Civil Rights Commission Near White House Original Photo1958 Vintage

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176299957979 CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION NEAR WHITE HOUSE ORIGINAL PHOTO1958 VINTAGE. A VERY RARE APPROXIMATELY 7 X 9 1/4 INCH 1958 PHOTO OF THE NEW CIVIL COMMISSION AT THE WHITE HOUSE TO SAFEGUARD MINORITY RIGHTS
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is a bipartisan, independent commission of the United States federal government, created in 1957, that is charged with the responsibility for investigating, reporting on, and making recommendations concerning civil rights issues in the United States. Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 1975d, all statutory authority for the commission terminated on September 30, 1996, and Congress has not passed new legislation, but has continued to pass appropriations.[1][2] Contents 1 Commissioners 2 History 2.1 List of Chairpersons, 1958–present 3 Commission structure 4 Commission operations 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links Commissioners The commission is composed of eight commissioners. Four are appointed by the President of the United States, two by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate (upon the recommendations of the Senate majority leader and minority leader), and two by the Speaker of the House of Representatives (upon the recommendations of the House majority leader and minority leader).[3] As of January 2020, the members of the commission are:[4][5] Presidential appointees (2D, 2 vacancies): Catherine E. Lhamon, Chair (D) – Former assistant secretary of education for civil rights (appointed by President Barack Obama, December 2016). Debo P. Adegbile (D) – Partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (appointed by President Obama, December 2016). 2 vacancies Senate appointees (1D, 1I): Gail Heriot (I) – University of San Diego law professor; alternate delegate to the 2000 Republican Convention (first appointed by President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd, February 2007; reappointed by President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy, December 2013). David Kladney (D) – Lawyer in private solo practice in Reno, Nevada (appointed by President Pro Tempore Daniel Inouye, January 2011; reappointed by President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch, November 2016). House appointees (1D, 1R): Peter N. Kirsanow (R) – Partner at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Arnoff in Cleveland, Ohio; former member of the National Labor Relations Board (first appointed by President George W. Bush, December 2006; reappointed by Speaker John Boehner, 2013). Michael Yaki (D) – San Francisco attorney and former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (first appointed by Speaker Dennis Hastert 2005 to fill an unexpired term, and then reappointed, 2006; reappointed by Speaker Boehner, April 2011; reappointed by Speaker Paul Ryan, January 2017). History The commission was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to a recommendation by an ad hoc President's Committee on Civil Rights. In calling for a permanent commission, that committee stated: In a democratic society, the systematic, critical review of social needs and public policy is a fundamental necessity. This is especially true of a field like civil rights, where the problems are enduring, and range widely [and where] ... a temporary, sporadic approach can never finally solve these problems. Nowhere in the federal government in there an agency charged with the continuous appraisal of the status of civil rights, and the efficiency of the machinery with which we hope to improve that status. ... A permanent Commission could perform an invaluable function by collecting data. ... Ultimately, this would make possible a periodic audit of the extent to which our civil rights are secure. ... [The Commission should also] serve[] as a clearing house and focus of coordination for the many private, state, and local agencies working in the civil rights field, [and thus] would be invaluable to them and to the federal government. A permanent Commission on Civil Rights should point all of its work toward regular reports which would include recommendations for action in ensuing periods. It should lay plans for dealing with broad civil rights problems. ... It should also investigate and make recommendations with respect to special civil rights problems.[6] As then-Senator and Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson put it, the Commission's task is to "gather facts instead of charges. ... [I]t can sift out the truth from the fancies; and it can return with recommendations which will be of assistance to reasonable men." Since the 1957 Act, the Commission has been re-authorized and re-configured by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Acts of 1983 and 1991 and the Civil Rights Commission Amendments Act of 1994. Soon after the passage of the 1957 Act, the then-six-member, bipartisan Commission, consisting of John A. Hannah, President of Michigan State University; Robert Storey, Dean of the Southern Methodist University Law School; Father Theodore Hesburgh, President of the University of Notre Dame; John Stewart Battle, former governor of Virginia; Ernest Wilkins, a Department of Labor attorney; and Doyle E. Carlton, former governor of Florida, set about to assemble a record. Their first project was to assess the administration of voter registration and elections in Montgomery, Alabama. But they immediately ran into resistance. Circuit Judge George C. Wallace, who was elected as governor in support of white supremacy, ordered voter registration records to be impounded. "They are not going to get the records," he said. "And if any agent of the Civil Rights Commission comes down to get them, they will be locked up. ... I repeat, I will jail any Civil Rights Commission agent who attempts to get the records." The hearing went forward with no shortage of evidence. Witness after witness testified to inappropriate interference with his or her right to vote. The Commissioners spent the night at Maxwell Air Base, because all the city's hotels were segregated. From there, the Commission went on to hold hearings on the implementation of Brown v. Board of Education in Nashville, Tennessee and on housing discrimination in Atlanta, Chicago and New York. The facts gathered in these and other hearings along with the Commission's recommendations were presented not just to Congress and the President but the American people generally, and they become part of the foundation upon which the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were built.[7] A revolution in public opinion occurred during the late 1950s and early 1960s on issues of civil rights. The activities and reports of the Commission on Civil Rights contributed to that change. In 1956, the year before the 1957 Act, less than half of white Americans agreed with the statement, "White students and Negro students should go to the same schools." By 1963, the year before the 1964 Act, that figure had jumped to 62%. In 1956, a healthy majority of white Americans—60%—opposed "separate sections for Negroes on streetcars and buses."[citation needed] By 1963, the number had grown to 79% opposed—an overwhelming majority. Even in the South, minds were being changed. In 1956, 27% of Southern whites opposed separate sections on public transportation for blacks and whites. By 1963, the number had become a majority of 52%. The change in views about the desirability of a federal law was even more dramatic. As late as July 1963, 49 percent of the total population favored a federal law that would give "all persons, Negro as well as white, the right to be served in public places such as hotels, restaurants, and similar establishments," and 42 percent were opposed. By September of the same year, a majority of 54 percent was in favor, and 38 percent opposed. In February 1964, support had climbed to 61 percent and opposition had declined to 31 percent. In 1977 the Commission produced the report Sex Bias in the U.S. Code.[8] In 1981 President Ronald Reagan, looking to move the commission in a more conservative direction, appointed Clarence M. Pendleton, Jr., as the first black chairman of the Commission. A Howard University graduate, he was a conservative who opposed affirmative action and many of the Commission's activities. Pendleton reduced its staff and programs.[9] In 1983, Reagan attempted to fire three members of the commission. They sued the administration in federal court to stay on. The authorizing legislation stated that a president could only fire a commissioner for "misbehavior in office," and it was clear that the terminations were the result of disagreements over policy. A compromise brokered in the Senate resulted in the current hybrid group of eight, half appointed by the president and half by the Congress, with six-year terms that do not expire with the inauguration of a new president. Since that time the commission has struggled to remain independent, and its agenda has oscillated between liberal and conservative aims as factions among its members have ebbed and waned.[10] The Commission became increasingly polarized under the George W. Bush administration, as conservatives –including Republican appointees on the Commission itself – argued that it no longer served any useful purpose and conducted partisan investigations meant to embarrass Republicans.[11][12] After 2004, when Bush appointed two conservative Commissioners who had recently canceled their Republican Party registrations to the two "independent" seats, obtaining a six-member conservative majority bloc, the Commission dramatically scaled back its activities and canceled several ongoing investigations.[13][12] During the Barack Obama administration, this conservative bloc reversed its position and began using the Commission as a vigorous advocate for conservative interpretations of civil rights issues, such as opposition to the Voting Rights Act and the expansion of federal hate crimes laws.[14] In 2010, Commissioner Abigail Thernstrom, a Republican appointee generally considered part of the Commission's conservative bloc, criticized her colleagues' investigation into the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case, describing it as motivated by a partisan "fantasy ... [that] they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage [President Obama]"[15] and arguing that only "a moron" could believe the Commission's theory that Obama appointees had ordered DoJ attorneys not to protect the voting rights of white people.[16] In October 2010, Michael Yaki, one of the two Democratic commissioners, walked out of a meeting in protest. In doing so, Yaki deprived the panel of a quorum and delayed a vote on a draft report, which Yaki claimed, is unfairly biased against the Obama administration. Yaki described the panel as a "kangaroo court".[17] President Obama eventually appointed two staunch liberals to the Commission in the last days of his administration,[18] keeping the Commission to six Democratic and two Republican appointees.[19] In June 2017 the commission voted unanimously to begin a wide-ranging investigation of the Trump administration's civil rights enforcement practices, and 6–2 along party lines to express their concern about the administration's actions.[19] On September 5, 2007, Commissioner Gail Heriot testified about the agency's value on the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Heriot told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary: If the value of a federal agency could be calculated on a per dollar basis, it would not surprise me to find the Commission on Civil Rights to be among the best investments Congress ever made. My back-of-the-envelope calculation is that the Commission now accounts for less than 1/2000th of 1 percent of the federal budget; back in the late 1950s its size would have been roughly similar. And yet its impact has been dramatic.[20] In 1990, Congress relied on a commission report to enact the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2008, President George W. Bush announced that he would oppose the proposed Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act shortly after the commission issued a report recommending rejection of the bill. In 2018 the Commission reversed its position in a report evaluating the federal government's efforts to meet its trust obligations to Native Americans and Native Hawaiians.[21] List of Chairpersons, 1958–present John A. Hannah, 1958–1969 Theodore Hesburgh, 1969–1972[22] J. Stephen Horn, 1972–1974 (Acting)[23] Arthur S. Flemming, 1974–1981[24] Clarence M. Pendleton, Jr., 1981–1988[25] William B. Allen, 1988–1989[26] Arthur Fletcher, 1990–1993[27] Mary Frances Berry, 1993–2004 Gerald A. Reynolds, 2004–2011 Martin R. Castro, 2011–2016 Catherine E. Lhamon, 2016–present Commission structure The eight commissioners serve six-year staggered terms. Four are appointed by the President, two by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate and two by the Speaker of the House of Representatives. No more than four Commissioners can be of the same political party. In addition, neither the two Senate appointees nor the two House appointees may be of the same political party. With the concurrence of a majority of the Commission's members, the President designates a Chair and a Vice Chair. The Staff Director is also appointed by the President with the concurrence of a majority of the Commissioners. The Commission has appointed 51 State Advisory Committees (SACs) to function as the "eyes and ears" of the Commission in their respective locations. The Commission's enabling legislation authorizes the creation of these SACs and directs the Commission to establish at least one advisory committee in every state and the District of Columbia. Each state committee has a charter that enables it to operate and identifies its members. Each charter is valid for a term of two years, and the committee terminates if the charter is not renewed by the Commission. Each committee has a minimum of eleven members. The SACs are supported by regional offices whose primary function is to assist them in their planning, fact-finding, and reporting activities. Like the Commission, the SACs produce written reports that are based on fact-finding hearings and other public meetings. Commission operations The commission studies alleged discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin. It also studies alleged deprivations of voting rights and discrimination in the administration of justice. Though the commission has no enforcement powers, its commissioners try to enhance the enforcement of federal civil rights laws. Its recommendations often lead to action in Congress.[28] Commissioners hold monthly daylong meetings, including six briefings on subjects, chosen by the commissioners, that involve possible discrimination. Ahead of these meetings, commission staff prepares reports on those subjects and schedules appearances by witnesses. Each year the Commission drafts recommendations that are sent to Congress by September 30.[28] The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was enacted to investigate issues concerning the civil rights of American citizens. Among other provisions, the act provided for creation of a United States Commission on Civil Rights (Commission) as an independent, executive, bipartisan, fact-finding agency. The mission of the Commission was to inform both the President and Congress on implementation of civil rights protections. Currently, the Commission is composed of eight members: four members are appointed by the President and two each by the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House on the recommendations of the Majority and Minority Leaders in each chamber. No more than four members at any one time can be of the same political party. Since 1957, the Commission has been reauthorized a number of times, most recently with passage of the Civil Rights Commission Amendments Act of 1994 (P.L. 103-419), which expired September 30, 1996. However, Congress has appropriated about $9 million each fiscal year since 1995 for the agency. On September 30, 2008, the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009 was enacted into law (P.L. 110-329; H.R. 2638), which provides for the Commission to be funded in FY2009 at the FY2008 enacted funding level of $8.5 million until March 6, 2009. For FY2009, the Bush Administration requested $8.8 million for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which was $300 thousand above the FY2008 funding for the Commission. According to some observers, discrimination has become more subtle since the establishment of the Commission and continues to affect women and certain racial and ethnic minorities, resulting in inequalities that affect income, job status, and educational attainment. These advocates believe that the Commission’s mandate allows it to support special legislative measures to overcome these socioeconomic inequalities. Opponents of this view, however, contend that the purpose of civil rights laws is to ensure equality of opportunity, not to guarantee actual socioeconomic equality among racial and ethnic groups and between the sexes. They state that when the Commission seeks “group preferences and benefits,” it becomes more of an advocate for special interests rather than an impartial monitor of legal equality. For several decades, tensions have increased among advocates of these fundamentally different approaches to addressing the issue of civil rights. When determining whether or on what occasion it is appropriate to consider race, gender, or other factors in forming policy, the issue of civil rights triggers strong beliefs and emotions, making it extremely difficult to reach a consensus on the Commission. As a consequence, some allege that the process for appointing members to the Commission has become a major tool in controlling debate on civil rights and molding public policy on the issue, leading to partisanship that interferes with the agency’s effectiveness. This CRS report will be updated to reflect any legislative activity This is a timeline of the 1954 to 1968 civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for African Americans. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law, ending legally established racial discrimination, and gaining equal access to public facilities, education reform, fair housing, and the ability to vote. Contents 1 1954–1959 1.1 1954 1.2 1955 1.3 1956 1.4 1957 1.5 1958 1.6 1959 2 1960–1968 2.1 1960 2.2 1961 2.3 1962 2.4 1963 2.5 1964 2.6 1965 2.7 1966 2.8 1967 2.9 1968 3 See also 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links 1954–1959 1954 May 3 – In Hernandez v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. May 17 – In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans. and in Bolling v. Sharpe, the U.S. Supreme Court rules against the "separate but equal" doctrine, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson and saying that segregation of public schools is unconstitutional. July 27 – The Charleston, Arkansas school board unanimously votes to end segregation in the school district. Ending segregation for first through twelfth grades, the Charleston school district was the first school district among the former Confederate States to desegregate. The schools opened for the new school year on August 23. July 30 – At a special meeting in Jackson, Mississippi called by Governor Hugh White, T.R.M. Howard of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, along with nearly one hundred other black leaders, publicly refuse to support a segregationist plan to maintain "separate but equal" in exchange for a crash program to increase spending on black schools. September 2 – In Montgomery, Alabama, 23 black children are prevented from attending all-white elementary schools, defying the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling. September 7 – The District of Columbia ends segregated education; Baltimore, Maryland follows suit on September 8. September 15 – Protests by white parents in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia force schools to postpone desegregation another year. September 16 – Mississippi abolishes all public schools with an amendment to its State Constitution; private segregation academies are founded for white students. September 30 – Integration of a high school in Milford, Delaware collapses when white students boycott classes. October 4 – Student demonstrations take place against integration of Washington, DC public schools. October 19 – Federal judge upholds an Oklahoma law requiring African-American candidates to be identified on voting ballots as "negro". October 30 – Desegregation of U.S. Armed Forces said to be complete. Frankie Muse Freeman is the lead attorney for the landmark NAACP case Davis et al. v. the St. Louis Housing Authority, which ended legal racial discrimination in the city's public housing. Constance Baker Motley was an attorney for NAACP: it was unusual to have two women attorneys leading such a high-profile case. 1955 January 15 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10590, establishing the President's Committee on Government Policy to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in Federal employment. January 20 – Demonstrators from CORE and Morgan State University stage a successful sit-in to desegregate Read's Drug Store in Baltimore, Maryland. April 5 – Mississippi passes a law penalizing white students by jail and fines who attend school with blacks. May 7 – NAACP and Regional Council of Negro Leadership activist Reverend George W. Lee is killed in Belzoni, Mississippi. May 31 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in "Brown II" that desegregation must occur with "all deliberate speed". June 8 – University of Oklahoma decides to allow black students. June 23 – Virginia governor and Board of Education decide to continue segregated schools into 1956. June 29 – The NAACP wins a U.S. Supreme Court suit which orders the University of Alabama to admit Autherine Lucy. July 11 – Georgia Board of Education orders that any teacher supporting integration be fired. July 14 – A Federal Appeals Court overturns segregation on Columbia, SC buses. August 1 – Georgia Board of Education fires all black teachers who are members of the NAACP. August 13 – Regional Council of Negro Leadership registration activist Lamar Smith is murdered in Brookhaven, Mississippi. August 28 – Teenager Emmett Till is killed for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi. November 7 – The Interstate Commerce Commission bans bus segregation in interstate travel in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. On the same day, the U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation on public parks and playgrounds. The governor of Georgia responds that his state would "get out of the park business" rather than allow playgrounds to be desegregated. December 1 – Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This occurs nine months after 15-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin became the first to refuse to give up her seat. Colvin's was the legal case which eventually ended the practice in Montgomery. Roy Wilkins becomes the NAACP executive secretary. 