The Civil Rights Movement

1
The Civil Rights Movement

• Harlem Renaissance
• Segregation
• School Desegregation
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Sit-Ins
• Freedom Riders
• Desegregating Southern Universities
• The March on Washington
• Voter Registration
• The End of the Movement

2
Harlem Renaissance

• The Harlem Renaissance was an African American
  cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s
  centered around the Harlem neighborhood of New
  York City.

Grocery store, Harlem, 1940 Library of
Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Washington, D.C. LC-USZC4-4737
3
Harlem Renaissance

• The Harlem Renaissance marked the first time that
  mainstream publishers and critics took African
  American literature seriously and African
  American arts attracted significant attention
  from the nation at large.
• Instead of more direct political means, African
  American artists and writers used culture to work
  for the goals of civil rights and equality.

4
Harlem Renaissance

• Several factors laid the groundwork for the
  movement.
• During a phenomenon known as the Great Migration,
  hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved
  from the economically depressed rural South to
  the industrial cities of the North, taking
  advantage of employment opportunities created by
  World War I.

5
Harlem Renaissance

• The diverse literary expression of the Harlem
  Renaissance was demonstrated through Langston
  Hughess weaving of the rhythms of African
  American music into his poems of ghetto life, as
  in The Weary Blues (1926).

Langston Hughes Library of Congress, Prints
Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection,
reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF34-9058-C
6
Harlem Renaissance

• The Harlem Renaissance pushed open the door for
  many African American authors to mainstream white
  periodicals and publishing houses.
• Harlems cabarets attracted both Harlem residents
  and white New Yorkers seeking out Harlem
  nightlife.
• Harlems famous Cotton Club carried this to an
  extreme, providing African American entertainment
  for exclusively white audiences.

7
Civil Rights Movement

• The civil rights movement was a political, legal,
  and social struggle to gain full citizenship
  rights for African Americans.
• The civil rights movement was first and foremost
  a challenge to segregation,
• the system of laws and customs separating African
  Americans and whites.
• During the movement, individuals and civil rights
  organizations challenged segregation and
  discrimination with a variety of activities,
• including protest marches, boycotts, and refusal
  to abide by segregation laws, sit ins, etc.

8
Albert Gore Sr.

• Gore was one of only three Democratic senators
  from the 11 former Confederate states who did not
  sign the 1956 Southern Manifesto opposing
  integration, the other two being Senate Majority
  Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas (who was not
  asked to sign) and fellow Tennessee senator Estes
  Kefauver, who refused to sign.
• South Carolina Senator J. Strom Thurmond tried to
  get Gore to sign the Southern Manifesto, Gore
  refused.
• a document written in February and March 1956, in
  the United States Congress, in opposition to
  racial integration of public places. The
  manifesto was signed by 99 politicians . The
  Congressmen drafted the document to counter the
  landmark Supreme Court 1954 ruling Brown v. Board
  of Education, which determined that segregation
  of public schools was unconstitutional.

9
Segregation

• Segregation was an attempt by many white
  Southerners to separate the races in every aspect
  of daily life.
• Segregation was often called the Jim Crow system,
  after a minstrel show character from the 1830s
  who was an African American slave who embodied
  negative stereotypes of African Americans.

10
Segregation

• Segregation became common in Southern states
  following the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
  These states began to pass local and state laws
  that specified certain places For Whites Only
  and others for Colored.

Drinking fountain on county courthouse lawn,
Halifax, North Carolina Library of Congress,
Prints Photographs Division, FSA/OWI
Collection, reproduction number, e.g.,
LC-USF34-9058-C
11
Segregation

• African Americans had separate schools,
  transportation, restaurants, and parks, many of
  which were poorly funded and inferior to those of
  whites.
• Over the next 75 years, Jim Crow signs to
  separate the races went up in every possible
  place.

Negro going in colored entrance of movie house on
Saturday afternoon, Belzoni, Mississippi Delta,
Mississippi Library of Congress, Prints
Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection,
reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF34-9058-C
12
Segregation

• The system of segregation also included the
  denial of voting rights, known as
  disenfranchisement.
• Between 1890 and 1910, all Southern states passed
  laws imposing requirements for voting.
• These were used to prevent African Americans from
  voting, in spite of the Fifteenth Amendment to
  the Constitution of the United States, which had
  been designed to protect African American voting
  rights.

