1. Monday, 23 September 2019Monday, 23 September 2019
Do Now: Define the following:
NAACP
SCLC
SNCC
CORE
Non violent direct action
Challenge:
How did these protest groups place civil rights at the top of the political agenda by 1963?

2. Non-violent direct action:
Nonviolent action are techniques outside of institutionalized behaviour for social change that challenges an unjust power dynamic using methods of protest, non-cooperation, and intervention without the use or threat of injurious force.
Nonviolent direct action is known by many names.
Gandhi called it satyagraha (truth or soul force).
Henry Thoreau called it civil disobedience.
Activists in North Philadelphia sometimes call it street heat.
In the Philippines, democracy activists call it people power.

3. Why was Non Violent Direct Action so successful?
List 3 aspects highlighted in Selma

4. How divisive were the differing approaches to Civil Rights 1961-9?
LOs:
1. To explain the aims and impact of non-violent direct action
2. To explain why internal differences emerged within the Civil Rights movement and assess the legacy of these approaches
3. To evaluate the impact of Civil Rights legislation

5. Rosa Parks and bus boycotts, 1955
Why Rosa?

6. The Freedom Rides, 1961
People riding on public transport with signs arguing that black and white people should be able to sit together on buses

7. Lunch counter sit-ins, 1960
People sitting at a lunch bar that was meant to be for white people only.

8. Birmingham’s ‘Children’s Crusade’

9. March on Washington, 1963 (250,000)

10. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 A law written by JFK.
Became law in July 1964,
so JFK didn’t live to see it passed.
Passed by his deputy, who took over as President after JFK’s assassination.
The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theatres,
restaurants, and hotels.

11. Mississippi Freedom Summer

12. Selma to Montgomery, 1965
(Bloody Sunday)

13. What were the aims of SNCC and CORE?
Task one: Read pages
What were the aims of SNCC and CORE?
How did they differ to MLK’s approach?
What was the effect and impact of the Freedom Rides?
What was the intended effect of the Birmingham ‘children’s crusade’?
What was the effect of the Selma to Montgomery marches?
Challenge
Who deserves the most credit for the improvement in black American civil rights between 1955 and 1965, Martin Luther King Jr, The Supreme Court, federal government support (i.e. presidents), grassroots activists, white American supporters? Add any other relevant factors.

14. Non-violent Direct action
Legal action (Supreme Court rulings & NAACP cases)
The role of individuals and leaders
Which factor (reason) was MOST important in helping to achieve civil rights? Which factors hinders progress most?
Non-violent Direct action
Federal
intervention

15. Did MLK’s strategies apply to everyone?

16. Why do you think black people resorted to violence in the 1960’s?
Throughout the 1960’s there were widespread riots such as those in NYC and in the WATTS district of Los Angeles, in which 34 people were killed 1072 people were injured in 6 days of rioting. Much of the area was burned down by its own people who chanted ‘black power’ slogans and fired on police.
There were further violent riots in 1966 in Cleveland, Chicago, Newark and detroit.
In 1968 rioting broke out all over the US when it was announced that MLK had been assassinated.
Why do you think black people resorted to violence in the 1960’s?

17. Task: Read Stokely Carmichael’s The Basis of Black Power (SNCC)
What is he suggesting about white supporters of civil rights?
What/whose methods does he criticise?

18. Stokely Carmichael’s The Basis of Black Power (SNCC)
You cannot change Western culture’s black stereotype
Blacks must solve their own problems from within, rather than without, in a white hierarchy.
They need to prove that they can organise themselves to erase stereotypes.

19. So which way? What are the strengths and weaknesses of their methods?
The peaceful approach showed how respectable black people were.
The more aggressive approach of the black power movement showed black people would no longer put up with violence and would organise themselves

20. Black Power
They were more ggressive in defence of black rights. They believed:
MLK’s soft approach was not working and just making Black people look ‘nice’ i.e. there were violent attacks (often from the police!) on Black people who protested peacefully.
Black people should defend themselves i.e. Violence should be met with violence.
The black community should be segregated (separate) from the white community and should not ‘beg’ the white man for equality.
Also the black community should educate itself, develop its own businesses, and build up its own community without the white man’s help.

21. Task: Black Power
Read the article on Black Power and answer the following (brief, note form or highlight on the sheet):
Who was Stokely Carmichael and what did he believe?
What events had shaped his views?
Why did the Black Power movement fail to make much progress?
What were Black Power’s achievements?

22. BLACK PANTHERS
The Black Panthers were the most violent and secretive group.
They were involved in many bloody battles with the police in the 1960’s.
The police targeted and destroyed the movement.
Task three
Read the BPP’s manifesto.
What are their grievances?
What solutions do they suggest for ordinary black Americans?
What is controversial about their program?

24. Violence in the Streets: a practical and legitimate purpose?
Some argue that the Panthers consistently regarded armed resistance as merely one part of their larger discourse of self-defence.
“We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organising black self-defence groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self-defence”.

25. Subverted authority
Panthers provided blacks with a visual example of how to assert their rights and take charge of their lives, encouraging self-confidence, organisation and autonomy, in place of the degenerate authority they had subverted.
Aim: to mock and subvert authority, to instill a sense of racial pride, self-respect and self-confidence in the black community, assuring every African American that they had the right to self-defense and community autonomy.
Their teaching ‘tools’:
Law books, cameras and tape recorders - the patroller’s recitation of the Bill of Rights or the appropriate penal code served as a teaching tool so that community members could learn to defend themselves. Surely the law enforcement agency should be the side more informed about the American law and reading it to the suspected ‘criminal’.
Cartoons: ‘Pig’ images to degenerate the body of authority and associate them with a dirty pig lifestyle and portray them as animalistic, lacking in human soul and consciousness. Unlike the ‘pig cops’, they could used their weapons responsibly and justly, only when necessary. They could be respected as community authority and the vanguard party, a replacement for the police. Cartoons by Emory Douglass – for him, “a tool of liberation”, by which he could expose “the character of those [authorities] who oppressed us”, as Douglass himself explained.
Selling Newspapers
Radical Chic- uniform; disciplined appearance.

26. “The Rules:”
“1. No party member can have narcotics or weed in his possession while doing party work”.
“3. No party member can be DRUNK while doing daily party work”.
“5. No party member will USE, POINT, or FIRE a weapon of any kind unnecessarily or accidently at anyone”.
“Eight Points of Attention”, appear the upmost citizens:
“Speak politely.
Pay fairly for what you buy.
Return everything you borrow.
Pay for anything you damage.
Do not hit or sear at people.
Do not damage property or crops of the poor,
oppressed masses.
Do not take liberties with women.
If we ever have to take captives do not ill-treat
them”.

27. Why a visual, confident strategy?
Huey Newton himself claimed, “the Black community is basically not a reading community”.
Appeal to the modern black youth.
Building on a familiar, informal tradition: “Owing to both a particular African heritage and specific forms of Euro-American oppression, black cultural production has focused primarily on performance and pageantry, style and spectacle”.

28. Task: Black Power
1) Using Sanders pages 133-5, describe the causes of the Black Power movement:
Ghetto conditions (N and W)
The Nation of Islam
Ghetto riots
Failure of the SCLC (N and W)
Vietnam
2) Using Sanders pages 135-6, and the article on the BPP:
What were the aims of the party?
What were their activities?
Why was the party seen as the most radical of Black Power groups?
How far did their influence ‘decline’ post 1967?

29. Why was the half time performance at the Super Bowl so controversial this year?

30. Has anything changed?

31. Task: Assessing impact
Complete the table using Sanders pages
Challenge:
How far can it be argued that Civil Rights campaigns were successful?