Chapter 28

Theme: Organizing Peace

• In 1955 Montgomery's black community mobilized when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat and comply with segregation laws.
  
• Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister, a boycott of busses was launched.
  
• A network of local activists organized car pools using private cars to get people to and from work.
  
• Leaders endured violence and legal harassment, but won a court ruling that the segregation ordinance was unconstitutional.
  

Civil Rights After World War II

• Rock The WWII experiences of African Americans laid the foundations for the subsequent struggle.
  
• A mass migration to the North brought political power to African Americans working through the Democratic Party.
  
• The NAACP grew in numbers and its Legal Defense Fund initiated a series of lawsuits to win key rights.
  
• Key ways the African Americans were breaking color barriers included:
  
  • Jackie Robinson's entrance into major league baseball
    
  • Ralph Bunche's winning a Nobel Peace prize
    
• A new generation of jazz musicians created be-bop.
  

Segregation & Brown vs. Board

• In the South, segregation and unequal rights were still the law of the land.
  
• Law and custom kept blacks as second-class citizens with no effective political rights. African Americans had learned to survive and not challenge the situation.
  
  • Brown v. Board of Education
    
• The NAACP initiated a series of court cases challenging the constitutionality of segregation. (trying to turn around Plessy vs. Ferguson.)
  
• Thurgood Marshall was a key lawyer for the NAACP and fought Brown vs. Board of Education for them.
  
• In Brown v. Board of Education, newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren led the court to declare that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
  
• The court postponed ordering a clear timetable to implement the decision.
  
• Southern whites declared their intention to nullify the decision.
  

Crisis in Little (1^st of many school desegregations)

• In Little Rock, Arkansas, a judge ordered integration.
  
• The governor ordered the National Guard to keep African American children out of Central High. (Orvil Faubus)
  
• When the troops were withdrawn, a riot erupted forcing President Eisenhower to send in more troops to integrate the school.
  
  • (He & Eisenhower made a deal, Faubus backtracks on his deal, troops are withdrawn)
    

Martin Luther King and the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)

• Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged from the bus boycott as a prominent national figure.
  
• A well-educated son of a Baptist minister, King taught his followers nonviolent resistance, modeled after the tactics of Mohandas Gandhi.
  
• The civil rights movement was deeply rooted in the traditions of the African American church.
  
• King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to promote nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation.
  

Sit-Ins

• African American college students, first in Greensboro, NC, began sitting in at segregated lunch counters.
  
• Nonviolent sit-ins were:
  
  • widely supported by the African American community
    
  • Accompanied by community-wide boycotts of businesses that would not integrate.
    

SNCC and the "Beloved Community"

• A new spirit of militancy was evident among young people.
  
• 120 African American activists created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to promote nonviolent direct challenges to segregation. (SCLC & SNCC work together with MLK to make things happen)
  
• The young activists were found at the forefront of nearly every major civil rights battle.
  

The Election of 1960 and Civil Rights

• The race issue had moved to center stage by 1960.
  
• As Vice President, Nixon had strongly supported civil rights.
  
• But Kennedy pressured a judge to release Martin Luther King, Jr. from jail.
  
• African American voters provided Kennedy's margin of victory, though an unfriendly Congress insured that little legislation would come out.
  
• Attorney General Robert Kennedy used the Justice Department to force compliance with desegregation orders.
  

Freedom Rides

• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored a freedom ride of biracial teams to ride interstate buses in the South.
  
• The FBI and Justice Department knew of the plans but were absent when mobs firebombed a bus and severely beat the Freedom Riders.
  
• There was violence and no police protection at other stops.
  
• The Kennedy Administration was forced to mediate a safe conduct for the riders, though 300 people were arrested.
  
• A Justice Department petition led to new rules that effectively ended segregated interstate buses.
  

The Limits of Protest

• Where the federal government was not present, segregationists could triumph.
  
• In Albany, Georgia local authorities kept white mobs from running wild and kept police brutality down to a minimum.
  
• Martin Luther King, Jr. was twice arrested, but Albany remained segregated.
  
• When the federal government intervened, as it did in the University of Mississippi, integration could take place. (5,000 troops in the end.)
  

Birmingham

• In conjunction with the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), local activists in Birmingham, Alabama planned a large desegregation campaign.
  
