Civil Rights

Malcom X

Born in 1925, in Omaha NE; raised in Lansing, MI. His father was a follower of Marcus Garvey (a controversial black leader with extreme views ((on black nationalism and separatism)) and was killed by the KKK when ____ was six. His mother was also institutionalized, leading to the boy being in the foster care system. He attended school but dropped out because his teacher said he couldn’t become a lawyer because of his race – which led him to become a drug dealer/gang leader. In prison, he educated himself and joined the National of Islam, changing his last name from ‘‘Little’’ to ‘‘X’’ to represent his ancestors’ loss of their African names when they were brought here as slaves. After, being released from prison, he became a leader in the Nation of Islam.

Nation of Islam

Founded in 1930, it is still around today. Only 2% of Black Americans are Muslim and only 2% of Black Muslims identify with the group. It was a religious and political movement.

It’s Islam accompanied by nationalism and black separatism. Followers believe in defending themselves against racism, even if that means using violence (no ‘‘turn the other cheek’’). They opposed integration and racial intermarriage – they wanted separate institutions – or even a separate nation – for the Black Americans. The NOI is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to its history of making anti-white and anti-Semitic statements.

Malcom X

As a leader in the Nation of Islam, he challenged Martin Luther King’s goal of integration and strategy of non-violence. He said that white people could not be trusted and called on blacks to be proud of their heritage and to set up strong communities without the help of whites. He also promoted the establishment of a separate state for African Americans, in which they could rely on themselves to provide solutions to their problems. He also remarked that violence was not the only answer, but it was justified in self-defense and urged followers to defend themselves by ‘‘any means necessary.’’

1964

Malcolm X split from the Nation of Islam in ____. He renounced separatist beliefs, and softened his stance on violence, but remained a Muslim.

February 21st, 1965

Malcolm was assassinated in _____ by 3 members of the nation of Islam while delivering a lecture at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. His ideas contributed to the development of the Black Power movement in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Tension and Division

By 1965, tension was growing among various groups and leaders within the civil rights movement. Many African Americans were tired of being beaten and/or jailed for participation in nonviolent protests. And many were also frustrated with the slow pace of change, especially in the South where de facto segregation was still deeply entrenched. Younger leaders felt the older leaders (like MLK) had made too many compromises, leading to some groups and leaders beginning to advocate for a more violent approach, causing SNCC and Core to become more militant (aggressive), and for new more radical leaders and groups to emerge.

Black Power Movement

Emphasized racial pride and unity, self-sufficiency, and equity for all black Americans. The term was popularized in 1966 when SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael railed marchers at a protest in a Mississippi by chanting, ‘‘We want Black power.’’ However, MLK didn’t like the phrase ‘‘black power’’ because he thought it would provoke African Americans to violence and antagonize whites.

Carmichael’s Leadership

Under his leadership, SNCC became more radical after 1966, urging SNCC to stop recruiting whites and focus on developing African American pride. He also told SNCC workers to fight back and promoted confrontation with authorities. This marked a major split in the civil rights movement.

Black Power at the Olympics

At the 1968 Summer Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave the Black salute on the medals podium. They were kicked out of the Olympics and banned from competing in future Olympics. Smith later said: ‘‘If I win, I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black, black America will understand what we did tonight.’’

Black Panthers

The far-left political party that was founded in October 1966, in Oakland, CA by Bobby Seale & Huey Newton. The group's goal was to get blacks to take leadership roles in their communities, and full employment for African Americans. Such as better housing, getting the government to rebuild ghettos, and stopping police brutality against blacks. They were known for their militant tactics of dressing in black leather jackets, black berets, and sunglasses; occasionally carrying weapons, conducting arms citizens’ patrols to monitor the behavior of police officers (causing several shootouts occurring between the panthers and the police), also distributing pro-communist literature in the past.

Blacks Panthers

Though controversial, they did a lot to help their community, including daycare centers, free breakfast for children, free health clinics, and assistance to the homeless. Many Black Americans objected to the group’s militant tactics and the group fell apart by the early 1980s.

