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Malcolm X

Ella Baker

Shelley v. Kramer

Selma

  • Declared government support of restrictive covenants under which private parties could exclude minorities from buying homes in white neighborhoods illegal.
  • The radical voice of the Civil Rights Movement.
  • X went to prison in Massachusetts and converted to the Nation of Islam following the teachings of Elijah Muhammad.
  • X emphasized the idea of armed self defense.
  • He felt the pace of nonviolence was too slow. He also felt blacks needed economic and racial justice, not just desegregation.
  • Malcolm X spoke to a working, underclass. He was able to articulate the repressed emotions of the upper and middle class.
  • Ella Baker was a grassroots organizer in the South. She worked for over two decades as a quiet but radical force.
  • Baker's radical message spoke to the students. They understood each other.
  • Together with students she helped to found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC.
  • Baker felt that the people were the ultimate source of power in any movement. The bottom should direct the top.
  • Unfortunately, the movement was dominated by ministers and religious leaders, where women had very few roles. Baker never received the recognition she deserved.
  • Baker helped the movement broaden and gain momentum.

Brown v. Board of Education

  • On March 7, 1965 protestors began a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama for Voting Rights.
  • As peaceful protestors crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by Alabama state troopers.
  • The police attacked the protestors in what is now known as Bloody Sunday.
  • The event was nationally televised. About 48 million people saw the event happen in real time.
  • Television became a source to gain national support.
  • Within days thousands of clergy men became allies of the movement and held marches across the nation. They even joined King in Selma for a second march.

Paul Robeson

  • Paul Robeson was an actor who used his star status as a political platform
  • Declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
  • "Separate but equal, is inherently unequal."

Precursors to Origins

Motown

  • Robeson felt economic deprivation of blacks to be much like what Hitler did to the Jews.
  • In 1951, he presented a petition at the UN titled "We Charge Genocide: The Crimes of Government Against the Negro People.
  • Giving this speech at the UN gave him a worldwide platform.
  • He called for a Communist Revolution that other blacks and the NAACP disagreed with.
  • Robeson's use of public shaming influenced the Modern Civil Rights Movement's tactics.

3 Origins

Issac Woodard

  • In February 1949, Sgt. Issac Woodard was beaten and blinded by police officers in Mississippi after a confrontation with a white bus driver .
  • The 3 origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement did not pop out of thin air. The 3 origins had years of oppression before them to perpetuate these events and make them defining moments.

  • The 1940s contains several precursors to the movement including the Detroit Race Riot, the Double V Campaign, and the activism of actor Paul Robeson.
  • In 1963, the movement came back to Detroit and an unlikely supporter helped spread its message
  • King came to Detroit in June to spread his gospel of nonviolence to the North.
  • Berry Gordy, founder of Motown, helped spread the message of Dr. King by selling recordings of King's 1963 speech in Detroit, which was a prototype for his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Though many events and years of oppression led to the Modern Civil Rights Movement, there are 3 origins of the Modern Civil Rights Movement:

  • Images of Woodard were seen across the nation and outrage from not only the black community, but white community as well was gained.
  • Radio host Orson Welles condemned the cops on his nationally syndicated radio show.
  • Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
  • Lynching of Emitt Till
  • Montgomery Bus Boycott

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1965 Voting Rights Act

  • December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat
  • Parks was picked as the ideal candidate to lead this crusade. Several trials were run before her but the candidates were not quite perfect.
  • Parks had a long history of activism. She attended the Highlander School.
  • A year of protest ensued. Blacks refused to ride city buses, which hurt the white economy.
  • Many say "when Rosa sat down, black people stood up."
  • One of the most famous quotes of the boycott was from a black maid: "My feets are tired but my soul is rested." This represented the new invigoration of the movement.
  • Federal Interstate Commerce Commission, FICC, declares segregation on interstate trains and buses illegal.
  • The most highly revered and well known leader of the Modern Civil Rights Movement.
  • King practiced the idea of civil disobedience and nonviolent protest.
  • This would agitate segregationist to be violent and when caught on film and seen, outrage the public.

Great Walk to Freedom

The March Against Fear

  • The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned the use of literacy test as a means to discriminate and deny or abridge the right to vote. It also gave federal jurisdiction over voting in areas Congress felt were especially problematic. These areas were mainly in the deep South.

Double V Campaign

What was the Civil Rights Movement?