1956 January 9 – Virginia voters and representatives decide to fund private schools with state money to maintain segregation. January 16 – FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover writes a rare open letter of complaint directed to civil rights leader Dr. T.R.M. Howard after Howard charged in a speech that the "FBI can pick up pieces of a fallen airplane on the slopes of a Colorado mountain and find the man who caused the crash, but they can't find a white man when he kills a Negro in the South." [1] January 24 – Governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia agree to block integration of schools. February 1 – Virginia legislature passes a resolution that the U.S. Supreme Court integration decision was an "illegal encroachment". February 3 – Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama. Whites riot for days, and she is suspended. Later, she is expelled for her part in filing legal action against the university. February 24 – The policy of Massive Resistance is declared by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. from Virginia. February/March – The Southern Manifesto, opposing integration of schools, is drafted and signed by members of the Congressional delegations of Southern states, including 19 senators and 81 members of the House of Representatives, notably the entire delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. On March 12, it is released to the press. February 13 – Wilmington, Delaware's school board decides to end segregation. February 22 – Ninety black leaders in Montgomery, Alabama are arrested for leading a bus boycott. February 29 – Mississippi legislature declares U.S. Supreme Court integration decision "invalid" in that state. March 1 – Alabama legislature votes to ask for federal funds to deport blacks to northern states. March 12 – U.S. Supreme Court orders the University of Florida to admit a black law school applicant "without delay". March 22 – King sentenced to fine or jail for instigating Montgomery bus boycott, suspended pending appeal. April 23 – U.S. Supreme Court strikes down segregation on buses nationwide. May 26 – Circuit Judge Walter B. Jones issues an injunction prohibiting the NAACP from operating in Alabama. May 28 – The Tallahassee, Florida bus boycott begins. June 5 – The Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) is founded at a mass meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. September 2–11 – Teargas and National Guard used to quell segregationists rioting in Clinton, Tennessee; 12 black students enter high school under Guard protection. Smaller disturbances occur in Mansfield, Texas and Sturgis, Kentucky. September 10 – Two black students are prevented by a mob from entering a junior college in Texarkana, Texas. Schools in Louisville, Kentucky are successfully desegregated. September 12 – Four black children enter an elementary school in Clay, Kentucky under National Guard protection; white students boycott. The school board bars the four again on September 17. October 15 – Integrated athletic or social events are banned in Louisiana. November 13 – In Browder v. Gayle, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Alabama laws requiring segregation of buses. This ruling, together with the ICC's 1955 ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach banning "Jim Crow laws" in bus travel among the states, is a landmark in outlawing "Jim Crow" in bus travel. December 20 – Federal marshals enforce the ruling to desegregate bus systems in Montgomery. December 24 – Blacks in Tallahassee, Florida begin defying segregation on city buses. December 25 – The parsonage in Birmingham, Alabama occupied by Fred Shuttlesworth, movement leader, is bombed. Shuttlesworth receives only minor injuries. December 26 – The ACMHR tests the Browder v. Gayle ruling by riding in the white sections of Birmingham city buses. 22 demonstrators are arrested. Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission formed. Director J. Edgar Hoover orders the FBI to begin the COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt "dissident" groups within the United States. 1957 February 8 – Georgia Senate votes to declare the 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution null and void in that state. February 14 – Southern Christian Leadership Conference is formed; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is named its chairman. April 18 – Florida Senate votes to consider U.S. Supreme Court's desegregation decisions "null and void". May 17 – The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, DC is at the time the largest nonviolent demonstration for civil rights. September 2 – Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, calls out the National Guard to block integration of Little Rock Central High School. September 6 – Federal judge orders Nashville public schools to integrate immediately. September 15 – New York Times reports that in three years since the decision, there has been minimal progress toward integration in four southern states, and no progress at all in seven. September 24 – President Dwight Eisenhower federalizes the National Guard and also orders US Army troops to ensure Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas is integrated. Federal and National Guard troops escort the Little Rock Nine. September 27 – Civil Rights Act of 1957 signed by President Eisenhower. October 7 – The finance minister of Ghana is refused service at a Dover, Delaware restaurant. President Eisenhower hosts him at the White House to apologize October 10. October 9 – Florida legislature votes to close any school if federal troops are sent to enforce integration. October 31 – Officers of NAACP arrested in Little Rock for failing to comply with a new financial disclosure ordinance. November 26 – Texas legislature votes to close any school where federal troops might be sent. 1958 June 29 – Bethel Baptist Church (Birmingham, Alabama) is bombed by Ku Klux Klan members.[2] June 30 – In NAACP v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the NAACP was not required to release membership lists to continue operating in the state. July – NAACP Youth Council sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, Kansas. After three weeks, the movement successfully gets the store to change its policy and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas are desegregated. August 19 – Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council conduct the largest successful sit-in to date, on drug store lunch-counters in Oklahoma City. This starts a successful six-year campaign by Luper and the Council to desegregate businesses and related institutions in Oklahoma City. September 2 – Governor J. Lindsay Almond, Jr. of Virginia threatens to shut down any school if it is forced to integrate. September 4 – Justice Department sues under Civil Rights Act to force Terrell County, Georgia to register blacks to vote. September 8 – A Federal judge orders Louisiana State University to desegregate; sixty-nine African-Americans enroll successfully on September 12. September 12 – In Cooper v. Aaron the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the states were bound by the Court's decisions. Governor Faubus responds by shutting down all four high schools in Little Rock, and Governor Almond shuts one in Front Royal, Virginia. September 18 – Governor Lindsay closes two more schools in Charlottesville, Virginia, and six in Norfolk on September 27. September 29 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that states may not use evasive measures to avoid desegregation. October 8 – A Federal judge in Harrisonburg, VA rules that public money may not be used for segregated private schools. October 20 – Thirteen blacks arrested for sitting in front of bus in Birmingham. November 28 – Federal court throws out Louisiana law against integrated athletic events. December 8 – Voter registration officials in Montgomery refuse to cooperate with US Civil Rights Commission investigation. 1959 January 9 – One Federal judge throws out segregation on Atlanta, Georgia, buses, while another orders Montgomery registrars to comply with the Civil Rights Commission. January 19 – Federal Appeals court overturns Virginia's closure of the schools in Norfolk; they reopen January 28 with 17 black students. April 18 – Martin Luther King Jr. speaks for the integration of schools at a rally of 26,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. November 20 – Alabama passes laws to limit black voter registration. 1960–1968 1960 February 1 – Four black students sit at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking six months of the Greensboro Sit-Ins. February 13 – The Nashville, Tennessee Sit-in begins, although the Nashville students, trained by activist and nonviolent teacher James Lawson, had been doing preliminary groundwork towards the action for two months. The sit-in ends successfully in May. February 17 – Alabama grand jury indicts Martin Luther King, Jr. for tax evasion. February 19 – Virginia Union University students, called the Richmond 34, stage a sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Richmond, Virginia.[3] February 22 – The Richmond 34 stage a sit-in the Richmond Room at Thalhimer's department store. March 3 – Vanderbilt University expels James Lawson for sit-in participation. March 4, 1960 – Houston's first sit-in, led by Texas Southern University students, was held at Weingarten supermarket, located at 4110 Almeda in Houston, Texas. [1] March 19 – San Antonio becomes first city to integrate lunch counters. April 8 – Weak civil rights bill survives Senate filibuster. April 15–17 – The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in Raleigh, North Carolina. April 19 – Z. Alexander Looby's home is bombed, with no injuries. Looby, a Nashville civil rights lawyer, was active in the city's ongoing Nashville sit-in for integration of public facilities. May – Nashville sit-ins end with business agreements to integrate lunch counters and other public areas. May 6 – Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. May 28 – William Robert Ming and Hubert Delaney obtain an acquittal of Dr. King from an all-white jury in Alabama.[4] June 28 – Bayard Rustin resigns from SCLC after condemnation by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. July 31 – Elijah Muhammad calls for an all-black state; membership in Nation of Islam estimated at 50,000 to 100,000. August – Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker replaces Ella Baker as SCLC's Executive Director. October 19 – King and 50 others arrested at sit-in at Atlanta's Rich's Department Store. October 26 – King's earlier probation revoked; he is transferred to Reidsville State Prison. October 28 – After intervention from Robert F. Kennedy, King is freed on bond. November 14 – Ruby Bridges becomes the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South (William Frantz Elementary School) following court-ordered integration in New Orleans, Louisiana. This event was portrayed by Norman Rockwell in his 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With. December 5 – In Boynton v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that racial segregation in bus terminals is illegal because such segregation violates the Interstate Commerce Act. This ruling, in combination with the Interstate Commerce Commission's 1955 decision in Keys v. Carolina Coach Co., effectively outlaws segregation on interstate buses and at the terminals servicing such buses. 1961 January 11 – Rioting over court-ordered admission of first two African-Americans (Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault) at the University of Georgia leads to their suspension, but they are ordered reinstated. January 31 – Members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and nine students are arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina for a sit-in at a McCrory's lunch counter. March 6 – President Kennedy issues Executive Order 10925, which establishes a Presidential committee that later becomes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. May 4 – The first group of Freedom Riders, with the intent of integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C. by Greyhound bus. The group, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals.[5] May 6 – Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy delivers a speech to the students of the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, Georgia, promising to enforce civil rights legislation. It is the Kennedy administration's first formal endorsement of civil rights.[6] May 14 – The Freedom Riders' bus is attacked and burned outside of Anniston, Alabama. A mob beats the Freedom Riders upon their arrival in Birmingham. The Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and spend 40 to 60 days in Parchman Penitentiary.[5] May 17 – Nashville students, coordinated by Diane Nash, John Lewis, and James Bevel, take up the Freedom Ride, signaling the increased involvement of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). May 20 – Freedom Riders are assaulted in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Greyhound Bus Station. May 21 – MLK, the Freedom Riders, and congregation of 1,500 at Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in Montgomery are besieged by mob of segregationists; RFK as Attorney General sends federal marshals to protect them. May 29 – Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, citing the 1955 landmark ICC ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1960 decision in Boynton v. Virginia, petitions the ICC to enforce desegregation in interstate travel. June–August – U.S. Dept. of Justice initiates talks with civil rights groups and foundations on beginning Voter Education Project. July – SCLC begins citizenship classes; Andrew J. Young hired to direct the program. Bob Moses begins voter registration in McComb, Mississippi. He leaves because of violence. September – James Forman becomes SNCC’s Executive Secretary. September 23 – The Interstate Commerce Commission, at RFK’s insistence, issues new rules ending discrimination in interstate travel, effective November 1, 1961, six years after the ICC's own ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. September 25 – Voter registration activist and NAACP member Herbert Lee is shot and killed by a white state legislator in McComb, Mississippi. November 1 – All interstate buses required to display a certificate that reads: “Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin, by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission.”[7] November 1 – SNCC workers Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon and nine Chatmon Youth Council members test new ICC rules at Trailways bus station in Albany, Georgia.[8] November 17 – SNCC workers help encourage and coordinate black activism in Albany, Georgia, culminating in the founding of the Albany Movement as a formal coalition.[8] November 22 – Three high school students from Chatmon's Youth Council arrested after using “positive actions” by walking into white sections of the Albany bus station.[8] November 22 – Albany State College students Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall arrested after entering the white waiting room of the Albany Trailways station.[8] December 10 – Freedom Riders from Atlanta, SNCC leader Charles Jones, and Albany State student Bertha Gober are arrested at Albany Union Railway Terminal, sparking mass demonstrations, with hundreds of protesters arrested over the next five days.[9] December 11–15 – Five hundred protesters arrested in Albany, Georgia. December 15 – King arrives in Albany, Georgia in response to a call from Dr. W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities.[5] December 16 – King is arrested at an Albany, Georgia demonstration. He is charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.[5] December 18 – Albany truce, including a 60-day postponement of King's trial; King leaves town.[10] Whitney Young is appointed executive director of the National Urban League and begins expanding its size and mission. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, a white southerner who deliberately darkened his skin to pass as a Negro in the Deep South, is published, describing "Jim Crow" segregation for a national audience. 1962 January 18–20 – Student protests over sit-in leaders’ expulsions at Baton Rouge’s Southern University, the nation's largest black school, close it down. February – Representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP form the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). A grant request to fund COFO voter registration activities is submitted to the Voter Education Project (VEP). February 26 – Segregated transportation facilities, both interstate and intrastate, ruled unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court. March – SNCC workers sit-in at US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's office to protest jailings in Baton Rouge. March 20 – FBI installs wiretaps on NAACP activist Stanley Levison’s office. April 3 – Defense Department orders full racial integration of military reserve units, except the National Guard. June – SNCC workers establish voter registration projects in rural southwest Georgia. July 10 – August 28 SCLC renews protests in Albany; MLK in jail July 10–12 and July 27 – August 10. August 31 – Fannie Lou Hamer attempts to register to vote in Indianola, Mississippi. September 9 – Two black churches used by SNCC for voter registration meetings are burned in Sasser, Georgia. September 20 – James Meredith is barred from becoming the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. September 30-October 1 – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black orders James Meredith admitted to Ole Miss.; he enrolls and a white riot ensues. French photographer Paul Guihard and Oxford resident Ray Gunter are killed. October – Leflore County, Mississippi, supervisors cut off surplus food distribution in retaliation against voter drive. October 23 – FBI begins Communist Infiltration (COMINFIL) investigation of SCLC. November 20 – Attorney General Kennedy authorizes FBI wiretap on Stanley Levison’s home telephone. November 20 – President Kennedy upholds 1960 presidential campaign promise to eliminate housing segregation by signing Executive Order 11063 banning segregation in Federally funded housing. 1963 January 14 – Incoming Alabama governor George Wallace calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address. April 3–May 10 – The Birmingham campaign, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, protests segregation in Birmingham by daily mass demonstrations. April – Mary Lucille Hamilton, Field Secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality, refuses to answer a judge in Gadsden, Alabama, until she is addressed by the honorific "Miss". At the time, it was southern custom to address white people by honorifics and people of color by their first names. Jailed for contempt of court Hamilton refused to pay bail. The case Hamilton v. Alabama is filed by the NAACP. It reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1964 that courts must address persons of color with the same courtesy extended to whites. April 7 – Ministers John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith and A.D. King lead a group of 2,000 marchers to protest the jailing of movement leaders in Birmingham. April 12 – Dr. King is arrested in Birmingham for "parading without a permit". April 16 – Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail is completed. April 23 – CORE activist William L. Moore is murdered in Gadsden, Alabama. May 2–4 – Birmingham's juvenile court is inundated with African-American children and teenagers arrested after James Bevel, SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, launches his "D-Day" youth march. The actions spans three days to become the Birmingham Children's Crusade where over a thousand children and students are arrested. The images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on the protesters are televised around the world.[11] May 9–10 – The Children's Crusade lays the groundwork for the terms of a negotiated truce on Thursday, May 9, which puts an end to mass demonstrations in return for rolling back segregation laws and practices. Dr. King and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth announce the settlement terms on Friday, May 10, only after King holds out to orchestrate the release of thousands of jailed demonstrators with bail money from Harry Belafonte and Robert Kennedy.[12] May 11–12 – A double bombing in Birmingham, probably organized by the KKK with help from local police, precipitates rioting, police retaliation, intervention of state troopers, and finally mobilization of federal troops. May 13 – In United States of America and Interstate Commerce Commission v. the City of Jackson, Mississippi et al., the United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit rules the city's attempt to circumvent laws desegregating interstate transportation facilities by posting sidewalk signs outside Greyhound, Trailways and Illinois Central terminals reading "Waiting Room for White Only — By Order Police Department" and "Waiting Room for Colored Only – By Order Police Department" to be unlawful.[13] May 24 – A group of Black leaders (assembled by James Baldwin) meets with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss race relations. May 29 – Violence escalates at NAACP picket of Philadelphia construction site.[14] May 30 – Police attack Florida A&M anti-segregation demonstrators with tear gas; arrest 257.[15] June 9 – Fannie Lou Hamer is among several SNCC workers badly beaten by police in the Winona, Mississippi, jail after their bus stops there. June 11 – "The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door": Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in front of a schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation by the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Wallace stands aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Alabama National Guard. Later in life, he apologizes for his opposition to racial integration. June 11 – President Kennedy makes his historic civil rights address, promising a bill to Congress the next week. About civil rights for "Negroes", in his speech he asks for "the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves." June 12 – NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi. (His murderer is convicted in 1994.)[16] Summer – 80,000 blacks quickly register to vote in Mississippi by a test project to show their desire to participate in the political system. June 19 – President Kennedy sends Congress (H. Doc. 124, 88th Cong., 1st session.) his proposed Civil Rights Act.[17] White leaders in business and philanthropy gather at the Carlyle Hotel to raise initial funds for the Council on United Civil Rights Leadership August 28 – Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Northwest Baltimore, County, Maryland is desegregated. August 28 – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held. Martin Luther King gives his I Have a Dream speech.[18] September 10 – Birmingham, Alabama City Schools are integrated by National Guardsmen under orders from President Kennedy. September 15 – 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham kills four young girls. That same day, in response to the killings, James Bevel and Diane Nash begin the Alabama Project, which will later develop as the Selma Voting Rights Movement. 1964 All year – The Alabama Voting Rights Project continues organizing led by James Bevel, Diane Nash, and James Orange. The SCLC is not yet participating. Bevel represents it as Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education. All year - Throughout Mississippi approximately fifty Freedom Libraries are established and ran by librarian volunteers.[19] January 23 – Twenty-fourth Amendment abolishes the poll tax for Federal elections. April - The Chester School Protests culminate in violent clashes with police in Chester, Pennsylvania.[20] Summer – Freedom Summer – movement for voter education and registration in the Mississippi. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was founded and elected an alternative slate of delegates for the national convention, as blacks are still officially disenfranchised. June 9 – Bloody Tuesday – peaceful marchers beaten, arrested and tear gassed by Tuscaloosa, Alabama police on a peaceful march to the County Courthouse to protest whites-only restroom signs and drinking fountains June 21 – Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, three civil rights workers disappear from Philadelphia, Mississippi, later to be found murdered and buried in an earthen dam. June 28 – Organization of Afro-American Unity is founded by Malcolm X, lasts until his death. July 2 – Civil Rights Act of 1964[21] signed, banning discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations.[22] August – Congress passes the Economic Opportunity Act which, among other things, provides federal funds for legal representation of Native Americans in both civil and criminal suits. This allows the ACLU and the American Bar Association to represent Native Americans in cases that later win them additional civil rights. August – The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates challenge the seating of all-white Mississippi representatives at the Democratic national convention. December 10 – King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person so honored.