Urban Violence: The Watts Riot

Occurred from 11-16, 1965, In a black neighborhood named ____ in South Central L.A. Violence broke out after a young black man was pulled over and arrested for suspicion of drunk driving. The damage was overturned cars, looted and damaged stores, along with burned buildings and vehicles, equivalent to roughly $40 million in damage. Eventually, 14,000 National Guardsmen were called in to control the situation. But in the end, 34 people were killed; about 1,000 were injured and 4,000 were arrested.

Urban Violence: The Long, Hot Summer of 1967

164 incidents in 34 states, 83 were killed, thousands injured, and tens of millions of dollars in property damage. In Detroit alone, 43 were killed.

Urban Violence: Why?

LBJ created the Kerner Commission to study the issue and make recommendations for the future. The report was issued in February 1968; it concluded that white racism/attitudes were to blame for the violence and criticized government officials and the media for ignoring the plight of black Americans. This conclusion was rejected by many white politicians and news media, The report was ignored by policy makers. Money LBJ had pledged to finance a ‘‘War on Poverty’’ ended up diverted to the war in Vietnam.

King’s Final Campaign

The Poor People campaign was organized by King and the SCLC in 1968. The goal was to alleviate poverty for Americans of all races. It asked the government to commit $30 billion to help the poor get jobs, health care, and better housing.

King's Final Speech

King was in Memphis, TN to support a strike by sanitation workers who were seeking better working conditions, He delivered the ‘‘Mountaintop Speech’’ on April 3, 1968. Toward the end of the speech, King referred to threats against his life and, in retrospect, predicted his impending death,

Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the evening of April 4, ___ stepped onto his balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He was shot by a man named James Earl Ray, who was hiding in a boarding house across the street. ____ never regained consciousness after being shot and was pronounced dead at the hospital.

James Earl Ray

He was arrested and pled guilty to King’s murder. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison and died in 1998 of liver failure.

Robert F. Kennedy

In the spring of 1968, ____ (the brother of the former president, John F. Kennedy) was campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination; the night King died, ___ had an appearance scheduled in an African American neighborhood in Indianapolis, IN. It was he who informed the crowd of King’s death and he went on to make a plea for continued non-violence. His speech is credited with preventing a riot in Indianapolis while more than 100 other cities exploded that night, RFK was assassinated 2 months later,

America, a Nation fo Immigrants

15-20,000 years ago: the first humans arrived in North America; 500-100 years ago: the first Europeans arrived in North America. And in the 1520s, the first enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to ‘the U.S.’’ (FL). In 1565 first permanent European settlement was in ‘‘the U.S’’ And in 1619, the first slaves were brought to the American colonies (Jamestown, VA). In 1607-1930, 1.2 million arrived; 49% were English, and most were protestant; seeking treasure and/or religious freedom. 1830-1890 15.3 million arrive; most are Irish (fleeing because of the potato famine). German (fleeing warfare). Chinese (lured by the Gold Rush/jobs on railroads), and Japanese (Seeking economic opportunities). 1890-1920 22.3 million around; most arrived from

Nativism

Favoring native-born Americans, resulting in prejudice and discrimination against immigrants.

Know-Nothing Party

America’s first single-issue political party that was forced to oppose immigration.

Catholic Immigrants

1840s. Most of them were from Ireland or Germany. Signs that read, ‘‘No Irish Need Apply’’ were a common sight in store windows and newspaper classified pages around the country. In Philadelphia in 1844, mobs destroyed homes belonging to Irish-Catholic immigrants and torched Catholic churches; 30 people were killed and 100 injured.

Chinese and Japanese Immigrants

1850s-1890s. Several laws restricted immigration from ____ and ____. In CA, a ____ person could not testify as a witness against white citizens, which gave white people a free pass to attack Chinese people. A wave of violence against these immigrants led to massacres and the forced removal of these residents from their own homes.

