The Civil Rights EraWoolworth sit-In, North Carolina, 1960 Woolworth sit-In, Mississippi, 1963

Jim Crow Laws

• Restricted marriage, voting, and working rights

Civil Rights under President Eisenhower

• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

“Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

--Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren

Southern Reaction Against Brown v. Board of Education

• 80% of White southerners opposed ruling

• KKK Revival• De-segregation not

enforced

Little Rock 9, 1957

• Central Rock High School, Little Rock, Arkansas

• Governor Faubus had National Guard block entrance

• Eisenhower sent 1,000 paratroopers to protect the 9 students

Watch PBS documentary “Eyes on the Prize” from 5:52 – 30:00

Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dec. 1955 – Dec. 1956

• 40,000 African American daily bus riders in Montgomery, Alabama

• Rosa Parks, NAACP member

• Dr. Martin Luther King led bus boycott

• Supreme Court outlawed bus segregation

Civil Rights Under JFK

• Birmingham/ Bombingham, 1963• Police Commissioner

“Bull” Conner

Dr. King’s March on Washington

• Intended to pressure JFK, 1963

Civil Rights Under LBJ

• LBJ promoted the Civil Rights Act as a legacy to honor assassinated JFK

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Ended legal segregation

• Created Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

• Did not address voting rights

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Ended literacy tests, poll taxes, grandfather clauses

• Registered black voters in the South increased by 2 million

Civil Rights After 1964

Black Power Movement • Rejected Dr. King’s slow-

paced nonviolence & rejected white cooperation

• Black Power philosophy influenced by Malcolm X

Stokely Carmichael

Malcolm X• Converted to Nation of Islam

in jail• Based in the Northern U.S.• Broke with Elijah

Muhammad upon return from Mecca

• Killed on February 21, 1965

Black Panthers

• Founded in California, 1966

Dr. King’s Assassination

• Assassinated in Memphis, April 4, 1968

Urban Riots, 1965 – 1970 • Civil Rights Movement in the

South raised expectations in Northern cities

• 1964 = Harlem, Rochester, Jersey City, Philadelphia

• 1965 = Watt’s Riot lasted 6 days, 34 dead, $40 million in damages

• 1966 = Chicago, Milwaukee, SF, Cleveland, Dayton

• TOTAL = 250 deaths, 10,000 injuries, 60,000 arrests

Chicano Civil Rights Movement

• Cesar Chavez organized migrant farm workers into unions

• 5 million migrant farm workers in U.S. in 1960s

• National Labor Relations Act of 1935 did not allow farm workers to join labor unions

• No minimum wage, no Social Security benefits

• Chavez used King and Gandhi’s strategy of nonviolence

Grape Boycott • 1962: Chavez formed National Farm

Workers/United Farm Workers

• 1965: First boycott of California’s grapes gained national attention to poor living conditions

• Chavez went on 25 day hunger strike

• 5 year boycott ended with U.F.W. contract in 1970

The Brown Berets• March 1968: 10,000 students

walked out of L.A high schools to protest poor education quality

• “Brown Berets” influenced Chicano Studies, Puerto Rican Studies departments in colleges

• Women discouraged from participating

The American Indian Movement

• 1960s & 1970s = 70% of Indians located on reservations

• 1968 = (AIM) American Indian Movement founded to create economic opportunities on reservations & stop police harassment

Capture of Alcatraz Island, 1969

• 1969 = 78 AIM members captured former federal prison Alcatraz Island

• Treaty stated abandoned federal land belonged to American Indians

• Occupation lasted 1.5 years until 1971