Transcript Civil Rights - Leleua Loupe

African American Civil Rights
Movement
Events and reform movements aimed at
abolishing private and public acts of racial
discrimination
Study Guide Identifications
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Litigation and Lobbying efforts
Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, KS
Jim Crow and Jane Crow
Civil Disobedience and Direct Action
Emmet Till
Montgomery Bus Boycott, Greensboro Sit
in, Children’s Crusade
• Black Panthers, Malcolm X
Study Guide Questions
• What were two phases of the African
American Civil Rights Movement?
• What strategies were used in the struggle
for civil rights?
• What were examples of Civil Rights
Legislation and tactics used to ensure new
laws were enforced?
• Why is the Civil Rights Movement referred
to by some historians as the Second
Reconstruction?
Prior to 1955
• The Civil Rights Movement prior to 1955
confronted discrimination against African
Americans with a variety of strategies.
– These included litigation and lobbying efforts by
traditional organizations such as the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP).
• The crowning achievement of these efforts was the legal
victory in Brown v. Board of Education (1954),
– made segregation legally impermissible, but provided few
practical remedies.
Jim Crow
• Required or permitted acts of discrimination against
African Americans fell mainly into four categories:
– (1) racial segregation – upheld by the United States Supreme
Court decision in Plessey v. Ferguson in 1896 - which was
legally mandated by southern states and by many local
governments outside the south
– (2) voter suppression or disfranchisement in the southern
states;
– (3) denial of economic opportunity or resources nationwide
– (4) private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at
African Americans, which were often encouraged and seldom
hindered by government authorities.
– The combination in the southern states of overtly racial laws,
public and private acts of discrimination, marginal economic
opportunity, and racial violence became known as "Jim Crow".
Post Civil War
• White perpetrated riots ultimately terrorized and
killed 1,000’s of African Americans
– Shady Grove, Louisiana: 200 blacks dead
– Cross Plains Alabama: White teacher & 6 black
students lynched
– Texas: 1865 – 1868 2,225 offenses and 500 murders
against blacks
– 1882 – 1937 3,700 blacks lynched in America
– Memphis Riots May 1 – 3, 1866
• 46 blacks killed, 70 wounded
• 5 women raped
• 4 churches, 12 schools, 91 homes destroyed in black
community
1900’s Violence continued
• Riots continued 1917-1921
• Vicksburg, MS February 13, 1904
– Guilty for being Luther Hubert’s wife (He was accused of killing a
white man)
• She was tied to a tree, chopped her fingers off, poked out an
eyeball with a stick, inserted a large corkscrew into their bodies and
“tore out big pieces of raw, quivering flesh”
• St. Louis IL, 1917
– 2 days left 150 blacks dead
• Georgia 1918 unknown black man killed a white farmer
– 11 blacks murdered
• Woman who protested the innocence of her husband was tied to a
tree from her ankles, poured petrol on her clothing, burned her to
death. In the process her 8 mo. Old baby was born and kicked to
and fro by the mob.
Rationalization of terror
• Southern whites claimed that the reason for all
the carnage was simple:
– black men were animals whose sexual drive has been
unleashed by emancipation and the false idea of
racial equality.
– White women therefore needed to be protected by the
noble sons of the confederacy from the insatiable lust
of freedmen.
– One defender of lynching proclaimed in 1918, “As
the world is to be made safe for democracy, so
ought the south to be made free for white
women.”
Violence through WWII
• 1921, Tulsa, Ok. After 3 days of rioting,
200 blacks dead
• Riots continued while white authorities
disarmed African Americans and black
neighborhoods
• Allowed armed whites to continue
terrorizing
Phases of Civil Rights
2nd Reconstruction
• 1954 and 1968:
– Litigation & lobbying efforts
• Crowning achievement Brown Vs. the Board of
Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954) overturned
Plessey Vs. Ferguson (1896)
• 1966 to 1975, Black Power Movement
– enlarged and gradually eclipsed the aims of
the Civil Rights Movement to include racial
dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency,
and freedom from white authority.
Civil Riots Pre-1955
• Strategies to fight discrimination
– Litigation & lobbying efforts
• Brown Vs. Board of Education of Topeka, 1954
– Overturned separate but equal established by Plessey Vs.
Ferguson
• Failure of Change through legal means
– Direct Action + Non-violent Resistance = Civil
Disobedience
– Created crisis situation of which the government had
to respond
• Boycotts, sit-ins, Marches, Freedom Rides
1954-1968 Civil Rights
• Civil Disobedience
– Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956) in Alabama
– Greensboro sit-in (1960) in North Carolina;
– Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama.
