civil rights movement 1954- 1965 i. background a. 1896 – u. s. supreme court declares racial...

Civil Rights Movement

1954-1965

I. Background

A. 1896 – U. S. Supreme Court declares racial segregation legal in Plessy v. Ferguson.

So for the next 60 years blacks were supposed to get “separate but equal” schools and all public facilities.

The reality was separate but not equal.

I. Background

B. 1909 – The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP was founded.

C. President Harry Truman ended all segregation in the military in 1948.

Benjamin Oliver Davis Sr. was the first African-American General.

He held the rank of private to Brigadier General.

General Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. served in the military for fifty years in the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II.

General Davis’ son, Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr. was the only African-American at West Point when he graduated in 1936.

He trained with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.

Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr. was the first

African-American Air Force General, and the

second African-American General in

the U.S. Military.

II. Brown vs. Board of Education -

1954

Oliver Brown’s 8 year old daughter, Linda, had to ride 5 miles and cross a dangerous railroad yard to get to her all-black school.

A white school was only a few blocks away.

13 families were involved in the case.

Brown was listed as main plaintiff.

Oliver Brown, minister, A.M.E. church, was named because he was the only adult

male in the 13 families.

II. Brown vs. Board of EducationA. Overturned Plessy v. FergusonB. Schools were ordered by the

Supreme Court to desegregate with all “deliberate speed”.

No states rushed out to desegregate.

The states did all they could to delay following the Court’s decision.

III. Death of Emmett Till - 1955Emmett Till was the only son of a man who died serving in the U.S. military during World War II and Mamie Till. He Lived in Chicago.

In the summer of 1955 he visited relatives in Mississippi.

In the summer of ’55 Emmett was 14 years old, was 5’ 4” tall and

weighed about 160 lbs.

Emmett and several others stopped by Bryant’s Store.

Emmett may have made some remarks to the young white woman who worked in the store (on a dare from his buddies). The story varies.

He did whistle at the woman before they all left the store.

This is the store where Emmett and the others stopped.

This is the woman Emmett

spoke to and whistled at.

The woman’s husband and brother-in-law, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam later went to the home of Emmett’s great uncle, Moses Wright.

They demanded to see “the boy who did the talking”.

They forced Emmett to go with them.

Moses Wright later testified in court that Bryant and Milam had taken Emmett from his home. He and his wife then fled Mississippi in

fear of their own lives.

In a Look magazine article several months after being acquitted of the murder, both Bryant and Milam told how they had murdered Emmett and thrown his body in the Tallahatchie River.

The all-white jury deliberated only about an hour before finding Bryant

and Milam not guilty.

III. Murder of Emmett Till

A.14 years old

B.Murdered by two white men

C.Happened in Mississippi

D.Murderers went free

E.Helped spark the movement for equality

The Emmett Till case was a spark for a new generation to commit their lives to social change, you know. They said, "We're not gonna die like

this. Instead, we're gonna live and transform the South so people won't have to die like this." And if anything, if any event of the 1950s inspired

young people to be committed to that kind of change, it was the lynching of Emmett Till. Robin DG Kelley, Civil Rights Historian

IV. The Montgomery Bus Boycott – 1955

A. Rosa Parks arrested

On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks

boarded a city bus and sat with three other

blacks in the fifth row, the first row that blacks

could occupy. A few stops later, the front four rows were filled with whites, and one white man was left

standing.

According to law, blacks and whites could not occupy the same row, so the bus driver asked all four of the blacks seated in the fifth row to move. Three complied, but Parks refused. She

was arrested.

Though she was working as a seamstress, Mrs. Parks had attended Alabama State.

She was active in the NAACP


B. Jo Ann Robinson and others organized a bus boycott

Jo Ann Robinson was an English teacher at Alabama State College in Montgomery.

Ms. Robinson mimeographed fliers to hand out to people to encourage a one-day bus boycott.


