Black American Experience and Civil Rights Movement

African American Abolitionists

• Frederick Douglass– Narrative of the Life of

Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

– The North Star

Slavery, Emancipation, End of Slavery, Reconstruction and Civil

Rights• Slavery issues in American history

• Emancipation Proclamation

• 13th Amendment

• 14th Amendment

• 15th Amendment

• RECONSTRUCTION

Civil Rights Act of 1875

• "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude"

• Civil Rights Cases (1883)– The 14th amendment applies to government, not to private

actions of individuals – hence the the federal government does not have authority to outlaw racial discrimination by individuals and organizations

– Civil Rights Act of 1875 – unconstitutional– segregation sanctioned

Plessy v. Fergusson (1896)

• New Orleans – a quite peculiar place…

• Lousiana Separate Car Act (1890)

• Citizens’ Committee to Test the Separate Car Act (Comité des Citoyens) (30’’)

• Homer Plessy

• racial segregation in public facilities CONSTITUTIONAL under the doctrine of "separate but equal."

Jim Crow and disfranchisement

• literacy clauses

• grandfather clauses

• segregation

Booker T. Washington

• Tuskegee Machine – Tuskagee Institute

• Integration and assimilation

• vocational education

W. E. B. DuBois

• political representation• pan-Africanism• Niagara movement• The Philadelphia Negro

(1899),• The Souls of Black Folk

(1903),• John Brown (1909), • Black Reconstruction

(1935),

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP) (1909)

Marcus Garvey

• UNIA – Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial) League

• Back-to-Africa movement– Liberia

• Black nationalism• Black Star Line

Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

• racial segragation ruled to be a violation of equal protection Clause of the 14th Amendment

• Plessy v. Fergusson overturned

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

• Rosa Parks• One year long boycott• Result: Alabama

segregation laws ruled unconstitutional

• Result: Martin Luther King Jr. Steps into national limelight

• Result: Civil Rights Movement first major victory

Martin Luther King

• I Have a Dream (August 28, 1963)

Malcolm X

• Elijah Mohhammed

• Nation of Islam

• (1h07m40s 1h52m40s)

• Ballot or the Bullet (April 3, 1964) (1’38’’) (4’48’’)

Black Panther Party

• First Black nationalist• then socialist• Huey Newton & Bobby Seale• COINTELPRO

• Summer Olympic Games in Mexico 1968– Black Power Salute (Silent Salute) (Tommie Smith &

John Carlos) (35m20s)• Avery Brundage, IOC

• The Olympic Project for Human Rights

Legacy

• Jesse Jackson

• Louis Farrakhan

• Jeremiah Wright controversy

Civil Rights Legislation

• J.F. Kennedy

• Lyndon B. Johnson

• Affirmative action