• Notable achievements:
– Civil Rights Act of 1957
– Civil Rights Act of 1964
• banned discrimination in employment practices and public
accommodations
– Voting Rights Act of 1965
• restored voting rights
– Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965
• dramatically changed U.S. immigration policy
– Civil Rights Act of 1968
• banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.
Domestic Terrorism
• Murders of African Americans common & no
legal protection or recourse
– Emmett Till, 1955
• Beaten & murdered “for whistling at a white woman”
• Open casket, 50,000 viewed
• Murderer’s acquitted by an all white male jury, later
confessed & remained free
• Galvanized opinion in the north
Montgomery Bus Boycott
1955-56
• Rosa Parks December 1, 1955 led the
boycott
– Refused to give up her seat
• Arrested, tried, convicted for disorderly
conduct & violating a local ordinance
– 50 civil rights leaders organized
boycott
• 382 days
• Local ordinance establishing
segregation lifted
• Martin Luther King Jr. rose to national
attention
Desegregating Little Rock, 1957
• Supreme Court, Brown Vs. Board
of Education
– 9 students sued to attend an
integrated school
• Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus
called out National Guard to prevent the
students from attending
• President Eisenhower federalized the
National Guard and deployed 101st
Airborne division to protect the students
• Due to continuing harassment
only Ernest Greet graduated, the
school shut down rather than
integrate further
Greensboro Sit In
• Greensboro, North Carolina; Nashville,
Tennessee; Atlanta Georgia
– Sit Ins at lunch counters to protest those
establishments refusal to desegregate
• Technique used in the mid-west in the 1940s by the
Congress of Racial Equality
• Success led to student campaigns throughout
the south in every public place
– When Arrested made a “Jail no Bail” Pledge to call
attention to their cause and to put financial burden of
jail space and food on jailers
1957
Mississippi, 1962
• Robert Moses organized The Council of
Federated Organizations (SNCC, NAACP,
Committee On Racial Equality)
– to address the most dangerous of all southern
states
• Medgar Evers
– Door-to-Door voter education projects in rural
Mississippi & to recruit students
• murdered in drive way later that year
Freedom Riders
• Anniston, Alabama
– bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives.
• Birmingham, Al.
– FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Eugene
"Bull" Connor had encouraged the Ku Klux Klan to attack an
incoming group of freedom riders "until it looked like a bulldog
had got a hold of them," the riders were severely beaten.
• Montgomery, AL.
– a mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking John Lewis
unconscious with a crate
– smashed Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own
camera.
– A dozen men surrounded Jim Zwerg, a white student from Fisk
University, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out
his teeth.
Desegregating Univ. of Miss.
• Clyde Kennard, 1960
– Univ. of Southern Mississippi
• Racial agitator
• Convicted of crime he didn’t commit – 7 yr sentence, 3 yrs
served
• James Meredith, 1962
• Won lawsuit
• Governor Ross Barnett barred from entering
– "no school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your
Governor".
• U.S. Marshall’s escorted Meredith on Campus
• Whites rioted: 2 killed, 28 Marshals shot, 160 others injured
• Kennedy sent in army to quell uprising
– Meredith began classes next day
Children’s Crusade
• 1963, SCLC, create Crisis to agitate for
desegregation
• “Letter from Birmingham”
• “Children’s Crusade”
– High School students joined demonstrations
• 2nd day Bull Connor: Police dogs, fired hoses (separate
mortar from bricks) televised
• Kennedy forced to intervene between white
business community and SCLC
– May 10, agreement to desegregate public places
March for Jobs & Freedom
• August 28, 1963
• 2nd March Led by Randolph and Bayard Rustin civil
rights, labor and liberal organizations joined
• Goals
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Meaningful civil rights laws (Civil Rights Bill)
Massive Federal Works Programs
Full and Fair employment
Decent housing
The vote
Adequate integrated education
• King with an audience of 200,000 “I have A Dream”
John Lewis
• We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be
proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here—
for they have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving
starvation wages…or no wages at all. In good conscience, we cannot
support the administration's civil rights bill.
• This bill will not protect young children and old women from police
dogs and fire hoses when engaging in peaceful demonstrations. This
bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in
constant fear in a police state. This bill will not protect the hundreds
of people who have been arrested on trumped-up charges like those
in Americus, Georgia, where four young men are in jail, facing a death
penalty, for engaging in peaceful protest.
