2. What does “civil rights” mean?
“Rights that belong to a person by virtue of his or her status as a citizen or as a member of civil society.”

3. The Impact Today
Changes brought about by the civil rights movement are still with us
Provides protection against discrimination for all citizens
Economic programs for inner-city residents by government and social service agencies continue

4. Emancipation Proclamation
President Abraham Lincoln
January 1, 1863
Third year of bloody civil war
The Proclamation declared:
"that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

5. 13th, 14th, & 15th Amendment 13th – Abolished slavery (1865)
14th – Gave all citizens of the United States equal rights (1868)
15th – Gave every male the right to vote (1868)
Limitations???

6. Origins of the Movement
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
– Upheld the state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal.”

7. The Origins of the Movement
Jim Crow Laws – After Plessy decision, these laws separated African Americans and whites in:
Buses
Schools
Trains
Restaurants
Swimming pools
Other public facilities

8. Jim Crow & Racial Violence in the South
Slavery had been illegal for 30 years by the 1890s, but African Americans experienced de facto slavery
By fact, not by law
1950s: lynching was accepted as a method of imposing law and order in the South and maintaining a social caste system

9. Jim Crow & Racial Violence
Jim Crow system of de jure segregation in the South:
Second-class citizens with restricted voting, education, and housing rights
Denied government protection from the racial violence
KKK, white police officers, etc.
Violence employed to maintain this caste system
Local officials were not interested in prosecuting white-on-black violence

10. Jim Crow Laws
“Marriages are void when one party is a white person and the other is possessed of one-eighth or more negro, Japanese, or Chinese blood.”
“Any white woman who shall suffer or permit herself to be got with child by a negro or mulatto … shall be sentenced to the penitentiary for not less than eighteen months.”
“No colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women and girls.”
“It shall be unlawful for a negro and white person to play together or in company with each other in any game of cards or dice, dominoes or checkers.”

11. “Strange Fruit”

12. “Strange Fruit” Poem written by Abel Meeropol
Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx
He published under the pen name Lewis Allan
About the lynching of two black men
Lawrence Beitler’s photograph of the 1930 lynching in Indiana

13. Events that Jump Started the Civil Rights Movement

14. The Origins of the Movement
Murder of Emmett Till (1955)
14, from Chicago, visiting cousins in Mississippi
Dared to whistle at a white woman
Husband & half-brother took Till, kidnapped him & transported him to a barn

15. Murder of Emmett Till (1955)
They beat him
Gouged out one of his eyes
Shot him in the head
Disposed of his body in the Tallahatchie River
70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire
His body was discovered and retrieved from the river three days later

16. The Untold Story of Emmett Till

17. Newly Acquired Political Power
NAACP (1909) – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Supported court cases intended to overturn segregation
1946: Ruled against segregation on interstate buses
1950: State law school had to admit qualified African American applicants

18. Origins of the Movement
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
– A landmark decision that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional
– Violated 14th Amendment (equal protection clause)
– Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson
“In the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” – Earl Warren

23. School Desegregation
By 1955, white opposition in the South persuaded people to resist compliance with the desegregation orders
Tactics included:
Firing school employees who showed willingness to seek integration
Closing public schools rather than desegregating
Boycotting all public education that was integrated

24. “With all deliberate speed”???
1956: Autherine Lucy, a black woman seeking admission to U. of Alabama was pelted with rotten eggs
1957: Bloody riots erupted when the Little Rock nine attempted to integrate
1960: Angry whites threw tomatoes and eggs at Ruby Bridges (6) in New Orleans
1964: Prince Edward County, VA, not a single African American child had been admitted to a white school
County defiantly closed their schools