Civil Rights Movement

1. The Civil Rights Movement

2. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
“Separate But Equal"
Supreme Court ruled that segregated facilities for whites and blacks were legal
as long as the facilities were of equal quality.

3. Segregation and Jim Crow
The separation of blacks and whites, mostly in the South, in public facilities,
transportation, schools, etc.
Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily,
but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-
1960s. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-black laws.

4. An African American man climbs stairs to a theater’s “colored” entrance in Mississippi
about 1939. The door on the ground level is marked “white men only.”

6. N.A.A.C.P.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)
Founded in 1909 to promote full legal equality and remove
obstacles to voting.
N.A.A.C.P.’s magazine is called, “The Crisis.”

7. Roy Wilkins
President of the NAACP during the 1950s and 1960s. He played a pivotal
role in leading the nation into the Civil Rights movement and spearheaded
the efforts that led to significant civil rights victories, including Brown v.
Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act
of 1965.

8. Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Founded in 1942 to address civil rights issues concerning the many African
Americans who served their country honorably during World War II, but still
faced racial barriers at home. At first, only Blacks were allowed to join.
Eventually, CORE broadened its reach in 1961 by allowing racially mixed
groups of passengers on Freedom Rides to desegregate interstate buses.
In 1964, it concentrated on organizing votes for Black candidates in states like
Mississippi and Alabama. Three of its members were murdered in Mississippi
during voter registration efforts in 1964's Freedom Summer.

9. Charles Hamilton Houston
African American lawyer who played a significant role in dismantling the Jim
Crow laws, which earned him the title “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow.”
He is also well known for having trained future Supreme Court Justice
Thurgood Marshall.

10. Desegregation of the Armed Forces, 1948
In July, Truman issued an executive order establishing a policy of racial
equality in the Armed Forces "be put into effect as rapidly as possible."
He also created a committee to ensure its implementation.
Segregated Troops
Desegregated Troops

11. Dixiecrats and Strom Thurmond
Southern political party in 1948 that opposed desegregation. South Carolina
governor, Strom Thurmond ran as the presidential candidate for the Dixiecrats
in 1948.

12. 1948 Election
Thomas Dewey, the republican candidate for president in 1948 almost
defeated Harry Truman during the 1948 presidential election because of
Truman’s support of Civil Rights.

13. Jackie Robinson
Became the first African American during the modern era to play baseball in
the Major League.
Before Robinson, black players could only participate in the Negro League.
Played for the Dodgers from 1947 until 1956.
"I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking
me... All I ask is that you respect me as a human
being." -Jackie Robinson

14. Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
An organization founded in 1942 and devoted to social change
through non-violent action.

15. Whitney M. Young and the National Urban League
Young became Executive Director of the National Urban League. As executive
director of the League, Young pushed major corporations to hire more blacks.

16. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)
The acknowledged leader of the civil rights movement during the 1950s-1960s.
Led peaceful marches, boycotts, sit-ins, and other non-violent demonstrations
to protest racism in the South.
Modeled after Mohandas Gandhi’s style in India.
Martin Luther King Jr. borrowed many of his “non-violent” or passive resistance strategies
from India’s Mohandas K. Gandhi. Both men were killed for peace and equality in which they
both strongly believed.
Mohandas GandhiMartin Luther King Jr.

17. Rosa Parks
On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give
up her seat to a white person and was arrested.

18. The Montgomery Bus Boycott
In December 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat for a White man
as required by city ordinance. It started the Civil Rights Movement and lasted
over a year until, in November 1956.
UH…UH… I’m
Not Goin’ Your
Way…

19. Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
The Supreme Court reversed the Plessey v. Ferguson decision and ruled
that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

20. Little Rock Central High School in 1957
In Little Rock, Arkansas, the governor tried to prevent *nine black students
from entering a desegregated public school, prompting President Eisenhower
to nationalize the Guard and escort the students to class.
President Eisenhower sent in U.S. Federal
troops to force the “white only” public
school in Little Rock, Arkansas to admit
black students.
*Known as the
“Little Rock Nine.”

21. Murder of Emmett Till
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi on
August 24, 1955 when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery
store. Four days later, two white men kidnapped Emmett, beat him, and shot
him in the head.
The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them.
The defendants were acquitted on all
counts by an all-white jury. Months
later they wrote an article for a
magazine about how they did it for
$4,000

22. George Wallace
Governor of Alabama who opposed integration and attempted to prevent black
students from gaining admittance to the University of Alabama.
In 1972, while running for U.S. President, George
Wallace was shot and paralyzed from the waist down.
In later years he apologized for his anti-Civil Rights
stance and asked for forgiveness from the black
community.
Segregationist Governor of Alabama,
George Wallace did everything in his
power to prevent Civil Right legislation.
He his famous for his statement,
“Segregation today… Segregation
tomorrow… Segregation forever!”

