Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement

  • The Kerner Commission- which President Johnsonhad appointed to study the causes of urban violence, issued its 200,000-word report.
  • The report called for the nation to create new jobs, construct new housing, and end de facto segregation in order to wipe out the destructive ghetto environment.
  • Congress passed the most important civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, including the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which ended discrimination in housing.
  • After school segregation ended the number of African American who finished high school and who went to college increased significantly, this led to better jobs and business opportunities.
  • Another accomplishment was to give African Americans greater pride in their racial identity.
  • By 1970, an estimated two-thirds of eligible African Americans were registered to vote.
  • In 1970s the challenges for the movement changed, the issues it confronted- housing and job discrimination, education inequality, poverty, and racism- involved the difficult task of changing people’s attitudes and behavior.
  • To help equalize education and job opportunities, the government in the 1960s began to promote affirmative action, this involve making special efforts to hire or enroll groups that have suffered discrimination.
  • Many colleges and almost all companies that do business with federal government adopted such programs.

New Leaders Voice Discontent

  • Malcolm X- African American Leader who urged his followers to take control

African American Solidarity

  • Nation of Islam- black Muslims (Malcolm X joins this group after being imprisoned)
  • Elijah Muhammad leader of Nation of Islam
  • Malcolm X becomes Islamic preacher
  • Overall message is racial pride of African Americans (racial superiority)
  • Malcolm X gets a lot of press because he is very controversial

Ballots or Bullets

  • March 1974 Malcolm breaks with Elijah Muhammad for reasons concerning strategy and doctrine
  • On pilgrimage to Mecca he learns racial equality and begins to preach equality as he returns to the United States
  • Shot and killed on February 21, 1965- 39 years old

Black Power

  • James Meredith plans “walk against fear” but is shot by white supremacist on the way, can not continue
  • Martin Luther King of SCLC, Floyd McKissick of CORE, and Stokely Carmichael of SNCC lead their followers in a march to finish what Meredith had started
  • SNCC and CORE members were might more militant and angry than the followers of MLK- conflict ensued
  • Black power- defined by Carmichael, black define their own goals and lead their own organizations

Black Panthers

  • Black Panthers- founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale made to fight police brutality in the ghetto
  • Wanted full employment, decent housing, exempt from military

The Segregation System

  • Fourteenth Amendment guarantees all Americans equal treatment under the law.
  • Events of World War II set stage for civil rights movement:

1. Labor shortage opened new job opportunities for African Americans, Latinos, and white women.

2. One million African Americans served in the armed forces which ended their discriminatory policies.

3. Civil rights organizations actively campaigned for African-American voting rights and challenges Jim Crows laws.

Challenging Segregation in Court

  • Thurgood Marshall- placed a team of his best law students under his direction.
  • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka- a case in which the Supremem Court ruled that “separate but equal” education for black and white students was unconstitutional.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

  • Rosa Parks- a seamstress and an NAACP officer, took a seat in the front row of the colored section of a bus. She refused to move when the bus driver told her that he was going to call the police on her if she did not move.
  • Martin Luther King Jr.- lead Montgomery Improvement Association to organize boycott.
  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference- carries on nonviolent crusades against the evils of second-class citizenship.
  • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)- protest group that hopes to harness the energy of student protesters.
  • Sit-ins- African American protesters sat down at segregated lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served.

De facto segregation: racial separation established by practice and custom, not by law

De jure segregation: racial separation established by law

African Americans Seek Greater Equality

  • Common theme of civil rights groups in early 1960s:\
  • Calls for a newfound pride in black identity
  • Commitment to change the social and economic structures that kept people in lives of poverty
  • 1965: civil rights groups drifted apart
  • Attention directed north where African Americans faced not legal segregation but deeply entrenched and oppressive racial prejudice
  • Segregation formed in North was de facto segregation, which is harder to fight than de jure segregation
  • De facto segregation intensified after African Americans migrated to northern cities during and after World War 2.
  • White flight: great number of whites moved out of the cities to the nearby suburbs
  • Mid 11960s-
  • Most African Americans
  • Lived in decaying slums
  • Paying rent to landlords who didn’t comply with housing and health ordinance
  • Schools for African American kids deteriorated with the neighborhood
  • Unemployment was more than twice as high as whites
  • Angry at brutal treatment received from mostly white police in community
  • Clashes between white authority and black civilians spread fast
  • NYC- July 1964- encounter with white police and black civilians leads to 15 year old student’s death- sparks a race riot in Harlem
  • August 11, 1965- 5 days after voting rights act into law- race riot in watts, California- 34 dead, hundreds of millions of dollars in property destruction
  • 1966- even more racial disturbances
  • 1967- riots and violent clashes took place in 100+ cities
  • Q: why would blacks turn to violence after winning so many victories in the south?
  • A: African Americans wanted and needed economic equality of opportunities in jobs, housing, and education
  • 1966-
  • Late July- MLK led demonstrators through Chicago- angry whites threw rocks and bottles
  • August 5th- hostile whites stoned MLK while he led 600 marchers
  • MLK left Chicago without accomplishing anything, but vowed to return
  • Before riots of 1964- President Johnson announced his war on poverty- The Great Society- program to help impoverished Americans, but flow of money was redirected to fund the war in Vietnam
  • 1967- MLK: “the Great Society has been shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam”