leon county schools - reverend c. k. steele at the bethel ... · web viewthe voting rights act gave...

Group #1 Names:

Answer the following questions based off your initial reactions to the sources you are given.

1. What can you identify in this picture? Who, what and where is in this picture?

2. What messages or themes are shown in the picture?

3. What don’t you know about these photographs? What questions do you have?

After being instructed to do so, use the second information sheet to answer the following:

4. How has your understanding of the images changed? Have your feelings towards the images changed?

5. How do these images relate to the American government? Did they impact the creation of laws/legislation?

6. Why is this source significant to understanding civil rights and our government?

Prepare to present your sources, each group will have 2-3 minutes to present 1) Your initial reaction 2) The new information you learned 3) How it relates to US Government

NAACP members marching to the Capitol during legislative session - Tallahassee, Florida.Photographed on March 27, 1964

Shown on Canal St. - now FAMU Way.

The NAACP planned the demonstration to protest the U.S. Senate filibuster over the civil rights bill.

The longest continuous debate in Senate history took place in 1964 over the Civil Rights Act. Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who had proposed the legislation, it was strongly advocated by his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Addressing a joint session of Congress just after Kennedy’s death, Johnson urged members of Congress to honor Kennedy’s memory by passing a civil rights bill to end racial discrimination and segregation in public accommodations, public education, and federally assisted programs. In his address, Johnson declared, “we have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.”

On June 10, a coalition of 27 Republicans and 44 Democrats ended the filibuster when the Senate voted 71 to 29 for cloture, thereby limiting further debate. This marked the first time in its history that the Senate voted to end debate on a civil rights bill. Nine days later, the Senate passed the most sweeping civil rights legislation in the nation's history.

The Civil Rights Act provided protection of voting rights; banned discrimination in public facilities—including private businesses offering public services—such as lunch counters, hotels, and theaters; and established equal employment opportunity as the law of the land.

When President Johnson signed the bill into law that same day in a nationally televised broadcast, he was joined by civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been instrumental in leading the public mobilization efforts in favor of civil rights legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 remains one of the most significant legislative achievements in American history.

_____

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Civil_Rights_Filibuster_Ended.htm

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Civil_Rights_Filibuster_Ended.htm

Group #2 Names:










Reverend C. K. Steele at the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church - Tallahassee, Floridaat 224 north Boulevard St., at about 9:30 PM on January 2, 1957

____https://www.polk-fl.net/staff/teachers/tah/documents/floridaflavor/lessons/F-6.pdfhttp://www.floridamemory.com/blog/2013/05/26/tallahassee-bus-boycott/

http://www.floridamemory.com/blog/2013/05/26/tallahassee-bus-boycott/

https://www.polk-fl.net/staff/teachers/tah/documents/floridaflavor/lessons/F-6.pdf

"Rev. Charles K. Steele with the 4' cross that was burned at his church,. Most likely brought on by the front of the bus riding demonstrations the week before."

On May 26, 1956, two female students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, sat down in the “whites only” section of a segregated bus in the city of Tallahassee. When they refused to move to the “colored” section at the rear of the bus, the driver pulled into a service station and called the police. Tallahassee police arrested Jakes and Patterson and charged them with “placing themselves in a position to incite a riot.”In the days immediately following these arrests, students at FAMU organized a campus-wide boycott of city buses. Their collective stand against segregation set an example that propelled like-minded Tallahassee citizens into action. As the boycott dragged on into the summer, the Tallahassee police continually harassed its organizers as well as rank-and-file members of the ICC, many of whom were FAMU students. Segregationists smashed windows at Reverend Steele’s house and burned crosses on numerous occasions in an attempt to intimidate the African-American community.

On May 29th,several leaders in the Tallahassee black community scheduled a meeting for later that night at the Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, where the Reverend C.K. Steele was pastor. Steele was also the acting president of the Tallahassee chapter of the NAACP. The Tallahassee Inter-Civic Council (ICC) was organized, and Rev. Steele was elected its president. Upon being elected president of the ICC, Steele privately stated that he would have preferred the NAACP conduct any boycott, but he also recognized the need to have a locally based organization. This would ensure that boycott opponents could not make the commonplace charge that the protest was the result of outside agitation. The ICC’s stated goal was the immediate desegregation of the city’s bus service. Its methods were nonviolent but directly confrontational. The Council made three specific demands on the transit company: first, seating on the buses should be on a first-come, first-serve basis; second, African-Americans were to be treated with courtesy by white bus drivers; and finally, black drivers were to be hired to drive routes through the black community. It also began operating a carpool system to transport workers, most of them domestics employed in white suburban homes, during the boycott.

