The development of the civil rights movement, 1954-60

Question 1

What treatments did black Americans face?

Answer 1

Across the USA, black Americans faced negative treatment such as racial segregation and discrimination. While discrimination and inequality was widespread in the North, in the South this was often the law. Jim Crow laws enforced segregation in public parks, cinemas, restaurants, schools, universities and on public transport.

Question 2

What were attitudes like in the ‘Deep South’?

Answer 2

They held very traditional and conservative views.

Question 3

Why do laws vary between states?

Answer 3

The US has a federal system of government. This means that while the constitution gives federal government some powers, it also gives states the right to pass many of their own laws.

Question 4

What was the Ku Klux Klan?

Answer 4

A group who persecuted Jews, Catholics, communists, and anyone who was not white, especially African Americans. They put burning crosses in front of houses, blew up homes and murdered people.

Question 5

How many black Americans could vote in the South?

Answer 5

Before the war, around 3% could vote, while in 1956 about 20% were registered to vote.

Question 6

Why were there so few black Americans registered to vote?

Answer 6

A variety of unofficial and official methods:

• Employers threatened to sack black employees
• White gangs gathered outside registration and voting places
• Black campaigners and the lawyers and activists who went to court to defend the right to vote frequently faced beatings or murder
• States set their own rules for holding elections
• unfair voting registration tests, including literacy tests, that would be biased towards white people

Question 7

What factors contributed to the growth of the civil rights movement in the 1950s?

Answer 7

Factors uncluded:

• Better education for black people, led to more black professionals
• Migration meant that many poor black people moved North and liberal whites moved south
• Southern towns grew, giving black people new job opportunities in industry
• The Cold War made the government sensitive to international critiscim
• New ideas disproved the idea that some races were genetically inferior
• Television brought events to the living room - rasicm could not be ignored across the USA.

Question 8

What nationwide civil rights organisations were there in the 1950s?

Answer 8

NAACP - National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (established in 1909)
CORE - Congress of Racial Equality (established in 1942)

Question 9

What groups campaigned in the south?

Answer 9

Local groups were often church based. Some local groups did not oppose segregation but wanted equal standards. These groups were important in helping develop tactics of non- violent direct action.

Question 10

How did NAACP campaign in civil rights?

Answer 10

Focussed on campaigning through the courts.

Question 11

What was Plessy v. Ferguson?

Answer 11

A decision by the US Supreme Court in 1896 that declared segregation ws allowed under the constitution, as it was ‘separate but equal’. This allowed for Jim Crow laws.

Question 12

How did the NAACP campaign against Plessy?

Answer 12

They provided evidence that facilities were not equal. They argued facilities were not the same as equal opportunites because they reinforced racial inferiority.

Question 13

How did CORE campaign against segregation?

Answer 13

CORE campaigns used non-violent direct action protests such as boycotts, pickets and sit-ins of segregated places (e.g. lunch counters, public transport).

Question 14

How did church organisations campaign for civil rights?

Answer 14

Black American churches were important centres of most black communities in the South. Black Clergymen were often community leaders and organisers, and were involved in civil rights movements because:

• Most were paid by the church so would not lose their jobs if they spoke against white racism.
• They were educated and good public speakers
• They were good negotiators
• They had their own network of contacts in the black community.
• They could persuade and gain support.
• They sometimes used non-violent direct action, but stressed forgiving opponents

Question 15

What opposition did the civil rights movement face in the south?

Answer 15

They face violent opposition from the KKK as well as from white Southern churches who used the bible to justify segregation.

Question 16

When and where was Emmett Till murdered?

Answer 16

The 14 year old boy from Chicago was murdered in August 1955 in MIssissippi.

Question 17

What was the impact of Till’s murder?

Answer 17

Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley, insisted on an open casket with an open viewig of her son’s battered body in the funeral home. This led to huge publicity.

Question 18

What was the Brown v. Topeka case

Answer 18

NAACP lawyers brought several school desgregation and took them to the US Supreme Court as Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1952. ON 17th May 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that the Plessy ruling should no longer apply so that ‘separate but equal’ could no longer be used to justify segregated education.

Question 19

What was the impact of Brown?

Answer 19

• The Brown case reversed Plessy, sparking off many more desegregation campaigns.
• In 1955, another Supreme Court case ruled that desgregation should be carried out by states ‘with all deliberate speed’.
• In the Deep South progress was slower. Governors of some states such as Kansas and Mississippi did not accept desegregation. Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia demanded ‘massive resistance’ by states using tactics such as closing schools that tried to desgregate.

Question 20

What happened at Little Rock High School in 1957?

Answer 20

Little Rock, Arkansas, was desegregating Central High School in 1957. Due to threats and discrimination, only 9 students were willing to go at the start of the school year. Governor Orval Faubus sent 250 state troopers to ‘keep the peace’ by stopping black students from entering on the first day of school. On the second day, Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine students, was shouted at by a white mob as she walked ito the school.

Question 21

What was the significance of Little Rock?

Answer 21

Photographs of Eckford and the white mob were on the newspapers worldwide with the Little Rock Nine becoming famous. The federal government became embarrassed by the publicity. As a result:

• President Eisenhower sent 1000 federal troops to force Kansas to obey the law.
• Governor Faubus’ state troops were put under federal control using a presidential order.
• At the end of the school year, Governor Faubus closed every Little Rock school for the next school year in order to avoid integration.
• Parents forced schools to re open as integrated in September 1959

Question 22

What was the WCC?

Answer 22

The Whites Citizens’ Council (WCC) was set up after the Brown ruling, grew rapidly in the late 1590s. They campaigned against desegregation and carried out threats and violent actions against black families and civil rights activists.

Question 23

Who was the figure head of the Montgomery bus boycott? And why?

Answer 23

Rosa Parks was a respectable, middle aged, married woman who was well regarded in the black community. There was nothing disreputable about her that opponents could use to make her look bad.

Question 24

What action was taken due to Parks’ arrest?

Answer 24

The WPC (Women’s Political Council) called for a one-day bus boycott on 5th December 1955. 90% of black passengers boycotted the bus company.

Question 25

What were the aims of the MIA?

Answer 25

The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was set up on 5th December 1955. It aimed to support the bus boycott and campaign for improvements demanded by the WPC.

Question 26

Who was chosen as leader of the MIA?

Answer 26

Martin Luther King

Question 27

When did the Montgomery Bus Boycott take place?

Answer 27

5th December 1955 - 20th December 1956.

Question 28

Why was the boycott successful?

Answer 28

Overall it was a combination of organisation, commitment, publicity and the leadership of MLK and E.D Nixon (NAACP member helped organise the boycott and went on fundraising tours).

Question 29

Why was the boycott important?

Answer 29

For several reasons:

• Showed black people could organise mass resistance
• Attracted widespread support and publicity
• Made MLK a well known figure
• Showed how non-violent direct action could work.

Question 30

How did the federal government respond to the boycott?

Answer 30

President Eisenhower introduced the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

Question 31

How effective was the 1957 Civil Rights Act?

Answer 31

It was a struggle to pass as Dixiecrats opposed the bill. When it eventually passed on 9th September 1957, it allowed the federal government to prosecute states that did not respect black voting rights. However, the trials had to take place in the states themselves and all-white juries were unlikely to do anything.

Question 32

What was the SCLC?

Answer 32

The Southern Christian Leadership Council(SCLC) was set up in January 1957 with MLK as leader. It wanted an end to all segregation and campaigned to increase black voter registration by using non-violent direct action, publicity and nationwide protests.