13
Segregation

• The voting requirements included the ability to
  read and write, which disqualified many African
  Americans who had not had access to education
• property ownership, which excluded most African
  Americans,
• and paying a poll tax, which prevented most
  Southern African Americans from voting because
  they could not afford it.

14
Segregation

• Conditions for African Americans in the Northern
  states were somewhat better, though up to 1910
  only ten percent of African Americans lived in
  the North.
• Segregated facilities were not as common in the
  North, but African Americans were usually denied
  entrance to the best hotels and restaurants.
• African Americans were usually free to vote in
  the North.

15
Segregation

• Perhaps the most difficult part of Northern life
  was the economic discrimination against African
  Americans. They had to compete with large numbers
  of recent European immigrants for job
  opportunities, and they almost always lost
  because of their race.

16
Segregation

• In the late 1800s, African Americans sued to stop
  separate seating in railroad cars, states
  disfranchisement of voters, and denial of access
  to schools and restaurants.
• One of the cases against segregated rail travel
  was Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which the
  Supreme Court of the United States ruled that
  separate but equal accommodations were
  constitutional.

17
Segregation

• In order to protest segregation, African
  Americans created national organizations.
• The National Afro-American League was formed in
  1890 W.E.B. Du Bois helped create the Niagara
  Movement in 1905 and the National Association for
  the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in
  1909.

18
Segregation

• In 1910, the National Urban League was created to
  help African Americans make the transition to
  urban, industrial life.
• In 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
  was founded to challenge segregation in public
  accommodations in the North.

19
Segregation

• The NAACP became one of the most important
  African American organizations of the twentieth
  century. It relied mainly on legal strategies
  that challenged segregation and discrimination in
  the courts.

20th Annual session of the N.A.A.C.P., 6-26-29,
Cleveland, Ohio Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
LC-USZ62-111535
20
Segregation

• Historian and sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was a
  founder and leader of the NAACP. Starting in
  1910, he made powerful arguments protesting
  segregation as editor of the NAACP magazine The
  Crisis.

Portrait of Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois Library of
Congress, Prints Photographs Division, Carl Van
Vechten Collection, reproduction number, e.g.,
LC-USZ62-54231
21
School Desegregation

• After World War II, the NAACPs campaign for
  civil rights continued to proceed.
• Led by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP Legal Defense
  Fund challenged and overturned many forms of
  discrimination.

Thurgood Marshall
22
School Desegregation

• The main focus of the NAACP turned to equal
  educational opportunities.
• Marshall and the Defense Fund worked with
  Southern plaintiffs to challenge the Plessy v
  Ferguson decision, arguing that separate was
  inherently unequal.
• The Supreme Court of the United States heard
  arguments on five cases that challenged
  elementary and secondary school segregation.

23
School Desegregation

• In May 1954, the Court issued its landmark ruling
  in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, stating
  racially segregated education was
  unconstitutional and overturning the Plessy
  decision.
• White Southerners were shocked by the Brown
  decision.

Desegregate the schools! Vote Socialist Workers
Peter Camejo for president, Willie Mae Reid for
vice-president. Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
LC-USZ62-101452
24
School Desegregation

• By 1955, white opposition in the South had grown
  into massive resistance, using a strategy to
  persuade all whites to resist compliance with the
  desegregation orders.
• Tactics included
• firing school employees who showed willingness
  to seek integration,
• closing public schools rather than desegregating,
  
• and boycotting all public education that was
  integrated.

25
Clinton 12

• On August 27, 1956, twelve young
  people in Clinton, Tennessee walked into history
  and changed the world.
• They were the first students to desegregate a
  state-supported high school in the south. 
• Clinton High School holds the honor of having the
  first African American person to graduate from a
  public high school in the South.
• It was a great victory for the Civil Rights
  Movement.
• The events of that school year and the years
  that followed are commemorated in a life size
  statue on the grounds of the museum.