1. “Freedom is on the march. We come up tonight out of the smoke of shotgun firing and the debris of broken windows to say the fight is still on, the war is not over...They have thrown rocks, they have smashed car windows, they have burned crosses. Well, I am happy to state here tonight that I have no fear of them and praise God I have no hate for them.”

2. By phone, by mail, and sometimes by more dire means there were attempts to intimidate Steele. One of Steele’s sons, the Rev. Henry Marion Steele, recalled that rocks and sometimes gunfire were directed at the Steeles’ home on the corner of Boulevard and Tennessee Streets. “Bullet holes were still visible in the walls almost ten years later when

the home was torn down,” Henry Steele said. And even in Steele’s own congregation at Bethel Missionary Baptist Church,

Group #3 Names:


1. What can you identify in this text? Why was it written?

2. What messages or themes are written about?

3. What don’t you know about the text? What questions do you still have?


4. How has your understanding of the text changed? Have your feelings towards the text changed?

5. How does this text relate to the American government? Did it impact the creation of laws/legislation?


Letter From Birmingham City Jail (Excerpts)

Martin Luther King, Jr. April 16, 1963

“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: 1) collection of the facts to determine whether injustices are alive; 2) negotiation; 3) self-purification; and 4) direct action. You may well ask, “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without legal and nonviolent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say wait. But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize, and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see the tears welling up in her little eyes and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” men and “colored”

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direst action” who paternistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

Shortly after King’s arrest, a friend smuggled in a copy of an April 12 Birmingham newspaper which included an open letter, written by eight local Christian and Jewish religious leaders, which criticized both the demonstrations and King himself, whom they considered an outside agitator. Isolated in his cell, King began working on a response. Without notes or research materials, King drafted an impassioned defense of his use of nonviolent, but direct, actions. Over the course of the letter’s 7,000 words, he turned the criticism back upon both the nation’s religious leaders and more moderate-minded white Americans, castigating them for sitting passively on the sidelines while King and others risked everything agitating for change. King drew inspiration for his words from a long line of religious and political philosophers, quoting everyone from St. Augustine and Socrates to Thomas Jefferson and then-Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren, who had overseen the Supreme Court’s landmark civil rights ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. For those, including the Birmingham religious leaders, who urged caution and remained convinced that time would solve the country’s racial issues, King reminded them of Warren’s own words on the need for desegregation, “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” And for those who thought the Atlanta-based King had no right to interfere with issues in Alabama, King argued, in one of his most famous phrases, that he could not sit “idly by in Atlanta” because “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

On June 11, with the horrific events in Birmingham still seared on the American consciousness, and following Governor George Wallace’s refusal to integrate the University of Alabama until the arrival of the U.S. National Guard, President Kennedy addressed the nation, announcing his plans to present sweeping civil rights legislation to the U.S. Congress. The Civil Rights Address would be the kickstarter to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a landmark piece of legislation that would pave the way for civil rights for all.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/letter-from-birmingham-city-jail-excerpts/



Group #4 Names:


1. What can you identify in the first picture? What does the information tell you about voting groups?

2. What do the two line graphs demonstrate?

3. What message do these graphs send? Why do you think that is the case?


4. How does the supplementary information help your understanding of the data? Do they support each other?




The Voting Rights Act of 1965 Why did there need to be a voting rights act in 1965?

Because states—particularly Southern states—had found ways to get around the 15th Amendment, which had guaranteed African American men the right to vote. Poll taxes, grandfather clauses, literacy and civics tests, as well as violence, made it virtually impossible for many black Americans to exercise their right to vote. Civil rights activists had challenged these restrictions in court cases, but in 1965, Congress determined that these case-by-case lawsuits were ineffective.

The key points of the voting rights act of 1965:

• No voting qualification, prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice or procedure shall be imposed ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.

• The court will appoint federal examiners to enforce the guarantees of the 15th Amendment.

• No “test” (e.g., literacy or civics) or “device” (e.g., grandfather clause) may be used as prerequisites for voting.

• States that require special attention are those that most severely restricted voting rights before this 1965 law. The Voting Rights Act identified those states as those that used any “test or device” that limited voting based on race or color on November 1, 1964; or where less than 50 percent of people of voting age were registered to vote on November 1, 1964.

Whenever one of the states identified above wants to change voter qualifications or voting procedures, it needs court approval to do so.

Federal examiners will oversee voter registration in the states identified above. Federal examiners may, at the request of the attorney general, observe at voting sites and vote-

counting sites. Poll taxes are illegal.

