The Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1966

The Montgomery Bus Boycott:An African-American Community Challenges Segregation

In 1955, Montgomery’s black community mobilized when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat and comply with segregation laws

Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, a boycott of buses was launched

A network of local activists organized carpools using private cars to get people to and from work

Leaders endured violence and legal harassment, but won a court ruling that the segregation ordinance was unconstitutional

The Montgomery Bus Boycott promoted non-violence

E.D. Nixon, the president of the Alabama NAACP and also head of the local Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters who used Rosa Parks’ 1955 arrest as an incident on which blacks would take a stand on segregation

MIA- The Montgomery Improvement Association was an organization of Montgomery’s black ministers formed to coordinate a black boycott system

Robert Graetz, Glenn Smiley and Clifford Durr worked to make the black boycott of Montgomery’s busses a success

Origins of the Movement

The WWII experiences of African Americans laid the foundations for the subsequent struggle of Civil Rights

A mass migration to the North brought political power to African Americans working through the Democratic Party Blacks migrated north in the 1940s for economic

opportunity and political freedom

President Truman called for a President’s Committee on Civil RightsThe Report To Secure These Rights

(1947), called for Legal attack on segregated housing Protection of voting rights Permanent civil rights division in the

Justice Department

In the 1948 election the State’ Rights Party nominated Strom Thurmond

They did not like that Truman was taking a stance on Civil Rights

Truman won re-election

The NAACP grew in numbers and its Legal Defense Fund initiated a series of lawsuits to win key rights

Key ways the African Americans were breaking color barriers included: Jackie Robinson’s entrance into major league

baseballRalph Bunche’s winning a Nobel Peace prize

United Nations diplomat won for arranging the Arab-Israeli Truce of 1948

A new generation of jazz musicians created be-bop It was a more complex rhythm and extended improvisation

than previous jazz styles

In the South, segregation and unequal rights were still the law of the land

Law and custom kept blacks as second-class citizens with no effective political rights. African Americans had learned to survive and not challenge the situation

African American poet Paul L. Dunbar wrote “We Wear the Mask”

We wear the mask that grins and lies,It hides our cheeks and shades or eyes,

This debt we pay to human guile;With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay let them only see us, whileWe wear the mask.

The NAACP initiated a series of court cases challenging the constitutionality of segregation

In Brown v. Board of Education, newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren led the court to declare that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal This overturned the separate but equal doctrine of

Plessy V. Ferguson This was a unanimous decision

The court postponed ordering a clear timetable to implement the decision

Southern whites declared their intention to nullify the decision.

Brown Decision

Missouri v. ex.rel. GainesStated that the University of Missouri

law school had to either admit African Americans or build and equal school for them

McLaurin V. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) Court stated that the regulations forcing

segregation of blacks inevitably created a “badge of inferiority”

In Little Rock, Arkansas, a judge ordered integration

The governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to keep African-American children out of Central High

When the troops were withdrawn, a riot erupted, forcing President Eisenhower to send in more troops to integrate the school.

During the Civil Rights Movement, the state where the most incidents in the movement occurred in Alabama

No Easy Road to Freedom,1957–62

Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged from the bus boycott as a prominent national figure. A well-educated son of a Baptist minister, King taught his followers nonviolent resistance, modeled after the tactics of Mohandas Gandhi

The civil rights movement was deeply rooted in the traditions of the African-American church

King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to promote nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation.

King was greatly influenced by Mohandas Gandhi

African-American college students, first in Greensboro, North Carolina, began sitting in at segregated lunch counters

Nonviolent sit-ins were:widely supported by the African-American

communityaccompanied by community-wide boycotts

of businesses that would not integrate.

On February 1, 1960, four black students from the North Carolina Agricultural & Technological College entered a Woolworth’s store and ordered coffee and doughnuts from the lunch counter, thereby beginning the Greensboro sit-in

This sit-in ended in July of 1960 because an economic boycott of the stores targeted by the sit-in severely reduced profits

The second day of the sit-in at the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth lunch counter, February 2, 1960. From left: Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Billy Smith, and Clarence Henderson. The Greensboro protest sparked a wave of sit-ins across the South, mostly by college students, demanding an end to segregation in restaurants and other public places. 

The Nashville sit-in was organized by a black minister James LawsonHe hoped to organize a community based

on Christian idealism and Gandhian principles

The leader of the Atlanta sit-ins wereMartin Luther KingLonnie KingJulian BondTwo Morehouse undergraduates

A new spirit of militancy was evident among young people

120 African American activists created the

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to promote nonviolent direct challenges to segregation. Consisted of young people under that age of 22

The young activists were found at the forefront of nearly every major civil rights battle.

The race issue had moved to center-stage by 1960

As vice president, Nixon had strongly supported civil rights. He minimized his own connection to the Civil Rights

movement because he wanted to attract southern white voters

But Kennedy pressured a judge to release Martin Luther King, Jr. from jail

African-American voters provided Kennedy’s margin of victory, though an unfriendly Congress ensured that little legislation would come out

Attorney General Robert Kennedy used the Justice Department to force compliance with desegregation orders.

The National Director of CORE, James Farmer announced in 1961 that an interracial group would conduct a Freedom Ride into the South to test Southern compliance with court orders banning segregation in interstate travel

The FBI and Justice Department knew of the plans but were absent when mobs firebombed a bus and severely beat the Freedom Riders.

