The Civil Rights Movement

Introduction to the Civil Rights Movement

• Themes • Phases • Regional Focus

Mississippi Delta and Alabama Black Belt

Background

• 1896: Plessy v Ferguson “separate but = ok”; Jim Crow

• 1900s-1930s: Washington, DuBois, Garvey, Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism, NAACP

• 1930s: Charles Hamilton Houston; legal challenge of system

• 1940s-1950s: WWII and The Cold War – Desegregation of military

1954

• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) under leadership of Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley wins Brown v Board of Education Topeka, Kansas

• “separate but equal… is inherently unequal”

• Kenneth Clark-The Doll Test – 2007: Kiri Davis New

Doll Test

1955

• Brown v Board of Education Topeka, Kansas II – Desegregate with “all deliberate speed”

• Positive Effects

• Negative Effects

Emmett Till 1955

• Money, Mississippi/Tallahatchie River (Miss. Delta) • Roy Bryant and J W Milan/Look Magazine • May 10, 2004 case reopened • 2005: Kevin Beauchamp documentary • 2006: Body exhumed • 2007: Investigation closed • Perceptions

Montgomery Bus BoycottDecember 5, 1955-December 21, 1956

1956• Browder v. Gayle: Supreme Court declares bus segregation unconstitutional

• Segregation on interstate buses, waiting rooms, and railroad coaches banned

• Autherine Lucy integrates the University of Alabama

• “Southern Manifesto” signed by Southern Congress members calling for the rejection of and resistance to Brown v Board of Education decision

• King’s house bombed in Montgomery, Alabama

1957: Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) established by

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Ralph Abernathy and Rev. Fred

Shuttlesworth

1957 The Little Rock Nine integrate Central High School

Little Rock, Arkansas

Little Rock Nine 1957

•Gov. Orval Faubus calls in National Guard to block integration

•Pres. Eisenhower calls in federal troops to protect students

•Daisy Bates advises students • Pres. Eisenhower’s civil rights

policy=gradualism •Civil Rights Act of 1957: federal crime to

prevent voting; established Civil Rights Commission to investigate violation of law

1958• King stabbed by a deranged Black woman while signing

copies of Stride Toward Freedom in Harlem, New York

• Ernest Green becomes first Black student to graduate from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas

1959 • King goes to India to study non-violence/

passive resistance • Elijah Muhammad (NOI) calls for an all-Black

state • NOI movement revealed to the mainstream in

a Mike Wallace documentary called “The Hate that Hate Produced”

1960

• Sit-In Movement begins to desegregate public facilities

• James Lawson coordinates non-violence workshops

• Woolworth’s sit-in (Greensboro, North Carolina) by Franklin McCain, Jibreel Khazan (Ezell Blair), Joseph McNeil and David Richmond o 1990: re-enactment of sit-in; lunch

counter moved to Smithsonian • Nashville, Tennesee sit-ins organized by Diane

Nash and and John Lewis

1960: SNCC or Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed Ella Baker is advisor

1960: Ruby Bridges desegregates William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, LA

• Jail-in Movement begins; students accept jail rather than pay unjust fines • Students begin organizing for voting rights • John F. Kennedy elected President • Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) established under leadership of James Farmer

o Interracial group o Begins Freedom Rides to test the effectiveness of court orders barring segregation

on interstate buses and terminals, from Washington, D.C. to Kentucky o Buses bombed; Freedom Riders beaten o SNCC takes up freedom rides; beaten and arrested

▪ Harassment sites: Chapel Hill, N.C./Rock Hill S.C./Anniston, AL/Jackson, MS

o Robert Kennedy sends federal marshals to protect riders as they head further South ▪ Freedom rides re-enacted May 11-14, 2001; 2011

1961

1961 • Albany Movement in Georgia

o Unsuccessful protest to desegregate public facilities o Lesson=community has to be mobilized and the target of the

protest has to be pinpointed in order for protest to work • Whitney Young Jr. becomes executive director of the National Urban

League; becomes part of the “Big Four”=King (SCLC), Wilkins (NAACP) Farmer (CORE), Young (NUL)