• Demonstrators, including Martin Luther King, Jr., filled the city's jails.
  
• King drafted his Letter From a Birmingham Jail.
  
• A TV audience saw water cannons and snarling dogs break up a children's march.
  
• A settlement was negotiated that desegregated businesses. (though denounced by many southern whites) (Kennedy sent in 3,000 troops to break up the violence) (Spike Lee- 4 Little Girls)
  
• Birmingham changed the nature of the civil rights movement by bringing in black unemployed and working poor for the first time.
  

JFK and the March on Washington

• The shifting public consensus led President Kennedy to appeal for civil rights legislation.
  
• A. Philip Randolph's (Head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) old idea of a march on Washington was revived.
  
• The march presented a unified call for change and held up the dream of universal freedom and brotherhood. (largest political assembly in American history
  

LBJ and the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• The assassination of John Kennedy threw a cloud over the movement as the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had never been a good friend to civil rights.
  
• LBJ used his skills as a political insider to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that put a virtual end to Jim Crow. ("Prohibited discrimination in places of…. On basis of race, color, religion, and national origin. Authorized Justice Department to desegregate schools, finically helped.)
  

Mississippi Freedom Summer

• In 1964 civil rights activists targeted Mississippi for a "freedom summer" that saw 900 volunteers come to open up this closed society.
  
  • Mississippi-forerunner of Mississippi Black Codes… Try to desegregate.
    
• Two white activists and a local black activist were quickly killed. (Movie- Mississippi Burning -> FBI was not there)
  
• Tensions developed between white volunteers and black movement veterans.
  
• The project riveted national attention on Mississippi.
  
• With an overwhelming Democratic victory in the 1964 elections, movement leaders pushed for federal legislation to protect the right to vote.
  

Malcom X and Black Consciousness (Malcolm was his first name & X was his slave last name- didn't know)

• Many younger civil rights activists were drawn to the vision of Malcolm X, who:
  
  • ridiculed integrationist goals
    
  • urged black audiences to take pride in their African heritage
    
  • break free from white domination
    
• He broke with the Nation of Islam (whites were not the dominated race- blacks were, whites came from black people), made a pilgrimage to Mecca, and returned to America with changed views.
  
• He sought common ground with the civil rights movement, but was murdered in 1965.
  
• Even in death, he continued to point to a new black consciousness.    (Black Power)
  

Selma

• In Selma, Alabama, whites had kept blacks off the voting lists and brutally responded to protests.
  
• A planned march to Montgomery ended when police beat marchers.
  
• Just when it appeared the Selma campaign would fade, a white gang attacked a group of Northern whites who had come to help out, one of whom died.
  
• President Johnson addressed the nation and thoroughly identified himself with the civil rights cause, declaring "we shall overcome."
  
• The march went forward.
  

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

• In August 1965 LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act that authorized federal supervision of voter registration in the South.
  

Mexican Americans

• "Operation Wetback"
  
• Mexican Americans formed groups to fight for their rights and used the courts to challenge discrimination.
  
• Legal and illegal Mexican migration increased dramatically during and after WWII. During the 1950s, efforts to round up undocumented immigrants led to a denial of basic civil rights and a distrust of Anglos.
  

Puerto Ricans

• Although Puerto Rican communities had been forming since the 1920s, the great migration came after WWII.
  
• Despite being citizens, Puerto Ricans faced both economic and cultural discrimination.
  
• In the 1960s and seventies, the decline in manufacturing jobs and urban decay severely hit them. (US acclaimed the Island in 1878- 1917- gained US citizenship.
  

Asian Americans & American Indian Peoples

• During the 1950s, Congress removed the old ban against Japanese immigration and naturalization.
  
• In 1965, a new immigration law increased opportunities for Asians to immigrate to the United States.
  
• As a result, the demographics of the Asian-American population drastically changed.
  
• During the 1950s, Congress passed a series of termination bills that ended tribal rights in return for cash payments and division of tribal assets.
  
• Indian activists challenged government policies leading to court decisions that reasserted the principle of tribal sovereignty.
  
• Reservation Indians remained trapped in poverty. (National Congress of American Indians)
  
• Indians who had left the reservation lost much of their tribal identities.
  
• Urban Indian groups arose and focused on civil instead of tribal rights.