislature refused to ratify either
  the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, or
  the 14th Amendment, which granted citizenship to
  African Americans.

15
Freedom at Last

• The legislature wanted to return Texas as much as
  possible to the way it was before the war and
  restrict the rights of African Americans.

16
Post-Civil War Violence in Texas

• The 1880s, white men in East Texas used violence
  as a method of political control, and lynching
  became the common form of retaliation.
• The Ku Klux Klan, the White Caps, law officials,
  and the Texas Rangers all acting as agents of
  white authority, regularly terrorized both
  Mexican Americans and black Texans.

17
Segregation Followed Emancipation

• Freedmen found themselves barred from most public
  places and schools, and confined to certain
  residential areas of towns.
• By the early twentieth century, such practices
  had been sanctioned by law.

18
Segregation Followed Emancipation

• These statutes were not formulated with Tejanos
  in mind, but they enforced them through social
  custom nonetheless.
• African and Mexican Americans faced terrorist
  tactics, literacy tests, the stuffing of ballots,
  and accusations of incompetence when they won
  office.

19
Poll-tax and Political parties

• Institution of poll-tax, a fixed tax for every
  person regardless of income, was used to
  disenfranchise minorities and poor whites.
• By the late 1920s, Texas politicians had
  effectively immobilized African Texan voters
  through court cases that defined political
  parties as private organizations which could
  exclude members.

20
Jim Crow Laws

• Increased the segregation of the races.
• Blacks and Hispanics attended segregated and
  inferior "colored" and "Mexican" schools.
• In mid-1950s, the state legislature passed
  segregationist laws directed at blacks (and by
  implication to Tejanos), some dealing with
  education, others with residential areas and
  public accommodations.

21
Protests

• African and Mexican Americans criticized
  segregationist policies and white injustices via
  their newspapers, labor organizations, and
  self-help societies.
• The period between 1900 and 1930 saw continued
  efforts by minorities to break down racial
  barriers.

22
Protests

• Much of the leadership on behalf of civil rights
  came from the ranks of the middle class.
• Black leaders established a chapter of the
  National Association for the Advancement of
  Colored People in Houston in 1912.
• The association pursued the elimination of the
  white primary and other obstacles to voting, as
  well as the desegregation of schools,
  institutions of higher education, and public
  places.

23
Fight for Equality

• Mexican and Black Texans continued their advocacy
  for equality during the depression era.
• The black movement, for its part, won increased
  white support in the 1930s from the ranks of the
  Association of Southern Women for the Prevention
  of Lynching and from such prominent congressmen
  as Maury Maverick.

24
Desegregation of Schools

• The famous case of Brown v. Board of Education
  (1954) produced the integration of schools,
  buses, restaurants, and other public
  accommodations.
• The case of Sweatt v. Painter (1950) integrated
  the University of Texas Law School, and in its
  wake several undergraduate colleges in the state
  desegregated.

25
1960s

• During the 1960s both African Americans and
  Mexican Americans took part in national movements
  intended to bring down racial barriers.
• Black Texans held demonstrations within the state
  to protest the endurance of segregated
  conditions.

26
1960s Black Power

• In conjunction with the National March on
  Washington in 1963, approximately 900 protesters
  marched on the state Capitol.
• Some segments of the black community flocked to
  the cause of Black Power" and accepted violence
  as a means of social redress. However, Texas saw
  a lot less violence and destruction of property
  in comparison to some other states like Alabama.

27
Chicano Movement

• Tejanos took part in the Chicano movement of the
  era, and some, especially youths, supported the
  movement's militancy, its denunciation of
  "gringos," and its talk of separatism from
  American society.
• The movement declined by the mid-1970s.

28
Racial Equality

• The federal government pursued an agenda designed
  to achieve racial equality, and Mexican and Black
  Texans both profited from this initiative.
• The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, barred the
  poll tax in federal elections, and that same year
  Congress passed the Civil Rights Act outlawing
  the Jim Crow tradition.

29
Racial Equality

• Texas followed suit in 1969 by repealing its own
  separatist statutes.
• The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 eliminated
  local restrictions to voting and required that
  federal marshals monitor election proceedings.