US Civil RightsHow did the US Civil Rights movement influence Australia?

Beginning in the late 1950s, civil rights activists moved to end government supported segregation in the southern states of the United States. This movement involved some of the most famous and influential people in American History, such as Martin Luther King Jr, as well as millions of ordinary people, including six-year-old school student Ruby Bridges.

Civil Disobediance

Their example inspired activists around the world, including those who undertook the 1965 Freedom Rides in Australia.

Jim Crow Laws

• Slavery ended and the formal recognition of equal voting rights at the end of the American Civil War in 1865,

• However legal segregation still existed in many parts of the south.

• These laws, called Jim Crow laws, were supposed to provide for ‘separate but equal’ facilities for black and white Americans, including segregated:

1. Housing2. Schools3. Public transport4. Public toilets & bubblers5. Restaurants

Sampling of Jim Crow laws from various states

http://www.nps.gov/malu/forteachers/jim_crow_laws.htm

In reality, facilities for Black Americans were subject to legally enforced segregation.In some states, black and white Americans were not even allowed by law to marry each other.

Ending School Segregation

In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled state-sponsored segregation illegal. This meant white schools and universities could no longer refuse black students. But some southern states refused to obey the Supreme Court ruling; they would not desegregate their schools.

http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/get-involved/federal-court-activities/brown-board-education-re-enactment/history.aspx

Images of Segregation

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/20/gordon-parks_n_5689182.html

The images, originally titled "The Restraints: Open and Hidden," were first taken for a photo essay for Life Magazine in 1956. The essay reveals how prejudice pervades even the most ordinary and personal of daily occurrences.

Violence

• When the first black students attempted to attend ‘white’ schools, they faced violence at the hands of white mobs.

• Local police offered no protection, so the Federal Government had to send in US Marshals to protect the students.

• Ruby Bridges was one such student,

Rosa Parks

• On 1st December 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama because she refused to give up her seat when a white man boarded the bus she was on.

• Her arrest resulted in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The black population refused to use the city’s bus services. The boycott was led by Martin Luther King.

• This boycott, led by a young Martin Luther King, lasted for 381 days and led to similar boycotts across the South.

• In the end, the Supreme Court ruled segregated buses illegal

The Freedom Riders

• In the early 1960s, groups of black and white activists rode interstate buses together, in violation of local segregation laws.

• These activists were called the ‘Freedom Riders’ and their example inspired Charles Perkins in Australia.

Violent Repressionof Freedom Rides

The freedom Riders faced great danger at times.In May 1961, they were attacked by angry mobs, led by the Ku Klux Klan, in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama. The police failed to protect them. Some of the Freedom Riders were beaten and were refused treatment at the local hospital.

Violent Klan Activity

The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local KKK activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause.

March on Washington

• On August 28, 1963, about 250,000 Americans marched to Washington DC to highlight the political and social challenges African Americans faced.

• The march culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a spirited call for racial justice and equality.

• The march is credited with helping pass the Civil Rights Act (1964) & the Voting Rights Act (1965).

Martin Luther King Jr“I have a Dream”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE

President Stands Up to the Klan

In 1965, US President Lyndon Johnson publicly condemned the Klan and announced the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come.http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/johnson-signs-voting-rights-act