1962• James Meredith first to integrate University of

Mississippi; Gov. Ross Barnett tries to block entrance

• JFK bans racial discrimination in federally financed housing

1963• Medgar Evers assassinated while working

for voter registration in Mississippi o 1994: Byron de la Beckwith found

guilty of murdering Evers • JFK proposes a civil rights bill • Gov. George Wallace blocks entrance of

University of Alabama as Vivian Malone and James Hood try to enter

o Malone and Hood enter university later with National Guard

o White rioters wound 160 federal marshals and kill 2 bystanders

• SCLC/SNCC goes to Birmingham, Alabama (Bombingham) to desegregate downtown public facilities

o Challenged by Gov. George C. Wallace and Theophilus “Bull” Connor

o King jailed and criticized by White/Black ministers in newspaper

o “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was King’s response to criticism

o Decision to use children in protest o Use of police dogs and fire hoses

against protesters o Use of media to show how

protesters were treated o Rioting in Birmingham spread to

other cities o King’s motel room bombed (Gaston

Motel-A.G. Gaston)

1963 March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom

• Organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin o King gives “I Have A Dream” speech

• Bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham o 4 Little Girls killed (Denise McNair, Carole Robinson, Addie Mae

Collins, Cynthia Wesley) • SNCC decides to focus on the fight for voting rights • Men who set bombs at church indicted/convicted

□ 1977: Robert “Dynamite” Chambliss □ 2000: Bobby Frank Cherry (? of mental competency) □ 2001: Thomas Blanton

• JFK assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald; Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) is president

1964• King wins Nobel Peace Prize • 24th Amendment outlaws poll tax requirement for voting • NAACP, CORE, SNCC, SCLC forms the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) • COFO Leads voter registration drive in South to challenge barriers to voting; drive called

Mississippi Freedom Summer Project o Freedom Summer organized by Bob Moses to focus on voter registration o Black and White volunteers sent into Mississippi o Summer of violence o Bodies of 3 volunteers (Michael Schwerner, James Earl Chaney, Andy Goodman) found

in an earthen dam in Mississippi swamp in Neshoba County ▪ Other bodies of people, who had been lynched or mysteriously disappeared,

found while searching for 3 volunteers ▪ 1997: Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files released detailing surveillance

of civil rights workers ▪ 2005: Edgar Ray Killem found guilty of manslaughter

o Importance of White student participation in the movement; national exposure o Freedom Schools

1964• Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed

o Gave power to ban discrimination in public places o Technical and financial aid to help desegregate schools o Established EEOC and ended federal funding of programs that discriminated o Little power to enforce voting rights

• As culmination of Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) goes to Democratic Party National Convention to represent black people’s interests o Fannie Lou Hamer is MFDP spokesperson on televised speech o Interrupted by LBJ who is afraid of angering Whites and Southerners o MFDP not seated as part of Democratic Party but offered two seats at-large

• LBJ announces his War on Poverty • U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War • Congress passes Economic Opportunity Act

o Allows Blacks to benefit from Headstart, Upward Bound, and college work study financial aid

1965• SNCC in Selma, Alabama for voting drive

o Protesters attacked on Edmund Pettis Bridge for not following an injunction against march; shown on TV; day called “Bloody Sunday”

o Jimmie Jackson killed while protecting mother from police o LBJ announces support for voting rights bill on TV(cuts in on movie “The Judgement of Nuremberg) o SNCC/SCLC given permit to continue march with federal troop protection

• Blacks in Watts riot as a result of police brutality charges o Watts destroyed after 6 days of rioting and $45 million worth of damage o Watts never rebuilt

• SNCC in Lowndes County, Alabama for voter registration drive o Use of Black Panther as political symbol recognizable to Black people

• Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) elected chairman of SNCC over John Lewis: SNCC moves toward militancy

• Estimated that Blacks account for 25% of all U.S. casualties in Vietnam but only make up 11% of U.S. total population

• Voting Rights Act of 1965 gives federal government control over voter registration process

Malcolm X~El Hajj Malik Shabazz1956 • Malcolm X becomes minister for the Nation of Islam

