What does our country stand for?

� We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-The Declaration of IndependenceJuly 4th, 1776

The Early Civil Rights Movement

Reconstruction AmendmentsSegregationJim Crow LawsThe Great MigrationEarly Civil Rights GroupsTimes Are A Changing…The Sparks the Lit the Fire

Civil Right Movement� The civil rights movement was a political, legal, and social

struggle to gain full citizenship rights for African Americans . It has its roots in the abolitionist movement of the late 18th

and early 19th century.� The civil rights movement of the 1950s began as a challenge

to segregation , the system of laws and customs separating African Americans and whites.

� During this movement, individuals and civil rights organizations challenged segregation and discrimination with a variety of activities, including protest marches , sit ins , boycotts , and refusal to abide by segregation laws.

Reconstruction Amendments� 1864: The 13th amendment freed all

African Americans from slavery. However, southern whites found ways around this freedom by enacting the BLACK CODES .

� 14th & 15th amendment were put into place to counteract these codes� 14th amendment gave all citizens

“equal protection under the law”� 15th amendment prohibits any state

from denying citizens the right to vote based on race, color, or creed.

Segregation� Segregation was an attempt

by many white Southerners to separate the races in every aspect of daily life.

� Segregation was often called the Jim Crow system, after a minstrel show character from the 1830s who was an African American slave who embodied negative stereotypes of African Americans.

Jim Crow Laws� Jim Crow laws were a reaction

by southern states to the 14th

& 15th amendments. These laws originally included the denial of voting rights, known as disenfranchisement .

� Between 1890 and 1910, all Southern states passed laws imposing requirements for voting such as literacy test & poll taxes , but over time the laws included many ways to force segregation of races in southern states.

Segregation� Segregation became common in

Southern states following the end of Reconstruction in 1877. These states began to pass local and state laws that specified certain public places“For Whites Only” and others for “Colored.”

� African Americans had separate schools, transportation, restaurants, and parks, many of which were poorly funded and inferior to those of whites. Over the next 75 years, Jim Crow signs to separate the races went up in every possible place.

Plessy v. Ferguson“Separate but Equal”

� In the late 1800s, African Americans sued to stop separate seating in railroad cars, states’disenfranchisement of voters, and denial of access to schools and restaurants.

� One of the cases against segregated rail travel was Plessyv. Ferguson (1896), in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that “separate but equal ”accommodations were constitutional since they were of equal quality.

The Great Migration� By 1910 each state that had been part of the

Confederacy had a complex and complete system of Jim Crow laws in place. These laws made African American second-class citizens and led to intimidation and brutal acts by the Ku Klux Klan to keep African Americans in their place.

� Between 1910 and 1930 , hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrated to the North and West to escape the brutal and economically depressed Rural South. They hoped to take advantage of employmentopportunities in industry created by World War I.

The Great Migration

Conditions in the North� Conditions for African Americans in the Northern states

were somewhat better, though up to 1910 only ten percent of African Americans lived in the North.� Segregated facilities were not as common in the North,

but African Americans were usually denied entrance to the best hotels and restaurants .

� African Americans were usually free to vote in the North.� Perhaps the most difficult part of Northern life was the

economic discrimination against African Americans. At the turn of the century, African Americans had to compete with large numbers of recent European immigrants for job opportunities, and they almost always lost because of their race.

Civil Rights Organizations� In order to protest segregation an

the injustices they experienced, African Americans created national organizations .� The National Afro-American

League was formed in 1890 but closed in 1908 due to lack of funding.

� In 1910, the National Urban League was created to help African Americans make the transition to urban, industrial life. This group is still around today focusing on stopping the violence in the inner city.

NAACP

� W.E.B. Du Bois helped create the Niagara Movement in 1905 and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

� The NAACP became one of the most important African American organizations of the twentieth century. It relied mainly on legal strategies that challenged segregation and discrimination in the courts.

“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”

Times are a changing…� 1920’-1930s: Harlem Renaissance: an

African American cultural movement which centered around the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.� Instead of more direct political means, African

American artists and writers used culture to work for the goals of civil rights and equality.

� 1930’s: Great Depression: Hit African Americans harder because many were sharecroppers when agriculture prices were at rock bottom or low industry workers whose jobs were the first to go.� FDR’s New Deal helped millions of African

Americans by giving them relief money but most of the jobs created by the New Deal went to white Americans and so the African American population couldn’t fully recover.

Times are a changing…� 1940’s: WWII provides many

opportunities for African Americans in war industry. African American soldiers show great valor during the war.� Many notice they are fighting for

freedoms in Europe that they are denied at home.

� 1940-1950’s:Culture Shock for Americans � Jackie Robinson becomes the first

African American in major league baseball.

� Popularity of Rock & Roll leads to a break down in racial barriers.

The Sparks that lit the Fire!

� Brown v. Board of Education (1954)� Murder of Emmett Till (1955)� Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-1956)