Chapter 10: Case study: The US Civil Rights Movement Flashcards
Reasons for the Civil Rights Movement
After the American Civil War from 1861-1865, segregation became the effective policy of the US, especially in Southern states that were defeated in the war. This policy was legalised by the Jim Crow laws, which discriminated against black Americans by insisting that they use separate facilities and services and live separately by whites. The right of the states to insist on separate public facilities was upheld by the Supreme Court in the judgement of 1896. The principle was expressed as separate but equal. Separate facilities included housing, schools, public transport, public toilets, restaurants and drinking fountains. Separate facilities came to mean inferior ones for black people.
Black Americans were denied certain of their civil, especially in the Southern states. They were disenfranchised, were denied equal employment opportunities, they were also violently attacked by the KKK. Many lynchings occurred. However, there was a decline in documented lynchings.
In 1909, The NAACP was founded to promote black equality . It used peaceful methods like legal challenges, education through speeches and writings, demonstrations, and lobbying white politicians but without much success.
World War II had a major influence on black servicemen. They experienced a larger world where segregation was not the norm. Many of them performed specialist roles, some of them as officers. They came back to the US wanting to assert their rights and achieve equality for themselves, their families and their children.
Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
In 1954, the Supreme Court made a landmark decision in the case of Brown vs The Board of Education. It struck down the Plessy vs Ferguson ruling of 1896, declaring that separation in public services was unconstitutional. In practice, separate did not mean equal. This decision meant, for example, that separate schools could no longer be maintained. This crucial court ruling marked a new, intensified phase in the Civil Rights Movement, as whites registered its implementation.
In 1955, another event further stimulated the movement. A 14 year old black boy from Chicago, Emmett Till, was brutally murdered by two white men for supposedly making a pass at a white woman. These two men were put on trial but were acquitted by an all-white jury. Emmett Till was buried in his hometown. His mother insisted that his casket be left open so that everyone could see the terrible damage that had been done to him. People around the country and world were horrified by the racist murder of Emmett Till and the brutality of his killing. Some see his case as being the event that sparked off the activist Civil Rights Movement in the US.
The role, impact and influence of Martin Luther King Junior
MLK Jr was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta. His father was the minister at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Martin decided to follow his father into the ministry and studied at Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, later obtaining a doctorate from Boston University. King became a pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in 1954.
When the Montgomery bus boycott started in December 1955, King was asked to be the spokesperson for the MIA. This was to be a historic decision. In his first speech to a mass meeting of the MIA, King electrified his audience with his eloquence.
The next month, King was arrested and his home was attacked with a stick of dynamite, damaging the porch and shattering the living-room windows. An angry, armed black crowd gathered, confronting white policemen.
King soon became, not only the leader of the bus boycott in Montgomery, but also a symbol of resistance to segregation and injustice against African-Americans throughout the country. He had displayed great courage, determination, calm and a eloquent way of speaking and inspiring people. He became a constant inspiration to others to maintain their resistance to segregation and unfair discrimination.
In February 1957, a body called the SCLC was set up, with King as its leader. Its mission was to lead non-violent direct action against segregation and achieve full civil rights for black Americans. King led the SCLC for eleven years until his assassination in 1968.
The Influence of Passive Resistance (Ghandi) on Martin Luther King
MLK realised early that violence was not the way for black people in the US to achieve their civil rights. Black Americans were a small minority. It would be suicidal for them to take up arms against the vast white majority of the population. King adopted a philosophy of non-violence. He would not carry arms, nor would he allow his drivers and bodyguards to do so.
While at university, King had studied the writings of the American philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr argued that force was needed to defeat injustice. However, he believed that even passive resistance and civil disobedience involved the use of a kind of force. King reached the conclusion that Niebuhr’s thinking was too negative. As a Christian minister, he believed in the power of love to transform society for the better. In 1959, King visited Ghandi’s birthplace in India.
Like Ghandi, King became a firm believer in the power of mass non-violent direct action, that is, passive resistance and civil disobedience. he believed that, if black people were prepared to suffer of their protests and not strike back, they would eventually get their oppressors to see the error of their ways and change. In this way, reconciliation would be achieved through the power of love. This also meant that the oppressors would have no excuse to become violent themselves. King believed in reconciliation with white people and ultimate integration with them in a common society.