The Monday, one-day boycott was a success.

On that afternoon local ministers and civil rights leaders met to discuss the possibility of continuing the boycott.In 1953 a two week bus boycott had taken place in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

A compromise had been reached in which blacks were allowed to sit in other areas of the bus.


C. The Montgomery Improvement Association was formed.

1. Martin Luther King Jr., minister of the Dexter Ave Church, was chosen as the leader of MIA.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a young minister at Dexter Ave,

Church in Montgomery.

2. The MIA adopted a plan of action to begin on December 5, 1955.

The resolution basically stated three demands:

a) Blacks would be treated politely by bus drivers.

All bus drivers were white.

Some drivers were rude and unfair to their black riders.

60% of the riders were black.

b) End seating segregation- seating would be first come-first served c) Hire Black bus drivers.

Mr. King copied the free-ride network from the

Baton Rouge Boycott to help protestors get to their jobs and other

places.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted from Dec. 5, 1955

until Dec. 21, 1956.

Mr. King’s home was bombed on Jan. 30th.

The homes of other leaders were bombed as were four Baptist churches, and some local black businesses.

Mr. King was one of 89 people arrested under an old law against boycotting.

He was the first to go to trial.

He was fined $1000.

D. Federal Court helped end the Boycott on Dec. 21, 1956.

E. Importance - the Boycott started the 10 year movement for civil rights.

V. Southern Christian Leadership Conference – 1957

A. Martin Luther King Jr. selected leader

B. SCLC became a major force

C. Based action on nonviolence and civil disobedience

Martin Luther King, Charles Steele , and Fred Shuttlesworth established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. According to King, it was essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who opposed them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.

Famous Alabamian - Fred Shuttlesworth

Born in Alabama 1922

Shuttlesworth's civil rights activities made him a target of white racists and on the evening of 25th December, 1956, he survived a bomb blast that destroyed his house.

The following year a white mob beat him with whips and chains during an attempt to integrate an all-white public school.

His wife was stabbed in the buttocks and later told her doctor that her only regret was that modesty prevented her from showing her wounds at the next civil rights mass meeting.

During this period Martin Luther King described Shuttlesworth as "the most courageous civil rights fighter in the South".

Mr. Shuttlesworth passed away in Birmingham on October 6, 2011 at the age of 89.

VI. Desegregation-Little Rock, Arkansas – 1957 The schools in Little Rock took three years to come up with a “plan” to desegregate.

Little Rock Central High was to be desegregated first.

17 black students were chosen (mostly on good grades), but by the beginning of school only 9 were left who were willing to go after all of the threats they had received from both whites and blacks.

On Sep. 2nd the governor of Arkansas called out the National Guard to stop the blacks from entering the school.

On Sep. 4th the Nine planned to enter school together.

Elizabeth Eckford did not get the message to meet the others and she tried to enter the school alone and was threatened by the crowd.

She was rescued by two white people.

All Nine were denied entrance to the school by the National Guard under orders from the governor.

On Sep. 20th a Federal judge told the governor the students must be allowed to enter school.

On Sep 23rd all of the Little Rock 9 entered school, they had to be taken out by a rear entrance by 11:30 due to the anger of the mob outside the school.

President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to ensure that the Little Rock 9 could attend school.

The 101st patrolled outside the school and escorted the black students into the school. In addition, the

black students were assigned a personal guard from the 101st who followed them around the

school. Still, they were subjects of unspeakable hatred.

Despite the way they were treated, 8 of the 9 finished

the year at Central High School.

Primary Source Reading

VI. Desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas

A. Nine Black Students enrolled at Central High.

B. The next year the high school was closed.

VII. Sit-ins

On February 1, 1960, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David Richmond, and Ezell Blair, Jr., walked into an F.W. Woolworth Company store in Greensboro, North Carolina, purchased some school supplies, then went to the lunch counter and asked to be served. They knew they probably would not be.

