apush - civil rights movement

Booker T. Washington

The most important African-American figure in the U.S. between the end of the Civil War and World War I. Son of a slave and slave owner, went to work early in salt mines near Malden W. VA. He was mentored by Gen. Samuel Armstrong at the Hampton Institute where he received an industrial education. Founder of the Tuskegee Institute, teaching the industrial education model that he learned at Hampton. At the Worlds Fair in Atlanta, 1896, delivers the Atlanta Compromise speech, on seeking white support for industrial education. Don't demand today what you can earn tomorrow. The first African-American invited to the White House. Served as advisor on all things African American to Theodore Roosevelt.

W. E. B. Dubois

The intellectual leader of Black America during the early 20th century, and founder of the Niagara Movement, which later became the NAACP. A vocal critic of Washington, he labeled Washington's speech the Atlanta compromise. Dubois argued for the Talented Tenth of black students to be afforded a traditional liberal arts education.

William Monroe Trotter

Publisher of the Boston Guardian and a vocal critic of Booker T. Washington. Attended the Paris Peace Conference on his own dime, working his way across the Atlantic on a cattle ship.

Ida B. Wells

Attacked lynchings under her pen name, Iola. A founder of the NAACP, as well as the National Association of Colored Women.

Willie James Howard

15-year old African American boy lynched in Suwannee County, FL in 1944.

Harry T. Moore

Florida field secretary of the NAACP, killed with his wife on Christmas night, 1950, when a bomb was placed under his home.

The Groveland Boys

Four African American boys in Groveland, FL (Lake County) wrongly accused of raping a white woman when no proof was found. Three were killed, one by the local sheriff, with only one living to leave prison.

Emmett Till

A Chicago teen who was lynched in 1955 while on summer vacation visiting family in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman. His murderers were acquitted by an all white jury.

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

Supreme Court case ending school desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

Little Rock, AR

Gov. Orval Faubus refuses to allow desegregation, calling out the National Guard to prevent it. The first test case for Brown v. Board of Education, 9 black students escorted into previously all white Central High, leading to riots and threats, causing members of the 101st Airborne Division to be called in and remain on campus for the entire school year.

Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896

Separate by Equal is the law of the land.

Thurgood Marshall

Leader of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, brought Brown v. Board of Education to the Supreme Court, defended blacks accused of various crimes all over the country, including Groveland. First African American justice on U.S. Supreme Court.

Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955

Rosa Parks, working with NAACP, refuses to give up her seat on a city bus, prompting a city wide and year long bus boycott using the peaceful, non-violent method. The movement is orchestrated by the youthful pastor of Dexter Ave. Baptist Church, Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tallahassee Bus Boycott, 1956

Similar to Montgomery, sparked when two FAMU students, Carrie Patterson and Wilhelmina Jakes, refuse to give up seats and are arrested. Boycott led by Rev. Charles K. Steele, classmate of MLK at Morehouse College.

Sit-Ins

Students at NCA&T in Greensboro, NC, in 1960 refuse to give up seats at a Woolworth segregated lunch counter and are arrested, and replaced with other students. Begins wave of sit-ins around country.

John Lewis

Student leader of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and future US. Congressman from GA. Participates in movement during sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and Selma.

CORE

Congress of Racial Equality, sponsored Freedom Rides testing new laws desegregating interstate bus stops.

Oxford, MS, 1962

James Meredith, the first African American to enroll at the University of Mississippi, prompts days of riots, the 82nd Airborne, and 2 deaths.

Albany, GA, 1962

Sheriff Laurie Pritchett refuses to allow his jails to fill during protests again Albany's segregation laws. It has been said that Albany is MLK's first defeat.

Birmingham, aka Bombingham

1963: Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth invites MLK and the SLC (Southern Leadership Council) to protest in Birmingham on during the Easter weekend. Chief Public Safety officer Bull Connor turns the police, dogs, fire hoses…on the protests, some of them children, drawing international headlines and provoking the Federal government to get involved.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

MLK's letter to the NY Times remarking on his change of philosophy going forward.

Gov. George Wallace

Segregationist Governor of Alabama.

Medgar Evers

NAACP field Secretary in Jackson, MS, killed in his own driveway by a sniper when returning home.

March on Washington, 1963

The high point of the integrationist phase of the Civil Rights Movement. Remembered mostly for MLK's I have a dream speech.

A. Philip Randolph

Former leader of sleeping car porters union, organizes the March on Washington.

Civil Rights Act, 1964

Pushed through Congress by LBJ as a tribute to the late JFK. Ends segregation at all public places.

Malcolm X

Harlem leader of the Nation of Islam, and widely known black separatist, who later comes to accept that all whites may not be blue eyed devils. Is attaining a higher level of leadership when he is gunned down by members of the Nation of Islam while delivering a speech in Harlem in 1965.

Selma, AL

While marching for voting rights, John Lewis and others are set upon at the Edmund Pettis Bridge by an armed and mounted posse and beaten badly, prompting Federal marshals to arrive and continue the march from Selma to Montgomery, this time with MLK and other leaders involved.

Voting Rights Act, 1965

Pushed through Congress by LBJ, it outlawed onerous state laws designed to prevent African Americans from voting.

Burn Baby Burn

Three long hot summers of riots in the nation's urban core.

Black Power

The call by Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) of SNCC and others for an even, separatists, black society.

Black Panthers

Bobby Seale and Huey Newton led organization in Oakland, CA, that worked against the police and on behalf of the cities poor blacks. The imagery of this group was frightening to many whites.

Fred Hampton

Deputy Chairman, National Black Panther Party/Chair, IL Chapter - shot and killed in his bed by members of a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack. Many scholars now consider Hampton's death an assassination at the FBI's urging.

1968

MLK is Murdered; Riots; Bobby Kennedy is Murdered; Riots; Democratic National Convention - police turned on protesters; Riots. Nixon elected.