1. Successes & Challenges After 1964

2. Push for Voting Rights
Poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation in South
1964: Mississippi- SNCC called for “Freedom Summer” – 1,000 volunteers (mostly students) flooded MS to register African Americans to vote
Mississippi, 1964: not a single African American person was registered to vote in 5 counties that had African American majorities

3. March 1965: MLK & SCLC org. major campaign in Selma (Alabama)
March from Selma to Montgomery to pressure federal gov’t to pass legislation
Attacks: “Bloody Sunday”
Pres. Johnson: called for strong fed. laws
selma-to-montgomery

4. Voting Rights Guaranteed
Voting Rights Act of 1965: banned literacy tests; gave fed. Gov’t power to oversee elections in historically discriminatory states
24th Amend (1964): banned poll tax
SCOTUS cases limited racial gerrymandering
In Mississippi, percentage of African Americans registered to vote jumped from just under 7% in 1964 to about 70% in 1986.
Nationwide: number of African American elected officials rose from fewer than 100 to more than 6,000 by the mid-1980s.

5. Frustration  Violence
Many race riots in 1960s – worst in summer Why???
Prez Johnson creates Kerner Commission to determine cause  long-term racial discrimination
Radicalization
Malcolm X – anti-integration {mini bio}
For some African Americans, things had not changed much even after passage of Voting Rights Act. In many urban areas, there was anger and frustration over continuing discrimination and poverty
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebraska (1925) – adopted the X to represent his lost African name (Little, he argued, was his slave name). Had a difficult childhood… moved around, landed in NYC where he became involved in drugs and crime and landed in prison at 21 for burglary
Malcolm X:

6. Black Power
Coined 1966; whites felt threatened, thought it meant violence
Black Panther Party (Oakland, CA)
Symbol of young militant African Americans
Antipoverty programs
Black Panthers became symbol of young militant African Americans almost overnight
Organized armed patrols of urban neighborhoods to protect people from police bause. Created antipoverty programs (like giving free breakfasts),
Entered state capitol in Sacramento carrying shotguns and wearing black leather jackets and berets to protest attempts to restrict their right to bear arms

7. MLK Assassinated Nonviolent alternative to economic injustice
Org. “Poor People’s Campaign” – travelled to Memphis (April 1968)
April 4, 1968: shot on balcony outside motel room