26
Governor Clement Acts

• When trouble arose after Clinton High School was
  desegregated, Governor Frank Clement sent 600
  National Guard troops and 100 highway patrolmen
  to Clinton to control the violence. This act
  ensured that the African American students at
  Clinton would be permitted to attend despite
  continued threats. 
•  
• Clement had run for governor as a
  segregationist. But in private conversations,
  Clement said desegregating schools was the right
  thing to do. Clement said we are going to obey
  the law. As the states chief law enforcement
  officer, Clement evidently felt it was his job to
  uphold the law and to protect both black and
  white citizens of Clinton.

27
Little Rock Nine

• Virtually no schools in the South segregated
  their schools in the first years following the
  Brown decision.
• In Virginia, one county actually closed its
  public schools.
• In 1957, Governor Orval Faubus defied a federal
  court order to admit nine African American
  students to Central High School in Little Rock,
  Arkansas.
• President Dwight Eisenhower sent
  federal troops to enforce
  desegregation.

28
Tennessee vs. Arkansas

• At Central High School in Little Rock, Governor
  Orval Faubus, normally a moderate governor,
  worried more about reelection, and what voters
  might think. He called out the Arkansas National
  Guard troops to block black students from
  attending Central High School in Little Rock. 
• Since it is the presidents job to uphold the
  laws, President Dwight Eisenhower intervened. The
  president nationalized the Arkansas Guard to
  protect the black students and allow them to go
  to the formerly all white school. 
•  Even though the Clinton integration got national
  attention at the time, today many people think
  Arkansas was the first place black students went
  to an all-white school in the South. Little
  Rock's more dramatic scene received more news
  coverage then and later.

29
School Desegregation

• The event was covered by the national media, and
  the fate of the nine students attempting to
  integrate the school gripped the nation.
• Not all school desegregation was as dramatic as
  Little Rock schools gradually desegregated.
• Often, schools were desegregated only in theory
  because racially segregated neighborhoods led to
  segregated schools.
• To overcome the problem, some school districts
  began busing students to schools outside their
  neighborhoods in the 1970s.

30
School Desegregation

• As desegregation continued, the membership of the
  Ku Klux Klan (KKK) grew.
• The KKK used violence or threats against anyone
  who was suspected of favoring desegregation or
  African American civil rights.
• Ku Klux Klan terror, including intimidation and
  murder, was widespread in the South during the
  1950s and 1960s, though Klan activities were not
  always reported in the media.

31
The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Despite threats and violence, the civil rights
  movement quickly moved beyond school
  desegregation to challenge segregation in other
  areas.
• In December 1955, Rosa Parks, a member of the
  Montgomery, Alabama, branch of the NAACP, was
  told to give up her seat on a city bus to a white
  person.

32
The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• When Parks refused to move, she was arrested.
• The local NAACP, led by Edgar D. Nixon,
  recognized that the arrest of Parks might rally
  local African Americans to protest segregated
  buses.

Woman fingerprinted. Mrs. Rosa Parks, Negro
seamstress, whose refusal to move to the back of
a bus touched off the bus boycott in Montgomery,
Ala. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Division Washington, D.C. LC-USZ62-109643
33
The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Montgomerys African American community had long
  been angry about their mistreatment on city buses
  where white drivers were rude and abusive.
• The community had previously considered a boycott
  of the buses and overnight one was organized.
• The bus boycott was an immediate success, with
  almost unanimous support from the African
  Americans in Montgomery.

34
The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• The boycott lasted for more than a year,
  expressing to the nation the determination of
  African Americans in the South to end
  segregation.
• In November 1956, a federal court ordered
  Montgomerys buses desegregated and the boycott
  ended in victory.

35
The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• A Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr.,
  was president of the Montgomery Improvement
  Association, the organization that directed the
  boycott.
• His involvement in the protest made him a
  national figure. Through his eloquent appeals to
  Christian brotherhood and American idealism he
  attracted people both inside and outside the
  South.

36
The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• King became the president of the Southern
  Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) when it
  was founded in 1957.
• The SCLC complemented the NAACPs legal strategy
  by encouraging the use of nonviolent, direct
  action to protest segregation. These activities
  included marches, demonstrations, and boycotts.
• The harsh white response to African Americans
  direct action eventually forced the federal
  government to confront the issue of racism in the
  South.

