Civil Rights Movement & Student protests in the 60s and 70s

NAACP: National Association for the advancement of colored people

SCLC: Southern Christian

Leadership Conference

SNCC: Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee

Selma to Montgomery march:

Martin Luther King jr.

• 7/3/1965--> SCLC planned the march but Bloody Sunday (Pettus Bridge)
• 9/3/1965--> 2nd march, topped again
• eventually gained permission to proceed
• 6/8/1965--> Voting Rights Act (Lyndon B. Johnson)

Freedom Summer

• most effective leader, major spokesperson
• nonviolent tactics--> Gandhi
• 1957--> SCLC with King as president
• 10/12/1964 Nobel
• murdered 4/4/1968

Malcolm X

ACTS:

• Civil Rights Act 1964
• Voting Rights Act 1965
• Immigration and Nationality Services Act 1965
• Fair Housing Act 1968

Montgomery Bus Boycott:

Students

• 1964--> SNCC activism in rural areas of Georgia, Alabama and Mississipi
• aim: register as many black voters as possible
• Mississipi Freedom Democratic Party
• KKK--> 3 leaders arrested then abducted and murdered
• media attention

• 1/12/1955 Rosa Parks
• black community boycott of the city busses--> 1 YEAR

• 1/2/1960 North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College--> sit-ins
• more radical than MLK
• creation of the SNCC

March of Washington:

Birmingham campaign:

• 1/4 million participants
• MLK delivered "I have a dream speech
• largest gathering ever in Washington D.C.

• 1963 major campaign SCLC
• armed police vs unarmed crowd--> northern sympathy
• Jfk--> new civil rights legislation

Background

African americans' condition

• racial segregation
• disenfranchisement
• exploitation
• violence (lynchings)
• housing segregation

• after the Civil War, 65-77 whites resisted the social changes (kkk)
• 1890-1908 southern states passed laws to disfranchise african americans
• 1900--> violence, democrats imposed racial segregation
• 1910-1970--> migration from the south to the north

non violent protests and civil disobedience

Social movements in the United States whose goals were to end racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans and to secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law.

dialogue between the activists and authorities

through...

What was the civil rights movement?

1954 Brown v. Board of Education:

• student protests (spring '51) against racial segregation in schools
• intervention of the NAACP
• together they brought 5 cases to trial --> against the doctrine "separate but equal"
• the court declared the separated education UNCONSTITUTIONAL

KEY EVENTS:

Civil Rights Movement & Student protests in the 60s and 70s

THE STUDENT MOVEMENT

Civil Rights Movement influenced later movements for social change.

Gay rights Movement

The Women's Movement

Late 1960s

• 1960s: laws in most of the states prohibited Homosexuality
• Post WW2 years: semi secret Gay Rights Organization had begun to form
• 1960s: large Gay Rights Movement
• 1969 at a gay bar in NYC: first major Gay Protest
• Other gay men and women intensified their efforts to organize a Gay Liberation Movement

Roots of the Protest Movement

• Many women began to question the traditional role of the woman in the U.S. Society
• 1950s-1960s: women were expected to stay at home and depend on men to provide their financial support
• Women were excluded from high status and well paid jobs

The anti-Vietnam War Movement

• Changing Role of the Federal Government
• Importance of America's global Leadership
• Impact of Widespread Economic Prosperity

Ideals

• fought to eliminate racism and poverty, increase student rights, and to end the Vietnam War
• believed in a partecipatory democracy

• 1965: many people were active in an oral movement to end the War in Vietnam
• U.S.Government: wanted to avoid the spred of communism in Southeast Asia
• Protesters: not a vital issue, Vietnam was at the last stage of indipendence

• Dual goal: to gain acceptance of Homosexuality and to and to end Discrimination against homosexuals
• By 1973 about 800 gay rights organizations existed

The beginning

1960: SDS(Students for a Democratic Society)

1964: protest at Berkley University because of the banning of political leafleting on campus--> demanded not to be treated like numbers

other protests around the country

• 1963: The Feminine Mystique by Bettie Friedan --> encouraged women to fight for change
• 1964 Civil Rights Act: no discrimination based on gender
• 1966 NOW(National Organization for Women): demanded to Government to prosecute cases of job discrimination against women

• It soon became a Mass Crusade
• March 1965 University of Michigan: Teach-in on vietnam
• April 1967: Marches in San Francisco and New York
• October 1967: March on the Pentagon
• April 1970: expanded Vietnam War to Cambodia
• Millions of Americans protested against tyhe widening of the war