Southern and Eastern Europeans

1890s-1920s. Many of them were from Italy; many were Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Jewish. In 1891, 11 Italians were lynched in New Orleans – it was one of the worst mass lynchings in U.S. history. Jews were excluded from certain professions, colleges, and many public places. They had also faced the same violence, including lynching. Many famous people, including Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh, were openly anti-Semitic (prejudiced against or hostile to Jews).

High Tide of Nativism

With the increased immigrant (immigrant slowed during WW1, but picked up again when the war ended

Ku Klux Klan Revival

In 1915, they came back and expanded their message of hate to include Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. And by 1924 – millions of Americans had joined. They had a lot of political power and influence; political leaders were sometimes openly members of this group. Due to the high levels of Nativism in the country, the group was secretive but didn’t hide in the shadows, as they would, in the 1900s hide with a mask on their face. They sponsored public picnics, parade floats, and speakers, members marched in parades.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti

In 1920, two Italian immigrants were accused, tried, convicted, and executed for robbery and murder, even though there wasn’t any direct evidence linking them to the crime.

Immigration Act of 1924

Congress restricted immigration from Europe for the first time in U.S. history. Each country in the Eastern Hemisphere had a quota (a numerical limit) equal to the 2% of the U.S. population from that same country as counted in the 1890 census. The goal was to limit/reduce the number of immigrants entering from Southern and Eastern Europe. The law also included a near-total ban on immigration from Japan. However, countries in the Western Hemisphere (Canada, Mexico, etc) did not have quotas. When President Coolidge signed the law, he declared, ‘‘America must be kept American.’’

Hispanics, Asians, Muslims Immigrant

In 2006, Arizona voters approved a proposition to make English the official language in the state. They said it was necessary because recent immigrants, especially Hispanic newcomers, were not being sufficiently assimilated. During the Great Recession (2007-08), state legislatures in Alabama and Arizona passed laws that required police and other officials to verify the immigration status of those they thought had entered the country illegally. In 2010, plans for a mosque/community center to be opened in an abandoned building near the World Trade Center site sparked nationwide opposition. Conspiracy theories alleging former President Obama is not a U.S. citizen or that he is Muslim continued to circulate. In August 2019, a gunman who believed Hispanics were ‘‘invading’’ Texas targeted Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, TX. Twenty-three people were killed and dozens more injured. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there were dozens of instances of threats and harassment against Asian Americans in the six months following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2023, about a third 34%) of immigrants in the U.S. say they have been told they should ‘‘go back where you came from.’’

Immigration Act of 1965

Replaced quotas with overall caps based on hemispheres. They gave preferences to people who already had family living in the U.S. Workers with desirable skills, such as doctors and scientists. This had a huge impact on America’s demographics.

Harlem Renaissance

The booming development of Harlem with the explosion of black culture in performing, jazz, and art in the 1920s-30s.

A. Philip Randolph

_______ was a labor leader and civil rights activist who founded the nation’s first major Black labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) in 1925. In the 1930s, his organizing efforts helped end both racial discrimination in defense industries and segregation in the U.S. armed forces. Randolph was also a principal organizer of the March on Washington in 1963, which paved the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos

Wearing beads and scarves to oppose lynchings and black socks with no shoes to highlight poverty, African American sprinters _____ and _____ took to the podium during the October 16, 1968, Olympic medal ceremony in Mexico City to receive their respective gold and bronze medals in the 200-meter race. But it was a single accessory—a black glove—and an accompanying gesture—a raised fist during the American national anthem—that sparked an uproar. From that moment, the two athletes would be vilified, threatened and, in some circles, celebrated.

Using the Olympic medal ceremony to show solidarity with oppressed Black people worldwide impacted both the professional and the personal lives of Smith and Carlos for years afterward. Widely deemed a “Black Power salute,” the men’s gesture at the podium was by no means a random act. Instead, historians say, it was a direct outgrowth of the political climate in the late 1960s.