Mass non-violent direct action also helped to promote black unity and confidence. It attracted much publicity for the cause and built up considerable pressure on the federal courts to respond to the legal issues raised by protests. By adopting the Ghandhian strategy of non-violent direct action. King was able to bring about significant political and social change in the US.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956
In many Southern cities, public transport was segregated. Whites sat in front and blacks at the back. If the bus was full and a white person needed a seat, black people occupying the middle seats had to stand for the white person.
On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress who also worked for the local NAACP, refused to give up her seat for a white man. She was arrested and charged. A one-day bus boycott was decided upon by the local black community for 5 December. When it was successful, it was decided to continue the boycott.
The MIA, led by MLK, organised the boycott. About 100 leaders, were charged in terms of an old anti-boycott law, but this merely united the black people behind them. King ended up spending two weeks in jail.
The bus boycott continued for eleven months in all, with people wither walking to work or using carpools, which the MIA organised. Sometimes white women would give lifts to black women. Of course, very often they needed these women as domestic workers and child-minders.
In June 1956, an Alabama federal district court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional and therefore illegal. The bus boycott continued with enthusiasm. In November 1956, the US Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Alabama district court. The boycotters won. A new city ordinance allowed black people to sit where they pleased on the bus. The boycott officially ended on 20 December 1956, after 381 days. The success of the Birmingham bus boycott stimulated the national Civil Rights Movement across the US and launched MLK as one of its national leaders.
Segregated public transport was the focus of another civil rights campaign, the Freedom Rides of 1961. Blacks and whites traveled on inter-state buses, ignoring the segregation practices along the way. The KKK attacked the Riders violently; the police provided little or no protection. Despite all the violence and persecution, the Freedom Rights continued. In September 1961, on the insistence of Attorney-General Robert F Kennedy, interstate travel was officially desegregated.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Sit-ins: 1960
In many Southern towns, facilities, such as lunch counters in department stores, were segregated. Some young black and white people decided to protest against this arrangement.
In February 1960, the first sit-in occurred at the white lunch counter at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC. At this store, blacks would be served take-aways, but were not allowed to sit and eat. On the day in question, four black students sat down at the counter and refused to move until they were served, which they were not. They stayed until closing time. The sit-in continued daily, with more students joining in, and soon spread to other stores and to other towns across the South.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Sit-ins: 1960
The Nashville students were trained in non-violence and ignored insults and other provocative behavior from disapproving whites. Eventually, after about two weeks of sit-ins, the demonstrators were attacked by some whites and arrested. They were sentenced to about a month in prison, nevertheless, the sit-ins continued.
At Easter 1960, the civil rights activists in Nashville launched a boycott for white-owned downtown businesses. This action spread to many other cities and was very well supported by black people. After the house of a prominent black lawyer was bombed, about 4 000 black people marched through the town. Faced with this public pressure, the mayor, Ben West, came out publicly in support of the principle of desegregated facilities.
Soon lunch counters in Nashville and many other Southern towns were desegregated. This particular sit-in movement had proved highly successful. Similar protests that occurred segregated facilities were read-ins at libraries, wade-ins at public pools, play-ins at parks and kneel-ins at churches.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: The March on Washington, August 1963
MLK Jr and other CRM leaders felt that the time had come to pressure the federal government for change. They decided to organise a massive march on Washington DC, the nation’s capital. On 28 August 1963, perhaps 250 000 people, black and white, converged on Washington and marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, to appeal for jobs, civil rights and equality for all.
Famous folk singers like Bob Dylan, among others, sang at the march, and MLK Jr delivered his most famous speech, I have a dream.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Birmingham Campaign, 1963
Birmingham, Alabama, was a fiercely racist and segregationist Southern city. Its Commissioner for Public Safety, Eugene Connor, was fully prepared to use violence to uphold segregation in Birmingham, as the Freedom Riders ha experienced in 1961.
