Black Power in the South

1
Black Power in the South

• KEY THEMES ISSUES
• 1. Selma The Impact of the Voting Rights Act
• 2. The Transformation of SNCC
• 3. The Diverse Strands of Black Power

2
Voting Rights Selma, 1965

• SNCC v SCLC Tensions
• White Selma disunited
• Joseph Smitherman
• Jim Clark vs Wilson Baker
• Bloody Sunday, March 7 1965
• MLK March March 9, 1965
• Selma to Montgomery March, March 21 1965
• LBJ Voting Rights Act of 1965

3
Voting Rights
4
Black Votes

• Post-Voting Rights Act of 65
• Rise of Black elected officials
• Julian Bond, GA. State rep, 1966
• Andrew Young (Ga) Congress, 1972
• Maynard Jackson, Mayor of Atlanta, 1973
• New White Resistance
• gerrymandering/redistricting
• annexation (eg Richmond)
• white suburban flight
• defection to Republicans
• Thurmond, Helms

Maynard Jackson
5
SNCC After Atlantic City

• Waveland Retreat, 1964
• Bob Moses rejects interracialism
• White Folks Project
• Questioning of nonviolence
• Floaters vs Hardliners
• James Forman
• 1966 Stokely Carmichael replaces John Lewis as
  chair,
• 1967 Student NATIONAL Coordinating Committee
  blacks only
• Alliance with Black Panthers

6
Black Power, 1

• The Meredith March, June 1966
• James Meredith
• MLK (SCLC)
• Stokely Carmichael (SNCC)
• Floyd McKissick (CORE)
• Frustration
• with limits of white liberalism
• persistence of systemic racism
• political organizing needs

Floyd McKissick, MLK, Stokely Carmichael
7
Black Power, 2

• Influence of Malcolm X
• armed self-defense
• Robert Williams, NC
• Deacons for Defense, LA Miss
• Racial pride
• soul music, soul food
• Vietnam
• race, class militarism

8
1968

• SCLC Poor Peoples Campaign
• Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike
• MLK killed, April 4, 1968 riots
• CORE SNCC radicalize more
• White Backlash
• Wallace Nixon
• Civil Rights Act of 1968 ( riots!)
• Housing
• Green Alexander Decisions, 1968 69
• More pressure for desegregating school systems

9
Conclusions

• 1. A mass southern civil rights movement using
  nonviolent direct action had won statutory
  equality by the mid-1960s.
• 2. After 1965, raised black pride, expectations
  the continuing gap between racial theory
  practices encouraged more radical tactics more
  interest in separatist ideas, as well as
  continued attempts to harness black political
  power.
• 3. The numbers of black elected officials in the
  South rose dramatically.
• 4. Some white southerners sought new methods of
  resistance to minimize the impact of the end of
  Jim Crow.