[23] December 14 – In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[21] The Edmund Pettus Bridge on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965. 1965 February 18 – After a peaceful protest march in Marion, Alabama, state troopers break it up and one shoots Jimmie Lee Jackson. Jackson dies on February 26. Though not prosecuted at the time, James Bonard Fowler is indicted for his murder in 2007. February 21 – Malcolm X is assassinated in Manhattan, New York, probably by three members of the Nation of Islam. March 7 – Bloody Sunday: Civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama, begin the Selma to Montgomery march but are attacked and stopped by a massive Alabama State trooper and police blockade as they cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge into the county. Many marchers are injured. This march, initiated and organized by James Bevel, becomes the visual symbol of the Selma Voting Rights Movement. March 9 – Joined by clergy from all over the country who responded to his urgent appeals for reinforcements in Selma, King leads a second attempt to cross the Pettus Bridge. Although amassed law enforcement personnel are ordered to draw back when the protesters near the foot of the bridge on the other side, King responds by telling the marchers to turn around, and they return to Brown Chapel nearby. He thereby obeys a just-minted federal order prohibiting the group from walking the highway to Montgomery.[24] March 15 – President Lyndon Johnson uses the phrase "We Shall Overcome" in a speech before Congress to urge passage of the voting rights bill.[25] March 21 – Participants in the third and successful Selma to Montgomery march stepped off on a five-day 54-mile march to Montgomery, Alabama's capitol. March 25 – After the successful completion of the Selma to Montgomery March, and after Dr. King has delivered his "How Long, Not Long" speech on the steps of the state capitol, a white volunteer, Viola Liuzzo, is shot and killed by KKK members in Alabama, one of whom was an FBI informant. June 2 – Black deputy sheriff Oneal Moore is murdered in Varnado, Louisiana. July 2 – Equal Employment Opportunity Commission begins operations. August 6 – Voting Rights Act of 1965 is signed by President Johnson. It provides for federal oversight and enforcement of voter registration in states and individual voting districts with a history of discriminatory tests and underrepresented populations. It prohibits discriminatory practices preventing African Americans and other minorities from registering and voting, and electoral systems diluting their vote.[25][25] August 11–15 – Following the accusations of mistreatment and police brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department towards the city's African-American community, Watts riots erupt in South Central Los Angeles which last over five days. Over 34 are killed, 1,032 injured, 3,438 arrested, and cost over $40 million in property damage. September – Raylawni Branch and Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong become the first African-American students to attend the University of Southern Mississippi. September 24 – President Johnson signs Executive Order 11246 requiring Equal Employment Opportunity by federal contractors. 1966 January 10 – NAACP local chapter president Vernon Dahmer is injured by a bomb in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He dies the next day. June 5 – James Meredith begins a solitary March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. Shortly after starting, he is shot with birdshot and injured. Civil rights leaders and organizations rally and continue the march leading to, on June 16, Stokely Carmichael first using the slogan Black power in a speech. Twenty-five thousand marchers entered the capital. Summer – The Chicago Open Housing Movement, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., James Bevel[26][27] and Al Raby, includes a large rally, marches, and demands to Mayor Richard J. Daley and the City of Chicago which are discussed in a movement-ending Summit Conference. October – Black Panther Party founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California. 1967 April 4 – MLK delivers "Beyond Vietnam" speech, calling for defeat of "the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism". June 12 – In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. In the trial of accused killers in the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, the jury convicts 7 of 18 accused men. Conspirator Edgar Ray Killen is later convicted in 2005. June - August – Over 150 communities burn during the Long, Hot Summer of 1967. The largest and deadliest riots of the summer take place in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit with 26 fatalities reported in Newark and 43 people losing their lives in the Motor City. October 2 – Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the United States Supreme Court. 1968 February 1 – Two Memphis sanitation workers are killed in the line of duty, exacerbating labor tensions. February 8 – The Orangeburg Massacre occurs during university protest in South Carolina. February 12 – First day of the (wildcat) Memphis Sanitation Strike. April 3 – King returns to Memphis; delivers "Mountaintop" speech in support of the workers. April 4 – Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. April 4–8 and one on May 1968 – Riots break out in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City, and more than 150 U.S. cities in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. April 11 – Civil Rights Act of 1968 is signed. The Fair Housing Act is Title VIII of this Civil Rights Act, and bans discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. The law is passed following a series of Open Housing campaigns throughout the urban North, the most significant being the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement and the organized events in Milwaukee during 1967–68. In both cities, angry white mobs had attacked nonviolent protesters.[28][29] May 12 – Poor People's Campaign encamps on the National Mall in Washington, DC. October 16 – In Mexico City, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic men's 200 metres. December 23 – In Powe v. Miles, a federal court holds that the portions of private colleges that are funded by public money are subject to the Civil Rights Act. The civil rights movement (also known as the American civil rights movement and other terms)[b] in the United States was a decades-long struggle by African Americans to end legalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and racial segregation in the United States. The movement has its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although the movement achieved its largest legislative gains in the mid-1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the human rights of all Americans. After the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, most of whom had recently been enslaved. For a period, African Americans voted and held political office, but they were increasingly deprived of civil rights, often under Jim Crow laws, and subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by whites in the South. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal rights. In 1954, the separate but equal policy which aided the enforcement of Jim Crow laws was weakened with the United States Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling and other subsequent rulings which followed.[1] Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations, which highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans across the country. The lynching of Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi, and the outrage generated by seeing how he had been abused, when his mother decided to have an open-casket funeral, mobilized the African-American community nationwide.[2] Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts, such as the successful Montgomery bus boycott (1955–56) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina and successful Nashville sit-ins in Tennessee; marches, such as the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade and 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities. At the culmination of a legal strategy pursued by African Americans, the U.S. Supreme Court began, in 1954 under the leadership of Earl Warren, to find unconstitutional many of the laws that had allowed racial segregation and discrimination to be legal in the United States.[3][4][5][6] The Warren Court made a series of landmark rulings such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), and Loving v. Virginia (1967) which banned segregation in public schools and public accommodations, and struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage.[7][8][9] The rulings also helped bring an end to the segregationist Jim Crow laws prevalent in the Southern states.[10] In the 1960s, moderates in the movement worked with Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that overturned discriminatory practices and authorized oversight and enforcement by the federal government. The Civil Rights Act of 1964,[11] which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), expressly banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices; ended unequal application of voter registration requirements; and prohibited racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and in public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minorities as voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and across the country young people were inspired to take action. From 1964 through 1970, a wave of inner-city riots in black communities undercut support from the white middle class, but increased support from private foundations.[12] The emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from about 1965 to 1975, challenged the established black leadership for its cooperative attitude and its practice of nonviolence. Instead, its leaders demanded that, in addition to the new laws gained through the nonviolent movement, political and economic self-sufficiency had to be developed in the black community. Many popular representations of the movement are centered on the charismatic leadership and philosophy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. However, some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to any one person, organization, or strategy.[13] Contents 1 Background 2 The Beginnings of Direct Action (1950s) 3 History 3.1 Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 3.2 Emmett Till's murder, 1955 3.3 Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956 3.4 Desegregating Little Rock Central High School, 1957 3.5 The method of nonviolence and nonviolence training 3.6 Robert F. Williams and the debate on nonviolence, 1959–1964 3.7 Sit-ins, 1958–1960 3.8 Freedom Rides, 1961 3.9 Voter registration organizing 3.10 Integration of Mississippi universities, 1956–1965 3.11 Albany Movement, 1961–62 3.12 Birmingham campaign, 1963 3.13 "Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's response, 1963 3.14 March on Washington, 1963 3.15 Malcolm X joins the movement, 1964–1965 3.16 St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–64 3.17 Chester School Protests, Spring 1964 3.18 Freedom Summer, 1964 3.19 Civil Rights Act of 1964 3.20 Harlem riot of 1964 3.21 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964 3.22 Selma Voting Rights Movement 3.23 Voting Rights Act of 1965 3.24 Watts riot of 1965 3.25 Fair housing movements, 1966–1968 3.26 Nationwide riots of 1967 3.27 Memphis, King assassination and the Poor People's March 1968 3.28 Civil Rights Act of 1968 4 Movements, politics, and white reactions 4.1 Grassroots leadership 4.2 Black power (1966–1968) 4.3 Black conservatism 4.4 Avoiding the "Communist" label 4.5 Kennedy administration, 1961–1963 4.6 American Jewish community and the civil rights movement 4.6.1 Profile 4.7 White backlash 4.8 African-American women in the movement 4.8.1 Discrimination 4.9 Long-term impact on social divides 5 Johnson administration: 1963–1968 6 Prison reform 6.1 Gates v. Collier 7 Cold War 8 In popular culture 9 Activist organizations 10 Individual activists 11 See also 12 Notes 13 References 14 Bibliography 15 Further reading 15.1 Historiography and memory 15.2 Autobiographies and memoirs 16 External links Background Further information: Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era, Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, Jim Crow laws, Civil rights movement (1865–1896), and Civil rights movement (1896–1954) Before the American Civil War, almost four million blacks were enslaved in the South, only white men of property could vote, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites only.[14][15][16] Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the 13th Amendment (1865) that ended slavery; the 14th Amendment (1869) that gave African-Americans citizenship, adding their total population of four million to the official population of southern states for Congressional apportionment; and the 15th Amendment (1870) that gave African-American males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time). From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent Reconstruction Era trying to establish free labor and civil rights of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to insurgent movements such as the Ku Klux Klan, whose members attacked black and white Republicans to maintain white supremacy. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant, the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the Enforcement Acts.[17] Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent paramilitary groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage, intimidating and suppressing black voters, and assassinating Republican officeholders.[18][19] However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the Federal Government to get involved.[19] Many Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of war.[19] After the disputed election of 1876 resulted in the end of Reconstruction and federal troops were withdrawn, whites in the South regained political control of the region's state legislatures. They continued to intimidate and violently attack blacks before and during elections to suppress their voting, but the last African Americans were elected to Congress from the South before disenfranchisement of blacks by states throughout the region, as described below. The mob-style lynching of Will James, Cairo, Illinois, 1909 From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to disenfranchise African Americans and many poor whites by creating barriers to voter registration; voting rolls were dramatically reduced as blacks and poor whites were forced out of electoral politics. After the landmark Supreme Court case of Smith v. Allwright (1944), which prohibited white primaries, progress was made in increasing black political participation in the Rim South and Acadiana – although almost entirely in urban areas[20] and a few rural localities where most blacks worked outside plantations.[21] The status quo ante of excluding African Americans from the political system lasted in the remainder of the South, especially North Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s to provide federal enforcement of constitutional voting rights. For more than sixty years, blacks in the South were essentially excluded from politics, unable to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.[19] Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries. During this period, the white-dominated Democratic Party maintained political control of the South. With whites controlling all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful voting bloc in Congress. The Republican Party—the "party of Lincoln" and the party to which most blacks had belonged—shrank to insignificance except in remote Unionist areas of Appalachia and the Ozarks as black voter registration was suppressed. Until 1965, the “Solid South” was a one-party system under the white Democrats. Excepting the previously noted historic Unionist strongholds the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office.[22] In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to dine at the White House, making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers."[23] Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African-American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, these actions were resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics.[23] Lynching victim Will Brown, who was mutilated and burned during the Omaha, Nebraska race riot of 1919. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the U.S.[24] During the same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white southerners imposed racial segregation by law. Violence against blacks increased, with numerous lynchings through the turn of the century. The system of de jure state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged from the post-Reconstruction South became to be known as the "Jim Crow" system. The United States Supreme Court, made up almost entirely of Northerners, upheld the constitutionality of those state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, legitimizing them through the "separate but equal" doctrine.[25] Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat.[26] For those places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were served first.[26] Elected in 1912, President Woodrow Wilson gave in to demands by Southern members of his cabinet and ordered segregation of workplaces throughout the federal government.[27] The early 20th century is a period often referred to as the "nadir of American race relations", when the number of lynchings was highest. While tensions and civil rights violations were most intense in the South, social discrimination affected African Americans in other regions as well.[28] At the national level, the Southern bloc controlled important committees in Congress, defeated passage of federal laws against lynching, and exercised considerable power beyond the number of whites in the South. Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period: Racial segregation. By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains.[29] Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality. Disenfranchisement. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more restrictive, essentially forcing black voters off the voting rolls. The number of African-American voters dropped dramatically, and they were no longer able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans, and U.S. states such as Alabama disenfranchised poor whites as well. Exploitation. Increased economic oppression of blacks through the convict lease system, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination. Violence. Individual, police, paramilitary, organizational, and mob racial violence against blacks (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in the West Coast). KKK night rally in Chicago, c. 1920 African Americans and other ethnic minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the Civil rights movement (1896–1954)). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through litigation, education, and lobbying efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), when the Warren Court ruled that segregation of public schools in the US was unconstitutional and, by implication, overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896.[7][30] Following the unanimous Supreme Court ruling, many states began to gradually integrate their schools, but some areas of the South resisted by closing public schools altogether.[7][30] The integration of Southern public libraries followed demonstrations and protests that used techniques seen in other elements of the larger civil rights movement.[31] This included sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance.[31] For example, in 1963 in the city of Anniston, Alabama, two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library.[31] Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries was generally quicker than the integration of other public institutions.[31] Colored Sailors room in World War I The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). From 1910 to 1970, African Americans sought better lives by migrating north and west out of the South. A total of nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the Great Migration, most during and after World War II. So many people migrated that the demographics of some previously black-majority states changed to a white majority (in combination with other developments). The rapid influx of blacks altered the demographics of Northern and Western cities; happening at a period of expanded European, Hispanic, and Asian immigration, it added to social competition and tensions, with the new migrants and immigrants battling for a place in jobs and housing. Reflecting social tensions after World War I, as veterans struggled to return to the workforce and labor unions were organizing, the Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.S. as a result of white race riots against blacks that took place in more than three dozen cities, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919 and the Omaha race riot of 1919. Urban problems such as crime and disease were blamed on the large influx of Southern blacks to cities in the north and west, based on stereotypes of rural southern African-Americans. Overall, African Americans in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for blacks were routed to the lowest-status and restrictive in potential mobility. Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering".[32] The Great Migration resulted in many African Americans becoming urbanized, and they began to realign from the Republican to the Democratic Party, especially because of opportunities under the New Deal of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression in the 1930s.[33] Substantially under pressure from African-American supporters who began the March on Washington Movement, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the first federal order banning discrimination and created the Fair Employment Practice Committee. Black veterans of the military after both World Wars pressed for full civil rights and often led activist movements. In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which eventually led to the end of segregation in the armed services.[34] White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the housing project erected this sign, Detroit, 1942. Housing segregation was a nationwide problem, widespread outside the South. Although the federal government had become increasingly involved in mortgage lending and development in the 1930s and 1940s, it did not reject the use of race-restrictive covenants until 1950, in part because of provisions by the Solid South Democrats in Congress.[35] Suburbanization became connected with white flight by this time, because whites were better established economically to move to newer housing. The situation was perpetuated by real estate agents' continuing racial discrimination. In particular, from the 1930s to the 1960s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor "should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood." The result was the development of all-black ghettos in the North and West, where much housing was older, as well as South.[36] Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about desegregation. They were faced with "massive resistance" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. In defiance, African-American activists adopted a combined strategy of direct action, nonviolence, nonviolent resistance, and many events described as civil disobedience, giving rise to the civil rights movement of 1954 to 1968. The Beginnings of Direct Action (1950s) The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation that had typified the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century broadened after Brown to a strategy that emphasized "direct action": boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, marches or walks, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, standing in line, and, at times, civil disobedience.