CIVIL RIGHTS AND CHANGING TIMES

SS8H11 Students will evaluate the role of Georgia in the modern civil rights movement.

a. Describe major developments in civil right…

Post WWII

• Between 1940 and 1970 many changes occurred in GA and across the country

– Soldiers returned home and started families (baby boom)

– New inventions like TV changed the way we spent our free time and see the world around us

– Many highways and new buildings are built, the economy grows substantially

– Cold War tensions grip our country

– African-Americans were becoming more visible

– The youth of the nation learned to protest

U.S. grows by leaps and bounds

• Returning soldiers attend college on the GI bill

• Average family income reaches $4,421.

• Rock and Roll dominates the music industry

• Auto industry soars

• Polio vaccine is developed

• Diner’s Club introduces the first credit card

Important Legal Federal Changes

• 1946 King v Chapman, white primary in GA ruled unconstitutional by federal court

• 1946 National School Lunch Act 1946, provided low cost or free lunches to children

• 1954 Brown v. Board of Education 1954, overturned Plessy v Ferguson of 1896, it becomes illegal to segregate schools or other public facilities

1946 Changes in the Democratic Primary in Georgia

• Georgia was essentially a one-party state

• The winner of the primary election was therefore a certain victory in the General Elections.

• Georgia only allowed whites to vote in the Democratic Party primary

• By the time the limited number of black votes got involved in the process, the decision had been made.

1946 Governor’s Race• Eugene Talmadge runs for his 4th term on the

platform to return the white primary

• Many secretly wrote in Herman (his son) on their ballots

• When he dies before taking office, Herman Talmadge, the outgoing Ellis Arnall, and the Lt. Governor Melvin Thompson all claim the office.

• GA State Supreme Court ruled Thompson was the rightful governor.

How will major events of this movement change laws?

Montgomery Bus Boycott

• 1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man

• On Sunday, December 4, a group of African American ministers gathered to discuss her support

• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was asked to be their spokesperson

• The community boycotts the buses until their demands were met in December of 1956

The Bus boycott Demands grantedAll passengers would be treated with courtesy

African American drivers would be assigned to primarily routes with their race

Seating would be on a first come, first serve basis

Bus revenue during the boycott was reduced by 65%

Why did GA change its flag in 1956?

Little Rock Nine 1957- When nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central HS the uproar over desegregation required the President to send in the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students safely to class

Little Rock Nine

Georgia Sibley Commission

• 1960-The Georgia General Assembly organized a 14 member commission to study the problem of integration of Georgia Public Schools

• Chairman of the committee was John Sibley

• Held hearings all over the state

• Results found by a 3:2 margin that the public would rather close the schools than integrate them

The Young Become Louder

SNCC- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

• An organization that started in April 1960, it become one of the largest during the Modern Civil Rights Movement

• Major involvement in nonviolent protests like the “sit-ins” at the lunch counters and the March on Washington in 1963

Freedom Riders• May 1961- black and white volunteers set

out from Washington D.C. to New Orleans on a Greyhound Bus testing the Interstate Commerce Commission’s laws which desegregated bus and train station’s waiting rooms

• When they reached the deep south, they encountered violent reactions

• This brought national attention to the disregard of the law in the south

*SNCC and CORE were two Civil Rights organizations that helped sponsor this protest event.

May 1961 Freedom Riders

Outside Anniston, Alabama, one of their buses was burned

Albany Movement

• Albany, Georgia; November 1961- July 1962• Inspired by the Freedom Riders• Protested segregation and other Civil Rights violations,

emphasizing the integration of bus waiting rooms• Dr. King became involved and hundreds were arrested

in December of 1961• With him (MLK)came the assistance of NAACP, SNCC

and SCLC • This event demonstrates how the Civil Rights

Movement was not just national but was also a local movement with deep roots in southern communities

Birmingham Children’s March

• In May 1963, James Bevel, a prominent leader in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), helped organize the “Children’s Crusade”

• Thousands of children were arrested in Birmingham, AL, for parading without a license

• Due to the press coverage, President Kennedy’s Administration got involved and as a result he begins creation of the Civil Rights Act

We March For…

President John F. Kennedy poses August 28, 1963 at the White House with a group of leaders of the

March on Washington.WPCP

March on Washington

• August 1963

• Organized by SNCC for jobs and freedom

• MLK gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech

• participants varied from 200,000 to over 300,000

• Helped to get the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed

The Church is Bombed!

• The 16th Street Baptist Church is bombed on a quiet Sunday morning in September 1963

• Four young girls getting into their choir robes are murdered, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Denise McNair, and 22 others are injured.

• This bombing was racially motivated by the Ku Klux Klan

Civil Rights Act of 1964• In June of 1963 President

Kennedy started the bill which would later be signed by President L.B. Johnson in 1964

• Gives greater emphasis to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, made segregation of all public facilities illegal and prohibited discrimination in businesses and labor unions

Freedom Summer• June 1964, in an attempt to register black voters

in Mississippi

• SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and SCLC organized 1,000’s of volunteers, mostly from the north, 90% were white and many were Jewish, to work with local organizations to coach them on the voter registration process

• Expensive poll taxes, especially difficult literacy tests, harassing would-be voters economically (by denying crop loans), and carrying out arson, battery, and lynching, all had kept most from voting for many years

Murders Uncovered

• June 21, 1964, three CORE members involved in Freedom Summer go missing in Mississippi

• They were ambushed by members of the KKK who brutally murdered them and buried them in a local earthen dam

• Their disappearance sparked national media attention and FBI intervention

• Initiated the creation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Three Civil Rights workers that were Murdered

Andrew Goodman James Chaney Michael Schwerner

Voting Rights Act of 1965

• This act provided federal oversight for elections, protecting the voting rights of everyone

• Created in response to the national attention brought about from the protests and violence that swept through the south during the early 1960’s

Fannie Lou Hamer inspires

many to fight for the right to vote.

Not a Peaceful March

• Selma, Alabama; “Bloody Sunday”• Inspired by the voting rights protests and the

death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, 600 marcher set out from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery

• The marchers encountered violence as they approached the Alabama River and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, 200 state troopers in front and mounted sheriff’s posse from behind (tear gas and billy clubs)

• Due to this violence President Johnson sent in the FBI and National Guard to protect the next march

Other Noteworthy Georgians

• Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Homes are the first two African Americans admitted to the University of Georgia on January 6, 1961

William Hartsfield

• Mayor of Atlanta 1937-1961, longest serving mayor

• “city too busy to hate”

• Supported the movement

• Devoted to aviation, instrumental in opening Atlanta’s first airport in 1925

• Helped the city during the depression

• Benjamin Mays-former

Moorehouse College president

1940-1967, mentored Dr. King

• Ivan Allen Jr.- Mayor of Atlanta (1962-1970) that brought professional sports to the city of Atlanta, also known for taking down the “whites only” signs from City Hall

John Lewis

• Leader in SNCC

• Spoke during the March on Washington

• Influential Civil Right leader

• U.S. Congressmen for Georgia’s 5th district

• Maynard Jackson becomes the first African American Mayorof Atlanta, in 1974

• Lester Maddox becomes Governor in 1967-72 by a legislative vote and despite his segregationist views is noted for appointing more African Americans to state boards and commissions than any prior governor

MLK Falls 1968