37
Sit-Ins

• On February 1, 1960, four African American
  college students from North Carolina AT
  University began protesting racial segregation in
  restaurants by sitting at White Only lunch
  counters and waiting to be served.

Sit-ins in a Nashville store Library of Congress
Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
LC-USZ62-126236
38
Sit-Ins

• This was not a new form of protest, but the
  response to the sit-ins spread throughout North
  Carolina, and within weeks sit-ins were taking
  place in cities across the South.
• Many restaurants were desegregated in response to
  the sit-ins.
• This form of protest demonstrated clearly to
  African Americans and whites alike that young
  African Americans were determined to reject
  segregation.

39
Tennessee sit ins

• Starting in February of 1960, students began
  sit-ins in various stores in Nashville,
  Tennessee, with the goal of desegregation at
  lunch counters.
• Students from Fisk University, Baptist
  Theological Seminary, and Tennessee State
  University, mainly led by Diane Nash and John
  Lewis, began the campaign that became a
  successful component of the Civil Rights Movement
  in the United States, and was influential in
  later campaigns.

40
Diane Nash
Diane Nash began attending non-violent civil
disobedience workshops led by Rev. James Lawson.
 James Lawson had studied Mahatma Gandhi's
techniques of nonviolent direct action and
passive resistance while studying in India.  By
the end of her first semester at Fisk, she had
become one of Lawson's most devoted disciples.
Although originally a reluctant participant in
non-violence, Nash emerged as a leader due to her
well-spoken, composed manner when speaking to the
authorities and to the press. In 1960 at age 22,
she became the leader of the Nashville sit-ins,
which lasted from February to May. Unlike
previous movements which were guided by older
adults, this movement was led and composed
primarily of students and young people
41
Birmingham Eugene Bull Connor

• Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in cooperation with
  local civil rights leaders, led demonstrations in
  Birmingham against racial segregation.
• Connor ordered Birmingham police officers and
  firemen to use dogs and high-pressure water hoses
  against demonstrators.
• Images of the resulting mayhem appeared on
  television and in newspapers throughout the
  country and helped to shift public opinion in
  favor of national civil-rights legislation.

42
Protests
43
Freedom Riders

• After the sit-in movement, some SNCC members
  participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides organized
  by CORE.
• The Freedom Riders, both African American and
  white, traveled around the South in buses to test
  the effectiveness of a 1960 U.S. Supreme Court
  decision declaring segregation illegal in bus
  stations open to interstate travel.

44
Freedom Riders

• The Freedom Rides began in Washington, D.C.
  Except for some violence in Rock Hill, South
  Carolina, the trip was peaceful until the buses
  reached Alabama, where violence erupted.
• In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was burned and some
  riders were beaten.
• In Birmingham, a mob attacked the riders when
  they got off the bus.
• The riders suffered even more severe beatings in
  Montgomery.

45
Freedom Riders

• The violence brought national attention to the
  Freedom Riders and fierce condemnation of Alabama
  officials for allowing the brutality to occur.
• The administration of President John F. Kennedy
  stepped in to protect the Freedom Riders when it
  was clear that Alabama officials would not
  guarantee their safe travel.

46
Freedom Riders

• The riders continued on to Jackson, Mississippi,
  where they were arrested and imprisoned at the
  state penitentiary, ending the protest.
• The Freedom Rides did result in the desegregation
  of some bus stations, but more importantly they
  caught the attention of the American public.

47
(No Transcript)
48
Stokley Carmichael

• Stokley Carmichael became chairman of Student Non
  Violent Coordinating Committee in 1966, taking
  over from John Lewis, who later became a US
  Congressman.
• A few weeks after Carmichael took office, James
  Meredith was shot and wounded by a shotgun during
  his solitary "March Against Fear".
• Carmichael joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
  Floyd McKissick, Cleveland Sellers and others to
  continue Meredith's march.
• He was arrested during the march and, upon his
  release, he gave his first "Black Power" speech,
  using the phrase to urge black pride and
  socio-economic independence

49
Black Power

• While Black Power was not a new concept,
  Carmichael's speech brought it into the spotlight
  and it became a rallying cry for young African
  Americans across the country.
• Everywhere that Black Power spread, if accepted,
  credit was given to the prominent Carmichael. If
  the concept was condemned, he was held
  responsible and blamed.
• According to Carmichael "Black Power meant
  black people coming together to form a political
  force and either electing representatives or
  forcing their representatives to speak their
  needs rather than relying on established
  parties".

