28.3: The Movement at High Tide

A. Birmingham 1.In conjunction with the SCLC, local activists in Birmingham, Alabama, planned a large desegregation campaign. 2.Demonstrators, including Martin Luther King, Jr., filled the city’s jails. 3.King drafted his Letter From a Birmingham Jail. 4.A TV audience saw water cannons and snarling dogs break up a children’s march. 5.A settlement was negotiated that desegregated businesses. 6.Birmingham changed the nature of the civil rights movement by bringing in black unemployed and working poor for the first time.

Police dogs attacked a seventeen-year-old civil rights demonstrator for defying an antiparade ordinance in Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, He was part of the “children’s crusade” organized by SCLC in its campaign to fill the city jails with protesters. More than 900 Birmingham schoolchildren went to jail that day. SOURCE:Photo by Bill Hudson.AP/Wide World Photos.

B. JFK and the March on Washington 1.The shifting public consensus led President Kennedy to appeal for civil rights legislation. 2.A. Philip Randolph’s old idea of a march on Washington was revived. 3.The march presented a unified call for change and held up the dream of universal freedom and brotherhood.

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledging the huge throng at the historic March on Washington for “jobs and freedom,” August 28, The size of the crowd, the stirring oratory and song, and the live network television coverage produced one of the most memorable political events in the nation’s history. SOURCE:George Ballis/Take Stock.

As the Civil Rights movement received greater coverage in the international press, editorial cartoonists in America expressed fears that white resistance to integration provided an effective propaganda weapon to the Soviet Union and its allies. This Oakland Tribune cartoon appeared on September 11, 1957, in the midst of the crisis in Little Rock. SOURCE:“Right into Their Hands ”, The Oakland Tribune.

C. LBJ and the Civil Rights Act of 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. 2.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.

D. Mississippi Freedom Summer 1.In 1964, civil rights activists targeted Mississippi for a “freedom summer” that saw 900 volunteers come to open up this closed society. 2.Two white activists and a local black activist were quickly killed. 3.Tensions developed between white volunteers and black movement veterans. 4.The project riveted national attention on Mississippi. 5.With an overwhelming Democratic victory in the 1964 elections, movement leaders pushed for federal legislation to protect the right to vote.

Bob Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the driving forces behind the 1964 Freedom Summer Project. Here he instructs student volunteers gathered in Oxford, Ohio, before they leave for voter registration and other community organizing work in Mississippi. Moses, who had been working for voting rights in Mississippi since 1961, played a key role in persuading SNCC to accept white volunteers from the North. SOURCE:Photo by Steve Shapiro.Black Star (PER 13SC HA000102).

After they were barred from the floor of the August 1964 Democratic National Convention, members of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party were led by Fanny Lou Hamer in a song-filled protest outside the hotel. Women from left to right: Fannie Lou Hamer, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Ella Baker. SOURCE:Photo by George Ballis.Take Stock –Images of Change ( ).

E. Malcolm X and Black Consciousness 1.Many younger civil rights activists were drawn to the vision of Malcolm X, who: a.ridiculed integrationist goals b.urged black audiences to take pride in their African heritage c.break free from white domination 2.He broke with the Nation of Islam, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and returned to America with changed views. 3.He sought common ground with the civil rights movement, but was murdered in Even in death, he continued to point to a new black consciousness.

Born Malcolm Little, Malcolm X (1925–65) took the name “X” as a symbol of the stolen identity of African slaves. He emerged in the early 1960s as the foremost advocate of racial unity and black nationalism. The Black Power movement, initiated in 1966 by SNCC members, was strongly influenced by Malcolm X. SOURCE:“Malcolm X in Egypt,1964 ”.Photo by John Launois.Black Star.

F. Selma 1.In Selma, Alabama, whites had kept blacks off the voting lists and brutally responded to protests. 2.A planned march to Montgomery ended when police beat marchers. 3.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. 4.President Johnson addressed the nation and thoroughly identified himself with the civil rights cause, declaring “we shall overcome.” 5.The march went forward.

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

Voting rights demonstrators on the historic four-day, fifty-four mile trek from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, March Intensive media coverage helped swell the original 3,000 marchers to over 30,000 supporters at a climactic rally in front of the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery.

MAP 28.2 Impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 Voter registration among African Americans in the South increased significantly between 1960 and 1971.