(NOI) 1963 • Malcolm X named spokesperson for NOI; criticized

White “Devils” and ‘Uncle Tom” Negro civil rights leaders

• Malcolm X silenced for making comment “chickens coming home to roost” about the death of JFK

• Remained out of NOI and created own program based on the philosophy of Black Nationalism

1964 • Leaders of SNCC, Hamer meet in New York to

rethink tactics; also meet Malcolm X • Malcolm X makes pilgrimage to Mecca • Becomes Orthodox Muslim and changes ideology

about Whites • Wants United States to answer to United Nations for

treatments of “Negroes in America” • Speaks at Oxford, England and articulates that

Negroes should use “any means necessary” to bring about justice where the government could give it\

• Inspires SNCC 1965 • Malcolm X invited to speak to marchers in Selma

and gives “Ballot or the Bullet” speech in support of King

• Malcom X assassinated

1966• Vernon Dahmer assassinated in Hattiesburg,

Mississippi because of voter registration work o 1998: On Aug. 21, 1998, a jury convicted

Bowers of the killing of Dahmer; Bowers sentenced to life in prison

• James Meredith’s “March Against Fear” o From Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson

Mississippi o To encourage Blacks to vote o On 2nd day of march Meredith is shot o SNCC/SCLC/CORE go to finish march o King wants to use “Freedom Now” slogan,

Carmichael calls for “Black Power”; conflict between King and Carmichael

o Carmichael urges SNCC to stop recruiting Whites into its ranks arguing that Blacks did not want to be assimilated or merged into White society

o Last great march of the Civil Rights Movement in the South

• Movement switches to North • SCLC goes to Chicago to deal with Mayor Daley;

unsuccessful

1966

• People frustrated by poverty and police brutality; embraced racial pride outlined by Carmichael

• Black Power becomes a call for Black people to unite, recognize their heritage, build a sense of community, define their own goals, lead and support own organizations and be more aggressive for civil rights

• “Black is Beautiful” becomes popular and fosters an appreciation of dark skin tones, African features, hair texture, etc.

• SNCC is first civil rights organization to denounce Vietnam War

1966 The Black Panther Party For Self Defense

• Huey Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Oakland, California

o Founded in response to police brutality o BPP is a militant political party that demanded the rights of Black people to

control their lives and communities o 10 point platform o Community programs set up (schools, breakfast program, cooperatives, free

medical care, clothing, legal advice) o Eldridge Cleaver (“Soul On Ice”) becomes BPP chief spokesperson o BPP and other civil rights leaders and organizations targeted by J. Edgar Hoover

and FBI COINTELPRO Program (Counter Intelligence Program) o COINTELPRO: FBI/Police harassment and infiltration of BPP o J. Edgar Hoover declares BPP the #1 internal threat to national security

1967 • H “Rap” Brown becomes SNCC chairman • King comes out against Vietnam War suggesting the avoidance of military

service o Challenges LBJ’s War on Poverty o Starts organizing a Poor People’s March on Washington, D.C.

• Thurgood Marshall becomes first Black U.S. Supreme Court Justice • Worst summer of racial disturbances in U.S. history occurs in major urban areas

throughout the country o Hough riots in Cleveland, Ohio in response to police brutality

• Carl Stokes elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio o 1st Black mayor in a major city

• Harry Edwards, professor of Sociology at San Jose State, forms the Olympic Committee for Human Rights (Olympic Project for Human Rights) to address the conditions of Black athletes

o Issues statement declaring that Black athletes will boycott 1968 Olympic Games

o Boycott does not have widespread support • Black Power Conference held in Newark, New Jersey

o Delegates call for the “partitioning of the U.S. into 2 separate independent nations-one for Blacks, one for Whites

• Detroit riots

1968 Tommie Smith and John Carlos will raise black-gloved fists at Olympic games in protest of

unjust treatment of athletes and racial climate of the U.S. Two banned from games and stripped of medals (Fists of Freedom)

1968 • King addresses rally of striking sanitation workers and supporters in Memphis, Tennessee • April 4, 1968: King assassinated by James Earl Ray at Lorraine Motel in Memphis

o Funeral held in Atlanta, Georgia o Rioting across the nation “Long, Hot Summer”

1968

• Abernathy leads Poor People’s March to Washington, D.C. o Resurrection City built to house poor in D.C.