50
Black Panther

• Carmichael had seen African-American
  demonstrators being beaten by police and shocked
  with cattle prods.
• As a witness to their suffering in commitment to
  non-violence, Carmichael began to develop a
  perspective that encouraged him to condone
  violence against the brutality of a racist police
  force.
• He wanted to cause reciprocal fear by his new
  tactics. He later joined the militant political
  group known as the Black Panther Party.

51
Birmingham Bombings

• The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham
  was used as a meeting-place for civil rights
  leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph David
  Abernathy and Fred Shutterworth. Tensions became
  high when the Southern Christian Leadership
  Conference (SCLC) and the Congress on Racial
  Equality (CORE) became involved in a campaign to
  register African American to vote in Birmingham.

On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was
seen getting out of a white and turquoise
Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps
of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon
afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded
killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins
(14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley
(14). The four girls had been attending Sunday
school classes at the church. Twenty-three other
people were also hurt by the blast.
52
(No Transcript)
53
Who is responsible?

• Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the
  Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Only a
  week before the bombing he had told the New York
  Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a
  "few first-class funerals."
• The case was unsolved until Bill Baxley was
  elected attorney general of Alabama. He requested
  the original Federal Bureau of Investigation
  files on the case and discovered that the
  organization had accumulated a great deal of
  evidence against Robert Chambliss.
• In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried for the
  Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Now aged
  73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to
  life imprisonment. Chambliss died in an Alabama
  prison on 29th October, 1985.

54
Desegregating Southern Universities

• In 1962, James Meredithan African
  Americanapplied for admission to the University
  of Mississippi.
• The university attempted to block Merediths
  admission, and he filed suit.
• After working through the state courts, Meredith
  was successful when a federal court ordered the
  university to desegregate and accept Meredith as
  a student.

55
Desegregating Southern Universities

• The Governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, defied
  the court order and tried to prevent Meredith
  from enrolling.
• In response, the administration of President
  Kennedy intervened to uphold the court order.
  Kennedy sent federal troops to protect Meredith
  when he went to enroll.
• During his first night on campus, a riot broke
  out when whites began to harass the federal
  marshals.
• In the end, two people were killed and several
  hundred were wounded.

56
Desegregating Southern Universities

• In 1963, the governor of Alabama, George C.
  Wallace, threatened a similar stand, trying to
  block the desegregation of the University of
  Alabama. The Kennedy administration responded
  with the full power of the federal government,
  including the U.S. Army.
• The confrontations with Barnett and Wallace
  pushed President Kennedy into a full commitment
  to end segregation.
• In June 1963, Kennedy proposed civil rights
  legislation.

57
The March on Washington

• National civil rights leaders decided to keep
  pressure on both the Kennedy administration and
  Congress to pass the civil rights legislation.
  The leaders planned a March on Washington to take
  place in August 1963.
• This idea was a revival of A. Phillip Randolphs
  planned 1941 march, which had resulted in a
  commitment to fair employment during World War
  II.

58
The March on Washington

• Randolph was present at the march in 1963, along
  with the leaders of the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, the
  Urban League, and SNCC.

Roy Wilkins with a few of the 250,000
participants on the Mall heading for the Lincoln
Memorial in the NAACP march on Washington on
August 28, 1963 Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
LC-USZ62-77160
59
The March on Washington

• Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a moving
  address to an audience of more than 200,000
  people.
• His I Have a Dream speechdelivered in front of
  the giant statue of Abraham Lincolnbecame famous
  for the way in which it expressed the ideals of
  the civil rights movement.
• After President Kennedy was assassinated in
  November 1963, the new president, Lyndon Johnson,
  strongly urged the passage of the civil rights
  legislation as a tribute to Kennedys memory.

