2-5: The Civil Rights Movement

These developments were viewed by activists as an indication that the time was right to start a civil rights movement.

1) President Truman's desegregation of the armed forces and banning of hiring discrimination in federal employment 2) Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education

Created in the mid 1960s, this Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the use of a poll tax (payment) as a requirement to vote in federal elections.

24th Amendment

This feminist author and activist wrote the book The Feminine Mystique and helped to establish the organization N.O.W.

Betty Friedan

Created after Reconstruction, these laws and customs enforced white dominance over blacks in the South. These laws disfranchised most blacks, required racial segregation, and sanctioned job and housing discrimination. Most of these unjust rules remained in effect until the 1950s and 1960s when they were finally banned by a number of key federal laws and Supreme Court decisions.

Jim Crow laws

Outraged by Rosa Park's arrest, and inspired by her defiance and the federal government's support for black civil rights, the black community in Montgomery launched this event to protest the city's bus segregation law.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

These were the "Big Four" civil rights organizations.

1) NAACP 2) CORE 3) SCLC 4) SNCC

In 1963, the SCLC organized and led local activists in this Alabama city to engage in marches and sit-ins. Many of the demonstrators were arrested, including Martin Luther King, Jr. who wrote a famous letter while in jail. During this campaign, the SCLC heightened the marches by persuading teenagers and school children to join in. The city's police attempted to stop the marches by attacking the demonstrators with dogs and with water from fire hoses.

Birmingham

This militant black organization was founded in Oakland, California, in 1966. The group advocated for self-defense, self-sufficiency, justice, and equality. Dressed in black leather, berets, and sunglasses, members formed patrols to monitor police and protect residents.

Black Panthers

Inspired by leaders like Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X, this radical black nationalist philosophy was popularized and promoted by Stokely Carmichael and others during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The philosophy generally emphasized racial pride, self-assertion, black cultural heritage, and, for some supporters, black separatism. Spokesmen of this philosophy, such as Carmichael, argued that blacks must lead their own organizations, organize themselves to gain political power (especially in areas where they constituted a majority), and possibly (if democratic processes are cheated) engage in violent revolution.

Black Power

This African-American leader of the late 1800s and early 1900s, established a black vocational school in Tuskegee, Alabama. He advocated for blacks to temporarily accept segregation and their inferior status and concentrate their efforts on attaining vocational skills, developing self-reliance, and becoming a valuable part of the American economy.

Booker T. Washington

Following its ruling on Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that communities must desegregate schools "with all deliberate speed." Unfortunately, many Southern school districts resisted desegregation. Perhaps the most famous example of this refusal occurred at this school in 1957.

Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas (White mobs blocked black kids from entering the school, and Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus supported the obstruction. In response, President Eisenhower sent Army troops to force compliance and escort the black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, to their classes.)

This proposed constitutional amendment would have required equal rights and protections for men and women. It was supported by NOW and in 1972 approved by the U.S. Congress, but the proposed amendment never became law because it failed to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)

During this civil rights campaign that occurred during the summer of 1964, thousands of college students trained in nonviolent protest traveled to Mississippi to assist blacks in registering to vote. Some of these students were beaten and a few even murdered.

Freedom Summer

Created in 1965, this Great Society program provides preschool for low-income children.

Head Start Program

These conditions and challenges helped inspire Native American Indians to protest against federal Indian policies during late 1960s and 1970s.

In the U.S., Native American Indians had the highest rates of unemployment, poverty, suicide, and alcoholism and the shortest life expectancy.

This Great Society program offers free education and vocational training to low-income young men and women ages 16 to 24.

Job Corps

This American was arrested for murdering JFK but was shot and killed by a Dallas nightclub owner two days later.

Lee Harvey Oswald

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was led by this local pastor.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Founded by Betty Friedan and other activists in 1966, this is the largest, most influential women's organization in the U.S. During the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, members of this group engaged in marching, lobbying government, and disseminating information to create changes in sexist attitudes and behavior and create legal reforms for equal educational opportunities, equal pay and employment opportunities, and legalized abortion.

National Organization for Women (NOW)

In its ruling on this case in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court established the "separate but equal" doctrine and validated segregation.

Plessy v. Ferguson

In its ruling on this landmark case in 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that women have some constitutional right to terminate their pregnancies. The court established a trimester framework that prohibited states from regulating abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy, permitted regulations designed to protect a woman's health in the second trimester, and permitted states to prohibit abortion during the third trimester, so long as the health of the mother was not at risk. Note: In a subsequent ruling in 1992, the Supreme Court replaced the trimester framework with a viability framework which allows states to forbid abortions once the fetus is viable and the mother's health is not at risk. Prior to viability, states can regulate abortion but cannot pose an undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion.