• I want to know, which side is the federal government on? The
revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the
revolution out of the streets and put it in the courts. Listen Mr.
Kennedy, the black masses are on the march for jobs and for
freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won't be a
'cooling-off period'.
Backlash
• Church Bombing, Birmingham, Alabama
– 4 girls killed
– Response to success of march on
Washington
– Young people changed the city, retaliated
against
Mississippi Freedom Summer
1964
• COFO brought more than a hundred college students, many
from outside the state,
• Register voters,
• Teach in "Freedom Schools"
• Organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
.
• Civil rights workers murdered by members of the Klan
– James Chaney,
– two white volunteers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner,
– They & many other bodies of missing African Americans
found in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi.
– Shot &savagely beaten
Backlash against King
• Edgar J. Hoover, director of FBI
– Racist
– Surveillance of King, political attack
• Nobel Peace Prize
– Civil rights message for the world
– Pushing boundaries of original movement
Selma & Voting Rights Act 1965
• Voter Registration in Selma, Alabama
– February King arrested with 250 others
– Violent resistance from police, Jimmie Lee
Jackson killed
• March Hosea Williams of the SCLC and
John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600
people who intended to walk the 54 miles
from Selma to the state capital in
Montgomery.
– six blocks into the march
– state troopers and local law enforcement,
– attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy
clubs, tear gas, rubber tubes wrapped in barbed
wire and bull whips
Voting Rights Act 1965
• National broadcast of police brutality and
continual murders of activists provoked
response
• Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act 1965
– suspended poll taxes, literacy tests and other voter
tests
– authorized federal supervision of voter registration in
states and individual voting districts where such tests
were being used.
– authorized the Attorney General of the United States
to send federal examiners to replace local registrars.
Voter Turnout
• ¼ million new black voters registered
• First 4 yrs
– Voter registration doubled
– 74-92% turnout in the south
• Changed political landscape of south
– Number of elective offices held in U.S. by
African Americans increased from 100 to
12,000 by 1989.
King’s Evolution
• Attempt to Broaden Civil Rights Movement
– 1965 called for peace negotiations and halt to
bombing of Vietnam
– Began moving towards socialism
– Need for economic justice in America
• Efforts to take movement North to Chicago
to address employment and Housing
discrimination unsuccessful in 1966
Cold War Context
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King
Malcolm X
Appeal to Third World
Hypocrisy of United States as “Leader of a
Free World”
• Factor in pushing government towards civil
rights legislation
Malcolm X
• Denounced Civil Rights
Movement
– King’s gradualist & non-violent
approach was irrelevant to social
& economic problems
• Endorsed self-defense & rights “By
any means necessary”
• Renewal of pride in African American
cultural practices
• Economic Reconstruction
• Murdered in 1965
Police
• Police relations brutal
and corrupt
– Ignored due process
– Used excessive force
– Disrespectful and
abusive language
• Viewed as Brutal
occupying army
– 1965 – Frye Brothers
prompted Watts Riots
Watts Riots 1965
• 10,000 people
rebellion
– Looted, burned white
owned businesses
– 40 million dollars in
damage
Watts Riots 1965
– National Guard restored
order leaving
• 31 black dead, 3 nonblack dead, 100’s injured,
4,000 arrested
– Produced little change
to address real issues
– Marked transition from
non-violent to violent
civil rights action
Race Riots
• Due to conditions riots broke out across
America: 1966-1967
• Atlanta, San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore,
Seattle, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Newark,
Chicago, New York City (specifically in Brooklyn,
Harlem and the Bronx) Detroit
• 1964 Kennedy Assassinated
• 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated
– Wave of new rioting,
– Johnson ordered major reforms in
employments and public assistance
Impact of Riots
• President Johnson had created the
National Advisory Commission on Civil
Disorders in 1967.
– The commission's final report called for major
reforms in employment and public assistance
sent to black communities everywhere
• Affirmative Action helped in the hiring process of
more black police officers in every major city
Black Power Movement
• Conservatives such as Reagan
– subversive agitators were
provoking violence
– only firm commitment to law
would ease racial tensions
• Social activists replied
– Racism
– Lack of educational &
employment opportunities
– Inadequate government
remedies produced despair
and outbursts of racial
violence
Black Power & KKK
• In 1966 SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael
also took Black Power to another level.
– He urged African American communities to
confront the white supremacist group known
as the Ku Klux Klan armed and ready for
battle because he felt it was the only way to
ever rid the communities of the terror caused
by the Klan.