23. James Meredith
An African American who the University of Mississippi attempted to defy the
Supreme Court and prevent James Meredith from enrolling at the university.
The university finally admitted Meredith after President Kennedy sent federal
authorities to deal with the situation.
James Meredith
I shall do everything in my
power to prevent
integration in our
schools.”
Governor Ross Barnett’s
Sept 13, 1962

24. Robert F. Williams
Williams was a key figure in promoting armed black self-defense in the United
States. A self-professed Black Nationalist and supporter of liberation he and
his wife left the United States in 1961 to avoid prosecution for kidnapping.
Williams' book Negroes with Guns (1962), published while he was in exile in
Cuba.

25. Medgar Evers
Director of the NAACP in Mississippi and a lawyer who defended accused
Blacks, he was murdered in his driveway by a sniper who was a member of the
Ku Klux Klan.

26. SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)
Sought to unite leaders from the black community (particularly black ministers)
in the cause of civil rights.

27. Letter from Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther King Jr. King wrote the letter in April 1963 from the jail in
Birmingham, Alabama, where he had been arrested following a peaceful civil
rights protest.
His letter was a response to several white
ministers who wrote a statement arguing
that the battle for civil rights should be
waged in the courts rather than by protests.

28. Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
These students devoted themselves to the use of non-violent protests to demand
civil rights for African Americans.

29. Sit-Ins
Non-violent protests in which blacks sat in segregated places until they were
served or arrested, often braving attacks by angry white mobs.
Non-Violent Sit-Ins:
Civil Right activists were subjected
to all kinds of verbal and physical
abuse at the hands of onlookers
who did not agree with them.
Police often did nothing to prevent
such abuses. When the police did
act, they often would arrest the
Civil Right activists for unlawful
assembly. There were many whites
that demonstrated with their black
counterparts and were subjected to
the same abuses themselves.
Members of the SNCC went
through realistic training
before participating in an
actual sit-in to prepare them
for what they may encounter.

30. Freedom Rides
Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy sent U.S. Marshals
to protect the “Freedom
Riders.”
Integrated bus trips in which civil rights advocates (both black and white)
traveled south on buses to tests Supreme Court rulings requiring the integration
of buses.

32. March on Washington, 1963
August 1963 over 200,000 demonstrators converged on the Lincoln Memorial
to hear Dr. King's speech and to celebrate Kennedy's support for the civil
rights movement. It culminated in Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream"
speech.
In August 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his
famous “I Have A Dream,” speech on the steps of
the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. This
speech is considered one of the greatest in
American history and ranks closely with
Abraham Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.”
A compassionate President John F. Kennedy
watched the televised speech from the White
House, only a few blocks away.

33. When we let freedom ring,
when we let it ring from every
village and every hamlet, from
every state and every city, we
will be able to speed up that
day when all of God's
children, black men and white
men, Jews and Gentiles,
Protestants and Catholics, will
be able to join hands and sing
in the words of the old Negro
spiritual, "Free at last! free at
last! thank God Almighty, we
are free at last!"
I Have A Dream…

34. Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam taught that Allah, the God of Islam, would bring about a
“Black Nation” composed of all the non-white peoples of the world.
Believed that the white man and white supremacy was the enemy.
Elijah Muhammad
The Nation of Islam was founded in Detroit in 1930. This variant of
traditional Islam that encouraged separatism from White society and taught
that God was black and the "White Devil" was the chief source of evil in the
world. When the original founder, W. D. Fard mysteriously disappeared in
1934, its leadership passed to Georgia native Elijah Muhammad.
During the 1950s, the Nation of Islam began a period of explosive growth
and attracted thousands with a doctrine of black pride, separation, and self-
sufficiency.

35. Malcolm X
Joined the Nation of Islam and became a powerful speaker who drew large
crowds. He criticized the non-violent strategy used by the NAACP. He called
for a separate Black Nation absolved from all whites. Malcolm X broke away
from the Nation of Islam in 1964 and in February 1965, Malcolm X was
assassinated by three members of the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm X at first urged Blacks to seize their freedom by any
means necessary, but later his changed position and advocated
racial harmony. He was assassinated in February, 1965.

36. Thurgood Marshall
N.A.A.C.P. attorney and founder of the Legal Defense for the N.A.A.C.P.
He is famous for his landmark legal victory in the “Brown v. Topeka Board
of Education in 1954.
His continued fight against discrimination and support of civil liberties
eventually led to him to become the first African American appointed to the
Supreme Court.