60
The March on Washington

• Over fierce opposition from Southern legislators,
  Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
  through Congress.
• It prohibited segregation in public
  accommodations and discrimination in education
  and employment. It also gave the executive branch
  of government the power to enforce the acts
  provisions.

61
Voter Registration

• Starting in 1961, SNCC and CORE organized voter
  registration campaigns in the predominantly
  African American counties of Mississippi,
  Alabama, and Georgia.

NAACP photograph showing people waiting in line
for voter registration, at Antioch Baptist
Church Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
LC-USZ62-122260
62
Voter Registration

• SNCC concentrated on voter registration because
  leaders believed that voting was a way to empower
  African Americans so that they could change
  racist policies in the South.
• SNCC members worked to teach African Americans
  necessary skills, such as reading, writing, and
  the correct answers to the voter registration
  application.

63
Voter Registration

• These activities caused violent reactions from
  Mississippis white supremacists.
• In June 1963, Medgar Evers, the NAACP Mississippi
  field secretary, was shot and killed in front of
  his home.
• In 1964, SNCC workers organized the Mississippi
  Summer Project to register African Americans to
  vote in the state, wanting to focus national
  attention on the states racism.

64
Voter Registration

• SNCC recruited Northern college students,
  teachers, artists, and clergy to work on the
  project. They believed the participation of these
  people would make the country concerned about
  discrimination and violence in Mississippi.
• The project did receive national attention,
  especially after three participantstwo of whom
  were whitedisappeared in June and were later
  found murdered and buried near Philadelphia,
  Mississippi.

65
Voter Registration

• By the end of the summer, the project had helped
  thousands of African Americans attempt to
  register, and about one thousand actually became
  registered voters.
• In early 1965, SCLC members employed a
  direct-action technique in a voting-rights
  protest initiated by SNCC in Selma, Alabama.
• When protests at the local courthouse were
  unsuccessful, protesters began to march to
  Montgomery, the state capital.

66
Voter Registration

• As marchers were leaving Selma, mounted police
  beat and tear-gassed them.
• Televised scenes of the violence, called Bloody
  Sunday, shocked many Americans, and the resulting
  outrage led to a commitment to continue the Selma
  March.

A small band of Negro teenagers march singing and
clapping their hands for a short distance, Selma,
Alabama. Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
LC-USZ62-127739
67
Voter Registration

• King and SCLC members led hundreds of people on a
  five-day, fifty-mile march to Montgomery.
• The Selma March drummed up broad national support
  for a law to protect Southern African Americans
  right to vote.
• President Johnson persuaded Congress to pass the
  Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended the
  use of literacy and other voter qualification
  tests in voter registration.

68
Strom Thurmond

• In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he
  conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone
  senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length,
  nonstop.
• In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights
  legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation
  and enforce the voting rights of African-American
  citizens.
• He always insisted he had never been a racist,
  but was opposed to excessive federal authority,
  and he attributed the movement for integration to
  Communist agitators.

69
Voter Registration

• Over the next three years, almost one million
  more African Americans in the South registered to
  vote.
• By 1968, African American voters had having a
  significant impact on Southern politics.
• During the 1970s, African Americans were seeking
  and winning public offices in majority African
  American electoral districts.

70
Malcom X - Malcom Little

• Little's was imprisoned for breaking and
  entering. During his imprisonment several of his
  siblings wrote to him about the Nation of Islam,
  a relatively new religious movement preaching
  black self-reliance and, ultimately, the
  reunification of the African nation with Africa,
  free from white American and European domination.
• After leaving prison he became a Muslim.
• In 1950 Little began signing his name
  "Malcolm X",explaining in his autobiography, "The
  Muslim's 'X' symbolized the true African family
  name that he never could know. For me, my 'X'
  replaced the white slave master name of 'Little'
• He became more and more violent in his leading of
  African Americans to seek equality.