[citation needed] Churches, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges used by the NAACP and others. In 1952, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), led by T. R. M. Howard, a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Nashville which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the White Citizens' Councils.[37] After Claudette Colvin was arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in March 1955, a bus boycott was considered and rejected. But when Rosa Parks was arrested in December, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson of the Montgomery Women's Political Council put the bus boycott protest in motion. Late that night, she, John Cannon (chairman of the Business Department at Alabama State University) and others mimeographed and distributed thousands of leaflets calling for a boycott.[38][39] The eventual success of the boycott made its spokesman Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the successful Tallahassee, Florida boycott of 1956–57.[40] In 1957, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, and other activists such as Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison, to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC, with its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made nonviolence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism. In 1959, Septima Clarke, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins, with the help of Myles Horton's Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, began the first Citizenship Schools in South Carolina's Sea Islands. They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on Johns Island. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere. History Main article: Timeline of the civil rights movement Further information: Civil rights movement (1865–1896) and Civil rights movement (1896–1954) Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 Main article: Brown v. Board of Education In the spring of 1951, black students in Virginia protested their unequal status in the state's segregated educational system. Students at Moton High School protested the overcrowded conditions and failing facility.[41] Some local leaders of the NAACP had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Jim Crow laws of school segregation. When the students did not budge, the NAACP joined their battle against school segregation. The NAACP proceeded with five cases challenging the school systems; these were later combined under what is known today as Brown v. Board of Education.[41] In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that mandating, or even permitting, public schools to be segregated by race was unconstitutional.[7] Chief Justice Warren wrote in the court majority opinion that[7][30] Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group.[42] The lawyers from the NAACP had to gather plausible evidence in order to win the case of Brown vs. Board of Education. Their method of addressing the issue of school segregation was to enumerate several arguments. One pertained to having exposure to interracial contact in a school environment. It was argued that interracial contact would, in turn, help prepare children to live with the pressures that society exerts in regards to race and thereby afford them a better chance of living in a democracy. In addition, another argument emphasized how "'education' comprehends the entire process of developing and training the mental, physical and moral powers and capabilities of human beings".[43] Risa Goluboff wrote that the NAACP's intention was to show the Courts that African American children were the victims of school segregation and their futures were at risk. The Court ruled that both Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" standard in general, and Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899), which had applied that standard to schools, were unconstitutional. The federal government filed a friend of the court brief in the case urging the justices to consider the effect that segregation had on America's image in the Cold War. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was quoted in the brief stating that "The United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country."[44][45] The following year, in the case known as Brown II, the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed".[46] Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) did not overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy v. Ferguson was segregation in transportation modes. Brown v. Board of Education dealt with segregation in education. Brown v. Board of Education did set in motion the future overturning of 'separate but equal'. School integration, Barnard School, Washington, D.C., 1955 On May 18, 1954, Greensboro, North Carolina, became the first city in the South to publicly announce that it would abide by the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling. "It is unthinkable,' remarked School Board Superintendent Benjamin Smith, 'that we will try to [override] the laws of the United States."[47] This positive reception for Brown, together with the appointment of African American Dr. David Jones to the school board in 1953, convinced numerous white and black citizens that Greensboro was heading in a progressive direction. Integration in Greensboro occurred rather peacefully compared to the process in Southern states such as Alabama, Arkansas, and Virginia where "massive resistance" was practiced by top officials and throughout the states. In Virginia, some counties closed their public schools rather than integrate, and many white Christian private schools were founded to accommodate students who used to go to public schools. Even in Greensboro, much local resistance to desegregation continued, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971.[47] Many Northern cities also had de facto segregation policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In Harlem, New York, for example, neither a single new school was built since the turn of the century, nor did a single nursery school exist – even as the Second Great Migration was causing overcrowding. Existing schools tended to be dilapidated and staffed with inexperienced teachers. Brown helped stimulate activism among New York City parents like Mae Mallory who, with the support of the NAACP, initiated a successful lawsuit against the city and state on Brown's principles. Mallory and thousands of other parents bolstered the pressure of the lawsuit with a school boycott in 1959. During the boycott, some of the first freedom schools of the period were established. The city responded to the campaign by permitting more open transfers to high-quality, historically-white schools. (New York's African-American community, and Northern desegregation activists generally, now found themselves contending with the problem of white flight, however.)[48][49] Emmett Till's murder, 1955 Main article: Emmett Till The Emmett Till Memorial triptych by Sandra Hansen Emmett Till, a 14-year old African American from Chicago, visited his relatives in Money, Mississippi, for the summer. He allegedly had an interaction with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a small grocery store that violated the norms of Mississippi culture, and Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam brutally murdered young Emmett Till. They beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. After Emmett's mother, Mamie Till, came to identify the remains of her son, she decided she wanted to "let the people see what I have seen".[50] Till's mother then had his body taken back to Chicago where she had it displayed in an open casket during the funeral services where many thousands of visitors arrived to show their respects.[50] A later publication of an image at the funeral in Jet is credited as a crucial moment in the civil rights era for displaying in vivid detail the violent racism that was being directed at black people in America.[51][50] In a column for The Atlantic, Vann R. Newkirk wrote: "The trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of white supremacy".[2] The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-white jury.[52] "Emmett's murder," historian Tim Tyson writes, "would never have become a watershed historical moment without Mamie finding the strength to make her private grief a public matter."[53] The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S.[2] The murder and resulting trial ended up markedly impacting the views of several young black activists.[53] Joyce Ladner referred to such activists as the "Emmett Till generation."[53] One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.[54] Parks later informed Till's mother that her decision to stay in her seat was guided by the image she still vividly recalled of Till's brutalized remains.[54] The glass topped casket that was used for Till's Chicago funeral was found in a cemetery garage in 2009. Till had been reburied in a different casket after being exhumed in 2005.[55] Till's family decided to donate the original casket to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American Culture and History, where it is now on display.[56] In 2007, Bryant disclosed that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her story in 1955.[51][57] Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956 Main articles: Rosa Parks and Montgomery Bus Boycott Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus to a white person On December 1, 1955, nine months after a 15-year-old high school student, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested, Rosa Parks did the same thing. Parks soon became the symbol of the resulting Montgomery Bus Boycott and received national publicity. She was later hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement".[58] Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee where nonviolence as a strategy was taught by Myles Horton and others. After Parks' arrest, African Americans gathered and organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott to demand a bus system in which passengers would be treated equally.[59] The organization was led by Jo Ann Robinson, a member of the Women's Political Council who had been waiting for the opportunity to boycott the bus system. Following Rosa Park's arrest, Jo Ann Robinson mimeographed 52,500 leaflets calling for a boycott. They were distributed around the city and helped gather the attention of civil rights leaders. After the city rejected many of their suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by E. D. Nixon, pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. In November 1956, the United States Supreme Court upheld a district court ruling in the case of Browder v. Gayle and ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated, ending the boycott.[59] Local leaders established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. Martin Luther King Jr. was elected President of this organization. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.[39] Desegregating Little Rock Central High School, 1957 Main article: Little Rock Nine A crisis erupted in Little Rock, Arkansas, when Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus called out the National Guard on September 4 to prevent entry to the nine African-American students who had sued for the right to attend an integrated school, Little Rock Central High School.[60] Under the guidance of Daisy Bates, the nine students had been chosen to attend Central High because of their excellent grades. On the first day of school, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford was the only one of the nine students who showed up because she did not receive the phone call about the danger of going to school. A photo was taken of Eckford being harassed by white protesters outside the school, and the police had to take her away in a patrol car for her protection. Afterwards, the nine students had to carpool to school and be escorted by military personnel in jeeps. White parents rally against integrating Little Rock's schools. Faubus was not a proclaimed segregationist. The Arkansas Democratic Party, which then controlled politics in the state, put significant pressure on Faubus after he had indicated he would investigate bringing Arkansas into compliance with the Brown decision. Faubus then took his stand against integration and against the Federal court ruling. Faubus' resistance received the attention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was determined to enforce the orders of the Federal courts. Critics had charged he was lukewarm, at best, on the goal of desegregation of public schools. But, Eisenhower federalized the National Guard in Arkansas and ordered them to return to their barracks. Eisenhower deployed elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the students. The students attended high school under harsh conditions. They had to pass through a gauntlet of spitting, jeering whites to arrive at school on their first day, and to put up with harassment from other students for the rest of the year. Although federal troops escorted the students between classes, the students were teased and even attacked by white students when the soldiers were not around. One of the Little Rock Nine, Minnijean Brown, was suspended for spilling a bowl of chili on the head of a white student who was harassing her in the school lunch line. Later, she was expelled for verbally abusing a white female student.[61] Only Ernest Green of the Little Rock Nine graduated from Central High School. After the 1957–58 school year was over, Little Rock closed its public school system completely rather than continue to integrate. Other school systems across the South followed suit. The method of nonviolence and nonviolence training During the time period considered to be the "African-American civil rights" era, the predominant use of protest was nonviolent, or peaceful.[62] Often referred to as pacifism, the method of nonviolence is considered to be an attempt to impact society positively. Although acts of racial discrimination have occurred historically throughout the United States, perhaps the most violent regions have been in the former Confederate states. During the 1950s and 1960s, the nonviolent protesting of the civil rights movement caused definite tension, which gained national attention. In order to prepare for protests physically and psychologically, demonstrators received training in nonviolence. According to former civil rights activist Bruce Hartford, there are two main branches of nonviolence training. There is the philosophical method, which involves understanding the method of nonviolence and why it is considered useful, and there is the tactical method, which ultimately teaches demonstrators "how to be a protestor—how to sit-in, how to picket, how to defend yourself against attack, giving training on how to remain cool when people are screaming racist insults into your face and pouring stuff on you and hitting you" (Civil Rights Movement Veterans). The philosophical method of nonviolence, in the American civil rights movement, was largely inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's "non-cooperation" with the British colonists in India, which was intended to gain attention so that the public would either "intervene in advance," or "provide public pressure in support of the action to be taken" (Erikson, 415). As Hartford explains it, philosophical nonviolence training aims to "shape the individual person's attitude and mental response to crises and violence" (Civil Rights Movement Veterans). Hartford and activists like him, who trained in tactical nonviolence, considered it necessary in order to ensure physical safety, instill discipline, teach demonstrators how to demonstrate, and form mutual confidence among demonstrators (Civil Rights Movement Veterans).[62][63] For many, the concept of nonviolent protest was a way of life, a culture. However, not everyone agreed with this notion. James Forman, former SNCC (and later Black Panther) member, and nonviolence trainer, was among those who did not. In his autobiography, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Forman revealed his perspective on the method of nonviolence as "strictly a tactic, not a way of life without limitations." Similarly, Bob Moses, who was also an active member of SNCC, felt that the method of nonviolence was practical. When interviewed by author Robert Penn Warren, Moses said "There's no question that he [Martin Luther King Jr.] had a great deal of influence with the masses. But I don't think it's in the direction of love. It's in a practical direction . . ." (Who Speaks for the Negro? Warren).[64][65] Robert F. Williams and the debate on nonviolence, 1959–1964 The Jim Crow system employed "terror as a means of social control,"[66] with the most organized manifestations being the Ku Klux Klan and their collaborators in local police departments. This violence played a key role in blocking the progress of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s. Some black organizations in the South began practicing armed self-defense. The first to do so openly was the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the NAACP led by Robert F. Williams. Williams had rebuilt the chapter after its membership was terrorized out of public life by the Klan. He did so by encouraging a new, more working-class membership to arm itself thoroughly and defend against attack.[67] When Klan nightriders attacked the home of NAACP member Albert Perry in October 1957, Williams' militia exchanged gunfire with the stunned Klansmen, who quickly retreated. The following day, the city council held an emergency session and passed an ordinance banning KKK motorcades.[68] One year later, Lumbee Indians in North Carolina would have a similarly successful armed stand-off with the Klan (known as the Battle of Hayes Pond) which resulted in KKK leader James W. "Catfish" Cole being convicted of incitement to riot.[69] After the acquittal of several white men charged with sexually assaulting black women in Monroe, Williams announced to United Press International reporters that he would "meet violence with violence" as a policy. Williams' declaration was quoted on the front page of The New York Times, and The Carolina Times considered it "the biggest civil rights story of 1959".[70] NAACP National chairman Roy Wilkins immediately suspended Williams from his position, but the Monroe organizer won support from numerous NAACP chapters across the country. Ultimately, Wilkins resorted to bribing influential organizer Daisy Bates to campaign against Williams at the NAACP national convention and the suspension was upheld. The convention nonetheless passed a resolution which stated: "We do not deny, but reaffirm the right of individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults."[71] Martin Luther King Jr. argued for Williams' removal,[72] but Ella Baker[73] and WEB Dubois[13] both publicly praised the Monroe leader's position. Williams—along with his wife, Mabel Williams—continued to play a leadership role in the Monroe movement, and to some degree, in the national movement. The Williamses published The Crusader, a nationally circulated newsletter, beginning in 1960, and the influential book Negroes With Guns in 1962. Williams did not call for full militarization in this period, but "flexibility in the freedom struggle."[74] Williams was well-versed in legal tactics and publicity, which he had used successfully in the internationally known "Kissing Case" of 1958, as well as nonviolent methods, which he used at lunch counter sit-ins in Monroe—all with armed self-defense as a complementary tactic. Williams led the Monroe movement in another armed stand-off with white supremacists during an August 1961 Freedom Ride; he had been invited to participate in the campaign by Ella Baker and James Forman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The incident (along with his campaigns for peace with Cuba) resulted in him being targeted by the FBI and prosecuted for kidnapping; he was cleared of all charges in 1976.[75] Meanwhile, armed self-defense continued discreetly in the Southern movement with such figures as SNCC's Amzie Moore,[75] Hartman Turnbow,[76] and Fannie Lou Hamer[77] all willing to use arms to defend their lives from nightrides. Taking refuge from the FBI in Cuba, the Willamses broadcast the radio show Radio Free Dixie throughout the eastern United States via Radio Progresso beginning in 1962. In this period, Williams advocated guerilla warfare against racist institutions and saw the large ghetto riots of the era as a manifestation of his strategy. University of North Carolina historian Walter Rucker has written that "the emergence of Robert F Williams contributed to the marked decline in anti-black racial violence in the U.S....After centuries of anti-black violence, African Americans across the country began to defend their communities aggressively—employing overt force when necessary. This in turn evoked in whites real fear of black vengeance..." This opened up space for African Americans to use nonviolent demonstration with less fear of deadly reprisal.[78] Of the many civil rights activists who share this view, the most prominent was Rosa Parks. Parks gave the eulogy at Williams' funeral in 1996, praising him for "his courage and for his commitment to freedom," and concluding that "The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten."[79] Sit-ins, 1958–1960 See also: Greensboro sit-ins, Nashville sit-ins, and Sit-in movement In July 1958, the NAACP Youth Council sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, Kansas. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterwards all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated. This movement was quickly followed in the same year by a student sit-in at a Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City led by Clara Luper, which also was successful.[80] Mostly black students from area colleges led a sit-in at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina.[81] On February 1, 1960, four students, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, an all-black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans from being served food there.[82] The four students purchased small items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served. After being denied service, they produced their receipts and asked why their money was good everywhere else at the store, but not at the lunch counter.[83] The protesters had been encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in. The Greensboro sit-in was quickly followed by other sit-ins in Richmond, Virginia;[84][85] Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia.[86][87] The most immediately effective of these was in Nashville, where hundreds of well organized and highly disciplined college students conducted sit-ins in coordination with a boycott campaign.[88][89] As students across the south began to "sit-in" at the lunch counters of local stores, police and other officials sometimes used brutal force to physically escort the demonstrators from the lunch facilities. The "sit-in" technique was not new—as far back as 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library.[90] In 1960 the technique succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement.[91] On March 9, 1960, an Atlanta University Center group of students released An Appeal for Human Rights as a full page advertisement in newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Journal, and Atlanta Daily World.[92] Known as the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the group initiated the Atlanta Student Movement and began to lead sit-ins starting on March 15, 1960.[87][93] By the end of 1960, the process of sit-ins had spread to every southern and border state, and even to facilities in Nevada, Illinois, and Ohio that discriminated against blacks. Demonstrators focused not only on lunch counters but also on parks, beaches, libraries, theaters, museums, and other public facilities. In April 1960 activists who had led these sit-ins were invited by SCLC activist Ella Baker to hold a conference at Shaw University, a historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. This conference led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).