The Civil Rights Movement 1865-1968

Post-Slavery (“Reconstruction”) The Union army occupied the South, and the U.S. passed amendments banning slavery and saying *men* could vote regardless of their ethnicity. Many former slaves moved to cities in the North; those who couldn't often lived in conditions similar to slavery, renting parts of the former slavemaster's plantations (sharecropping).

Jim Crow Laws After the U.S. military pulled out of the South in 1876, new Southern governments began to disenfranchise black men. They passed laws requiring a poll tax or literacy test. Since most freedmen couldn't read or write or afford the tax, blacks were prevented from voting. Whites in the South, though, didn't have to pay or pass the literacy test because of "Grandfather Clauses."

Jim Crow Laws (cont.) • Those blacks that tried to vote were intimidated by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), who would burn houses and murder just to prevent blacks from voting. • In Southern states--and many Northern ones as well--whites and blacks had separate facilities: bathrooms, schools, drinking fountains. Many restaurants and hotels refused to serve blacks. • In 1896, the Supreme Court said "separate but equal" facilities were legal and fair.

Brown vs. Board of Education In 1954, the Supreme Court decided that "separate but equal" schools were illegal and inherently *unequal.* Over the next few years, other "separate" facilities--like buses--were deemed illegal. Many cities and states tried to prevent integration. In 1957, President Eisenhower had to call in the army to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Emmett Till In 1955, 13-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago was visiting his cousins in Mississippi. Allegedly at a store he whistled at a white woman. That night, the woman's husband and his brother kidnapped Emmett, tortured him, shot him, and dumped him in the river. His body was so disfigured that his mom only recognized him from a ring on his finger. His mom decided to have an open casket to show the world the racism that was going on. Emmett's death was one of the main motivations for the Civil Rights Movement. Many people who before were able to turn a blind eye to the discrimination and gruesome violence taking place in the South could no longer do it.

Rosa Parks A few months later, Rosa Parks was arrested in Alabama for refusing to move her seat on the bus. Following the arrest, she and other women from her church asked Martin Luther King, Jr., a relatively unknown pastor, to lead a bus boycott. So many blacks refused to ride the bus that the system almost went bankrupt. Months later, buses were finally integrated.

Peaceful Demonstrations; Violent Reactions “Freedom Riders”--people of all ethnicities, usually college students--would take buses down to the south to do "sit-ins" at counters, register voters, and protest against racism and segregation. Many were assaulted by townspeople and policemen--and many were murdered.

Martin Luther King, Jr. After the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King, Jr. became the primary leader of the Civil Rights Movement. He preached nonviolent protesting (based partially on Gandhi’s example), even though he was arrested, beaten, and threatened many times. In 1963, he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In 1968, after years of death threats, Martin Luther King was killed on the balcony of his hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.