Roe v. Wade

This attorney for the NAACP argued many important civil-rights cases, including Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. He was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Johnson in 1967 and participated in many court decisions that extended civil rights in America.

Thurgood Marshall

In a number of ways, President Kennedy attempted to promote civil rights for African Americans. He issued several executive orders that banned racial discrimination in government housing and by government contractors. He utilized federal troops to force Southern governors to allow blacks into college. Ultimately, President Kennedy's most important and impactful contribution to improving civil rights in America was his proposal of this in 1963.

a civil rights bill aimed at outlawing segregation and discrimination

This term refers to an awareness of women's oppression and the belief that women should have equal rights and opportunity. It was the basis of the modern Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

feminism

This was a method used by the Southern states to disfranchise blacks. In order to vote in elections, people had to pay a tax at polling places. Because most blacks in the South were poor, this method prevented many blacks from voting.

poll tax

The term disfranchise (sometimes spelled disenfranchise) mean this.

to deprive someone of the right to vote

These were the key outcomes of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1) For over a year, blacks in Montgomery refused to ride the buses and instead walked and carpooled to work. 2) MLK and other boycott leaders were arrested. 3) During the boycott, civil rights leaders filed a lawsuit against the mayor of Montgomery. In 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city's bus segregation laws were illegal and ordered Alabama to desegregate its buses. 4) MLK received national public attention and began his rapid rise as a main leader of the Civil Rights Movement. 5) The boycott inspired other black activists to utilize nonviolent protest and aim for rapid, radical change.

In its ruling on this 1954 landmark case, the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. Arguing that segregation in schools is psychologically damaging to black school children, Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal and violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

During the 1960s and 1970s, this Mexican-American civil rights activist and labor leader helped to organize migrant farm workers in California into a labor union. To force growers to recognize the farm workers' union and increase pay, he organized strikes and utilized nonviolent protest, such as a campaign that convinced consumers to boycott grapes.

Cesar Chavez

This federal law prohibits segregation in public accommodations and bans discrimination in education and employment. A number of factors helped push this law through Congress, such as the March on Washington, the assassination of JFK, and the leadership of President Johnson. This law was originally proposed by President Kennedy but ultimately signed by President Johnson.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

This was the last federal law of the Civil Rights Movement. Also known as the Fair Housing Act, this law prohibits racial discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. The law was the result of a number of developments: 1) Several fair housing protest campaigns were conducted in 1966 and 1967 by the SCLC, NAACP, and others in a number of northern cities. 2) A government report by the Kerner Commission on the 1967 race riots strongly recommended the creation and enforcement of a federal law that prohibits racial housing discrimination. 3) Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated.

Civil Rights Act of 1968

This civil rights organization, abbreviated CORE, was founded in 1942 by a group of pacifists who were inspired by Gandhi's teachings of nonviolent resistance. The organization is composed of local chapters, and its members played a key role in many campaigns and protests of the Civil Rights Movement.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

This Great Society program provides food-purchasing assistance for low-income people living in the U.S. During the mid 1960s, President Johnson and Congress expanded this anti-poverty program and made it permanent.

Food Stamp Program

This term refers to the black and white college students who in 1961 rode buses through the deep South to challenge segregated seating on interstate buses and segregated facilities at the bus stops. Some of the riders were beaten by white mobs and many were jailed.

Freedom Riders (their 1961 protest campaign is sometimes called the Freedom Rides)

Inspired by black civil rights efforts, women's liberation, and other movements of the late 20th century, homosexuals in America began to organize and protest for equal rights in the late 1960s. This early movement for gay and lesbian rights is known as this.

Gay Liberation Movement

This term refers to President Johnson's domestic program with which he hoped to defeat poverty, end racial injustice, and improve the quality of life in the U.S.

Great Society

Founded during the early 1900s, this organization works to improve the civil rights and living conditions of African Americans. In its early years, the organization concentrated on providing legal services and using the courts to overturn Jim Crow laws. Slowly, this legal strategy yielded important victories that ultimately helped to enable and inspire the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Below are a few key court rulings on cases filed and argued by this organization. 1915: grandfather-clause exemptions for literacy tests ruled unconstitutional 1930s-1950: a number of rulings allowed blacks into colleges and required equal, desegregated college facilities 1946: segregation of interstate buses and trains ruled unconstitutional 1954: segregation in public schools ruled unconstitutional

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

In 1960, John F. Kennedy used this term to confidently describe America's prosperity, technology, and potential for new levels of progress. Historians sometimes use this term to refer to President Kennedy's proposed goals, such as creating medical care for the elderly, rebuilding poor urban areas, aiding education, increasing defense and international aid, and advancing the space program. Although Congress supported many of his plans related to the Cold War, Republicans and Southern Democrats blocked many of JFK's social plans.