The Voting Rights Act gave African-American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among blacks increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.

https://www.archives.gov/legislative/resources/education/voting-rights

https://www.archives.gov/legislative/resources/education/voting-rights

Group #5 Names:










1. Segregated drinking fountains in North Carolina in 1950.

2. Children on the first day of desegregation in Fort Myer Elementary School in Fort Myer, Va,. in September, 1954. Photo: Corbis

Plessy v. Ferguson. On July 19, 1890, the Louisiana General Assembly passed an act that provided equal but separate accommodations for each race for the comfort of all the passengers. The presiding Judge, Judge Ferguson, of the Criminal District Court of New Orleans found the law constitutional as did the Louisiana Supreme Court. The case was heard in the Supreme Court in 1896. During this period many new Jim Crow laws had been passed throughout the South. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee passed laws requiring railroads to separate the races. Mississippi and South Carolina already denied the vote to Blacks and many other states were preparing to take the same steps.

These laws restricted travel, housing, use of private and public facilities, amusement parks and other recreational areas, and of course schools and institutions of higher learning. Although the Supreme Court inscribed the doctrine of “separate but equal” into law, in practice this did not happen. Local and state authorities never funded black education equally nor did African Americans have equal access to public accommodations.

Brown v. Board of Ed. After hearing a series of cases brought on behalf of Black students in segregated schools, the Court reviewed the circumstances surrounding the adoption of the 14th Amendment. They found, however, that after reviewing the history of public education since the ratification of the Amendment, they had a basis upon which to declare “separate but equal” legislation unconstitutional. Education is one of the most important functions of government. Compulsory education and public expenditures for education demonstrate this importance. The right to a good, equal education was fundamental to our democratic society.

They thus asked the question, “Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?” Their answer was clear and unequivocal—”We believe it does.” Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

_____https://www.ou.org/jewish_action/12/2014/brown-v-board-education-orthodox-cause/

Group #6 Names:









https://www.ou.org/jewish_action/12/2014/brown-v-board-education-orthodox-cause/

Prepare to present your sources, each group will have 2-3 minutes to present 1) Your initial reaction 2) The new information you learned 3) How it relates to US Government.

1. A member of the Hollywood Protective Association, dedicated to “keeping Hollywood white,” points at a descriptive sign, c. 1920.

2. 1942 exclusion order, directing removal of persons of Japanese ancestry.

Compounding a long history of discrimination against Japanese immigrants to the US, Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor cast suspicion on America’s Japanese citizens and residents. By early 1942, fear of Japanese American collusion in Japan’s war effort prompted the US government to suspend the rights of its Japanese American citizens and relocate them to concentration camps. This decision, delivered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Executive Order 9066, aimed to remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast “exclusion area” where they had access to established channels of communication with Japan.

In all, the US War Relocation Authority evacuated more than 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes and transplanted them, first to regional assembly centers, and then to ten relocation centers in remote outposts in the US interior. Of these 110,000, about two-thirds were American-born Nisei (second generation) and Sansei (third generation) and the rest Japanese-born Issei. In the camps, Japanese Americans lived in hastily-constructed barracks in extreme conditions, and struggled to overcome the stresses of internment and dislocation. Despite the suddenness and completeness of their removal from regular life, Japanese Americans resisted isolation by continuing to pursue education, religious worship, and family and community engagement in the camps. The US government subjected internees to loyalty questionnaires and offers to repatriate them to Japan in an effort to identify and contain subversive, disloyal Japanese Americans. Simultaneously, it recruited Nisei to enlist in the US Armed Forces.

By the end of 1944, two cases before the US Supreme Court had attempted to challenge the constitutionality of internment. Although the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of evacuation in wartime, they ruled the incarceration of Japanese Americans unconstitutional. As a result of these decisions and the coming end of World War II, the US government began to release internees and close camps, shuttering nine of ten camps by the end of 1945. Japanese Americans returned to lives that had been taken from them—abandoned businesses, damaged and appropriated property, and stolen assets.

Group #7 Names:


1. What can you identify in this text? Why was it written?

2. What messages or themes are written about?

3. What don’t you know about the text? What questions do you still have?


4. How has your understanding of the text changed? Have your feelings towards the text changed?

5. How does this text relate to the American government? Did it impact the creation of laws/legislation?



“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beckoning light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later the Negro is still languishing in the comers of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land.

We all have come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to change racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice ring out for all of God's children. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted citizenship rights.

And the marvelous new militarism which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers have evidenced by their presence here today that they have come to realize that their destiny is part of our destiny.

So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its Governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places

plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and before the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the mount with.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we're free at last!"

Edited Transcript of speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. August 28, 1963. Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks to about 250,000 people attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The demonstrators–black and white, poor and rich–came together in the nation’s capital to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans and to appeal for an end to racial segregation and discrimination. The speech and March helped propel the movement into its most successful year of change. In the year after the March on Washington, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished the poll tax and thus a barrier to poor African American voters in the South; and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities.

leon county schools - reverend c. k. steele at the bethel ... · web viewthe voting rights act gave...

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