Leaders of the SCLC, including MLK Jr, decided to target Birmingham in a special civil disobedience campaign. The campaign aimed at local white businesses with sit-ins and marches to try to have facilities desegregated and improve job opportunities for blacks. Hundreds were arrested and jailed, including King. While in jail, he wrote what become known as his Letter from Birmingham Jail, in response to a letter to the press signed by eight respected local white ministers, criticising the demonstrations. He defended the civil disobedience campaign.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Birmingham Campaign, 1963
In May 1963, black schoolchildren were involved in the campaign, known as the children’s crusade. Hundreds were arrested. Eventually, E Connor lost his patience and turned police dogs and high-pressure what hoses on the demonstrators. The television and newspaper images shocked the nation and the world. Street fighting broke out between blacks and whites, and a wave of bombings on black targets followed.
On June 11 1962, President John F Kennedy addressed the nation on television. He proposed that a new Civil Rights bill be put to Congress, aimed at ending segregation in Southern schools, discrimination in job opportunities and black disenfranchisement.
The success of the Birmingham campaign succeeded in bringing black demonstrators out on the streets across the South. 50 Cities introduced desegregation measures. The CRM became a mass movement, led by MLK Jr,
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Freedom Summer, 1964
The Freedom Summer of 1964 was a campaign mainly of Northern blacks and whites who travelled to the South to encourage blacks to register as voters. It focused on Mississippi. probably the most racist of Southern states. A boycott of white-owned businesses in Jackson, Mississippi was launched.
In June 1964, Freedom Summer was announced by CORE as a campaign for Freedom Schools and voter registration. Community centers and alternative schools teaching black history were set up. On 21 June, three volunteers, disappeared. On 4 August, their bodies were discovered. They had been shot and the black volunteer was severely beaten. They were buried separately because Mississippi laws required that blacks and whites be segregated, even in cemeteries.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Selma-Montgomery Marches
For years, black people in Selma, Alabama had tried unsuccessfully to register as voters. Sometimes they were prevented by force. In February 1965 a march took place in neighboring Marion, These participants were attacked by Alabama state troopers. A young man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, trying to protect his mother was shot at point blank range and died eight days later.
The CRM leaders decided on a symbolic march in protest from Selma to Montgomery. Governor George C Wallace banned the march, but on Sunday 7 March 1965, about 600 marchers proceeded towards Montgomery. They were stopped on a bridge on the outskirts of Selma by state troopers who beat and tear-gassed them and charged them down on horses. These scenes of violence were broadcast across the US and caused national shock and outrage.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Selma-Montgomery Marches
Countrywide, hundreds of people came to show sympathy with the black people of Selma. A planned second march for Tuesday, 9 March was banned by a federal judge. People, including prominent people, marched out to the same bridge where the attacks had occurred on the Sunday. When they confronted the state troopers, they knelt to pray and were then led back into Selma by MLK. That night, a white minister, James Reeb, one of the marchers, was attacked and clubbed by white segregationists. He died to days later, this caused a national outcry.
In July 1964, a Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B Johnson. It made discrimination on the basis of racial, ethnic, national, religious and gender identity illegal. On 15 March 1965, President Johnson announced to Congress his government’s intention to introduce a comprehensive Voting Rights bill. In his speech, he quoted the most famous CRM song, therefore publicly identifying himself with its cause.
Forms of Protest through Civil Disobedience: Selma-Montgomery Marches
On 16 March 1965, a federal judge declared the proposed Selma-Montgomery march legal. On 21 March it began with thousands of people participating and finally reached Montgomery five days later some 25 000 marchers in place, including folk singer Joan Baez, and MLK.
On 6 August 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed by President Johnson, after being passed by the US Congress. It made illegal any discriminatory practices in the registration of voters, and provided for monitoring by the federal government to ensure that its terms were honored. The result was that thousands of black voters across the South were able to register securely as voters.
Case Study; School desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas
In 1954, in the case of Brown vs the Board of Education, the US Supreme Court ruled that separate facilities for whites and blacks were unconstitutional. This meant that schools and universities would have to be desegregated