New Frontier

In 1965, to promote African-American voting rights, the SCLC conducted a protest campaign in this Alabama city. After several thousand blacks were arrested and one activist was killed, SCLC leaders attempted to march with protesters from this city to the state capital, Montgomery. During their first attempt at this fifty-mile march, the protesters were attacked by state troopers and the violence was shown on TV. In response, President Johnson delivered a speech to a televised session of Congress and asked for the creation a voting-rights bill. A few days later, Martin Luther King, Jr. and protesters in Selma were given federal protection and successfully completed their fifty-mile march to Montgomery.

Selma

This organization of black ministers and churches was founded in 1957 after the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the group organized and led a number of highly publicized protest campaigns during the 1950s and 1960s.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

This African American became the chairman of SNCC in the late 1960s. He and other members became critical of Martin Luther King's leadership, adopted a black nationalist philosophy, and excluded white students from membership in the SNCC.

Stokely Carmichael

In 1969, police officers raided a gay nightclub in New York and began arresting its patrons. Gay onlookers taunted the police, and violence erupted. This riot marked the beginning of the gay liberation movement, as it helped to inspire the creation of new organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and the use of protest events like gay pride marches.

Stonewall riots (Stonewall Inn uprising)

This civil-rights organization, abbreviated SNCC, was formed in 1960 by college students. Members of this group participated in sit-ins, freedom rides, voter registration efforts, marches, and other forms of nonviolent protest.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Cesar Chavez co-founded and led this farm workers' union during the 1960s and 1970s.

United Farm Workers (UFW)

Created in 1965 by President Johnson and Congress, this federal law prohibits unjust barriers to voting (literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, harassment) and empowered the federal government to oversee voter registration and elections. This law resulted in an enormous increase in the number of registered black voters.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

This intellectual leader of the early 1900s was the first African American to graduate from Harvard. He advocated immediate racial equality and believed that blacks' civil rights could be best advanced by the efforts and leadership of a black "talented tenth." He helped to found the NAACP in 1909.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Just days after JFK's funeral, President Johnson organized this commission to investigate Kennedy's death. Named after the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who was appointed as its chairman, the commission announced in 1964 that investigators found no evidence of a conspiracy in JFK's assassination and concluded that Oswald fired the shots that killed JFK.

Warren Commission

In the summer of 1963, as JFK's proposed civil-rights legislation was held up in the Senate, the "Big Four" civil rights groups organized a massive demonstration in this city to pressure Congress to pass Kennedy's civil rights bill. Over 250,000 people participated in a protest march around the city, and Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Washington, D.C.

This term refers to the policy of favoring minorities in hiring, promotion, college admissions, and the awarding of government contracts. Initiated by JFK and further expanded by his immediate successors, this policy was originally intended to force defense contractors, like Boeing and General Electric that were paid with taxpayer revenue, to end their overt practices of racial discrimination. Over time, the intent of this policy has widened. Proponents of the policy argue that it creates more opportunities for minorities, remedies the effects of past discrimination, and creates more diverse, educational college settings.

affirmative action

This clause (written into many Southern state constitutions) allowed an exemption from literacy tests and poll taxes to voters whose ancestors were eligible to vote prior to Civil War. This clause enabled illiterate, poor whites to avoid the voting barriers that were intended to disfranchise blacks.

grandfather clause

This was a method used by the Southern states to disfranchise blacks. It required voters to demonstrate their ability to read and write and assessed their knowledge of government. Typically, many of the required tasks and questions were unnecessarily difficult, and the examinations were unfairly scored and judged.

literacy tests

Since the 1970s, many affirmative action programs have been legally challenged and limited. For example, in the case Regents of University of California v. Bakke in 1978, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this type of affirmative-action admissions policy is unconstitutional. Additionally, in the last few decades, a number of states (through ballot initiatives) have banned public affirmative action policies that give preferential treatment to groups, and the U.S. Supreme Court has further narrowed the use of race as a factor in college admissions.

racial quotas (a fixed number)

This is the social and legal practice of separating blacks and whites. It includes residential separation (white and black neighborhoods) as well as separate public accommodations (schools, restaurants, bathrooms, drinking fountains, hospitals, churches, bus seating, etc.) In the South, this separation was required by law (de jure segregation). In many Northern communities, racial separation happened "by fact" (de facto segregation), meaning by tradition and habit rather than by legal requirement.

segregation

In the 1964 presidential election, President Johnson ran against the Republican Governor Barry Goldwater, who favored U.S. military intervention in Vietnam and threatened to use nuclear bombs to stop the spread of communism in Cuba and Asia. During his election campaign, LBJ stated that he would not sent U.S. troops to Vietnam and ran this famous TV commercial.

the "Daisy Spot" (a.k.a. the "Daisy Girl" advertisement)

In her bestselling book The Feminine Mystique, which helped to ignite the Women's Liberation Movement, Betty Friedan analyzed the dissatisfaction of many middle-class housewives with the role forced on them by American society. Friedan used the term "feminine mystique" to describe this.

the false notion of femininity in America during the mid-20th century that women's highest value in life and only commitment should be as a wife, mother, and homemaker

This historic event occurred in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

President Kennedy was assassinated.