The demonstrations in Greensboro, North Carolina, began on Feb. 1, 1960.

On Feb. 3, 63 blacks occupy the 65 seats in Woolworth’s.

On Feb. 4, three white women from a nearby women’s college join the demonstration.

In the next months, hundreds of people, black and white join the demonstrations at Woolworth’s and S.H. Kress across the street

February 10, 1960:Students participate in sit-ins

across the state.

Third week of February, 1960:

Demonstrations move to other states throughout the South. Support of picketing has begun in Northern cities

against Woolworth's and other chain stores.

July 25, 1960:

The first black ate a meal, sitting down, at Woolworth's

in Greensboro.

After one week, 300 blacks have been customers.

Students Matthew Walker, left, Peggy

Alexander, Diane Nash and Stanley Hemphill eat lunch at the previously

segregated counter of the Post House Restaurant in

the Greyhound bus terminal. This marked the first time since the start of the sit-ins that blacks

have been served at previously all-white

counters.Staff photo by Gerald Holly

May 16, 1960

Today there is a statue at North Carolina A&T University to honor the first four young men to conduct the sit-in at Woolworths.

VIII. Freedom Rides - 1961

On May 4, 1961 the Congress on Racial Equality organized Freedom Riders left Washington D.C., on a "Journey of Reconciliation". Their aim was to test the new federal law against segregation by traveling by bus to New Orleans. Unfortunately, the journey never reached it's intended conclusion.

Background - In 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) planned a "Journey of Reconciliation," designed to test the Supreme Court's 1946 decision in the Irene Morgan case, which declared segregated seating of interstate passengers unconstitutional. An interracial group of passengers met with heavy resistance in the upper South. Some members of the group served on a chain gang for six months after their arrest in North Carolina. The Journey of Reconciliation quickly broke down.

The strategy in 1961 was the same as 1947: an interracial group would board buses destined for the South. The whites would sit in the back and

the blacks in the front. At rest stops, the whites would go into blacks-only areas and vice versa.

Near Anniston, Alabama the Freedom Rider’s Bus was set afire and the tires slashed.

In Alabama and Mississippi the riders were attacked, beaten, and arrested. Bt the end of the summer there were over 300 arrests in several southern states. The freedom riders were fined and imprisoned.

VIII. Freedom Rides – 1961

A.Forced President Kennedy to address

the problem of segregation

B. September 1961 – segregation in interstate travel was outlawed

Famous Alabamians

Hank Aaron

Born February 5, 1934 in Mobile, Ala.Height, 6-0. Weight, 190. Threw and batted right-handed. Holds major league record for most career home runs (755), home runs with one club (Braves, 733), RBIs (2,297), total bases (6,856), most games played (3,298) and many others.

Hit 20 or more home runs for 20 consecutive seasons (1955-1974). Named to 24 All Star games. Won three Gold Glove awards, 1958, 1959, 1960. Named The Sporting News' National League Player of the Year, 1956, 1963. Named to Baseball Hall of Fame, 1982.

IX. Bombing of the 16th Street Church in

Birmingham, Alabama - 1963

Between 1947 and 1965, over fifty bombings occurred in Birmingham, resulting in the city becoming known as "Bombingham." Perhaps the most famous of these blasts was the one that took the lives of four innocent black youth as they prepared their Sunday School lessons on a Sunday Morning at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Firemen inside the bombed church - 1963

On a quiet Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, four young black girls prepared their Sunday School lessons in the basement of the church. In the same basement sat a bomb placed by segregationists, designed to

kill and maim in protest of the forced integration of Birmingham's public schools. Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Addie

Mae Collins were killed in the explosion. Angry blacks rioted and the civil authorities responded with great violence. During the rest of the day,

other black youths were murdered by police and civilians alike, compounding the desperation.