Freedom Summer

_______ or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive to increase the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. Over 700 mostly white volunteers joined African Americans in Mississippi to fight against voter intimidation and discrimination at the polls. 

The movement was organized by civil rights organizations like the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and run by the local Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). Freedom Summer volunteers were met with violent resistance from the Ku Klux Klan and members of state and local law enforcement. News coverage of beatings, false arrests, and even murder drew international attention to the civil rights movement. The increased awareness it brought to voter discrimination helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Civil Right Act of 1964

In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing.

Kerner Commission Report

According to the commission's report, the United States was socially and economically divided. The commission warned: “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” In addition to Newark and Detroit, the group surveyed uprisings in 23 cities.

Greensboro, NC sit-in

The ________ was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. Though many of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, their actions made an immediate and lasting impact, forcing Woolworth’s and other establishments to change their segregationist policies.

Poor Peoples Campaign

________, was a political campaign that culminated in a demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1968, in which participants demanded that the government formulate a plan to help redress the employment and housing problems of the poor throughout the United States.

Selma to Montgomery March

_____________ was part of a series of civil rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama, a Southern state with deeply entrenched racist policies. In March of that year, in an effort to register Black voters in the South, protesters marching the 54-mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were confronted with deadly violence from local authorities and white vigilante groups. As the world watched, the protesters—under the protection of federalized National Guard troops—finally achieved their goal, walking around the clock for three days to reach Montgomery, Alabama. The historic march, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s participation in it, raised awareness of the difficulties faced by Black voters, and the need for a national Voting Rights Act.

Emmett Till

____, a 14-year-old Black youth, was murdered in August 1955 in a racist attack that shocked the nation and provided a catalyst for the emerging civil rights movement. A Chicago native, Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, when he was accused of harassing a local white woman. Several days later, relatives of the woman abducted Till, brutally beating and killing him before disposing of his body in a nearby river. Till’s devastated mother insisted on a public, open-casket funeral for her son to shed light on the violence inflicted on Black people in the South. Till’s murderers were acquitted, but his death galvanized civil rights activists nationwide.

Plessy v. Ferguson

_______ was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Supreme Court ruled that a law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between white people and Black people was not unconstitutional. As a result, restrictive Jim Crow legislation and separate public accommodations based on race became commonplace.

Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka

In this milestone decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional in 1954.

President Truman

On July 26, 1948, President _____ issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981, ordering the desegregation of the federal workforce and the military. President Truman's decision to issue these orders – and his actions that led up to that decision – set the course for civil rights for the rest of the century.

President Eisenhower

On July 26, 1948, President _____ issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981, ordering the desegregation of the federal workforce and the military. President Truman's decision to issue these orders – and his actions that led up to that decision – set the course for civil rights for the rest of the century.

JFK

Kennedy defined the civil rights crisis as moral, as well as constitutional and legal. He announced that major civil rights legislation would be submitted to the Congress to guarantee equal access to public facilities, to end segregation in education, and to provide federal protection of the right to vote.

LBJ

He immediately carried out the civil rights agenda set by the slain president and created his own complementary plan for a "Great Society." Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protected voting rights, guaranteed access to public accommodations and allowed the withholding of federal funds from programs ...

President Nixon

Richard Nixon is credited for having a strong record on foreign policy, but his record on domestic policy — especially on Civil Rights at home is often overlooked. During his years as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, he sought to ensure minorities — especially African Americans — weren’t discriminated against in federal contracts. He also worked with Congress to spearhead the Civil Rights Act of 1957, sweeping legislation and a precursor to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.

When he reached the presidency, Nixon sought to expand economic opportunities for African Americans by ending discrimination in the work place, through the endowment of black colleges with federal funds, and helping them find meaningful employment through job assistance programs, and promotion of entrepreneurship — an initiative called “Black Capitalism.”

In 1970, perhaps the hall mark of the Nixon administration’s Civil Rights policies, Nixon sought to end the decades old and egregious tradition of segregated schools for black and white children throughout the nation, predominantly in the Southern states.