[94] SNCC took these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further, and organized the freedom rides. As the constitution protected interstate commerce, they decided to challenge segregation on interstate buses and in public bus facilities by putting interracial teams on them, to travel from the North through the segregated South.[95] Freedom Rides, 1961 Main article: Freedom Rider Freedom Rides were journeys by civil rights activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960), which ruled that segregation was unconstitutional for passengers engaged in interstate travel. Organized by CORE, the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.[96] During the first and subsequent Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the Deep South to integrate seating patterns on buses and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains. That proved to be a dangerous mission. In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives.[97] A mob beats Freedom Riders in Birmingham. This picture was reclaimed by the FBI from a local journalist who also was beaten and whose camera was smashed. In Birmingham, Alabama, an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor gave Ku Klux Klan members fifteen minutes to attack an incoming group of freedom riders before having police "protect" them. The riders were severely beaten "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them." James Peck, a white activist, was beaten so badly that he required fifty stitches to his head.[97] In a similar occurrence in Montgomery, Alabama, the Freedom Riders followed in the footsteps of Rosa Parks and rode an integrated Greyhound bus from Birmingham. Although they were protesting interstate bus segregation in peace, they were met with violence in Montgomery as a large, white mob attacked them for their activism. They caused an enormous, 2-hour long riot which resulted in 22 injuries, five of whom were hospitalized.[98] Mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham temporarily halted the rides. SNCC activists from Nashville brought in new riders to continue the journey from Birmingham to New Orleans. In Montgomery, Alabama, at the Greyhound Bus Station, a mob charged another busload of riders, knocking John Lewis unconscious with a crate and smashing Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded James Zwerg, a white student from Fisk University, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.[97] On May 24, 1961, the freedom riders continued their rides into Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested for "breaching the peace" by using "white only" facilities. New Freedom Rides were organized by many different organizations and continued to flow into the South. As riders arrived in Jackson, they were arrested. By the end of summer, more than 300 had been jailed in Mississippi.[96] .. When the weary Riders arrive in Jackson and attempt to use "white only" restrooms and lunch counters they are immediately arrested for Breach of Peace and Refusal to Obey an Officer. Says Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett in defense of segregation: "The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him." From lockup, the Riders announce "Jail No Bail"—they will not pay fines for unconstitutional arrests and illegal convictions—and by staying in jail they keep the issue alive. Each prisoner will remain in jail for 39 days, the maximum time they can serve without loosing [sic] their right to appeal the unconstitutionality of their arrests, trials, and convictions. After 39 days, they file an appeal and post bond...[99] The jailed freedom riders were treated harshly, crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100 °F heat. Others were transferred to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, where they were treated to harsh conditions. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe. Public sympathy and support for the freedom riders led John F. Kennedy's administration to order the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue a new desegregation order. When the new ICC rule took effect on November 1, 1961, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they chose on the bus; "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals; separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and lunch counters began serving people regardless of skin color. The student movement involved such celebrated figures as John Lewis, a single-minded activist; James Lawson, the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; Diane Nash, an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; Bob Moses, pioneer of voting registration in Mississippi; and James Bevel, a fiery preacher and charismatic organizer, strategist, and facilitator. Other prominent student activists included Charles McDew, Bernard Lafayette, Charles Jones, Lonnie King, Julian Bond, Hosea Williams, and Stokely Carmichael. Voter registration organizing After the Freedom Rides, local black leaders in Mississippi such as Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, Medgar Evers, and others asked SNCC to help register black voters and to build community organizations that could win a share of political power in the state. Since Mississippi ratified its new constitution in 1890 with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests, it made registration more complicated and stripped blacks from voter rolls and voting. Also, violence at the time of elections had earlier suppressed black voting. By the mid-20th century, preventing blacks from voting had become an essential part of the culture of white supremacy. In June and July 1959, members of the black community in Fayette County, TN formed the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League to spur voting. At the time, there were 16,927 blacks in the county, yet only 17 of them had voted in the previous seven years. Within a year, some 1,400 blacks had registered, and the white community responded with harsh economic reprisals. Using registration rolls, the White Citizens Council circulated a blacklist of all registered black voters, allowing banks, local stores, and gas stations to conspire to deny registered black voters essential services. What's more, sharecropping blacks who registered to vote were getting evicted from their homes. All in all, the number of evictions came to 257 families, many of whom were forced to live in a makeshift Tent City for well over a year. Finally, in December 1960, the Justice Department invoked its powers authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to file a suit against seventy parties accused of violating the civil rights of black Fayette County citizens.[100] In the following year the first voter registration project in McComb and the surrounding counties in the Southwest corner of the state. Their efforts were met with violent repression from state and local lawmen, the White Citizens' Council, and the Ku Klux Klan. Activists were beaten, there were hundreds of arrests of local citizens, and the voting activist Herbert Lee was murdered.[101] White opposition to black voter registration was so intense in Mississippi that Freedom Movement activists concluded that all of the state's civil rights organizations had to unite in a coordinated effort to have any chance of success. In February 1962, representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP formed the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). At a subsequent meeting in August, SCLC became part of COFO.[102] In the Spring of 1962, with funds from the Voter Education Project, SNCC/COFO began voter registration organizing in the Mississippi Delta area around Greenwood, and the areas surrounding Hattiesburg, Laurel, and Holly Springs. As in McComb, their efforts were met with fierce opposition—arrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. Registrars used the literacy test to keep blacks off the voting rolls by creating standards that even highly educated people could not meet. In addition, employers fired blacks who tried to register, and landlords evicted them from their rental homes.[103] Despite these actions, over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state. Similar voter registration campaigns—with similar responses—were begun by SNCC, CORE, and SCLC in Louisiana, Alabama, southwest Georgia, and South Carolina. By 1963, voter registration campaigns in the South were as integral to the Freedom Movement as desegregation efforts. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[11] protecting and facilitating voter registration despite state barriers became the main effort of the movement. It resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had provisions to enforce the constitutional right to vote for all citizens. Integration of Mississippi universities, 1956–1965 Beginning in 1956, Clyde Kennard, a black Korean War-veteran, wanted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now the University of Southern Mississippi) at Hattiesburg under the G.I. Bill. William David McCain, the college president, used the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, in order to prevent his enrollment by appealing to local black leaders and the segregationist state political establishment.[104] The state-funded organization tried to counter the civil rights movement by positively portraying segregationist policies. More significantly, it collected data on activists, harassed them legally, and used economic boycotts against them by threatening their jobs (or causing them to lose their jobs) to try to suppress their work. Kennard was twice arrested on trumped-up charges, and eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in the state prison.[105] After three years at hard labor, Kennard was paroled by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. Journalists had investigated his case and publicized the state's mistreatment of his colon cancer.[105] McCain's role in Kennard's arrests and convictions is unknown.[106][107][108][109] While trying to prevent Kennard's enrollment, McCain made a speech in Chicago, with his travel sponsored by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. He described the blacks' seeking to desegregate Southern schools as "imports" from the North. (Kennard was a native and resident of Hattiesburg.) McCain said: We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a segregated society...In all fairness, I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting...The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man's hands.[106][108][109] Note: Mississippi had passed a new constitution in 1890 that effectively disfranchised most blacks by changing electoral and voter registration requirements; although it deprived them of constitutional rights authorized under post-Civil War amendments, it survived U.S. Supreme Court challenges at the time. It was not until after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that most blacks in Mississippi and other southern states gained federal protection to enforce the constitutional right of citizens to vote. James Meredith walking to class accompanied by U.S. marshals In September 1962, James Meredith won a lawsuit to secure admission to the previously segregated University of Mississippi. He attempted to enter campus on September 20, on September 25, and again on September 26. He was blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett, who said, "[N]o school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor." The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Barnett and Lieutenant Governor Paul B. Johnson Jr. in contempt, ordering them arrested and fined more than $10,000 for each day they refused to allow Meredith to enroll.[110] U.S. Army trucks loaded with U.S. Marshals on the University of Mississippi campus Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent in a force of U.S. Marshals. On September 30, 1962, Meredith entered the campus under their escort. Students and other whites began rioting that evening, throwing rocks and firing on the U.S. Marshals guarding Meredith at Lyceum Hall. Rioters ended up killing two civilians, including a French journalist; 28 marshals suffered gunshot wounds, and 160 others were injured. President John F. Kennedy sent U.S. Army and federalized Mississippi National Guard forces as well as U.S. Border Patrol officers to the campus to quell the riot. Meredith began classes the day after the troops arrived.[111] Kennard and other activists continued to work on public university desegregation. In 1965 Raylawni Branch and Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong became the first African-American students to attend the University of Southern Mississippi. By that time, McCain helped ensure they had a peaceful entry.[112] In 2006, Judge Robert Helfrich ruled that Kennard was factually innocent of all charges for which he had been convicted in the 1950s.[105] Albany Movement, 1961–62 Main article: Albany Movement The SCLC, which had been criticized by some student activists for its failure to participate more fully in the freedom rides, committed much of its prestige and resources to a desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. King, who had been criticized personally by some SNCC activists for his distance from the dangers that local organizers faced—and given the derisive nickname "De Lawd" as a result—intervened personally to assist the campaign led by both SNCC organizers and local leaders. The campaign was a failure because of the canny tactics of Laurie Pritchett, the local police chief, and divisions within the black community. The goals may not have been specific enough. Pritchett contained the marchers without violent attacks on demonstrators that inflamed national opinion. He also arranged for arrested demonstrators to be taken to jails in surrounding communities, allowing plenty of room to remain in his jail. Pritchett also foresaw King's presence as a danger and forced his release to avoid King's rallying the black community. King left in 1962 without having achieved any dramatic victories. The local movement, however, continued the struggle, and it obtained significant gains in the next few years.[113] Birmingham campaign, 1963 Main article: Birmingham campaign The Albany movement was shown to be an important education for the SCLC, however, when it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. Executive Director Wyatt Tee Walker carefully planned the early strategy and tactics for the campaign. It focused on one goal—the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants, rather than total desegregation, as in Albany. The movement's efforts were helped by the brutal response of local authorities, in particular Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety. He had long held much political power but had lost a recent election for mayor to a less rabidly segregationist candidate. Refusing to accept the new mayor's authority, Connor intended to stay in office. The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins, kneel-ins at local churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a drive to register voters. The city, however, obtained an injunction barring all such protests. Convinced that the order was unconstitutional, the campaign defied it and prepared for mass arrests of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963.[114] While in jail, King wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail"[115] on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement.[116] Supporters appealed to the Kennedy administration, which intervened to obtain King's release. King was allowed to call his wife, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child and was released early on April 19. The campaign, however, faltered as it ran out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. James Bevel, SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, then came up with a bold and controversial alternative: to train high school students to take part in the demonstrations. As a result, in what would be called the Children's Crusade, more than one thousand students skipped school on May 2 to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church to join the demonstrations. More than six hundred marched out of the church fifty at a time in an attempt to walk to City Hall to speak to Birmingham's mayor about segregation. They were arrested and put into jail. In this first encounter, the police acted with restraint. On the next day, however, another one thousand students gathered at the church. When Bevel started them marching fifty at a time, Bull Connor finally unleashed police dogs on them and then turned the city's fire hoses water streams on the children. National television networks broadcast the scenes of the dogs attacking demonstrators and the water from the fire hoses knocking down the schoolchildren.[117] Widespread public outrage led the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully in negotiations between the white business community and the SCLC. On May 10, the parties announced an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown, to create a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, to arrange for the release of jailed protesters, and to establish regular means of communication between black and white leaders. Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement—the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth was particularly critical, since he was skeptical about the good faith of Birmingham's power structure from his experience in dealing with them. Parts of the white community reacted violently. They bombed the Gaston Motel, which housed the SCLC's unofficial headquarters, and the home of King's brother, the Reverend A. D. King. In response, thousands of blacks rioted, burning numerous buildings and one of them stabbed and wounded a police officer.[118] Congress of Racial Equality march in Washington D.C. on September 22, 1963, in memory of the children killed in the Birmingham bombings Kennedy prepared to federalize the Alabama National Guard if the need arose. Four months later, on September 15, a conspiracy of Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young girls. "Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's response, 1963 Main articles: Gloria Richardson, Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, and Civil Rights Address Birmingham was only one of over a hundred cities rocked by the chaotic protest that spring and summer, some of them in the North but mainly in the South. During the March on Washington, Martin Luther King would refer to such protests as "the whirlwinds of revolt." In Chicago, blacks rioted through the South Side in late May after a white police officer shot a fourteen-year-old black boy who was fleeing the scene of a robbery.[119] Violent clashes between black activists and white workers took place in both Philadelphia and Harlem in successful efforts to integrate state construction projects.[120][121] On June 6, over a thousand whites attacked a sit-in in Lexington, North Carolina; blacks fought back and one white man was killed.[122][123] Edwin C. Berry of the National Urban League warned of a complete breakdown in race relations: "My message from the beer gardens and the barbershops all indicate the fact that the Negro is ready for war."[119] In Cambridge, Maryland, a working‐class city on the Eastern Shore, Gloria Richardson of SNCC led a movement that pressed for desegregation but also demanded low‐rent public housing, job‐training, public and private jobs, and an end to police brutality.[124] On June 11, struggles between blacks and whites escalated into violent rioting, leading Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes to declare martial law. When negotiations between Richardson and Maryland officials faltered, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy directly intervened to negotiate a desegregation agreement.[125] Richardson felt that the increasing participation of poor and working-class blacks was expanding both the power and parameters of the movement, asserting that "the people as a whole really do have more intelligence than a few of their leaders.ʺ[124] In their deliberations during this wave of protests, the Kennedy administration privately felt that militant demonstrations were ʺbad for the countryʺ and that "Negroes are going to push this thing too far."[126] On May 24, Robert Kennedy had a meeting with prominent black intellectuals to discuss the racial situation. The blacks criticized Kennedy harshly for vacillating on civil rights and said that the African-American community's thoughts were increasingly turning to violence. The meeting ended with ill will on all sides.[127][128][129] Nonetheless, the Kennedys ultimately decided that new legislation for equal public accommodations was essential to drive activists "into the courts and out of the streets."[126][130] Alabama governor George Wallace stands against desegregation at the University of Alabama and is confronted by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach in 1963 On June 11, 1963, George Wallace, Governor of Alabama, tried to block[131] the integration of the University of Alabama. President John F. Kennedy sent a military force to make Governor Wallace step aside, allowing the enrollment of Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood. That evening, President Kennedy addressed the nation on TV and radio with his historic civil rights speech, where he lamented "a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety." He called on Congress to pass new civil rights legislation, and urged the country to embrace civil rights as "a moral issue...in our daily lives."[132] In the early hours of June 12, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, was assassinated by a member of the Klan.[133][134] The next week, as promised, on June 19, 1963, President Kennedy submitted his Civil Rights bill to Congress.[135] March on Washington, 1963 Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Bayard Rustin (left) and Cleveland Robinson (right), organizers of the March, on August 7, 1963 The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the National Mall A. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to support demands for elimination of employment discrimination in defense industries; he called off the march when the Roosevelt administration met the demand by issuing Executive Order 8802 barring racial discrimination and creating an agency to oversee compliance with the order.[136] Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the chief planners of the second march, which they proposed in 1962. In 1963, the Kennedy administration initially opposed the march out of concern it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, Randolph and King were firm that the march would proceed.[137] With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. Concerned about the turnout, President Kennedy enlisted the aid of white church leaders and Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, to help mobilize white supporters for the march.[138][139] The march was held on August 28, 1963. Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals: meaningful civil rights laws a massive federal works program full and fair employment decent housing the right to vote adequate integrated education. Of these, the march's major focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham. Martin Luther King Jr. at a Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. National media attention also greatly contributed to the march's national exposure and probable impact. In the essay "The March on Washington and Television News,"[140] historian William Thomas notes: "Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers". By carrying the organizers' speeches and offering their own commentary, television stations framed the way their local audiences saw and understood the event.[140] "I Have a Dream" MENU0:00 30-second sample from "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963 Problems playing this file? See media help. The march was a success, although not without controversy. