Civil Right MovementWorking Within and Outside the System

“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair.” MLK, Jr.

Civil Disobedience and Passive Resistance

• Civil Disobedience: Purposefully breaking the law to show the injustice of the law (can be nonviolent or violent)

• Passive Resistance: “Going limp;” Accepting punishment, harassment, etc. without responding (always nonviolent)

Passive Resistance

Bus Boycotts: 1955-1956

• Boycotts started when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus

• led to months-long boycott of black (75% of riders) and sympathetic whites

• organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) under the leadership of MLK, Jr.

• as a result, segregation in public transportation was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court

Sit-ins: strategy of peacefully sitting in segregated areas to protest injustice

Sit-ins and SNCC

• SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee); “snick”• College students that organized protest

movement, including sit-ins

Sit-ins were often met with violence from the community; police did not protect protesters

Freedom Rides

• Freedom rides were organized byCORE (Congress ofRacial Equality);In 1961, rode busses to expose violations of anti-segregation laws; many buses were attacked

MLK, Jr. Arrested in Birmingham

• SCLC, led by MLK, Jr. went to Birmingham to protest segregation laws

• MLK, Jr. was arrested and jailed • Boycotts, protests, and media

coverage led to the end of legal (de jure) segregation in Birmingham

“When you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking in agonizing pathos: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?" when you take a cross country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" men and "colored" when your first name becomes "nigger" and your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and when your wife and mother are never given the respected title of "Mrs." when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of injustice where they experience the bleakness of corroding despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”

March on Washington: 1963; 200,00 protesters for federal civil rights laws; MLK, Jr. delivered “I Have a Dream” speech

Civil Rights Act of 1964

• In 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, and gender.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Eliminated literacy tests and allowed federal examiners to oversee elections

• Overall percentage of registered African-American voters tripled

Malcolm X and Black Power

• Malcolm X criticized MLK, Jr.’s non-violent approach

• Argued for “Black Power” (black-owned businesses, police, schools, bloc voting)

• Created real change (more black representatives in government, business, police forces)

• Divided civil rights community and led to white backlash

Race Riots: 1964-1967, over 100 riots; usually started over a conflict between white police and black youths

• Watts riot:

Other Civil Rights Movements…

• Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers• Worked towards fair pay, right to join

unions, and better conditions for farm workers

• Organized grape boycotts (1966)

• Native Occupation of Alcatraz• 1969-1971• Organized by AIM (American Indian

Movement)• Argued land must be returned to the

Native people from whom it was acquired • Forcibly removed by government in 1971

Within or Outside the System?

• MLK, Jr.• Malcolm X/Black Power• Brown v. Board of Education• Bus Boycotts• March on Washington• CORE/Freedom Rides• Race Riots• United Farm Workers• Occupation of Alcatraz