71
Malcom X leaves Islam

• When JFK was assassinated he said it was the
  chickens coming home to roost The Nation of
  Islam was shocked and separated themselves from
  him.
• The Nation of Islam and its leaders began making
  both public and private threats against Malcolm X
• in June 1964, the Nation of Islam sued to reclaim
  Malcolm X's residence in Queens, New York, and
  his family was ordered to vacate. On February 14,
  1965?the night before a scheduled hearing to
  postpone the eviction?the house burned to the
  ground. Malcolm X and his family survived, and no
  one was charged with any crime.
• On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was preparing to
  address the Organization of Afro-American Unity
  in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom when someone in
  the 400-person audience yelled slurs at Malcom.

72
Threats are carried out!!

• As Malcolm X and his bodyguards attempted to
  quiet the disturbance, a man seated in the front
  row rushed forward and shot him once in the chest
  with a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun.
• Two other men charged the stage and fired
  semi-automatic handguns, hitting Malcolm X
  several times.
• He was pronounced dead at 330 pm, shortly after
  arriving at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
• According to the autopsy report, Malcolm X's
  body had 21 gunshot wounds to his chest, left
  shoulder, and arms and legs ten of the wounds
  were buckshot to his left chest and shoulder from
  the initial shotgun blast.

73
Martin Luther King Jr.

• Then, at 601 p.m., April 4, 1968, a shot rang
  out as King stood on the motel's second-floor
  balcony. The bullet entered through his right
  cheek, smashing his jaw, then traveled down his
  spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.
  Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel
  room and ran to the balcony to find King on the
  floor. Jackson stated after the shooting that he
  cradled King's head as King lay on the balcony,
  but this account was disputed by other colleagues
  of King's Jackson later changed his statement to
  say that he had "reached out" for King.
• After emergency chest surgery, King was
  pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 705
  p.m. According to biographer Taylor Branch,
  King's autopsy revealed that though only 39 years
  old, he "had the heart of a 60 year old", which
  Branch attributed to the stress of 13 years in
  the civil rights movement.
• He was shot by a man named James Earl Ray.

74
Civil Rights Act 1968

• After the assassination of Martin Luther King,
  Lyndon Johnson passed this act.
• Civil Rights Act of 1968 is commonly known as the
  Fair Housing Act and was meant as a follow-up to
  the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Civil
  Rights Act of 1866 prohibited discrimination in
  housing, there were no federal enforcement
  provisions. The 1968 act expanded on previous
  acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the
  sale, rental, and financing of housing based on
  race, religion, national origin, and since 1974,
  gender since 1988, the act protects people with
  disabilities and families with children.

75
The End of the Movement

• For many people the civil rights movement ended
  with the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in
  1968.
• Others believe it was over after the Selma March,
  because there have not been any significant
  changes since then.
• Still others argue the movement continues today
  because the goal of full equality has not yet
  been achieved.

76
Great Society

• The Great Society was a set of domestic programs
  in the United States first announced by President
  Lyndon B. Johnson and promoted by him and fellow
  Democrats in Congress in the 1960s.
• Two main goals of the Great Society social
  reforms were the elimination of poverty and
  racial injustice.
• New major spending programs that addressed
  education, medical care, urban problems, and
  transportation were launched during this period.
• The Great Society in scope and sweep resembled
  the New Deal domestic agenda of Franklin D.
  Roosevelt.
• While some of the programs have been eliminated
  or had their funding reduced, many of them,
  including Medicare, Medicaid, the Older Americans
  Act and federal education funding, continue to
  the present. The Great Society's programs
  expanded under the administrations of Richard
  Nixon and Gerald Ford.

77
Supreme Court Cases and Civil Rights

• Plessey v Ferguson separate but equal is legal
• Brown v Board of Education separate is not
  equal and orders desegregation of schools
• Miranda v Arizona People must be advised of
  their rights by the police before being
  questioned
• Gideon v Wainwright - Supreme Court unanimously
  ruled that state courts are required under the
  Fourteenth Amendment to provide counsel in
  criminal cases to represent those who have been
  indicted but who are unable to afford to pay
  their own attorneys
• Escobedo v. Illinois - holds that criminal
  suspects have a right to counsel during police
  interrogations under the Sixth Amendment. The
  case was decided a year after the court held in
  Gideon v. Wainwright and states that you have a
  right to counsel when being questioned even if
  you have not been indicted.