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. While many speakers applauded the Kennedy administration for the efforts it had made toward obtaining new, more effective civil rights legislation protecting the right to vote and outlawing segregation, John Lewis of SNCC took the administration to task for not doing more to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South. After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the White House. While the Kennedy administration appeared sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had enough votes in Congress to do so. However, when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963,[135] the new President Lyndon Johnson decided to use his influence in Congress to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda. Malcolm X joins the movement, 1964–1965 Main articles: Malcolm X, Black Nationalism, and The Ballot or the Bullet In March 1964, Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz), national representative of the Nation of Islam, formally broke with that organization, and made a public offer to collaborate with any civil rights organization that accepted the right to self-defense and the philosophy of Black nationalism (which Malcolm said no longer required Black separatism). Gloria Richardson, head of the Cambridge, Maryland, chapter of SNCC, and leader of the Cambridge rebellion,[141] an honored guest at The March on Washington, immediately embraced Malcolm's offer. Mrs. Richardson, "the nation's most prominent woman [civil rights] leader,"[142] told The Baltimore Afro-American that "Malcolm is being very practical...The federal government has moved into conflict situations only when matters approach the level of insurrection. Self-defense may force Washington to intervene sooner."[142] Earlier, in May 1963, writer and activist James Baldwin had stated publicly that "the Black Muslim movement is the only one in the country we can call grassroots, I hate to say it...Malcolm articulates for Negroes, their suffering...he corroborates their reality..."[143] On the local level, Malcolm and the NOI had been allied with the Harlem chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) since at least 1962.[144] Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. speak to each other thoughtfully as others look on. Malcolm X meets with Martin Luther King Jr., March 26, 1964 On March 26, 1964, as the Civil Rights Act was facing stiff opposition in Congress, Malcolm had a public meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Capitol. Malcolm had tried to begin a dialog with Dr. King as early as 1957, but King had rebuffed him. Malcolm had responded by calling King an "Uncle Tom", saying he had turned his back on black militancy in order to appease the white power structure. But the two men were on good terms at their face-to-face meeting.[145] There is evidence that King was preparing to support Malcolm's plan to formally bring the U.S. government before the United Nations on charges of human rights violations against African Americans.[146] Malcolm now encouraged Black nationalists to get involved in voter registration drives and other forms of community organizing to redefine and expand the movement.[147] Civil rights activists became increasingly combative in the 1963 to 1964 period, seeking to defy such events as the thwarting of the Albany campaign, police repression and Ku Klux Klan terrorism in Birmingham, and the assassination of Medgar Evers. The latter's brother Charles Evers, who took over as Mississippi NAACP Field Director, told a public NAACP conference on February 15, 1964, that "non-violence won't work in Mississippi...we made up our minds...that if a white man shoots at a Negro in Mississippi, we will shoot back."[148] The repression of sit-ins in Jacksonville, Florida, provoked a riot in which black youth threw Molotov cocktails at police on March 24, 1964.[149] Malcolm X gave numerous speeches in this period warning that such militant activity would escalate further if African Americans' rights were not fully recognized. In his landmark April 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm presented an ultimatum to white America: "There's new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets."[150] As noted in the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize, "Malcolm X had a far-reaching effect on the civil rights movement. In the South, there had been a long tradition of self-reliance. Malcolm X's ideas now touched that tradition".[151] Self-reliance was becoming paramount in light of the 1964 Democratic National Convention's decision to refuse seating to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and instead to seat the regular state delegation, which had been elected in violation of the party's own rules, and by Jim Crow law instead.[152] SNCC moved in an increasingly militant direction and worked with Malcolm X on two Harlem MFDP fundraisers in December 1964. When Fannie Lou Hamer spoke to Harlemites about the Jim Crow violence that she'd suffered in Mississippi, she linked it directly to the Northern police brutality against blacks that Malcolm protested against;[153] When Malcolm asserted that African Americans should emulate the Mau Mau army of Kenya in efforts to gain their independence, many in SNCC applauded.[154] During the Selma campaign for voting rights in 1965, Malcolm made it known that he'd heard reports of increased threats of lynching around Selma. In late January he sent an open telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, stating: "if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans...you and your KKK friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence."[155] The following month, the Selma chapter of SNCC invited Malcolm to speak to a mass meeting there. On the day of Malcolm's appearance, President Johnson made his first public statement in support of the Selma campaign.[156] Paul Ryan Haygood, a co-director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, credits Malcolm with a role in gaining support by the federal government. Haygood noted that "shortly after Malcolm's visit to Selma, a federal judge, responding to a suit brought by the Department of Justice, required Dallas County, Alabama, registrars to process at least 100 Black applications each day their offices were open."[157] St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–64 Main article: St. Augustine movement "We Cater to White Trade Only" sign on a restaurant window in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1938. In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and spent a night in jail for attempting to eat at a white-only restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida. St. Augustine was famous as the "Nation's Oldest City", founded by the Spanish in 1565. It became the stage for a great drama leading up to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. A local movement, led by Robert B. Hayling, a black dentist and Air Force veteran affiliated with the NAACP, had been picketing segregated local institutions since 1963. In the fall of 1964, Hayling and three companions were brutally beaten at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Nightriders shot into black homes, and teenagers Audrey Nell Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson, Samuel White, and Willie Carl Singleton (who came to be known as "The St. Augustine Four") sat in at a local Woolworth's lunch counter, seeking to get served. They were arrested and convicted of trespassing, and sentenced to six months in jail and reform school. It took a special act of the governor and cabinet of Florida to release them after national protests by the Pittsburgh Courier, Jackie Robinson, and others. In response to the repression, the St. Augustine movement practiced armed self-defense in addition to nonviolent direct action. In June 1963, Hayling publicly stated that "I and the others have armed. We will shoot first and answer questions later. We are not going to die like Medgar Evers." The comment made national headlines.[158] When Klan nightriders terrorized black neighborhoods in St. Augustine, Hayling's NAACP members often drove them off with gunfire. In October 1963, a Klansman was killed.[159] In 1964, Hayling and other activists urged the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to come to St. Augustine. Four prominent Massachusetts women – Mary Parkman Peabody, Esther Burgess, Hester Campbell (all of whose husbands were Episcopal bishops), and Florence Rowe (whose husband was vice president of the John Hancock Insurance Company) – also came to lend their support. The arrest of Peabody, the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, for attempting to eat at the segregated Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge in an integrated group, made front-page news across the country and brought the movement in St. Augustine to the attention of the world.[160] Widely publicized activities continued in the ensuing months. When Dr. King was arrested, he sent a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to a northern supporter, Rabbi Israel Dresner. A week later, in the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place, while they were conducting a pray-in at the segregated Monson Motel. A well-known photograph taken in St. Augustine shows the manager of the Monson Motel pouring muriatic acid in the swimming pool while blacks and whites are swimming in it. The horrifying photograph was run on the front page of a Washington newspaper the day the Senate was to vote on passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Chester School Protests, Spring 1964 Main article: Chester School Protests From November 1963 through April 1964, the Chester School Protests were a series of civil rights protests led by George Raymond of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP) and Stanley Branche of the Committee for Freedom Now (CFFN) that made Chester, Pennsylvania one of the key battlegrounds of the civil rights movement. James Farmer, the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality called Chester "the Birmingham of the North".[161] In 1962, Branche and the CFFN focused on improving conditions at the predominantly black Franklin Elementary school in Chester. Although the school was built to house 500 students, it had become overcrowded with 1,200 students. The school's average class-size was 39, twice the number of nearby all-white schools.[162] The school was built in 1910 and had never been updated. Only two bathrooms were available for the entire school.[163] In November 1963, CFFN protesters blocked the entrance to Franklin Elementary school and the Chester Municipal Building resulting in the arrest of 240 protesters. Following public attention to the protests stoked by media coverage of the mass arrests, the mayor and school board negotiated with the CFFN and NAACP.[161] The Chester Board of Education agreed to reduce class sizes at Franklin school, remove unsanitary toilet facilities, relocate classes held in the boiler room and coal bin and repair school grounds.[163] Emboldened by the success of the Franklin Elementary school demonstrations, the CFFN recruited new members, sponsored voter registration drives and planned a citywide boycott of Chester schools. Branche built close ties with students at nearby Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania Military College and Cheyney State College in order to ensure large turnouts at demonstrations and protests.[161] Branche invited Dick Gregory and Malcolm X to Chester to participate in the "Freedom Now Conference"[164] and other national civil rights leaders such as Gloria Richardson came to Chester in support of the demonstrations.[165] In 1964, a series of almost nightly protests brought chaos to Chester as protestors argued that the Chester School Board had de facto segregation of schools. The mayor of Chester, James Gorbey, issued "The Police Position to Preserve the Public Peace", a ten-point statement promising an immediate return to law and order. The city deputized firemen and trash collectors to help handle demonstrators.[161] The State of Pennsylvania deployed 50 state troopers to assist the 77-member Chester police force.[163] The demonstrations were marked by violence and charges of police brutality.[166] Over six hundred people were arrested over a two month period of civil rights rallies, marches, pickets, boycotts and sit-ins.[161] Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton became involved in the negotiations and convinced Branche to obey a court-ordered moratorium on demonstrations.[164] Scranton created the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission to conduct hearings on the de facto segregation of public schools. All protests were discontinued while the commission held hearings during the summer of 1964.[167] In November 1964, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission concluded that the Chester School Board had violated the law and ordered the Chester School District to desegregate the city's six predominantly African-American schools. The city appealed the ruling, which delayed implementation.[163] Freedom Summer, 1964 Main article: Freedom Summer In the summer of 1964, COFO brought nearly 1,000 activists to Mississippi—most of them white college students from the North and West—to join with local black activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools," and organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).[168] Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the outsiders and attempts to change their society. State and local governments, police, the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan used arrests, beatings, arson, murder, spying, firing, evictions, and other forms of intimidation and harassment to oppose the project and prevent blacks from registering to vote or achieving social equality.[169] Missing persons poster created by the FBI in 1964 shows the photographs of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared: James Chaney, a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two Jewish activists, Andrew Goodman, a Queens College anthropology student; and Michael Schwerner, a CORE organizer from Manhattan's Lower East Side. They were found weeks later, murdered by conspirators who turned out to be local members of the Klan, some of the members of the Neshoba County sheriff's department. This outraged the public, leading the U.S. Justice Department along with the FBI (the latter which had previously avoided dealing with the issue of segregation and persecution of blacks) to take action. The outrage over these murders helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. From June to August, Freedom Summer activists worked in 38 local projects scattered across the state, with the largest number concentrated in the Mississippi Delta region. At least 30 Freedom Schools, with close to 3,500 students, were established, and 28 community centers set up.[170] Over the course of the Summer Project, some 17,000 Mississippi blacks attempted to become registered voters in defiance of the red tape and forces of white supremacy arrayed against them—only 1,600 (less than 10%) succeeded. But more than 80,000 joined the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), founded as an alternative political organization, showing their desire to vote and participate in politics.[171] Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it had a significant effect on the course of the civil rights movement. It helped break down the decades of people's isolation and repression that were the foundation of the Jim Crow system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers. The progression of events throughout the South increased media attention to Mississippi.[172] The deaths of affluent northern white students and threats to non-Southerners attracted the full attention of the media spotlight to the state. Many black activists became embittered, believing the media valued lives of whites and blacks differently. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers, almost all of whom—black and white—still consider it to have been one of the defining periods of their lives.[172] Civil Rights Act of 1964 Main article: Civil Rights Act of 1964 Although President Kennedy had proposed civil rights legislation and it had support from Northern Congressmen and Senators of both parties, Southern Senators blocked the bill by threatening filibusters. After considerable parliamentary maneuvering and 54 days of filibuster on the floor of the United States Senate, President Johnson got a bill through the Congress.[173] Lyndon B. Johnson signs the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[11] which banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations. The bill authorized the Attorney General to file lawsuits to enforce the new law. The law also nullified state and local laws that required such discrimination. Harlem riot of 1964 Main article: Harlem riot of 1964 When police shot an unarmed black teenager in Harlem in July 1964, tensions escalated out of control. Residents were frustrated with racial inequalities. Rioting broke out, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, a major black neighborhood in Brooklyn erupted next. That summer, rioting also broke out in Philadelphia, for similar reasons. The riots were on a much smaller scale than what would occur in 1965 and later. Washington responded with a pilot program called Project Uplift. Thousands of young people in Harlem were given jobs during the summer of 1965. The project was inspired by a report generated by HARYOU called Youth in the Ghetto.[174] HARYOU was given a major role in organizing the project, together with the National Urban League and nearly 100 smaller community organizations.[175] Permanent jobs at living wages were still out of reach of many young black men. Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964 Main article: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Blacks in Mississippi had been disfranchised by statutory and constitutional changes since the late 19th century. In 1963 COFO held a Freedom Ballot in Mississippi to demonstrate the desire of black Mississippians to vote. More than 80,000 people registered and voted in the mock election, which pitted an integrated slate of candidates from the "Freedom Party" against the official state Democratic Party candidates.[176] President Lyndon B. Johnson (center) meets with civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young, and James Farmer, January 1964 In 1964, organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white official party. When Mississippi voting registrars refused to recognize their candidates, they held their own primary. They selected Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray to run for Congress, and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.[168] The presence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was inconvenient, however, for the convention organizers. They had planned a triumphant celebration of the Johnson administration's achievements in civil rights, rather than a fight over racism within the Democratic Party. All-white delegations from other Southern states threatened to walk out if the official slate from Mississippi was not seated. Johnson was worried about the inroads that Republican Barry Goldwater's campaign was making in what previously had been the white Democratic stronghold of the "Solid South", as well as support that George Wallace had received in the North during the Democratic primaries. Johnson could not, however, prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee. There Fannie Lou Hamer testified eloquently about the beatings that she and others endured and the threats they faced for trying to register to vote. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?" Johnson offered the MFDP a "compromise" under which it would receive two non-voting, at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would retain its seats. The MFDP angrily rejected the "compromise." The MFDP kept up its agitation at the convention after it was denied official recognition. When all but three of the "regular" Mississippi delegates left because they refused to pledge allegiance to the party, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic delegates and took the seats vacated by the official Mississippi delegates. National party organizers removed them. When they returned the next day, they found convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there the day before. They stayed and sang "freedom songs". The 1964 Democratic Party convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the civil rights movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP. The MFDP became more radical after Atlantic City. It invited Malcolm X to speak at one of its conventions and opposed the war in Vietnam. Selma Voting Rights Movement Main articles: Selma to Montgomery marches and Voting Rights Act President Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965 "Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act" File:Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act (August 6, 1965) Lyndon Baines Johnson.ogv Statement before the United States Congress by Johnson on August 6, 1965, about the Voting Rights Act "Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act" MENU0:00 audio only Problems playing these files? See media help. SNCC had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in Selma, Alabama, in 1963, but by 1965 little headway had been made in the face of opposition from Selma's sheriff, Jim Clark. After local residents asked the SCLC for assistance, King came to Selma to lead several marches, at which he was arrested along with 250 other demonstrators. The marchers continued to meet violent resistance from the police. