CLAIMING EQUALITY:The 20th-Century Civil Rights Movement

IMPORTANCE

Defined rights of citizenship for African-Americans

Redefined prevailing cultural ideas about civil rights

Redefined role of gov’t in enforcing/protecting these rights

Provided constitutional model for subsequent rights-seekers

ORIGINS

W.E.B. DuBois, 1907

Slave resistance

Reconstruction-era organizing

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) challenge

Nat’l Assoc. of Colored Women, 1896

DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

LEADERS EMERGE

Marcus Garvey, 1887-1940Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915

LEADERS EMERGE

Mary Church Terrell, c. 1900Ida B. Wells, c. 1900

NATIONAL ORGANIZING

Niagara Movement, 1905

NAACP founded 1909

National Urban League, 1911

Univ. Negro Improvement Assoc., 1914 (Garvey)

Congress for Racial Equality, (CORE), 1941

BROWN V. BOARD, 1954

NAACP test of Plessy v. Ferguson(1896)

Litigation strategy rested on individual blacks assuming risks before & after

Unanimous decision by Warren Court: “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Thurgood Marshall, c. 1954

MONTGOMERY BOYCOTT

Rosa Parks, Dec. 1, 1955

Seamstress Parks chosen as test case by NAACP

Parks’ jailing prompted bus boycott, lasted over a year

Local minister MLK emerges as leader; estab. of SCLC

STUDENT SIT-INS

Greensboro, NC, February 1, 1960

NC students embraced

Tactic spread

Founding of SNCC

SNCC VS. SCLC

Both southern-based

Both nonviolent direct action

SNCC: student focus SCLC: clergy-led, esp. MLK

SCLC: local aimed at national reform SNCC: autonomous local campaigns

NEW LEADERS EMERGE

Martin Luther King, c. 1964Ella Baker, c. 1964

NEW LEADERS EMERGE

Diane Nash, c. 1963

John Lewis, c. 1963

Julian Bond,c. 1963

BIRMINGHAM CAMPAIGN

SCLC led voter registration, 1963

Gained presidential attention

March on Washington, August 1963 King: “I have a Dream”

Died September 15, 1963

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT 1964

JFK, June 11, 1963

Banned discrimination in public facilities

Outlawed employment & educational discrimination

Barred “unequal application” of voting laws, though not qualifications.

Employment clause included discrimination based on sex, religion, national origin

PROTESTS CONTINUE

“Freedom Summer” 1964

Murder of 3 workers

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

“We had played by the rules, done everything we were supposed to do, had played the game exactly as required, had arrived at the doorstep and found the door slammed in our face. “

John Lewis, August 1964

Fannie Lou Hamer, c. 1964

ALABAMA 1965

“Bloody Sunday,” Selma , AL March, 1965

MLK managing public support

SNCC-SCLC collaboration

Last racial protest of 1960s with substantial white support

VOTING RIGHTS ACT

May not “deny or abridge” right to vote based on race or color.

Significant federal oversight of state voting procedures.

MILITANT CHALLENGES

“black liberation” proponents challenge reform focus

public support declines as fears of violence predominate

SIGNAL ACHIEVEMENTS

13th, 14th, 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Sociocultural impact over time

QUESTIONS?

Nashville sit-ins, 1960