Civil Rights Movement post-1965 Flashcards
Going West: Watts (1965)
- “Class revolt of underprivileged against privileged… the main issue is economic.” - MLK
Freedom was before in terms of segregation, now it referred to economic equality - MLK turned to socialism, calling for a better distribution of wealth
- Far larger riots than those in New York, 1964
Showed very clearly the little effect the recent civil rights legislations had on urban blacks
Roughly 4 million moved to cities in the West and North - Could vote in LA, yet many lived in large ghettos that were far more segregated than any cities in the south
- Unemployment, inadequate public transport → couldn’t go to the outer suburbs where jobs were available, massive overcrowding, poorly educated, poor living conditions, hospital not available
- This pattern of urban poverty was replicated in the North and West, so was segregated housing + all white neighborhoods
Going North: Chicago Freedom Movement (1966)
- Struggle was more economic
- MLK sought a southern ghetto of which the SCLC could concentrate
Choose chicago because:
- USA’s second largest city (3 million people, 700,000 of whom were black)
- Black chicagoans in the South Side and West Side ghettos suffered severe unemployment, housing and education problems
- Other great northern cities were shut off to MLK - told to keep out of NYC by Harlem Congressman - - - Adam layton Powell and out of PHillidelpjiia by local NAACP leader → SCLC tendency to come and take over
- Chicago’s history of sporadic protest → wade ins, 1961: protest against customary segregation of South Side Beach
- Religious community supported CRM
- Mayor Daley relied heavily on black voters and was not racist → could get things done if he won
- 1966: SCLC focused on discrimination in housing sales, which stopped black moving out of the ghettos’ slums
- Campaign was not going well, SCLC and local activists failed to get on and the lack of a clearly defined issue did not help.
- Negotiations with Mayor Daley - unproductive
- Chicago whites feared black neighbors would hit property values, increase frame and threaten cultural homogeneity → 500 black marchers entered white neighborhood to publicize and were greeted with considerable violence
- Autumn 1966: departed Chicago, leaving Jesse Jackson in charge of OPeration Breadbasket
- Daley agreed to promote integrated housing in Chicago, but the agreement was mere a ‘paper victory’
- Local community felt SCLC had sold out, hopelessness
- Poor race relations only made worse
- Many disillusioned → turned to Black Power
Reasons for failure:
- lack of planning, lack of grassroots, not fit for long-term, NAACP/local black curches/black conservatives were unhelpful
- Landlords of slums (who were black) resented MLK’s criticism of slums
- SCLC never called for outside help like in Selma
- slum landlords resented MLK
- not much publicity
Back Home: Meredith March (1966)
- James Meredith began a 220-mile walk from - - - Memphis to Mississippi’s capital Jackson, to encourage black people to vote
- When he was shot on the second day and temporarily immobilized, black organizations declared that they would continue his walk
- King and 20 other set of, 400 new marchers by the third day including the new SNCC leader Stokley Carmichael
DIVISION OF THE MEREDITH MARCH
- Black division damaged the march
- NAACP wanted it to focus national attention on a new civil rights bill and withdrew when Carmicheal criticized the bill
- King welcomed white participants, SNCC rejected them
- SNCC and CORE = increasingly militant (following the freedom summer)
- Carmichael was arrested and urged burning “every courthouse in Mississippi” and urged “black power”
- King feared this would drive away white sympathizers and encourage a white backlash
- King tired of violence, Johnson refused to send in federal troops
- Meredith felt excluded and began a march of his own - some SCLC members joined him to disguise the split
SIGNIFICANCE OF MARCH
- NAACP could no longer cooperate with SNCC or SCLC
- Blacks close to public split
- Now it seemed that leadership might pass into the hands of extremists such as Carmicheal who rejected non-violence
Where do we go from here? To Washington for the Poor People’s Campaign (1968) and Mephis, Tennessee (1968)
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
- In King’s book Where do we go from here? He highlights the problem: giving blacks the vote had not cost money, but improving ghettos would be expensive
- No one wanted higher taxation
- He urged demonstrations to seek affirmative action: positive discrimination to help those who have had a disadvantageous start in life
- Also urged blacks to broaden their movement and bring HIspanics, Native Americans and poor whites into the war on poverty
THE POOR PEOPLE’S CAMPAIGN, 1968
- King planned to bring the poor together to camp out in Washington, DC
- His final strategy (to represent a wider constituency) and his final tactics (yet another protest) were, in a climate of the time, unwise and unrealistic - fail
MEMPHIS, 1968
- King asked to visit Memphis to support black sanitation workers faced with discrimination from city authorities
- King joined a protest march
- When a radical black power minority got violent, - King was exhausted, confused, frightened, etc → within hours, he was dead
ASSASINATION AFTERMATH
- The asasination triggered ghetto riots across the US
- CR leaders called for calm, although Carmicheal sought a more empathetic response
- Mixed response from the white USA - some grief, some guilt, some joy
- President Johnson declared a day of national mourning and Congress was inspired to pass the Fair Housing Act which became a somewhat sanitized hero, whose radicalism and faults were swept under the rug
Black Panthers (1966)
- Established 1966 by Huey and Bobby Seale
- AIMS: to be part of global non-white working-class struggle; to gain compensation for slavery, freedom for jailed blacks convicted by white juries, exemption from military service, UN supervised referendum of black africans to determine the will of black people re national destiny, expose and therefore reduce police brutality, improvements to ghetto living conditions
- METHODS: forged links with liberation movements in Africa, Asia and South America and aligned themselves with other radical US groups (Mexican Brown Berets); wore distinctive paramilitary uniform; set up ghetto clinics focusing on self-help
followed police cars in the ghettos (using 2nd amendment rights to carry arms) - ACHIEVMENTS: won support of a number of local communities; ghetto clinics advised on heath, welfare and legal rights; Southern California chapter’s Free Breakfast Programme provided 1700 meals weekly to poor; exposed police brutality and harassment… BUT more ambitious aims were not realized, especially as it became increasingly involved in a number of violent shoot-outs.
- arguably peaked in the 70s, with a swift decline - mirrors the fall of black power
- Division: badly organized, no coherent plan for change
- Financial pressures: no aid from white liberals
- unrealistic goals to have a seperate black state, their violence alienated them from potential supporters
