The Civil Rights Movement

Unit Objectives Understanding the status of African Americans before the Civil Rights Movement Understanding and analyzing the sparks that started the Civil Rights Movement Learning and understanding the important figures and events of the era

How African-Americans were kept powerless Black Codes: Jim Crow Laws:

Southern governments eased Black Codes and Jim Crow laws into society because they weren’t sure how the Supreme Court would rule on them, collectively known as “Separate but Equal” Plessy v Ferguson (1896) confirmed segregation was constitutional as long as the facilities were equal leading to separate facilities for whites and non-whites all over the South De Facto Segregation: Segregation based on custom and tradition, not written into law

Poll Taxes: Literacy Tests:

Intimidation: KKK and other groups intimidated formers slaves to keep them from voting Northern indifference: The federal government did nothing to prevent it

Volunteers assist with voter registration in Americus, Georgia, on August 9, 1965. Although blacks had long held the legal right to vote, political realities in the South made it difficult for them to register. Racists had discouraged black registration through threats of violence or unfair testing.

Beginnings of the Movement Brown v Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954): Overturned Plessy based on the idea that segregation was unconstitutional discrimination even if the facilities were equal; Spark that started the Civil Rights Movement A year later the Supreme Court ordered southern states to integrate public schools “with all deliberate speed”; Eventually led to desegregation of all public facilities

Southern Manifesto

U.S. Deputy Marshals escort 6-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in November 1960. The first grader was the only black child enrolled in the school. The U.S. Civil Rights Movement  

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955) This is an ID Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus and was arrested

Martin Luther King, Jr. (also an ID): Local minister who was selected to lead the boycott and eventually became the leader for the entire movement

Rosa Parks is fingerprinted at a police station after her arrest in Montgomery, Alabama.

Martin Luther King Jr. (left), Fred Shuttlesworth (center) and Ralph Abernathy (right), three pivotal leaders of the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s, hold a press conference in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. All were Baptist ministers who led churches in Alabama during the early days of the civil rights movement. In the United States, black churches provided leadership to their communities; the leaders headed the civil rights movement as well.

Civil Rights Organizations The Big Four: 1) Congress of Racial Equality (CORE):

Civil Disobedience: Purposely violating an unjust law to make a point usually resulting in arrest Passive Resistance: non-violent protesting

2) King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 and promoted the use of non-violent resistance At first focused on voting rights, later others Why was it so important to avoid using violence, even in self-defense? Could you use that kind of self-control to make a political point?

Demonstrators, including many ministers, picket the F. W Demonstrators, including many ministers, picket the F.W. Woolworth store in New York, April 14, 1960, in protest of the store's lunch-counter segregation at southern branches of its chain.

Members of the North Carolina Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, depicted at the Tottle House lunch counter in Atlanta in 1960, sparked sit-ins by students across the South.

3) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): Started by college students; Began with non-violent protests like sit-ins, freedom rides, March on Washington; Later moved toward violent protests and protesting the Vietnam War because African Americans were often drafted and put on the front lines

4) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)