1. The Civil Rights Movement 1945-1975
18.3= New Successes & Challenges

2. Push for Voting Rights; Freedom Summer
1964, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Plan to register thousands of African-Americans to vote in Miss.
Formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)
Alternative to Mississippi’s all-white Democratic Party

3. March on Selma, Alabama
1965= MLK & the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) march to pressure federal government to enact voting rights legislation

4. Voting Rights Act
1965= Banned literacy tests & empowered the federal government to oversee voting registration & elections in states that had discriminated against minorities
Also, the 24th Amendment was added to the Constitution
Banned the poll tax, which kept African-Americans from voting

5. Race Riots

6. The Kerner Commission
Created by President Johnson to determine causes of race riots
Finding: Long-term discrimination was most important cause of race riots
Recommended expanding federal programs aimed at overcoming problems of American’s urban ghettos
Riots led to white backlash

7. Malcolm X Radical civil rights leader, a part of the Nation of Islam
Religious group, strict rules of behavior
Malcolm advocated a separation of the Black & White races
After completing a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Malcolm X began to consider limited acceptance of whites; Broke away from Nation of Islam
Assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam, February 1965

8. Black Power & the Black Panthers
Call for African-Americans to collectively use their economic & political muscle to gain equality

9. Death of MLK; April 4th, 1968
Began his “Poor People’s Campaign” in Memphis, Tenn.
Shot & killed on balcony of his hotel by a white man
Nation wide riots ensued

10. Post-MLK Civil Rights Movement
Fair Housing Act
Affirmative action
Way to shorten economic gap between black & white Americans
Controversial: Whites argued reverse discrimination, would hurt goal of creating a “colorblind society”