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a resident of nearby Marion, was killed by police at a later march on February 17, 1965. Jackson's death prompted James Bevel, director of the Selma Movement, to initiate and organize a plan to march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital. On March 7, 1965, acting on Bevel's plan, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk the 54 miles (87 km) from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Six blocks into the march, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the marchers left the city and moved into the county, state troopers, and local county law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, rubber tubes wrapped in barbed wire, and bullwhips. They drove the marchers back into Selma. Lewis was knocked unconscious and dragged to safety. At least 16 other marchers were hospitalized. Among those gassed and beaten was Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was at the center of civil rights activity at the time. Police attack non-violent marchers on "Bloody Sunday", the first day of the Selma to Montgomery marches. The national broadcast of the news footage of lawmen attacking unresisting marchers' seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote provoked a national response and hundreds of people from all over the country came for a second march. These marchers were turned around by Dr. King at the last minute so as not to violate a federal injunction. With the support of James Forman and other SNCC leaders, activists throughout the country committed civil disobedience for Selma, particularly in Montgomery and at the White House. The marchers were able to lift the injunction and obtain protection from federal troops, permitting them to make the march across Alabama without incident two weeks later. On the evening of a second march on March 9 to the site of Bloody Sunday, local whites attacked Rev. James Reeb, a voting rights supporter. He died of his injuries in a Birmingham hospital on March 11. On March 25, four Klansmen shot and killed Detroit homemaker Viola Liuzzo as she drove marchers back to Selma at night after the successfully completed march to Montgomery. Voting Rights Act of 1965 Eight days after the first march, but before the final march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. In it he stated: Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome. On August 6, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended literacy tests and other subjective voter registration tests. It authorized Federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used and where African Americans were historically under-represented in voting rolls compared to the eligible population. African Americans who had been barred from registering to vote finally had an alternative to taking suits to local or state courts, which had seldom prosecuted their cases to success. If discrimination in voter registration occurred, the 1965 act authorized the Attorney General of the United States to send Federal examiners to replace local registrars. Within months of the bill's passage, 250,000 new black voters had been registered, one-third of them by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout at 74% and led the nation in the number of black public officials elected. In 1969, Tennessee had a 92.1% turnout among black voters; Arkansas, 77.9%; and Texas, 73.1%. Several whites who had opposed the Voting Rights Act paid a quick price. In 1966 Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma, Alabama, infamous for using cattle prods against civil rights marchers, was up for reelection. Although he took off the notorious "Never" pin on his uniform, he was defeated. At the election, Clark lost as blacks voted to get him out of office. Blacks' regaining the power to vote changed the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states. By 1989, there were more than 7,200 African Americans in office, including more than 4,800 in the South. Nearly every county where populations were majority black in Alabama had a black sheriff. Southern blacks held top positions in city, county, and state governments. Atlanta elected a black mayor, Andrew Young, as did Jackson, Mississippi, with Harvey Johnson Jr., and New Orleans, with Ernest Morial. Black politicians on the national level included Barbara Jordan, elected as a Representative from Texas in Congress, and President Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Julian Bond was elected to the Georgia State Legislature in 1965, although political reaction to his public opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War prevented him from taking his seat until 1967. John Lewis was first elected in 1986 to represent Georgia's 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives, where he has served since 1987. Watts riot of 1965 Main article: Watts Riots Police arrest a man during the Watts Riots, August 1965 The new Voting Rights Act of 1965 had no immediate effect on living conditions for poor blacks. A few days after the act became law, a riot broke out in the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. Like Harlem, Watts was a majority-black neighborhood with very high unemployment and associated poverty. Its residents confronted a largely white police department that had a history of abuse against blacks.[177] While arresting a young man for drunk driving, police officers argued with the suspect's mother before onlookers. The spark triggered massive destruction of property through six days of rioting. Thirty-four people were killed and property valued at about $30 million was destroyed, making the Watts Riots among the most expensive in American history. With black militancy on the rise, ghetto residents directed acts of anger at the police. Black residents growing tired of police brutality continued to riot. Some young people joined groups such as the Black Panthers, whose popularity was based in part on their reputation for confronting police officers. Riots among blacks occurred in 1966 and 1967 in cities such as Atlanta, San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore, Seattle, Tacoma, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, Newark, Chicago, New York City (specifically in Brooklyn, Harlem and the Bronx), and worst of all in Detroit. Fair housing movements, 1966–1968 The first major blow against housing segregation in the era, the Rumford Fair Housing Act, was passed in California in 1963. It was overturned by white California voters and real estate lobbyists the following year with Proposition 14, a move which helped precipitate the Watts Riots.[178][179] In 1966, the California Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 14 and reinstated the Rumford Fair Housing Act.[180] Working and organizing for fair housing laws became a major project of the movement over the next two years, with Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and Al Raby leading the Chicago Freedom Movement around the issue in 1966. In the following year, Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council also attracted national attention with a fair housing campaign in Milwaukee.[181][182] Both movements faced violent resistance from white homeowners and legal opposition from conservative politicians. The Fair Housing Bill was the most contentious civil rights legislation of the era. Senator Walter Mondale, who advocated for the bill, noted that over successive years, it was the most filibustered legislation in U.S. history. It was opposed by most Northern and Southern senators, as well as the National Association of Real Estate Boards. A proposed "Civil Rights Act of 1966" had collapsed completely because of its fair housing provision.[183] Mondale commented that: A lot of civil rights [legislation] was about making the South behave and taking the teeth from George Wallace, [but] this came right to the neighborhoods across the country. This was civil rights getting personal.[35] Nationwide riots of 1967 Main articles: Detroit Riot of 1967, 1967 Newark riots, 1967 Plainfield riots, and Long Hot Summer of 1967 In 1967 riots broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 100 U.S. cities, including Detroit, Newark, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C.[184] The largest of these was the 1967 Detroit riot. In Detroit, a large black middle class had begun to develop among those African Americans who worked at unionized jobs in the automotive industry. These workers complained of persisting racist practices, limiting the jobs they could have and opportunities for promotion. The United Auto Workers channeled these complaints into bureaucratic and ineffective grievance procedures.[185] Violent white mobs enforced the segregation of housing up through the 1960s.[186] Blacks who were not upwardly mobile were living in substandard conditions, subject to the same problems as poor African Americans in Watts and Harlem. When white Detroit Police Department (DPD) officers shut down an illegal bar and arrested a large group of patrons during the hot summer, furious black residents rioted. Rioters looted and destroyed property while snipers engaged in firefights from rooftops and windows, undermining the DPD's ability to curtail the disorder. In response, the Michigan Army National Guard and U.S. Army paratroopers were deployed to reinforce the DPD and protect Detroit Fire Department (DFD) firefighters from attacks while putting out fires. Residents reported that police officers and National Guardsmen shot at black civilians and suspects indiscriminately. After five days, 43 people had been killed, hundreds injured, and thousands left homeless; $40 to $45 million worth of damage was caused.[186][187] State and local governments responded to the riot with a dramatic increase in minority hiring.[188] In the aftermath of the turmoil, the Greater Detroit Board of Commerce also launched a campaign to find jobs for ten thousand "previously unemployable" persons, a preponderant number of whom were black.[189] Governor George Romney immediately responded to the riot of 1967 with a special session of the Michigan legislature where he forwarded sweeping housing proposals that included not only fair housing, but "important relocation, tenants' rights and code enforcement legislation." Romney had supported such proposals in 1965, but abandoned them in the face of organized opposition. The laws passed both houses of the legislature. Historian Sidney Fine wrote that: The Michigan Fair Housing Act, which took effect on November 15, 1968, was stronger than the federal fair housing law...It is probably more than a coincidence that the state that had experienced the most severe racial disorder of the 1960s also adopted one of the strongest state fair housing acts.[190] President Johnson created the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in response to a nationwide wave of riots. The commission's final report called for major reforms in employment and public policy in black communities. It warned that the United States was moving toward separate white and black societies. Memphis, King assassination and the Poor People's March 1968 Main articles: Poor People's Campaign and Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. See also: Orangeburg massacre "I've Been to the Mountaintop" MENU0:00 Final 30 seconds of "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. These are the final words from his final public speech. Problems playing this file? See media help. A 3,000-person shantytown called Resurrection City was established in 1968 on the National Mall as part of the Poor People's Campaign. Rev. James Lawson invited King to Memphis, Tennessee, in March 1968 to support a sanitation workers' strike. These workers launched a campaign for union representation after two workers were accidentally killed on the job; they were seeking fair wages and improved working conditions. King considered their struggle to be a vital part of the Poor People's Campaign he was planning. A day after delivering his stirring "I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon, which has become famous for his vision of American society, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Riots broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 110 cities across the United States in the days that followed, notably in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. The day before King's funeral, April 8, Coretta Scott King and three of the King children led 20,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis, holding signs that read, "Honor King: End Racism" and "Union Justice Now". Armed National Guardsmen lined the streets, sitting on M-48 tanks, to protect the marchers, and helicopters circled overhead. On April 9, Mrs. King led another 150,000 people in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta.[191] Her dignity revived courage and hope in many of the Movement's members, confirming her place as the new leader in the struggle for racial equality. Coretta Scott King said,[192] [Martin Luther King Jr.] gave his life for the poor of the world, the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. The day that Negro people and others in bondage are truly free, on the day want is abolished, on the day wars are no more, on that day I know my husband will rest in a long-deserved peace. Rev. Ralph Abernathy succeeded King as the head of the SCLC and attempted to carry forth King's plan for a Poor People's March. It was to unite blacks and whites to campaign for fundamental changes in American society and economic structure. The march went forward under Abernathy's plainspoken leadership but did not achieve its goals. Civil Rights Act of 1968 Main article: Civil Rights Act of 1968 As 1968 began, the fair housing bill was being filibustered once again, but two developments revived it.[35] The Kerner Commission report on the 1967 ghetto riots was delivered to Congress on March 1, and it strongly recommended "a comprehensive and enforceable federal open housing law" as a remedy to the civil disturbances. The Senate was moved to end their filibuster that week.[193] As the House of Representatives deliberated the bill in April, Dr. King was assassinated, and the largest wave of unrest since the Civil War swept the country.[194] Senator Charles Mathias wrote that: some Senators and Representatives publicly stated they would not be intimidated or rushed into legislating because of the disturbances. Nevertheless, the news coverage of the riots and the underlying disparities in income, jobs, housing, and education, between White and Black Americans helped educate citizens and Congress about the stark reality of an enormous social problem. Members of Congress knew they had to act to redress these imbalances in American life to fulfill the dream that King had so eloquently preached.[193] The House passed the legislation on April 10, and President Johnson signed it the next day. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin. It also made it a federal crime to "by force or by the threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone...by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin."[195] Movements, politics, and white reactions Grassroots leadership Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (and other Mississippi-based organizations) is an example of local grassroots leadership in the movement. While most popular representations of the movement are centered on the leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to one person, organization, or strategy. Sociologist Doug McAdam has stated that, "in King's case, it would be inaccurate to say that he was the leader of the modern civil rights movement...but more importantly, there was no singular civil rights movement. The movement was, in fact, a coalition of thousands of local efforts nationwide, spanning several decades, hundreds of discrete groups, and all manner of strategies and tactics—legal, illegal, institutional, non-institutional, violent, non-violent. Without discounting King's importance, it would be sheer fiction to call him the leader of what was fundamentally an amorphous, fluid, dispersed movement."[196] Decentralized grassroots leadership has been a major focus of movement scholarship in recent decades through the work of historians John Dittmer, Charles Payne, Barbara Ransby, and others. Black power (1966–1968) Main articles: Black Power and Black Power movement During the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964, numerous tensions within the civil rights movement came to the forefront. Many blacks in SNCC developed concerns that white activists from the North and West were taking over the movement. The participation by numerous white students was not reducing the amount of violence that SNCC suffered, but seemed to exacerbate it. Additionally, there was profound disillusionment at Lyndon Johnson's denial of voting status for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention.[197][198] Meanwhile, during CORE's work in Louisiana that summer, that group found the federal government would not respond to requests to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or to protect the lives of activists who challenged segregation. The Louisiana campaign survived by relying on a local African-American militia called the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who used arms to repel white supremacist violence and police repression. CORE's collaboration with the Deacons was effective in disrupting Jim Crow in numerous Louisiana areas.[199][200] In 1965, SNCC helped organize an independent political party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt, also Klan territory. It permitted its black leaders to openly promote the use of armed self-defense. Meanwhile, the Deacons for Defense and Justice expanded into Mississippi and assisted Charles Evers' NAACP chapter with a successful campaign in Natchez. Charles had taken the lead after his brother Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963.[201] The same year, the 1965 Watts Rebellion took place in Los Angeles. Many black youths were committed to the use of violence to protest inequality and oppression.[202] During the March Against Fear in 1966, initiated by James Meredith, SNCC and CORE fully embraced the slogan of "black power" to describe these trends towards militancy and self-reliance. In Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael declared, "I'm not going to beg the white man for anything that I deserve, I'm going to take it. We need power."[203] Some people engaging in the Black Power movement claimed a growing sense of black pride and identity. In gaining more of a sense of a cultural identity, blacks demanded that whites no longer refer to them as "Negroes" but as "Afro-Americans," similar to other ethnic groups, such as Irish Americans and Italian Americans. Until the mid-1960s, blacks had dressed similarly to whites and often straightened their hair. As a part of affirming their identity, blacks started to wear African-based dashikis and grow their hair out as a natural afro. The afro, sometimes nicknamed the "'fro," remained a popular black hairstyle until the late 1970s. Other variations of traditional African styles have become popular, often featuring braids, extensions, and dreadlocks. The Black Panther Party (BPP), which was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, in 1966, gained the most attention for Black Power nationally. The group began following the revolutionary pan-Africanism of late-period Malcolm X, using a "by-any-means necessary" approach to stopping racial inequality. They sought to rid African-American neighborhoods of police brutality and to establish socialist community control in the ghettos. While they conducted armed confrontation with police, they also set up free breakfast and healthcare programs for children.[204] Between 1968 and 1971, the BPP was one of the most important black organizations in the country and had support from the NAACP, SCLC, Peace and Freedom Party, and others.[205] Black Power was taken to another level inside prison walls. In 1966, George Jackson formed the Black Guerrilla Family in the California San Quentin State Prison. The goal of this group was to overthrow the white-run government in America and the prison system. In 1970, this group displayed their dedication after a white prison guard was found not guilty of shooting and killing three black prisoners from the prison tower. They retaliated by killing a white prison guard. "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud" MENU0:00 James Brown's "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud" from Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud Problems playing this file? See media help. Gold medalist Tommie Smith (center) and bronze medalist John Carlos (right) showing the raised fist on the podium after the 200 m race at the 1968 Summer Olympics; both wear Olympic Project for Human Rights badges. Peter Norman (silver medalist, left) from Australia also wears an OPHR badge in solidarity with Smith and Carlos. Numerous popular cultural expressions associated with black power appeared at this time. Released in August 1968, the number one Rhythm & Blues single for the Billboard Year-End list was James Brown's "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud".[206] In October 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, while being awarded the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the 1968 Summer Olympics, donned human rights badges and each raised a black-gloved Black Power salute during their podium ceremony. King was not comfortable with the "Black Power" slogan, which sounded too much like black nationalism to him. When King was assassinated in 1968, Stokely Carmichael said that whites had murdered the one person who would prevent rampant rioting and that blacks would burn every major city to the ground. Riots broke out in more than 100 cities across the country. Some cities did not recover from the damage for more than a generation; other city neighborhoods never recovered. Black conservatism Despite the common notion that the ideas of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Black Power only conflicted with each other and were the only ideologies of the civil rights movement, there were other sentiments felt by many blacks. Fearing the events during the movement was occurring too quickly, there were some blacks who felt that leaders should take their activism at a slower pace. Others had reservations on how focused blacks were on the movement and felt that such attention was better spent on reforming issues within the black community. Those who blatantly rejected integration had various rationales for doing so, such as fearing a change in the status quo they had been used to for so long or fearing for their safety if they found themselves in environments where whites were much more present. Some defended segregation for the sake of keeping ties with the white power structure from which many relied on for social and economic mobility above other blacks. Based on her interpretation of a 1966 study made by Donald Matthews and James Prothro detailing the relative percentage of blacks for integration, against it or feeling something else, Lauren Winner asserts that: Black defenders of segregation look, at first blush, very much like black nationalists, especially in their preference for all-black institutions; but black defenders of segregation differ from nationalists in two key ways. First, while both groups criticize NAACP-style integration, nationalists articulate a third alternative to integration and Jim Crow, while segregationists preferred to stick with the status quo. Second, absent from black defenders of segregation's political vocabulary was the demand for self-determination. They called for all-black institutions, but not autonomous all-black institutions; indeed, some defenders of segregation asserted that black people needed white paternalism and oversight in order to thrive.[207] Oftentimes, African-American community leaders would be staunch defenders of segregation. Church ministers, businessmen, and educators were among those who wished to keep segregation and segregationist ideals in order to retain the privileges they gained from patronage from whites, such as monetary gains. In addition, they relied on segregation to keep their jobs and economies in their communities thriving. It was feared that if integration became widespread in the South, black-owned businesses and other establishments would lose a large chunk of their customer base to white-owned businesses, and many blacks would lose opportunities for jobs that were presently exclusive to their interests.[208] On the other hand, there were the everyday, average black people who criticized integration as well. For them, they took issue with different parts of the civil rights movement and the potential for blacks to exercise consumerism and economic liberty without hindrance from whites.[209] For Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and other leading activists and groups during the movement, these opposing viewpoints acted as an obstacle against their ideas. These different views made such leaders' work much harder to accomplish, but they were nonetheless important in the overall scope of the movement. For the most part, the black individuals who had reservations on various aspects of the movement and ideologies of the activists were not able to make a game-changing dent in their efforts, but the existence of these alternate ideas gave some blacks an outlet to express their concerns about the changing social structure. Avoiding the "Communist" label See also: The Communist Party and African-Americans On December 17, 1951, the Communist Party–affiliated Civil Rights Congress delivered the petition We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People to the United Nations, arguing that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against lynching in the United States, was guilty of genocide under Article II of the UN Genocide Convention (see Black genocide).[210] The petition was presented to the United Nations at two separate venues: Paul Robeson, a concert singer and activist, presented it to a UN official in New York City, while William L. Patterson, executive director of the CRC, delivered copies of the drafted petition to a UN delegation in Paris.[211] Patterson, the editor of the petition, was a leader of the Communist Party USA and head of the International Labor Defense, a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African Americans who were involved in cases which involved issues of political or racial persecution. The ILD was known for leading the defense of the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama in 1931, where the Communist Party had a considerable amount of influence among African Americans in the 1930s. This influence had largely declined by the late 1950s, although it could command international attention. As earlier civil rights figures such as Robeson, Du Bois and Patterson became more politically radical (and therefore targets of Cold War anti-Communism by the U.S. Government), they lost favor with mainstream Black America as well as with the NAACP.