In 1955, this civil rights activist in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and was arrested for violating a city segregation law.

Rosa Parks

Many scholars consider 1968 to be the final year of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. These are the key events and developments of the late 1960s that fractured and weakened the movement.

1) In 1968, several important civil rights leaders were killed: MLK, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray (which led to the worst urban rioting in U.S. history). Robert Kennedy was assassinated while campaigning for president. 2) During the late 1960s, new radical leaders like Carmichael tended to alienate whites and reduce the unity and power of the Civil Rights Movement. 3) During the late 1960s, a wave of inner city riots in black communities undercut support from the white community. Some of these riots, such as the Detroit Race Riot of 1967, were the result of blacks' frustrations with restrictive housing segregation and abusive police practices. 4) In 1968, the Vietnam War reached its height, and many Americans became more concerned with the war and the Peace Movement.

These developments helped to stimulate the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

1) the persistence into the late 20th century of the cult domesticity and women's social and economic inequality 2) JFK's Commission on the Status of Women (reported widespread discrimination against women in the workplace) 3) the Civil Rights Movement and the Peace Movement 4) the bestselling book The Feminine Mystique 5) the Civil Rights Act 1964 (banned gender discrimination in employment)

This is how the Civil Rights Movement changed during the mid- and late 1960s.

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC turned their attention to addressing de facto segregation in the Northern states and advancing African Americans' economic prosperity. As King struggled to make progress in these areas, and as our nation's focus shifted toward the worsening war in Vietnam, many blacks grew frustrated. Civil rights groups began to disagree over strategy, and there was a rise of new civil rights leaders and groups that advocated black nationalism and an abandonment of nonviolent protest.

This Native-American rights organization was established in 1968. To gain greater control of their tribal lands and draw attention to their poor living conditions and dependence on welfare, members of this organization engaged a number of protests during the late 1960s and 1970s, such as: 1) the occupation of Alcatraz Island 2) the "Trail of Broken Treaties" march in Washington, DC, and a 3-day sit-in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs building 3) the Wounded Knee incident (seized the town in South Dakota for 71 days, took hostages, traded gunfire with FBI) 4) sit-ins in federal courts armed with copies of old treaties

American Indian Movement (AIM)

From humble Texas origins, this Democrat served in the U.S. Senate during the 1940s and 1950s and was known for his ability to persuade other Congressmen to support his bills. He served as Kennedy's Vice President and assumed the presidency immediate after JFK's death in 1963. He was reelected in 1964.

Lyndon B. Johnson

This civil rights leader became a prominent minister of an American religious movement known as the Nation of Islam. He argued that whites were inherently racist and evil, urged African Americans to embrace black pride and racial separation, and advised blacks to join the Nation of Islam in order to develop religious discipline and unity. In 1965, after disagreeing with his religious leader, Elijah Muhammad, and leaving the Nation of Islam, this leader was assassinated.

Malcolm X

This Great Society federal program provides health insurance for low-income Americans. It was created by LBJ and Congress in 1965.

Medicaid

Created in 1965 by President Johnson and Congress as part of LBJ's Great Society domestic agenda, this federal program provides low-cost medical insurance to Americans aged 65 and over.

Medicare

This federal agency was created in 1961 by President Kennedy and the U.S. Congress. Using volunteer college graduates as advisers, teachers, and health care workers, this agency provides assistance to developing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Peace Corps

This conservative political activist opposed feminism and organized the "STOP ERA" campaign. She argued that the ERA would lead to drafting women into the military, an expansion of federal power, taxpayer-funded abortions, and same-sex marriage.

Phyllis Schlafly

These were some of the main results of the Great Society.

Positive Effects: The programs reduced hunger and poverty, helped the elderly and poor to afford medical care, and improved racial justice in the U.S. Negative Effects: In the following decades, the costly programs contributed to bigger deficit spending and produced widespread doubts of the federal government's ability to solve social problems.

These were the main results of the Birmingham campaign.

The police violence against the demonstrators, which was shown on TV and reported in newspapers, shocked many Americans and increased public support for black civil rights. President Kennedy was compelled to submit to Congress a civil rights bill aimed at fighting segregation and discrimination.