– Listening to this, several Blacks confronted
the Ku Klux Klan armed and as a result the
Klan stopped terrorizing their communities.
Black Power Movement
• 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos,
while being awarded the gold and
bronze medals Summer Olympics
– human rights badges and each raised a
black-gloved Black Power salute during
their podium ceremony.
– Smith and Carlos were immediately ejected
from the games
– a permanent lifetime ban
• the Black Power movement had now
been given a stage on live, international
television.
Black Power
• Growing radical movements
• Cultural pride
• Community self-defense and
determination
• Solidarity and 3rd world peoples
• Socialist critiques of Capitalism
• Stokely Carmichael – “Black Power”
• Merrit College Students:
Newton and Seale
• Founded political party in
Oakland California – Black
Panthers
Black Panthers
– Demands:
• Full employment
• Decent housing
• End to police brutality
• Power to determine own
destiny of community
• Education – true history
• Release blacks from prison
– no fair or impartial trial
• Refusal to fight against
other people of color in the
world who are also being
victimized by American
white racist government
Social Progress
• Asserted 2nd amendment right to bear arms in
defense of community from racist police
oppression and brutality – called militant
• Overshadowed:
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After school free breakfast programs
Community clinics
Voter registration drives
Concerns for education
Prison reform
Murder of Panthers
• Response to activism
– Police intensified repression, began arresting
and harassing party members
• Minister of Defense, Newton (1967)
• Minister of Education, Eldridge Cleaver (1968)
• FBI and Police joined forces, murdered 28
members leading to party’s decline
Legacy
• Empowered community
• Ignited Student Movement for black and ethnic
studies program
• Began to reclaim and celebrate history and
culture
• Registered 30,000 voters
– Elected black city officials
• John George – Alameda’s 1st black superintendent (1966)
• Lionel Wilson – Oakland's 1st black mayor (1977)
“Red Power”
• Response to Termination Program of the
1950s, relocation, poverty and broken treaties
– Advocated:
• Cultural pride
• Intertribal unity
• Mutual aid
• Foundation of movement 1950-60s
• Intertribal Friendship House (Oakland)
• San Francisco Indian Center
• Bay area Council of American Indians
Militancy
• 1969 Alcatraz Island “Taking the Rock”
• Led by Richard Oaks and included Edward
Castillo (Cahuilla-Luiseno) presently a full
professor at UC (Northern California)
Legacy
• Re-established identity at Indian people
with a culture and as a political entity
• President Nixon
– Ended termination
– Restored millions of acres of land to several
tribes
– Increased federal spending on housing,
health, legal and economic development
Asian Movement
• Declaration of Asian American Political Alliance
Viewed society
• Historically racist
• Systematically employs social and economic imperialism
• Domestically and internationally exploits all non-whites to
benefit a wealthy minority
• Repealed Alien Land Law Act 1956
• Walter McCarren Act
– Dismantled anti-Asian policies
– called for detention and deportation of citizens
suspected of Acts of Espionage or sabotage
– Imposed tougher restrictions on illegal immigrations
Chicano Movement
• Adopted Militant strategies for social and
political change “against forces who have
denied freedom of expression and human
dignity”
– Role of Chicanos in America
• Cheap labor, impoverished, exploited and
marginalized
Demanded
• Rights to:
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Own culture
Language,
Heritage
Way of life
• Advocated true sources of freedom
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Cultural pride
Community self defense
3 rd world solidarity
Recovery of true history
Cesar Chavez
• 1950’s a Latino civil rights group.
– Chávez urged Mexican-Americans to register and vote
– traveled throughout California and made speeches in support of
Worker’s Rights
Co-founded the National Farm Workers Association
(NFWA)
– In 1965, Filipino workers, under their organization the
Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC),
– initiated the Delano Grape Strike to protest in favor of higher
wages.
• 5 year strike led to the first major labor victory for US
farm workers.
1960s legacy
• Shattered myth of Melting Pot
• Minorities and poor rose up to demand
equal rights and political power
• Respect for cultural traditions and
historical contributions
• Affirmative action policies – increased
educational and employment opportunities
and led to expansion of middle class
Legacy
• Women and Minorities continued to
advocate for Change
– NOW addresses issues of wage equity, reproductive
rights, child care, sex discrimination
» Passage of equal Rights Amendment of 1972
» Stiffer Penalties of sex discrimination
» Privacy of rape victims
» Access to abortion and birth control