Addie Mae Collins was 14

Years old

Carole Robertson was 14 Years old

Moderate whites condemned the bombing and the FBI took over the investigation from local authorities that had shown no real concern for

solving the crime, though they held strong evidence pointing to the bombers. Because of this local interference, the FBI took over the

investigation. With foot dragging of their own, they failed to convict anyone for the crime by 1968. It was not until 1977 that the state

convicted but one of the bombers.

Cynthia Wesley was 14 Years

old.

Denise McNair was 11 Years old.

The bombing outraged the nation and gave four young faces to the movement. The blast, combined with other

shameful Alabama events, such as the dogs and fire hoses of

1963, and the beatings of demonstrators as they began

the Selma to Montgomery march in 1964, contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights

of 1965, and the death of segregation in the South.

Following the tragic event, white strangers visited the grieving families to express

their sorrow. At the funeral for three of the girls (one family preferred a separate, private funeral), Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke about life being "as hard as crucible steel." More

than 8,000 mourners, including 800 clergymen of both races, attended the

service.

Fourteen years later Robert Chambliss, a KKK member was convicted of the murder of Denise McNair. He died in prison in 1985.

Thomas Blanton, Jr. was convicted in 2001.

Bobby Frank Cherry was convicted in 2002, largely on the testimony of his ex-wife.

Herman Frank Cash died in 1994 – he had never been charged.

X. March on Washington – 1963

A.The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.

No one knew for certain how many people would

come..word of the march circulated

through the south by word of mouth and in

churches.

X. The March on Washington - 1963

B. Attended by some 250,000 people, it was the largest demonstration ever seen in the nation's capital.

It is estimated that 60,000 of the

marchers were white.

X. The March on Washington

C. March was organized by five groups including the

NAACP, the SCLC and others.

Some 40 railroad trains and 2,500

buses were chartered to

transport demonstrators to

and from Washington.

Special planes were routed to fly delegations from the West Coast


D. It was opposed by the KKK, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam.

Malcolm X referred to the March as the “Farce on

Washington” (A “farce” is something that is a mockery –

a play that makes fun of something)


E. Two Purposes of the March (there were others)

1. passage of a Civil Rights Act

2. end of segregation in public schools

Although there were concerns that violence

might happen, the March had no problems.

The marchers congregated at the

Washington Monument and walked

to the Lincoln Memorial

The 200,000 to 250,000 people in Washington that day made their mark on the world.

It was at this March on Washington that Martin Luther

King, Jr. made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Born (1927) and raised in Marion, Alabama.

Family were land-owning farmers.

Her mother rented a bus so Coretta and other black young people could attend high school.

Famous Alabamians

Coretta Scott King

Attended college in Ohio, majored in music and education.

Married Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1953.

Mrs. King, like her husband, was a

leader in the Civil Rights Movement.

Following her husband’s death in 1968, Mrs. King

continued the fight for racial equality, both here and in

other countries.

She raised money to establish the MLK Center for Non-violent

Social Change, in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1969 the American Library Association (ALA) created the annual

Coretta Scott King award to honor children's book authors and illustrators

of African descent.

XI. The Selma-Montgomery March – 1965

A.Purpose – Demand voting rights

B.First attempt stopped by Alabama troopers and police

On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some

600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the

Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen

attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back

into Selma.

Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. Then civil rights leaders sought court protection

for a third, full-scale march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery.

On Sunday, March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12

miles a day and sleeping in fields.

C. A Federal judge declared the march was legal.

By the time they reached the capitol of Montgomery on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong.

Less than five months after the last of the

three marches, President Lyndon

Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of

1965--the best possible redress of grievances.

D. 1965 -Civil Rights Acts passed by

Congress and signed by

President Lyndon Johnson.

Famous Alabamians – Willie MaysWillie Howard Mays Jr. was best known for his high, boyish voice; his

huge wide-palmed hands, branching out at the wrists like mini baseball gloves; the oversize cap that flew off his head as he

rounded the bases or roamed the outfield; and his trademark basket catch -- maybe, most of all, The Catch, the one that robbed the

Cleveland Indians' Vic Wertz of extra bases in the first game of the 1954 World Series.