[211] In order to secure a place in the political mainstream and gain the broadest base of support, the new generation of civil rights activists believed that it had to openly distance itself from anything and anyone associated with the Communist party. According to Ella Baker, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference added the word "Christian" to its name in order to deter charges that it was associated with Communism.[212] Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI had been concerned about communism since the early 20th century, and it kept civil rights activists under close surveillance and labeled some of them "Communist" or "subversive", a practice that continued during the Civil Rights Movement. In the early 1960s, the practice of distancing the civil rights movement from "Reds" was challenged by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which adopted a policy of accepting assistance and participation from anyone who supported the SNCC's political program and was willing to "put their body on the line, regardless of political affiliation." At times the SNCC's policy of political openness put it at odds with the NAACP.[211] Kennedy administration, 1961–1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy speaking before a hostile Civil Rights crowd protesting low minority hiring in his Justice Department June 14, 1963[213] For the first two years of the Kennedy administration, civil rights activists had mixed opinions of both the president and Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy. A well of historical skepticism toward liberal politics had left African Americans with a sense of uneasy disdain for any white politician who claimed to share their concerns for freedom, particularly ones connected to the historically pro-segregationist Democratic Party. Still, many were encouraged by the discreet support Kennedy gave to Dr. King, and the administration's willingness, after dramatic pressure from civil disobedience, to bring forth racially progressive initiatives. Many of the initiatives resulted from Robert Kennedy's passion. The younger Kennedy gained a rapid education in the realities of racism through events such as the Baldwin-Kennedy meeting. The president came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matter, resulting in the landmark Civil Rights Address of June 1963 and the introduction of the first major civil rights act of the decade.[214][215] Robert Kennedy first became concerned with civil rights in mid-May 1961 during the Freedom Rides, when photographs of the burning bus and savage beatings in Anniston and Birmingham were broadcast around the world. They came at an especially embarrassing time, as President Kennedy was about to have a summit with the Soviet premier in Vienna. The White House was concerned with its image among the populations of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, and Robert Kennedy responded with an address for Voice of America stating that great progress had been made on the issue of race relations. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the administration worked to resolve the crisis with a minimum of violence and prevent the Freedom Riders from generating a fresh crop of headlines that might divert attention from the President's international agenda. The Freedom Riders documentary notes that, "The back burner issue of civil rights had collided with the urgent demands of Cold War realpolitik."[216] On May 21, when a white mob attacked and burned the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where King was holding out with protesters, Robert Kennedy telephoned King to ask him to stay in the building until the U.S. Marshals and National Guard could secure the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked Kennedy for deploying the force to break up an attack that might otherwise have ended King's life. With a very small majority in Congress, the president's ability to press ahead with legislation relied considerably on a balancing game with the Senators and Congressmen of the South. Without the support of Vice-President Johnson, a former Senator who had years of experience in Congress and longstanding relations there, many of the Attorney-General's programs would not have progressed. By late 1962, frustration at the slow pace of political change was balanced by the movement's strong support for legislative initiatives, including administrative representation across all U.S. Government departments and greater access to the ballot box. From squaring off against Governor George Wallace, to "tearing into" Vice-President Johnson (for failing to desegregate areas of the administration), to threatening corrupt white Southern judges with disbarment, to desegregating interstate transport, Robert Kennedy came to be consumed by the civil rights movement. He continued to work on these social justice issues in his bid for the presidency in 1968. On the night of Governor Wallace's capitulation to African-American enrollment at the University of Alabama, President Kennedy gave an address to the nation, which marked the changing tide, an address that was to become a landmark for the ensuing change in political policy as to civil rights. In 1966, Robert Kennedy visited South Africa and voiced his objections to apartheid, the first time a major US politician had done so: At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence. — LOOK Magazine[217] Robert Kennedy's relationship with the movement was not always positive. As attorney general, he was called to account by activists—who booed him at a June 1963 speech—for the Justice Department's own poor record of hiring blacks.[213] He also presided over FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO program. This program ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of Communist front groups, a category in which the paranoid Hoover included most civil rights organizations.[218][219] Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs.[220] According to Tim Weiner, "RFK knew much more about this surveillance than he ever admitted." Although Kennedy only gave approval for limited wiretapping of Dr. King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so." Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of the black leader's life they deemed important; they then used this information to harass King.[221] Kennedy directly ordered surveillance on James Baldwin after their antagonistic racial summit in 1963.[222][223] American Jewish community and the civil rights movement See also: African American–Jewish relations; New York City teachers' strike of 1968; and Brownsville, Brooklyn Jewish civil rights activist Joseph L. Rauh Jr. marching with Martin Luther King in 1963 Many in the Jewish community supported the civil rights movement. In fact, statistically, Jews were one of the most actively involved non-black groups in the Movement. Many Jewish students worked in concert with African Americans for CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full-time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era. Jews made up roughly half of the white northern and western volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project and approximately half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s.[224] Jewish leaders were arrested while heeding a call from Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida, in June 1964, where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge—a nationally important civil rights landmark that was demolished in 2003 so that a Hilton Hotel could be built on the site. Abraham Joshua Heschel, a writer, rabbi, and professor of theology at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, was outspoken on the subject of civil rights. He marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. In the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, the two white activists killed, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were both Jewish. Brandeis University, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college university in the world, created the Transitional Year Program (TYP) in 1968, in part response to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. The faculty created it to renew the university's commitment to social justice. Recognizing Brandeis as a university with a commitment to academic excellence, these faculty members created a chance for disadvantaged students to participate in an empowering educational experience. The American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) actively promoted civil rights. While Jews were very active in the civil rights movement in the South, in the North, many had experienced a more strained relationship with African Americans. It has been argued that with Black militancy and the Black Power movements on the rise, "Black Anti-Semitism" increased leading to strained relations between Blacks and Jews in Northern communities. In New York City, most notably, there was a major socio-economic class difference in the perception of African Americans by Jews.[225] Jews from better educated Upper-Middle-Class backgrounds were often very supportive of African American civil rights activities while the Jews in poorer urban communities that became increasingly minority were often less supportive largely in part due to more negative and violent interactions between the two groups. According to political scientist Michael Rogin, Jewish-Black hostility was a two-way street extending to earlier decades. In the post-World War II era, Jews were granted white privilege and most moved into the middle-class while Blacks were left behind in the ghetto.[226] Urban Jews engaged in the same sort of conflicts with Blacks—over integration busing, local control of schools, housing, crime, communal identity, and class divides—that other white ethnics did, leading to Jews participating in white flight. The culmination of this was the 1968 New York City teachers' strike, pitting largely Jewish schoolteachers against predominantly Black parents in Brownsville, New York.[227] Profile Many Jewish individuals in the Southern states who supported civil rights for African Americans tended to keep a low profile on "the race issue", in order to avoid attracting the attention of the anti-Black and antisemitic Ku Klux Klan.[228] However, Klan groups exploited the issue of African-American integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle in order to commit violently antisemitic hate crimes. As an example of this hatred, in one year alone, from November 1957 to October 1958, temples and other Jewish communal gatherings were bombed and desecrated in Atlanta, Nashville, Jacksonville, and Miami, and dynamite was found under synagogues in Birmingham, Charlotte, and Gastonia, North Carolina. Some rabbis received death threats, but there were no injuries following these outbursts of violence.[228] White backlash King reached the height of popular acclaim during his life in 1964, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After that point his career was filled with frustrating challenges. The liberal coalition that had gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began to fray. King was becoming more estranged from the Johnson administration. In 1965 he broke with it by calling for peace negotiations and a halt to the bombing of Vietnam. He moved further left in the following years, speaking about the need for economic justice and thoroughgoing changes in American society. He believed that change was needed beyond the civil rights which had been gained by the movement. However, King's attempts to broaden the scope of the civil rights movement were halting and largely unsuccessful. In 1965 King made several attempts to take the Movement north in order to address housing discrimination. The SCLC's campaign in Chicago publicly failed, because Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley marginalized the SCLC's campaign by promising to "study" the city's problems. In 1966, white demonstrators in notoriously racist Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, held "white power" signs and threw stones at marchers who were demonstrating against housing segregation.[229] Politicians and journalists quickly blamed this white backlash on the movement's shift towards Black Power in the mid-1960s; today most scholars believe the backlash was a phenomenon that was already developing in the mid-1950s, and it was embodied in the "massive resistance" movement in the South where even the few moderate white leaders (including George Wallace, who had once been endorsed by the NAACP) shifted to openly racist positions.[230][231] Northern and Western racists opposed the southerners on a regional and cultural basis, but also held segregationist attitudes which became more pronounced as the civil rights movement headed north and west. For instance, prior to the Watts riot, California whites had already mobilized to repeal the state's 1963 fair housing law.[229] Even so, the backlash which occurred at the time was not able to roll back the major civil rights victories which had been achieved or swing the country into reaction. Social historians Matthew Lassiter and Barbara Ehrenreich note that the backlash's primary constituency was suburban and middle-class, not working-class whites: "among the white electorate, one half of blue-collar voters…cast their ballot for [the liberal presidential candidate] Hubert Humphrey in 1968…only in the South did George Wallace draw substantially more blue-collar than white-collar support."[232] African-American women in the movement African-American women in the civil rights movement were pivotal to its success.[233] They volunteered as activists, advocates, educators, clerics, writers, spiritual guides, caretakers and politicians for the civil rights movement; leading and participating in organizations that contributed to the cause of civil rights.[233] Rosa Parks's refusal to sit at the back of a public bus resulted in the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott,[233] and the eventual desegregation of interstate travel in the United States.[234] Women were members of the NAACP because they believed it could help them contribute to the cause of civil rights.[233] Some of those involved with the Black Panthers were nationally recognized as leaders, and still others did editorial work on the Black Panther newspaper spurring internal discussions about gender issues.[235] Ella Baker founded the SNCC.[236] Female students involved with the SNCC helped to organize sit-ins and the Freedom Rides.[236] At the same time many elderly black women in towns across the Southern US cared for the organization's volunteers at their homes, providing the students food, a bed, healing aid and motherly love.[236] Other women involved also formed church groups, bridge clubs, and professional organizations, such as the National Council of Negro Women, to help achieve freedom for themselves and their race.[235] Several who participated in these organizations lost their jobs because of their involvement.[235] Discrimination Many women who participated in the movement experienced gender discrimination and sexual harassment.[237] In the SCLC, Ella Baker's input was discouraged in spite of her being the oldest and most experienced person on the staff.[238] Long-term impact on social divides Civil rights protest activity had an observable impact on white American's views on race and politics over time.[239] White people in counties in which civil rights protests of historical significance occurred have been found to have lower levels of racial resentment against blacks, are more likely to identify with the Democratic Party as well as more likely to support affirmative action.[239] Johnson administration: 1963–1968 Further information: Civil Rights Act of 1964, War on Poverty, and Lyndon B. Johnson Lyndon Johnson made civil rights one of his highest priorities, coupling it with a whites war on poverty. However increasing the shrill opposition to the War in Vietnam, coupled with the cost of the war, undercut support for his domestic programs.[240] Under Kennedy, major civil rights legislation had been stalled in Congress. His assassination changed everything. On one hand president Lyndon Johnson was a much more skillful negotiator than Kennedy but he had behind him a powerful national momentum demanding immediate action on moral and emotional grounds. Demands for immediate action originated from unexpected directions, especially white Protestant church groups. The Justice Department, led by Robert Kennedy, moved from a posture of defending Kennedy from the quagmire minefield of racial politics to acting to fulfill his legacy. The violent death and public reaction dramatically moved the moderate Republicans, led by Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, whose support was the margin of victory for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act immediately ended de jure (legal) segregation and the era of Jim Crow.[241] With the civil rights movement at full blast, Lyndon Johnson coupled black entrepreneurship with his war on poverty, setting up special program in the Small Business Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and other agencies.[242] This time there was money for loans designed to boost minority business ownership. Richard Nixon greatly expanded the program, setting up the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) in the expectation that black entrepreneurs would help defuse racial tensions and possibly support his reelection .[243] Prison reform Gates v. Collier Mississippi State Penitentiary Conditions at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, then known as Parchman Farm, became part of the public discussion of civil rights after activists were imprisoned there. In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders came to the South to test the desegregation of public facilities. By the end of June 1963, Freedom Riders had been convicted in Jackson, Mississippi.[244] Many were jailed in Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Mississippi employed the trusty system, a hierarchical order of inmates that used some inmates to control and enforce punishment of other inmates.[245] In 1970 the civil rights lawyer Roy Haber began taking statements from inmates. He collected 50 pages of details of murders, rapes, beatings and other abuses suffered by the inmates from 1969 to 1971 at Mississippi State Penitentiary. In a landmark case known as Gates v. Collier (1972), four inmates represented by Haber sued the superintendent of Parchman Farm for violating their rights under the United States Constitution. Federal Judge William C. Keady found in favor of the inmates, writing that Parchman Farm violated the civil rights of the inmates by inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. He ordered an immediate end to all unconstitutional conditions and practices. Racial segregation of inmates was abolished, as was the trusty system, which allowed certain inmates to have power and control over others.[246] The prison was renovated in 1972 after the scathing ruling by Judge Keady, who wrote that the prison was an affront to "modern standards of decency." Among other reforms, the accommodations were made fit for human habitation. The system of trusties was abolished. (The prison had armed lifers with rifles and given them authority to oversee and guard other inmates, which led to many cases of abuse and murders.)[247] In integrated correctional facilities in northern and western states, blacks represented a disproportionate number of the prisoners, in excess of their proportion of the general population. They were often treated as second-class citizens by white correctional officers. Blacks also represented a disproportionately high number of death row inmates. Eldridge Cleaver's book Soul on Ice was written from his experiences in the California correctional system; it contributed to black militancy.[248] Cold War There was an international context for the actions of the U.S. federal government during these years. The Soviet media frequently covered racial discrimination in the U.S.[249] Deeming American criticism of its own human rights abuses hypocritical, the Soviet government would respond by stating "And you are lynching Negroes".[250] In his 1934 book Russia Today: What Can We Learn from It?, Sherwood Eddy wrote: "In the most remote villages of Russia today Americans are frequently asked what they are going to do to the Scottsboro Negro boys and why they lynch Negroes."[251] In Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, the historian Mary L. Dudziak wrote that Communists who were critical of the United States accused it of practicing hypocrisy when it portrayed itself as the "leader of the free world," while so many of its citizens were being subjected to severe racial discrimination and violence; she argued that this was a major factor in moving the government to support civil rights legislation.[252] In popular culture Main article: Civil rights movement in popular culture The 1954 to 1968 civil rights movement contributed strong cultural threads to American and international theater, song, film, television, and folk art. Activist organizations National/regional civil rights organizations Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Deacons for Defense and Justice Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) Organization of Afro-American Unity Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) National economic empowerment organizations Operation Breadbasket Urban League Local civil rights organizations Albany Movement (Albany, GA) Council of Federated Organizations (Mississippi) Montgomery Improvement Association (Montgomery, AL) Regional Council of Negro Leadership (Mississippi) Women's Political Council (Montgomery, AL) Individual activists Ralph Abernathy Victoria Gray Adams Muhammad Ali Maya Angelou Louis Austin Ella Baker James Baldwin Marion Barry Daisy Bates Harry Belafonte Fay Bellamy Powell James Bevel Claude Black Unita Blackwell Julian Bond Anne Braden Carl Braden Stanley Branche Mary Fair Burks Stokely Carmichael Septima Poinsette Clark Xernona Clayton Albert Cleage Eldridge Cleaver Charles E. Cobb Jr. John Conyers Annie Lee Cooper Dorothy Cotton Claudette Colvin Jonathan Daniels Annie Devine Doris Derby Marian Wright Edelman Medgar Evers James L. Farmer Jr. Walter E. Fauntroy Karl Fleming Sarah Mae Flemming James Forman Frankie Muse Freeman Milton Galamison Fred Gray Jack Greenberg Dick Gregory Prathia Hall Fannie Lou Hamer Lorraine Hansberry Robert Hayling Dorothy Height Lola Hendricks Aaron Henry Libby Holman Myles Horton T. R. M. Howard Winson Hudson Jesse Jackson Jimmie Lee Jackson Esau Jenkins Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Gloria Johnson-Powell Barbara Jordan Vernon Jordan Colin Kaepernick Clyde Kennard Coretta Scott King Martin Luther King Jr. Bernard Lafayette W. W. Law James Lawson John Lewis Viola Liuzzo Joseph Lowery Autherine Lucy Clara Luper Thurgood Marshall Benjamin Mays Franklin McCain Floyd McKissick James Meredith Loren Miller Jack Minnis Anne Moody Harry T. Moore E. Frederic Morrow Bob Moses Bill Moyer Diane Nash Denise Nicholas E. D. Nixon David Nolan James Orange Nan Grogan Orrock Rosa Parks Rutledge Pearson A. Philip Randolph George Raymond George Raymond Jr. James Reeb Frederick D. Reese Gloria Richardson David Richmond Amelia Boynton Robinson Jackie Robinson Jo Ann Robinson Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson Bayard Rustin Cleveland Sellers Charles Sherrod Fred Shuttlesworth Modjeska Monteith Simkins Nina Simone Charles Kenzie Steele Annie Stein Dempsey Travis C. T. Vivian Wyatt Tee Walker Roy Wilkins Hosea Williams Robert F. Williams Malcolm X Andrew Young
  • Condition: Used
  • Type: Photograph
  • Year of Production: 1958
  • Original/Licensed Reprint: Original
  • Subject: Houses

PicClick Insights - Civil Rights Commission Near White House Original Photo1958 Vintage PicClick Exclusive

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