Freedom Ride of 1961UnsuccessfulDisbanded May 17, 1961Organized buy COREThey goal was to test compliance with

court orders banning segregation in interstate travel

Designed to provoke the SOuth

There was violence and no police protection at other stops

The Kennedy administration was forced to mediate a safe conduct for the riders, though 300 people were arrested

A Justice Department petition led to

new rules that effectively ended segregated interstate buses

Freedom Rides

Where the federal government was not present, segregationists could triumph

In Albany, Georgia, local authorities kept white mobs from running wild and kept police brutality down to a minimum

Martin Luther King, Jr. was twice arrested, but Albany remained segregated

When the federal government intervened, as it did in the University of Mississippi, integration could take place U.S. air force veteran James Meredith became the first blacks student to

attend “Ole Miss”

The Movement at High Tide

In conjunction with the SCLC, local activists in Birmingham, Alabama, planned a large desegregation campaign

Demonstrators, including Martin Luther King, Jr., filled the city’s jails

King drafted his Letter From a Birmingham Jail Replied to the claim that the campaign was illegal and

reinforce that freedom was never given voluntarily by the oppressor

Respond to the clergy who had deplored the Birmingham protests

Set out the moral issues at stake in Birmingham Defend the need for immediate action against the charger that

the Birmingham campaign was ill timed

The Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor of Birmingham who advocated the use of Billy clubs, water cannons and police dogs

A TV audience saw water cannons and snarling dogs break up a children’s march.

After the violence erupted, the Justice Department arranged a truce that calledFor an immediate end to the civil rights protests

thereThe creation of biracial city committee to oversee

desegregation of public facilitiesThe hiring of African Americans by city business

George Wallace the Governor of Alabama denounced the Justice Department truce in Birmingham and threatened to personally block the admission of black students to the University of Alabama

The shifting public consensus led President Kennedy to appeal for civil rights legislation

A. Philip Randolph’s old idea of a March on Washington was revived

The march presented a unified call for change and held up the dream of universal freedom and brotherhood

Walter Reuther, A. Phillip Randolph and Joan Boez played a role in the March

JFK 1963 legislationEnd segregation In

public facilitatesBolster federal

authority for fundingEnsure that blacks

had the right to voteDeny funds for

discriminatory programs

March on WashingtonWalter Reuther Joan Boez John LewisA. Phillip Randolph

All played a roled

The assassination of John Kennedy threw a cloud over the movement as the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had never been a good friend to civil rights

LBJ used his skills as a political insider to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that put a virtual end to Jim Crow Authorized the Justice Department to institute suites

to desegregate public schools Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Offered Federal aid to communities desegregating

their schools Outlawed discrimination in employment

In 1964, civil rights activists targeted Mississippi for a “freedom summer” that saw 900 volunteers come to open up this closed society

The leader of the Mississippi NAACP , Medgar Evers was murdered outside his home in 1963

Tensions developed between white volunteers and black movement veterans

The project riveted national attention

on Mississippi

With an overwhelming Democratic victory in the 1964 elections, movement leaders pushed for federal legislation to protect the right to vote.

Many younger civil rights activists were drawn to the vision of Malcolm X, who: ridiculed integrationist goals urged black audiences to take pride in their African

heritage break free from white domination

The leading spokesman for the Nation of Islam in the 1950s and early 1960s was Malcolm X

He broke with the Nation of Islam, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and returned to America with changed views

He sought common ground with the civil rights movement, but was murdered in 1965.

Even in death, he continued to point to a new black consciousness.

In Selma, Alabama, whites had kept blacks off the voting lists and brutally responded to protests

A planned march to Montgomery ended when police beat marchers

Just when it appeared the Selma campaign would fade, a white gang attacked a group of Northern whites who had come to help out, one of whom died

President Johnson addressed the nation and thoroughly identified himself with the civil rights cause, declaring “we shall overcome.”

The march went forward.

In August 1965, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act that authorized federal supervision of voter registration in the South.

Civil Rights Beyond Black and White

Mexican Americans formed groups to fight for their rights and used the courts to challenge discrimination

Legal and illegal Mexican migration increased dramatically during and after WWII. During the 1950s, efforts to round up undocumented immigrants led to a denial of basic civil rights and a distrust of Anglos.

Although Puerto Rican communities had been forming since the 1920s, the great migration came after WWII

Despite being citizens, Puerto Ricans faced both economic and cultural discrimination

In the 1960s and 1970s, the decline in

manufacturing jobs and urban decay severely hit them.

During the 1950s, Congress passed a series of termination bills that ended tribal rights in return for cash payments and division of tribal assets

Indian activists challenged government policies leading to court decisions that reasserted the principle of tribal sovereignty.

Reservation Indians remained trapped in poverty

Indians who had left the reservation lost much of their tribal identities

In the 1978 Supreme Court case U.S. v. Wheeler recognized tribal independence except where limited by federal treaty or law

Urban Indian groups arose and focused on civil instead of tribal rights

During the 1950s, Congress removed the old ban against Japanese immigration and naturalization

In 1965, a new immigration law increased opportunities for Asians to immigrate to the United States

As a result, the demographics of the Asian-American population drastically changed.