Nash & Lewis

  • In June of 1966, James Meredith, a law student, began a solo march across the deep South to raise awareness about voter registration.
  • Just 2 days into his trip Meredith was shot by a sniper after crossing the Mississippi state line.
  • It was then that King and the elders joined forces with Stokley Carmichael and SNCC to finish what Meredith started, calling it the Meredith March.
  • In Greenwood, MS Carmichael makes a speech and the Black Power Movement is born. He uses the call-and-response chant, "What do we want?, Black Power" to rev up the crowd and become an overnight sensation.
  • Response by African Americans to WWII.
  • Blacks enlisted to prove their patriotism and earn equal rights.
  • The Double V Campaign was for a victory on 2 fronts, at home against racism and overseas against fascism.
  • Unfortunately, black soldiers came home to find they had changed but their country has not.
  • Some would describe Malcolm X as black America's prosecuting attorney. He was prosecuting white Americans for injustices.
  • King would then be seen as a defense attorney acting as a mediator between whites and blacks.
  • In June of 1963 the two sides came together in Detroit for the Great Walk to Freedom.
  • It was the largest march for racial equality up to that point.
  • Grace Lee Boggs, an organizer would say that the tides were turning in Malcolm's favor. Nonviolence was no longer enough.
  • Students were pivotal to the success of the Modern Civil Rights Movement.
  • Many older community members were afraid to rebel, in fear that they would lose their economic ties with white people, which supported their families. Students had nothing to lose.

Ruby Bridges

Stokley Carmichael

  • On November 14, 1960 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Bridges was the first of 6 children to desegregate the cities all white elementary schools.
  • Stokley Carmichael was a political activist.
  • He is best known as being the leader of SNCC in the 1960s but also for helping to start the Black Power Movement
  • He articulated the ideals of black separatism.
  • His thoughts ally with many of Malcolm X's.
  • Students Dianne Nash and John Lewis held workshops on nonviolence to prepare students for what they would face in their efforts to desegregate lunch counters.
  • The workshops included role play and acted out the social drama students would face.
  • They knew passive resistance would be met with brutality.
  • Nashville became the 1st major city to desegregate lunch counters.
  • By the end of April 1960, 50,000 students had staged sit- ins in the South.
  • After losing faith in the nonviolent tactics of King, Carmichael began promoting the Black Power Movement, a political and psychological break from the norms of the time.
  • He would later go on to ally with the militant Black Panther Party.

A social movement that concentrated on the denial of rights to blacks, through the publicizing of grievances and a grassroots approach, in order to gain entry to the legal system, wage interest groups within the political system and gain rights for blacks/ minorities.

  • Brown had been a triumph without change thus far.
  • Bridges was met by mobs of people. 500 kids walked out of school that day.
  • Never once was Bridges harmed.
  • What the mob saw was not a child, but change. Change where they lost what was theirs.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Moving Forward

The Greensboro Four

  • In 1964 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act. The provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of race in hiring, promoting, and firing. Also in public housing and places, and schools discrimination was barred.
  • On February 1, 1960, 4 students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, had a sit- in at the Woolworths' lunch counter in downtown Greensboro, NC.
  • The sit-in would attract both local and national attention.
  • These sit-ins spread throughout the South. The 4 students would later be known as the Greensboro Four.

With the assassination of King on April 4, 1968, the days of nonviolence had seen their last. Black resistance began to take a new form where nonviolence was irrelevant. Though the Modern Civil Rights Movement brought about legislative victories, there was still a long battle to be fought for equality in all aspects of life. Racial tensions were mounting in major cities across the US and a tipping point would soon come.

The greatest point to remember from this era though, is that the battle took on many forms and tactical styles but without the publicizing of events through radio and television media the outcome would not have been the same.

Seeing is believing.

Works Cited

1943 Detroit Race Riot

  • Racial tensions exploded in June of 1943 in Detroit, Michigan as white citizens went into black neighborhoods and began to beat the black citizens.
  • 24 African Americans were killed. At least half were killed by police.

"BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION (I)." Brown v. Board of Education (I). Web. 26 Mar. 2015.

"Civil Rights Chronology." The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Web. 16 Feb. 2015.

"Rise!." Gates Jr., Henry Louis. The African Americans:Many Rivers to Cross. PBS, . 20 Nov. 2013. Television.

McDonald, Brian. "Civil Liberties and Civil Rights." AP Government . CE Jordan High School, Durham. 12 Dec. 2012. Lecture.

Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi. Delta Trade Pbk. ed. New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks, 2004. Print.

"The Civil RIghts Movement." CNN. Cable News Network. Web. 10 Mar. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1997/mlk/links.html>.

"This Far By Faith." PBS. PBS. Web. 27 Jan. 2015. <http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/timeline/p_4.html>.

X, Malcolm, and Alex Haley. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine, 1992. Print.

  • For the first time, in a long time, black citizens came back from the riots and refused to stick to the status quo any longer.

African- American Politics & Civil Rights:

The Modern Civil Rights Era

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