Transcript Affirmative Action - University of Nebraska Omaha
The Modern Civil Rights Movement, Social Critics, and Nonconformists
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Address to First Montgomery Improvement Association
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a leader in the Civil Rights movement.
He gained prominence in the 1950s after the Montgomery bus boycott began. He gave this speech the day Rosa Parks was arrested. He discusses the civil rights of all people.
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The Birth of a New Nation
Dr. King delivered this sermon at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama on April 7, 1957.
He speaks about Africa and the many struggles African countries went through to get their independence from other countries like Great Britain. He then compares this to the struggle of African-Americans to gain freedom in the United States. Dr. King discusses his dedication to the principles of non-violence.
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Give Us the Ballot
Dr. King gave this address at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C. on May 17, 1957.
It is about African-Americans gaining the right to vote that was supposed to be guaranteed to them with the passage of the 13th Amendment after the Civil War. Dr. King says that if the African Americans are given the right to vote, they will no longer have to bother the federal government with their civil rights.
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Supreme Court Rejects Plea Of City
In June a federal court ruled segregated seating unconstitutional, and the case went on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The United States Supreme Court later decided that the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses unconstitutional. The boycott of the buses had lasted for 381 days.
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Statement on Ending the Bus Boycott
This speech was given by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after the court ruled that segregation laws were unconstitutional.
His statement officially ended the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama.
African-Americans could now sit where they wanted to on the bus. There was no longer a “black” and “white” section.
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Brown v. Board of Education
This landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court overturned
Plessy v. Ferguson
It declared once and for all the separate is not equal. Te decision was handed down on May 17, 1954.
This victory paved the way for integration and the Civil Rights Movement. 7
Integration of Central High School
LRCHS was the focal point of the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. Nine black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, were denied entrance to the school in defiance of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling ordering integration of public schools.
This provoked a showdown between the Governor and President Dwight D. Eisenhower that gained international attention.
It was the first fundamental test of the national resolve to enforce black civil rights in the years following the Brown decision. A National Guard Member sits outside of Central High School during the integration.
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House Un-American Activities Committee
Ronald Reagan testifies to HUAC.
HUAC was an investigative committee of the US Senate. In 1947 HUAC investigated alleged communist infiltration of the motion picture industry. Hearsay, innuendo, and rumor were perfectly acceptable forms of evidence. HUAC decided the Fifth Amendment did not apply in its hearings so those refusing to testify, branded the “Hollywood Ten”, were imprisoned for contempt. Through pressing witnesses to “name names,” HUAC claimed to have identified 324 communists working in the motion picture industry.
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Senator Joseph McCarthy
Elected to the Senate from Wisconsin in 1946. Rabid anti-communist and alleged communist infiltration into the American government. On 20 February 1950, McCarthy made a six hour Senate speech claiming that the Democratic Party had been engaged in twenty years of treason. In 1952, the Republicans gained control of the Senate. The Republicans named McCarthy as Chairman of the Senate Sub-Committee on Investigations.
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McCarthy Hearings
In the Senate Sub Committee for Investigations, Senator McCarthy applied the methods of HUAC to the American government, military, and defense industry. According to McCarthy’s own numbers, his investigations drove 400 suspected communists from the American government, though, in reality, few were guilty of anything more than liberal 11 politics or associations
Opposition to McCarthyism
Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine, criticized his tactics as being detrimental to individual freedom. In March 1954, McCarthy began to investigate Annie Lee Moss, a middle aged African American woman who worked for the Army Signal Corps. For this, Moss lost her job with the Army, was dragged before McCarthy’s hearings, and publicly interrogated on national television. Senator Symington pointed out that there were four Annie Lee Mosses listed in the Washington D.C. phonebook and that there was no indication that this was the proper one.
Margaret Chase Smith 12
The Feminine Mystique
Throughout the 1950’s and 60’s, women’s rights activists continued to blow the whistle on the problems and inequities in society. In her book The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan showed the hidden side of a housewife, one that is; Bored Uninspired screaming for change This was a very different image of what advertisements, television, and society in general portrayed.
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Equal Pay Act of 1963
The issue of equal pay became one of the main focal points for the second stage of the women’s movement. Arguments were made to the Senate regarding unfair wages for retail clerks.
In passing the bill, Congress denounced sex discrimination for the following reason: It depresses wages and living standards for employees necessary for their health and efficiency; prevents the maximum utilization of the available labor resources tends to cause labor disputes, thereby burdening, affecting, and obstructing commerce; burdens commerce and the free flow of goods in commerce; constitutes an unfair method of competition. 14
Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American women elected to Congress. Chisholm acknowledged the strides being made in regards to discrimination based on race, But she called attention to the fact that gender discrimination is so ingrained in society few leaders fail to realize the full weight of the issue.
Chisholm also argues for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment that Congress had failed to pass for years.
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Counter Culture
During the 1950s a counterculture emerged. They were called the Beat Generation when the term beatnik was coined. Some time during the 1960s, the "Beat Generation" gave way to "The Sixties Counterculture." With this came a change in the terminology referring the members of the counterculture from "Beatnik" to "hippie".
This group questioned American society and was seen in the literature, art and songs written by the Beatniks.
Jack Kerouac was the most famous beat writers. His 1957
On the Road
helped to define the generation.
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Media Citations
Slide 2: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/images/br0119s.jpg
Slide 3: http://www.bu.edu/marshplaza/photos/yesterday6.jpg
Slide 4: http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/graphics/call.jpg
Slide 5: http://www.africanaonline.com/montgomery.htm
Slide 6: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civilrights/cr-exhibit.html
Slide 7: http://www.historicaldocuments.com/ThurgoodMarshalletal.jpg
Slide 8: http://www.centralhigh57.org/rifle.htm
Slide 9: http://www.authentichistory.com/1950s/speeches/images/19471023_Reagan_HU AC.jpg
Slide 10: http://chawedrosin.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/mccarthy.jpg
Slide 11: http://www.yale.edu/yale300/democracy/may1text/images/McCarthyandCohen.jpg
Slide 12: http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/graphic/large/MargaretCSm ith.jpg
Slide 13: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/images/0205-01.jpg
Slide 14: http://www.brookings.edu/gs/cps/ga/images/kennedy_equalpayact.jpg
Slide 15: www.utexas.edu/lbj/news/spring2005/chisholm.html Slide 16: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/kerouac-jack.jpg
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