1968 • Orangeburg Massacre (South Carolina)

o Feb 6: Students from South Carolina State University and Claflin College protested the All Star bowling alley because it remained segregated 4 years after the CRA of 1964

o 15 arrested on 2nd night of protest o Feb 8: students organize a protest on the campus of South

Carolina State University; bonfire started; law enforcement try to put it out; officer injured by a piece of banister; highway patrolman fires gun in the air to calm crowd; other law enforcement shoot into crowd; 3 killed and 27 injured; 9 patrolmen charged and acquitted

o 2003: movement to establish a commission to recommend compensation to victims and families of victims

• Students take over Howard University demanding resignation of university officials and establishment of Black Studies Program

o 1st of many college protests concerning Black Studies programs across the nation

o Influenced by Orangeburg • Department of Pan-African Studies founded at Kent State University

o Members of Black United Students walk off campus o Dr. Edward Crosby become chairman o Establishment of the Progressive Education Community School

(PEC)

1968 • LBJ convenes National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorder after rioting

o Issues Kerner Commission Report o America is two societies, Black/White, and White racism is one of the fundamental causes

of rioting in the U.S. ▪ Rioting causes:

❑ lack of opportunity/employment ❑ police brutality/harassment ❑ attempts to strike back at an unjust system, ❑ unification in rebellion ❑ taking control of or lashing out because of lack of control of community ❑ frustration and anger ❑ King said that is was dangerous to build a society full of people who have

no stake in it, who have nothing to lose and who subconsciously want to destroy it

1968 • Richard Nixon campaigns and wins the

Presidency based on a platform of law and order

• MFDP is recognized/seated by the Democratic Party as representatives for Mississippi

• Civil Rights Act of 1968: declares illegality of housing or dwelling discrimination

• Increased protest over Vietnam oViolence at Democratic Party National

Convention over Vietnam

1969 Abernathy leads march of 700 striking hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina Alex Rackley, BPP member, burned to death for alleged disloyalty to the organization

Bobby Seale arrested for murder BPP members Mark Clark and Fred Hampton killed by police in Chicago (Cook County)

Edward Hanrahan, Cook County State Attorney, and 13 others indicted/acquitted Hampton family receives $1.8 million dollar settlement

1970s • May 14-15: Jackson State protest; students shot protesting Vietnam and Kent State shootings • Movement comes full circle by addressing equal education for and discrimination against Blacks • North addresses desegregation of public schools by busing

o Boston, Massachusetts • 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana

o More Blacks in politics and elected positions

1970s Affirmative Action 1977 Bakke Case

Other movements inspired by the Civil Rights Movement • Migrant Workers/United Farm Workers

o Organized Mexican Americans to address better working conditions and wages

o Led by Cesar Chavez o 1965 strike of California grape pickers and nationwide

boycott of grapes picked by non-union workers o By 1970 workers had won most of their demands

• Chicano Movement/Brown Power o Organized by young Mexican American students o Called for more radical action and emphasized pride

in Mexican culture and heritage o Pride reflected in numerous Mexican American

political parties being established o La Raza United (the united race) founded in Texas

1970 • Red Power Movement/Native Americans

o Demanded that U.S. government pay tribes for land taken illegally

o American Indian Movement organized in 1968 o 1969 Red Power advocates occupy deserted Alcatraz

Island near San Francisco ▪ Offered to buy land with beads and cloth-

similar to what Dutch paid for Manhattan Island

▪ Occupation lasted for months until federal authorities removed them by force

• Women’s Rights Movement

Black Arts and Black Consciousness Movement

The Civil Rights Movement

The Black Arts Movement and Black Consciousness

• 1967-1975 intense political & cultural discussions

• Black Power = debate – Future of AA politics in

post-CRM era – on future of AA art &

artists

• Is black art political or aesthetic?