37. Civil Rights Act of 1964
The act prohibited segregation in public hotels, restaurants, theaters and
discrimination in education and employment.

38. Freedom Summer
A campaign launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African
American voters as possible in Mississippi, which had historically excluded
most blacks from voting. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools,
Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout
Mississippi to aid the local black population.
Over the course of the ten-week project:
•Four civil rights workers were killed (one in a
head-on collision)
•At least three Mississippi blacks were
murdered because of their support for the civil
rights movement
•Four people were critically wounded
•Eighty Freedom Summer workers were beaten
•One-thousand and sixty-two people were
arrested (volunteers and locals)
•Thirty-seven churches were bombed or burned
•Thirty Black homes or businesses were bombed
or burned

39. Literacy Tests, Grandfather Clause, and Poll Taxes
Literacy Tests: Voters had to prove basic literacy to be entitled to vote.
Because of poor schools, Blacks were often prevented from voting.
Grandfather Clause: Said that a person could vote only if their grandfather
had been registered to vote, which disqualified Blacks whose grandparents
had been slaves.
Poll Taxes: Individuals were required to pay in order to vote.
Literacy Tests Poll Taxes

40. Voting Rights Act of 1965
Passed by Congress in 1965, it allowed for supervisors to register Blacks to
vote in places where they had not been allowed to vote before.

41. 24th Amendment
This amendment served to protect blacks' voting rights by making the poll
tax illegal.
This new law led to a huge increase in African-American voter registration,
as well as an increase in the number of African-American candidates elected
to public office.

42. Urban League
Helping Blacks to find jobs and homes, it was founded in 1966 and was a
social service agency providing facts about discrimination.

43. Selma, Alabama (1965)
Civil Rights activists decided to bring national attention to the cause of
civil rights by marching to Montgomery on Mar 7, 1965. State troopers
and sheriff's deputies beat them with clubs and whips, released dogs on
them, and showered them with tear gas. *Televised scenes of the violence
shocked people nationwide and increased support for the Civil Rights.

44. Watts Race Riots (August 11, 1965)
Many African Americans living in Los Angeles viewed police officers as
oppressors. After police stopped a 21-year-old African American for drunk
driving they used nightsticks on the suspect after the suspect resisted arrest.
Thousands of African Americans began a riot, in which several hundred stores
were looted and buildings burnt down.
The riots lasted 6 days before the local police and National Guard was able to
stop the rioting.
Watts riot resulted in 34
dead, 800 injured, 3500
arrested, and $140,000,000
in damages.

45. Racial Unrest (1965-1968)

46. Stokely Carmichael & Black Power
An activist in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement who popularized the term,
"Black Power,” which called on African Americans to unite and to recognize
their heritage with the slogan, “Black is Beautiful.”
In 1966, as chair of SNCC, he
called to assert Black Power.
Supporting the Black
Panthers, he was against
integration.
The 1968 Olympics Black Power salute was an act of protest
by the African-American athletes during their medal
ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. In
response to their actions, the International Olympic
Committee ordered Smith and Carlos suspended from the
U.S. team and banned from the Olympic Village.

47. H. Rap Brown
A proponent of Black Power, he succeeded Stokely Carmichael as head of
SNCC. He was indicted by inciting riot and for arson.

48. Black Panthers
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale co-founded the Black Panther Party in 1966.
The Black Panther Party was an African-American left-wing organization
whose political goals included better housing, jobs, and education for African
Americans. The group believed that violence, or the threat of it, might be
needed to bring about social change.
The Black Panthers sometimes made news with a show of force, as they did when they entered the California
Legislature fully armed in order to protest a gun bill and demand that the federal government rebuild the nation’s
ghettos in repayment for years of discrimination.
Bobby Seale Huey P. Newton

49. Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a hotel balcony in Memphis,
Tennessee on April 4, 1968 by James Earl Ray. James Earl Ray was found
guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

50. James Earl Ray: Plead guilty and sentenced to life in prison for the assassination. He later said he
was innocent. There are many who believe he was framed and that there was a conspiracy, including
Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow and children. James Earl Ray died in prison in 1998.
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

51. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
(1970)
Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled that public schools could
integrate through busing.
Question?
Were federal courts
constitutionally
authorized to oversee
and produce remedies
for state-imposed
segregation?

52. Affirmative Action
In the U.S., the effort to improve the employment and educational
opportunities of women and members of minority groups through preferential
treatment in:
• Job hiring
• College admissions
• The awarding of government contracts
• Allocation of other social benefits.

53. Bakke v. Board of Regents, University of California
at Davis (1978)
Barred colleges from admitting students solely on the basis of race, but
allowed them to include race along with other considerations when deciding
which students to admit.