What was the Impact of Black Americans's Fight for Civil Rights (1955-1980) Flashcards
Why was Rosa Parks chosen as NAACP’s case leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and not people that went before her
There were 2 women who protested before Rosa Parks - one was an unmarried pregnant 15 year old and the other was poor with an alcoholic father - Rosa Parks was a dignified and respectable 42 year old woman who was a better look for the NAACP and boycott
What did Rosa Parks do to get arrested and when
1st December 1955, she refused to move from the front of the bus although black people were supposed to give up their seat at the front to white people
What group was set up to organise the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, what day were they set up and who was their leader
- Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)
- Set up 2nd December 1955
- Led by a local Baptist minister called MLK
What did the MIA do for the Montgomery Bus Boycott (3 things)
- Began on 5/12/1955
- Organised taxis to get black people to work instead of the bus
- Publicised leaflets informing others about the boycott
What was the Local Impact of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts (3 facts)
- Lasted for 380 days
- Of the 75% of previous bus users who were black, 90% took part in the boycott
- The government started to fine taxi drivers for accepting fares
What was the National Impact of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts (1 law)
- 13th November 1956, buses were nationally desegregated
How did white people react to bus desegregation (2 facts)
Angry:
- Firebombed MLK’s house
- Sniped black people in formerly white seats, wounding a pregnant woman
What group did MLK set up in 1957 and what did they do
SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) who advocated for non-violent protest
What were MLK’s 3 main non-violent protest rules in order to create the best media impression
- Never be rude or aggressive as the image of a violent black person harms the cause
- Getting arrested, and going with them peacefully, was good publicity - MLK taught sit-ins campaigners to go limp when touched by police
- Accept as many white people as possible on your protests
Describe the events of Little Rock Central High School
In 1957, 9 black students were accepted to the school for the first time, against the will of the school governer, Orval Faubus. On the first day of school, 4/9/1957, Faubus brought in the Arkansas National Guard to stop the students going in. 8 children went by car, but Elizabeth Eckford went by herself. At the school, she was met with a screaming mob demanding she got lynched, and Eckford bravely walked through all of them to get back to her bus stop after the Arkansas National Guard denied her entry
Describe the impact of the events of Little Rock High (4)
- There were 250 reporters present who showed the shocking events and anger of the white mob across national media
- MLK requested Eisenhower take action about it, arguing it was a bad look for his Republican Government
- Eisenhower sent in federal troops to let the students safely go to school, but the students were bullied and threatened all year
- Little Rock Central High School was shut by Fauvus for the next school year due to bad press, but it eventually reopened and reintegrated
Describe the Greensboro sit ins (and date)
-1st February 1960, four black students went into a Greensboro department store, and waited to be served at a white-only lunch counter. They waited from lunch until the store shut.
- The next day they came back and did it again
- The next day, about 30 students joined them
- The next day, almost all the seats were filled by black people
- White people came to heckle, so the media publicised images and videos of black people being respectful and well dressed whilst being yelled at and having food poured on them by white people. This made the black people seem the victims and white people the oppressors to people reading the news or watching TV
What does the SNCC stand for, what does it stand for and when was it set up (DDMMYYYY)
The SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) was set up on the 15th April 1960 to encourage and train for non-violent direct action
What were two risky things that SNCC did to politicse black people in racist areas
- Sent out ‘Field Secretaries’ to live in the Deep South who encouraged voter registration amongst black people
- Took peaceful protests into violent areas to try and cause anger and potentially get a headlining story from it which would show black people as victims
Describe the Freedom Rides
- A series of bus rides organised by CORE and the SNCC to test whether bus toilets had been desegregated, which they legally should have been. They hoped to provoke a reaction for using now desegregated toilets in the deep south
- The first two buses were attacked and riders were beaten up
- At Anniston, Alabama, one bus was changed by a horde of 50 angry cars (including police), before it was firebombed
- 3 Freedom riders died in total
Describe the campaign for the desegregation of Birmingham, Alabama
- The city was notoriously racist and was nicknamed ‘Bombingham’ for how often black homes, businesses and churches were firebombed
- MLK led a campaign there from the 3rd April 1963 to desegregate the town
- The first tactic was to fill the jails, which were full by the end of the month
- Children led a march in Birmingham, which led the racist chief of polcie, ‘Bull’ Connor, to use firehoses and dogs to injure the children, which caused national shock
What was the impact of the Birmingham Campaign 1963
- National media was shocked by the racism of Bull Connor
- Encouraged Kennedy to press forward on civil rights
- Before Birmingham, 1962, 4% saw race relations as the most pressing US matter. After Birmingham, it was 42%
What was the Washington March 1963
A march in Washington DC in 1963 with over 250,000 attendees demanding racial equality. Where the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech took place
What was the Freedom Summer 1964
- As 1964 was an election year, the SNCC wanted a rise in black voters in the South, and sent 45 volunteers (mostly young white and afford to pay travel and bail) to Mississippi to train black people to pass the tests to become voters.
- White residents were furious, and by the end of the summer, there were 6 volunteers murdered, 35 shootings and countless beatings
- of the 17,000 attempted black voters in Mississippi, only 1,600 were accepted
Describe the life of Malcolm X
- Was born in Detroit, where his father was murdered by racist white people
- He became an advocate for violent protest, believing it was the only effective method for change
- As he grew older, he started to deradicalise
- He was assassinated in 1965
Why did Civil Rights begin to split in 1965
There was a conflict between MLK’s non violent methods and the more aggressive Black Power movement
What year was the Black Panther Movement set up, and what was it
1966, inspired by the more violent SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael’s panther imagery used in 1965
It was a group who were seen as dangerous as they had uniforms and guns, but mostly worked in black communities and helped out in ways like providing black children free breakfast
What was the main difference between MLKs movement and the Black Power movement
Black Power was made up of thousands of small, fragmented groups, so worked well locally but was less coherent nationally than MLK’s united cause
How did Black Power influence thinking amongst many black civil rights groups
It began to radicalise groups like the NAACP, as well as trade unions who became more demanding
Name 3 cities in the USA that experienced riots from black people in 1964 about low standards of life
New York, Chicago, Philadelphia
What was the Northern Crusade and what year
1966
MLK decided to focus on the North USA, focusing on improving working conditions in Chicago. As it got less media attention, the movement petered out, and was considered by some a failure due to a lack of change it brought
What day did MLK die and how
4th April 1968, he was assassinated whilst supporting a strike for sanitation for workers in Memphis
What was the name of the order JFK passed in 1962 banning discrimination in the form of allocating federal housing based on race
Executive Order 1106
What was the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Bans discriminating someone for their religion, gender, nationality or, most importantly for black people, race
Name 3 ways black lives had changed from 1961 to 1980, with a key fact for each
- Development of a black upper and middle class (far more black politicians at all levels)
- Black people formed better socioeconomically (socioeconomic employment score of black people went from 16 -> 31 for men and 13 -> 36 for women from 1940-1980)
- More black Americans voted. 58.2% of black Americans were registered to vote in 1968
What was the main limiting factor to the civil rights success after 1964
After the Civil Rights Act, many people felt Civil Rights had been ‘solved’, and people focused more on Vietnam instead
What happened to the civil rights movement after the death of MLK
It died down without an equally good spokesman
What happened to the black lower class in the 1970s
They got little support and became even poorer and many started to turn to crime out of necessity - In 1980, 75% of black dropouts had a criminal record, and gangs started to thrive, especially in NY, Chicago and LA