Willie Mays, Jr. was born in Westfield, Alabama in 1931.

He played for the Black Barons (Negro League) when he was 16.

Willie’s dad would not let him play when the game interfered with school.

The day he graduated from high school he was signed by the New York Giants.

To a generation of fans, Mays was the greatest ballplayer they had ever seen. He combined power and speed in ways unseen on the diamond before his time.

When he retired he ranked third in career home runs and he was the first man to hit 50 home runs and steal 20 bases in a single season.

Famous Alabamians – Condoleezza Rice

Former U.S. Secretary of StateBorn November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama, she earned her bachelor's degree in political science, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981.

Secretary Rice’s father was a school guidance counselor and her mother a teacher. She was in Birmingham during the 16th St. bombing.

"I remember being at a church which was a few blocks away from the 16th St. Baptist Church, and just being completely shocked by the sound. It was almost like a train coming -- I don't remember being frightened at that moment although it was a terrifying time. I just felt sad." (2002 interview)

Rice says it didn't take a movement or the government to

open doors for her. "Black Americans of my grandparents' ilk had liberated themselves," she told the Post. The family

strategy was to ignore racism, she said: Racism in Birmingham was so routine, "you ceased to notice its existence." She was conditioned to succeed: "My

family is third-generation college-educated -- I should've

gotten to where I am."

She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded honorary doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, the University of Notre Dame in 1995, the National Defense University in 2002, the Mississippi College School of Law in 2003, the University of Louisville and Michigan State University in 2004. She resides in Washington, D.C.

While national Security Advisor to President Bush, Secretary Rice landed on board ship along with President Bush, though not in the same jet.

SourcesWe Shall Overcome, Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/mainmap1.htm

The Montgomery Bus Boycott http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/montbus.html

Sit-Ins http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/sit-ins.html

Freedom Rides http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/freeride.html

Birmingham http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/birming.html

The Little Rock Nine Enter High School http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/school-integration/lilrock/9enter.html

Civil Rights Timeline http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html

Brown vs. Board of Education http://www.gibbsmagazine.com/BrownvsBoard.htm

National Baseball Hall of Fame – Hank Aaron http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/hofer_bios/aaron_hank.htm

CThe Murder of Emmett Till http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/

Benjamin Oliver Davis, Sr. http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/topics/afam/davis.htm

African-American Pioneers – Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr. http://afgen.com/bendavis_jr.html

Introduction to the Court Opinion on Plessy vs. Ferguson http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/democrac/33.htm

The Little Rock Nine http://www.centralhigh57.org/The_Little_Rock_Nine.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/J0112391/little_rock_nine.htm

The Montgomery Bus Boycott http://afroamhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa082001a.htm

Montgomery Bus Boycott http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/about_king/encyclopedia/bus_boycott.html

African American Registry – Fred Shuttlesworth http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2289/Fred_Shuttlesworth_minister_and_leader

African American Odyssey – Sit-ins, Freedom Rides and Demonstrations http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart9b.html

The King Center, Coretta Scott King, Human Rights Activist and Leader, http://www.thekingcenter.org/csk/bio.html

The Civil Rights Movement, The March on Washington, 1963 http://www.abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp

Organizing the March http://www.angelfire.com/pa/marchonwashington/march.html

The March on Washington http://www.angelfire.com/pa/marchonwashington/march.html

We Shall Overcome – The Selma to Montgomery March http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/al4.htm

Brilliant Careers – Willie Mays http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/07/13/mays/

Academy of Achievement - Willie Mays http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may0bio-1

The White House – Condoleezza Rice http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ricebio.html

The Condi Rice Version of History http://www.alternet.org/story/18363

civil rights movement 1954- 1965 i. background a. 1896 – u. s. supreme court declares racial...

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