1. Civil Rights Taking on Segregation
American History 2

2. Reconstruction Did former slaves gain civil rights?
14th Amendment (1868) – citizenship and equal protection of the law to former slaves
Civil Rights Act of 1875 – outlawed segregation in public facilities
Declared unconstitutional in 1883.

4. Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896
Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” did not violate 14th Amendment
Came from a Louisiana law for railroads.

5. Migration
Around WWI, African-Americans began migrating away from the South.
Sharecroppers left for industrial jobs

6. Beginnings of a Civil Rights Movement
African-Americans worked in war industries and served in the armed services during WWII.
After fighting fascists, had energy to fight racism at home

7. Beginnings of a Civil Rights Movement (continued)
Some organizations worked to end Jim Crow laws
FDR issued directive prohibiting discrimination in war industries.

8. NAACP leads challenge to segregation
Legal strategy focuses on schools
Nation spent 10 x $ educating a white child over a black child (photos pg. 907)

9. Thurgood Marshall
Leads a team of talented law students in fighting segregation for NAACP

10. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
Marshall’s biggest victory
Linda Brown’s father sued b/c she couldn’t go to white school close to her house
Supreme Court struck down segregation in schooling as unconstitutional

12. Reactions to Brown Some Southern governors vowed resistance
Brown II – desegregation implemented “with all deliberate speed”

13. Crisis in Little Rock
Sept. 1957, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered National Guard to turn away the “Little Rock Nine”

14. Eisenhower takes acton
Eisenhower placed Arkansas Nat’l Guard under federal control and orders 1,000 paratroopers to Little Rock.
Gov. Faubus closes school at the end of the year.

19. Slow Integration
1964 (10 years after Brown), less than 2 percent of African-American students in the South attended integrated schools

20. Civil Rights Act of 1957
Pushed by (senator) LBJ, gave Fed. Gov’t. more power to desegregate schools.
Provided for a permanent Civil Rights Commission
Justice Dept new powers to protect voting rights

21. Some thought Ike didn’t do enough

22. Montgomery Bus Boycott
Montgomery buses had segregated seating.
Dec. 1, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus after being ordered to do so by the driver.

24. NAACP begins bus boycott in Montgomery
Montgomery Improvement Association – organized boycott – elected Martin Luther King, Jr to lead.

26. Dr. King’s Ideas Jesus – love enemies
Henry David Throreau (transcendentalist) – civil disobedience
A. Philip Randolph – organize mass demonstrations
Mohandas Ghandi – resist oppression without violence

27. Southern Christian Leadership Conference
1957, King teamed up with other civil rights leaders to found the SCLC “to carry out nonviolent crusades against the evils of second class citizenship”

28. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
SNCC founded by Shaw University students (Raleigh)

29. Sit-ins
CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) – staged first sit-ins in 1942
1960, Students from NC A & T staged a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro
TV cameras brought this movement into people’s homes
Many other sit-ins were staged across the country

32. Emmett Till
14 – year-old African American murdered after allegedly flirting with a white woman

33. L. Battling for Black Rights
Civil Rights Act was starting to fight discrim.
Voting rights remained a problem
Poll taxes, literacy tests, voting laws, intimidation
24th Amend.- banned poll taxes- freedom summer of deaths of civil rights workers

34. Overall gains by end of 60s- over ½ black school children in integrated schools by early 70s, voter reg. On rise, hundreds of elected officials, rising economic status

35. King’s voter drive in Selma, AL- Montgomery-65
Voting Rights Act outlawed literacy tests, stationed federal observers at southern registration points- began real political change for black people 100 years after Civil War

36. M. Black Power VRA of 65- end of nonviolent civil rights protests
Watts Riot- August week- police brutality
Division b/t black civil rights leaders
King’s nonviolent ideas vs. militant ideas like Malcolm X
Nation of Islam- separate from “blue-eyed white devils”- assassinated in 1965
Black Panther party established mid 1960s
1966- Stokely Carmichael of SNCC began preaching doctrine of Black Power- assimilationists vs. separatists

37. Long hot summers of 67-69- more inner city race riots
April 4, Memphis, TN- MLK killed by James Earl Ray- resulted in riots