Civil Rights Movement Notes

The Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement was a mass popular movement aimed at securing equal access and opportunities for African Americans, granting them the basic privileges and rights of U.S. citizenship. While its roots extend back to the 19th century, the movement reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s.

African Americans, both men and women, along with white allies, organized and led the movement at both national and local levels. They pursued their objectives through legal means, negotiations, petitions, and nonviolent protest demonstrations.

The movement was primarily concentrated in the American South, where the majority of the African American population resided and where racial inequality was most evident in education, economic opportunity, and the political and legal systems. Starting in the late 19th century, state and local governments enacted segregation laws, known as Jim Crow laws, that imposed restrictions on voting qualifications, effectively rendering the black population economically and politically powerless. Therefore, the movement primarily addressed three major areas of discrimination: education, social segregation, and voting rights.

The Brown Decision

The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lynda Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas marked a turning point in the civil rights struggle. This landmark ruling outlawed racial segregation in public schools.

Across the country, whites condemned the decision, and in the South, white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Citizens' Council mobilized to resist desegregation, sometimes resorting to violence. A major target of these supremacist groups was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP had filed numerous court cases over the years, including Brown, and had taken the lead in the national fight against segregated education. As the oldest established national civil rights organization, the NAACP also played a crucial role at the local level, where black communities across the South formed branches to combat discrimination.

Prompted by the work of the Arkansas NAACP and its president, Daisy Bates, one of the first attempts to comply with the Brown decision occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. When the local school board admitted nine black students to the previously all-white Central High School, white protests turned violent. President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened by dispatching federal troops to protect the black students.

The Challenge to Social Segregation

By the time of the Little Rock incident, the nation was already aware of the growing struggle in the South. In 1955, blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, organized a boycott of city buses to protest the policy of segregated seating. The boycott, which lasted $381$ days and was sparked by Rosa Parks, successfully integrated the seating. It also led to the formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1957, as a national organization led by Martin Luther King, Jr., a local black minister. As the head of the SCLC, King would later become a central figure in the broader civil rights movement.

A significant event in 1960 led to the establishment of another important organization, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which expanded the movement's participants to include college-age blacks. In that year, four students from the all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat at the "whites only" section of a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The waitress did not know how to react and did not take their order, so the students remained seated until the restaurant closed. This event initiated a series of sit-ins at restaurants throughout the South.

The sit-in protests were met with various reactions. Some protesters faced threats of violence, had food poured over them, and were sometimes arrested. These sit-ins expanded to include "wade-ins" at public swimming pools, "kneel-ins" at segregated all-white churches, and demonstrations in front of department stores and movie theaters. It was challenging for the protesters to remain peaceful and courteous, especially as white crowds grew increasingly angry and violent. The protesters found strength in their belief in brotherly love and in the conviction that their nonviolent protests were the only way to achieve their freedom.

Soon after, many SNCC members joined forces with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Founded in Chicago in the 1940s, CORE organized the Freedom Rides of 1961. Black and white Freedom Riders boarded commercial buses in Washington, D.C., and traveled through the South to challenge the 1960 Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia, which had outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals. Despite facing beatings, arrests, and the burning of one bus, the Freedom Rides ultimately succeeded in prompting the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce the Boynton ruling.

The SNCC also collaborated with NAACP branches on local campaigns to secure voting rights for blacks and end segregation in public places. Albany, Georgia, gained national attention in 1962 when Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC joined the local struggle. However, their efforts failed to achieve significant results, resulting in a humiliating defeat for King. Subsequently, the national spotlight shifted to Birmingham, Alabama.

Since 1956, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights had been leading the fight against racial discrimination in Birmingham. For decades, local blacks had faced a staunch segregationist in Eugene "Bull" Connor, the city's commissioner of public safety, who was largely responsible for Birmingham's reputation as the "most thoroughly segregated city in the United States." King arrived in the spring of 1963 and, together with Shuttlesworth, led nonviolent demonstrations. Connor's use of police dogs and fire hoses against protesters, an act that remains infamous, prompted President John Kennedy's administration to recognize the need for civil rights legislation. Following Kennedy's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson skillfully guided the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress. Representing a major victory for African Americans, the 1964 legislation outlawed segregation in public places and prohibited racial and gender discrimination in employment practices.

Voting Rights

By the mid-1960s, the majority of eligible black voters in the South remained disenfranchised. Following World War II, African Americans initiated local efforts to exercise their right to vote but encountered strong and often violent resistance from local whites. Organized initiatives to enfranchise blacks culminated in the Summer Project of 1964, popularly known as Freedom Summer. The Summer Project was conducted under the auspices of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), which included the SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP. Targeting Mississippi, where many counties had no registered black voters, COFO launched a massive, but largely unsuccessful, voter-registration drive. White resistance was widespread and marked by several killings. However, the effort did capture the attention of many lawmakers, who began calling for federal voting-rights legislation.

Such legislation followed events in Selma, Alabama, where King and the SCLC went in February 1965 to support a struggling voting-rights drive organized by the SNCC and local blacks. After two unsuccessful attempts, King led an $87$-km ($54$-mi) march from Selma to Montgomery. Three activists lost their lives during the Selma demonstrations, but in August 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

Almost $100$ years after the end of the Civil War, the American people and their government finally put an end to legal segregation. All laws that had allowed for the separation of white and black Americans were abolished.

Black Power

By this time, civil rights activists were shifting their focus to racial discrimination in the urban North and West. Many younger activists, dissatisfied with the slow pace of change, were becoming more militant. In 1966, SNCC replaced its chairman, John Lewis, with Stokely Carmichael, who was more radical. Carmichael expanded SNCC operations beyond the South and helped popularize the concept of "black power." Proponents of black power advocated for African Americans to control the movement, exercise economic autonomy, and preserve their African heritage. The calls for racial separatism and the principle of self-defense against white violence were the most controversial aspects, as they contradicted the ideals of more traditional activists who favored racial integration and passive resistance.

A leading group within the black power movement was the Black Panthers. Organized in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton, its members included activist and writer Eldridge Cleaver. Probably the best-known figure within the radical wing of the civil rights movement was Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam, also known as the Black Muslims. However, by the early 1970s, black power had largely faded away, having never gained widespread support from the African American population.