II: Challenging Segregation Events which pressured the federal government to end segregation and ensure voting

A. The Sit-in Movement 1. Started in Greensboro, Woolworth’s lunch counter 2. Mostly college students 3. Ella Baker instrumental in coordinating efforts on a national scale = 4. …

4. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) a. Goals: desegregation and voter registration in rural areas b. Mississippi Burning

5. Fannie Lou Hamer a.Jailed and beaten for urging AA to register to vote b.Helped form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) c.Goal? To allow more AA as delegates in the Democratic party ******************************

B. Freedom Rides 1. Began with CORE organization 2. Goal: Test desegregation ruling on interstate bus routes and terminals 3. JFK makes deal w/Gov: a. no violence in Ms and b. Riders can be arrested

Bus #2

KKK at terminal

4. Kennedy and Civil Rights a. Supporter of the CRM b. AG RFK help get MLK out of jail after demonstration c. Slow to respond once in office – need Southern Democrats to help pass bills d. ICC to desegregated interstate buses and terminals

James Meredith & Ole Miss

Violence in Birmingham, Ala. 1. Need to get JFK to respond 2. MLK – “most seg. city in the U.S.” 3. Bull Connor, Safety commissioner/mayor candidate a. Responds with harsh force b. Televised 4. Kennedy finally acts w/ Civil Rights Acts of 1964

Birmingham, Alabama Letter from MLK “I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters;…when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in the air-tight cage of poverty;…when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking:…”Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”…then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

The Civil Rights Act of “I say, segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!” - George Wallace, Gov. of Alabama, Medgar Evers;NAACP, veteran, assassinated by de la Beckwith 3. Pres. Kennedy orders Wallace to desegregate U of Ala

C. March on Washington August 28, goal: to persuade congress to pass Kennedy’s civil rights bill a. Equal education for all/law suits by federal gov’t b. video AJk AJk

Civil Rights Act of Passed while Pres. LB Johnson in office 2. Illegal to discriminate based on race, religion, national origin, and gender in employment and public facilities. 3. EEOC – bans employment discrimination based on race, religion, gender, and national origin

The Struggle for Voting Rights 1. Selma Campaign (Alabama 1965) a. 50% of population were AA - Only 3% registered voters b. Voter-registration drive organized in hopes of violent response by whites so that Johnson’s admin. would pass voting act.

Bloody Sunday: Alabama state troopers attack civil-rights demonstrators outside Selma, Alabama, on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

Voting Rights Act Got rid of literacy test 2. Agents of the Federal gov’t could register voters 3. Registered African American voters tripled in the South; in Selma = 10-60%/4 yrs. 4. Voting and discrimination addressed, now on to social and economic equality = poverty issues