30.4 The Movement Continues

Civil Rights movement in trouble:

SCLC workers were determined to continue King’s work so they went ahead with the Poor People’s campaign.

Ralph Abernathy told marchers on their way to Capital Hill, “We must prove to white America that you can kill the leader but you can’t kill the dream.”

In Washington D.C. protestors constructed Resurrection City. It was a settlement of tents and shacks constructed on public land designed to draw

attention to poverty.

Resurrection city was a disaster. Constant rain turned the town into a mud hole.

In June 1968 police evicted the protestors from the site.

After the failure of the Poor People’s Campaign many civil rights workers were left in a state of despair.

During the 1970s contributions to the SCLC shrank and the organization no longer played a leading role in civil rights issues.

Support for black nationalism also faced growing problems.

1967 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover launched programs designed to neutralize the activates of black nationalist.

Many organizations like the SNCC and Black Panthers also begin experiencing internal problems.

In early 1966 the SNCC and the Black Panthers announced plans to unite. However the union last only 6 months and the SNCC disbanded in the early

1970s and the Black Panthers also lost influence.

Backlash:

Many whites believe that civil rights reform was depriving them of their own rights.

Even after Brown v. Board said that all public schools must desegregate many U.S. cities remained segregated

Because of that most schools remained segregated .

To combat this problem school official suggested using busing-

sending children to school outside of their neighborhoods.

Violent protests erupted against the buses in 1976, but many African American parents believed that bussing was necessary to achieve equal

education opportunities.

In 1974 the Supreme Court limited the use of segregation by means of bussing in Milliken v. Bradley.

Justice Marshall dissented for the ruling saying, “Unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live

together.”

Affirmative Action

“Affirmative action” means positive steps taken to increase the representation of women and minorities in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

Allan Bakke, a thirty-five-year-old white man, had twice applied for admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis. He was rejected both

times.

The school reserved sixteen places in each entering class of one hundred for "qualified" minorities, as part of the university's affirmative action program, in an effort to redress longstanding, unfair minority exclusions from the medical

profession.

Bakke's qualifications (college GPA and test scores) exceeded those of any of the minority students admitted in the two years Bakke's applications were rejected.

Did the University of California violate the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, by practicing an affirmative

action policy that resulted in the repeated rejection of Bakke's application for admission to its medical school?

Justice Powell casting the deciding vote ordering the medical school to admit Bakke. However, in his opinion, Powell argued

that the rigid use of racial quotas as employed at the school violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth

Amendment. The remaining four justices held that the use of race as a criterion in admissions decisions in higher

education was constitutionally permissible. Powell joined that opinion as well, contending that the use of race was permissible

as one of several admission criteria.

Successes of the Movement:

Carl Stokes became mayor of Cleveland.

To ensure that African Americans would continue to gain political influence activists met in Indiana for the National Black Political Convention.

African Americans played a crucial role in the 1976 presidential election. 6.5 million African American voting for Jimmy Carter that year and he won the

election by fewer than 2 million popular votes.

By the late 1970s 4,500 held elected office three times the amount in 1969.

African American owned business also rose, and the number of African Americans entering colleges during the late 1970s was four time the

amount that it was in 1964.