- THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT -

The first African American to play in Major League Baseball when he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Jackie Robinson

 Executive Order 9981

• desegregated the U.S. Military. 

Dejure Segregation

segregation by law; Jim Crow laws primarily in Southern states

Defacto Segregation

segregation based on customs instead of by law; primarily in Northern states.

Legal Defense and Education Fund

• help fight segregation in federal court.

Thurgood Marshall

• African American lawyer who argued the Brown vs. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court. He would later go on to become the first African American Supreme Court Justice.

In response to the Brown v. Board decision, 101 Congressman signed

“Southern Manifesto” in opposition to the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC):

• Formed by MLK in 1957 and included Southern ministers who assisted in challenging segregation through non-violence.

“The Congress of Racial Equality” (CORE) and “The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee” (SNCC): 

•  Together with other organizations including the NAACP and the SCLC, CORE and SNCC led the Civil Rights campaigns of the early ‘60s. 

• This involved sit-ins, Freedom Rides, voter registration drives, and the March on Washington in 1963.

Freedom Riders:

• CORE and SNCC supported many of the “Freedom Rides” in the early 1960s to challenge segregation on interstate travel by riding interstate buses into the South to challenge segregation laws. 

• brought national attention to the violence against those who attempted to challenge segregation in the South. 

Freedom riders

•  first African American admitted into the University of Mississippi.

James Meredith

Attempted to prevent two African American students from attending the University of Alabama. 

 Governor George Wallace

 March on Washington

250,000 people gathered to call for the Kennedy Administration to pass Civil Rights legislation
It was at the March on Washington that MLK gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial and called for the end of racial prejudice in the nation.

The 24th Amendment (1964):

• Banned the poll tax, which had long been one of the methods of Southern states of disenfranchising African Americans from being able to vote.

FREEDOM SUMMER

• A movement emerged to register African Americans to vote in Southern states.

• This was one of the first times since Reconstruction that the federal government intervened in Southern states to investigate and prosecute crimes committed against African Americans and those assisting with civil rights.

Freedom summer

• known as “Bloody Sunday”.

MARCH FROM SELMA TO MONTGOMERY

MARCH FROM SELMA TO MONTGOMERY

600 Civil Rights marchers began marching from Selma, Alabama to the capital in Montgomery to protest for voting rights in the state.

As a result of the March from Selma to Montgomery, along with the efforts of Freedom Summer, it prompted LBJ to ask Congress to pass

Voting rights act

Civil Rights Act of 1968 (“The Fair Housing Act”

• Prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, or financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and sex.

Black Power

•  movement in the 1960s that included Stokely Carmichael which encouraged African American pride, economic power, and black separatism. 

Black Panthers:

• This was an organization founded in 1966 to challenge police brutality against African Americans. The Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols in Oakland and other U.S. cities. 

The Watts Riots (1965):

• Erupted in the neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles which stemmed from altercations with police after a traffic stop. The riots lasted for six days and resulted in 34 deaths, 4,000 arrests, destruction of 1,000 buildings, and left $40 million in damages.

The Assassination of MLK:

MLK came to Memphis, TN in 1968 to assist with the Sanitation Workers Strike and to lead a non-violent protest march in the city.