Civil Rights Movement in the USA

Ku Klux Klan (KKK)

funded in 1866

Terrorist organisation who targeted African American and sympathetic to them

The KKK became active in all Southern states and targeted African American political leaders and office holders

Lynching

Plessy vs. Ferguson

a case that was brought to supreme court by black lawsuits to challenge the legality of segregation. The court ruled that segregation was legal as long as it was "equal" - separate but equal

13th Amendment

abolished slavery

14th Amendment

Declares that all persons born in the U.S. are citizens and are guaranteed equal protection of the laws

Jim Crow Laws

Limited rights of blacks. Literacy tests, grandfather clauses and poll taxes limited black voting rights

Peonage

system by which workers owe labor to pay their debts

Lynching

putting a person to death by mob action without due process of law

Truman's Civil Right Bill (1947)

-ban segregation in public transport

-Lynching is a federal crime

-desegregated armed forces

-National Freedom day

Brown vs. Board of Education (1954)

Supreme Court decision that overturned the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision (1896), the Court ruled that "separate but equal" schools for blacks were inherently unequal and thus unconstitutional. The decision energized the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

Reactions to Brown vs. Fergurson

• Majority of schools in the south opposed to the desegregtion of schools

-Virginia created Perrow Plan: parents chose where to enrol their children, most schools segregated

Little Rock Nine, Arkansas (1957)

-Nine African American students were allowed to attend to Central High

-They were prevented from entering by the Arkansas national guard ordered from capital citizen council (CCC)

-Eisenhower acted and the students were scorted by the USA army

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

In 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus, Dr. Martin L. King led a boycott of city busses. After 11 months the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public transportation was illegal.

Freedom Rides (1961)

Whites and Blacks ride the bus across the South to protest segregation and promote civil rights

Bus firebombed in Alabama

KKK attacked in Birmingham

Kennedy intervenes and send 400 US Marshalls

Freedom Summer (1964)

Effort by civil rights groups in Mississippi to register black voters during the summer of 1964

Birmingham Campaign (1963)

Symbol of southern segregation

Goal was to bring attention over the integration efforts

Turning point: images of young people getting beaten up in the media

Washington March

March on Washington

held in 1963 to show support for the Civil Rights Bill in Congress. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a dream…" speech. 250,000 people attended the rally whites included and federal protection

Sit-ins (1960-61)

Well-dressed black men who attended to white-only dinner and when refuse they stayed till closing

Non-violence, CVRM, media helped to spread the message

Mississippi Burning (1964)

Cheney,Goodman, and Schwerner, civil rights activists, had been followed and boxed in. In trying to find their bodies officials the remains of countless other bodies that had been beaten by KKK, tortured, then shot. 2 of the men were white which immediately brought publicity.

Selma, Alabama (1965)

Major demonstration for black voter registration. The demonstrators were brutally attacked by local police and the violence, just as in Birmingham, received detailed television coverage.

-Southern police brutality of peaceful demonstrators in Selma and Birmingham outraged many Americans.

-Bloody Sunday: march from Selma to Montgomery finish in the crowd being beaten uo and gassed up

-It brought Johnson into presenting the Civil Rights Bill

Civil Rights Act (1964)

It contained voting rights, desegregationof public facilities, limit dicrimination in employment.

this and the voting rights act helped to give African-Americans equality on paper, and more federally-protected power so that social equality was a more realistic goal

Voting Rights Act of 1965

policy to ensure equal voting rights and access to political partcicipation

Martin Luther King Jr.

U.S. Baptist minister and civil rights leader. A noted orator, he opposed discrimination against blacks by organizing nonviolent resistance and peaceful mass demonstrations.

Malcolm X

Charismatic Black Muslim leader who promoted separatism and Black nationalism in the early 1960s

Black Panthers

A black political organization that was against peaceful protest and for violence if needed. The organization marked a shift in policy of the black movement, favoring militant ideals rather than peaceful protest.

National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP)

Interracial organization founded in 1909 to abolish segregation and discrimination and to achieve political and civil rights for African Americans.

Freedom Rights, sits in, march in Washington

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

1957 group founded by Martin Luther King Jr. to fight against segregation using nonviolent means