• Relationship between art & artist and political movement in AA community = Black Arts Movement

Artists who shaped revolutionary movement

• Introduced new forms of black writing • Delivered outspoken attacks on “white aesthetic” • Stressed black beauty and pride • Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni

Artists who shaped revolutionary movement

• Don L Lee (Haki Madhubuti)

• LeRoi Jones (Amari Baraka) – Black Arts Repertory

Theater (NY) – Linked political & cultural

aspects of black power – Moved from association

with white avant-garde (integrationist) to black cultural nationalist

Black Arts Movement

• Guided by “determination of black artists to produce black art for black people and accomplish black liberation” (558)

• Larry Neal – Wrote Black Fire to show how black writers and

thinkers had rejected integration in favor of new black consciousness and nationalist political engagement

– quote (558) – What other AA leaders have expressed these ideas?

Black Arts Movement

• Criticism – Celebration of black maleness, racial

exclusivity and homophobia • Analysis

– Never a unified movement w/all black artists speaking in one voice

– Creative dissent and competing visions of freedom

Black Arts Movement

• Maya Angelou – I Know Why The

Caged Bird Sings (1970)

– Other black women writers follow

– Black women’s literary renaissance

Black Arts Movement

• Prominent integrationist writers agreed with tenets of black arts movement and convert – Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry,

Gwendolyn Brooks and James Baldwin link the cultural renaissances of 1930s, 40s & 50s to black arts movement

Black Arts Movement

• Gwendolyn Brooks – Commitment of artist to

community – Relationship between

artist and audience – Supported community-

based arts programs

Black Arts Movement

• James Baldwin – Integrationist who “was

as alienated and angry as some of the artists identified with black arts” (559)

– Unflinching commentator on white racism

Black Arts MovementPoetry and Theater

• Greatest impact of movement • Centers: Harlem, Chicago/Detroit, San

Fransisco • Negro Digest/Black World promoted works

– Editor Hoyt Fuller, Publisher John H Johnson – 1970 “Negro” replaced to designate people of

African descent

Black Arts MovementPoetry and Theater

• Detroit – Naomi Long Madgett~Lotus Press – Dudley Randall~Broadside Press – Republished generations of black poets;

Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, Sterling Brown

• Chicago – Don L Lee (Haki Madhabuti)~Third World

Press

Black Arts MovementPoetry and Theater

• Chicago-Detroit publishing promoted poets – Nikki Giovanni, Etheridge Knight, Sonia

Sanchez – “most accomplished & experimental work of black arts movement…

resonated with the sounds of the AA vernacular, combining the rhythmic cadences of sermons with popular music and black “street speech” into a spirited new form of poetry that was free, conversational and militantly cool” (559)

Black Arts MovementPoetry and Theater

• Theater – Another prominent genre of black arts movement – Drama Review

• Edited by Playwright Ed Bullin • Featured essays and plays by most of the major activists in

black arts • Became the textbook of black arts

– Black communities form own theater groups across country (African Community Theater; Dr Fran Dorsey)

– The Black Scholar: Robert Chrisman and Nathan Hare

Black Arts Movement Music

• BAM cultivated an appreciation for modern jazz musicians

• Amiri Baraka – “jazz and other black music was the language that black people

developed to give uncensored accounts of their experiences” (561) • Other views of jazz

– “music could promote cultural identity and encourage pride critical for political struggle” (561)

– “jazz [is a] self-consciously engaged, economically independent, politically useful art form”

Black Arts Movement Music

Miles Davis • Kind of Blue (1959)

– 1 of most progressive and popular jazz albums ever

• Other jazz musicians: – Charlie Parker, Archie

Shepp, Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, Eric Dophy, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane

Black Arts Movement Music

• Jazz appeals to intellectuals but most AA preferred the rhythm & blues, gospel and soul

• Before BAM, AA musicians gave performances to raise funds and assert racial pride

Black Arts Movement Music

• James Brown “Godfather of Soul”

• “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” – Anthem for the era – Linked commercial

marketing to social commentary

– Confronted racism with racial pride and righteous indignation

– Other contributions to black community

Black Arts Movement Music

• Berry Gordy – Founder of Motown – Artistic and financial

contributions – Temptations, Stevie

Wonder and Marvin Gaye