Civil Rights 01 4/25/08

Focus on the deep South

2/3 of all blacks

NAACP begins breaking ground, campaigning for blacks more fervently

Upset at the treatment of blacks coming back from WWII

Blacks have same Constitutional rights

13th Amendment: Emancipation

14th: Citizenship

15th: Voting Equality

1896: Plessy vs. Ferguson

Separate but equal

Truman

Done with the war, needs to switch to domestic issues

In Mississippi, 6 black war vets are murdered

Upsets Truman greatly

In response, desegregates the military and federal jobs

Eisenhower, Truman's replacement, doesn't like desegreregation

1948: Lower courts overturn separate facilities

Overturn Plessy vs. Ferguson

Eisenhower

Reluctant to change

Grows up in a white segregated community

Has personal biases

1954: Brown vs. Board of Education

Orders schools in Topeka, Kansas to desegregate

Brown represents a number of people, suing the Kansas Board of Education, and BoE attorney, Earl Warren, a Populist

Overturns Plessy vs. Ferguson

Border states start to integrates

Native Americans

Trying to overturn the Indian Reorganization Act

Act that puts them on Reservations, with the Dawes Act

Eisenhower wants Indians to assimilate'

U.S. presidents have equivocated between assimilation and reservations 

Rosa Parks

Sat in the black section, was forced to give up her seat, and refused

Arrested

Leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Brings in MLK, head of SCLC

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

1957 Little Rock Arkansas

Governor of Arkansas refuses to uphold Brown vs. Board of Education, believes in states rights

Eisenhower forces integration b/c of federal rights

Calls in Nat'l Guard to make sure that nine black high school students can attend an all-white high school

Civil Rights Act

Creates a Civil Rights commission to evaluate inequalities

15 million possible black voters

Civil Rights Commission helps 20% register to vote

1960's

Starts with a bang

Election between JFK and Nixon

JFK wins in part because he looks so much better on television

First televised debates

Feb 1960

First Sit-In to get national notoriety

Greensboro, N.C.

April: Civil Rights Act is passed

Gives teeth to the former Civil Rights Acts

White Students would from down on "freedom rides" to ensure African Americans can vote, supporting CRA

24th Amendment

No more poll taxes

"Mississippi Burning"

1965: Mississippi revolts against reform, and tries to protect states rights

Increase in lynchings and violence

One of the worst places in America

1965: Voting Rights Act

Removes grandfather clauses, etc, other tactics to keep blacks from voting

New Black Militancy

Forms Black Panthers

Malcom X

Opposite to MLK's peaceful agenda

Watts Riots

Hot, hot summer

Riots occur more often in the summer

African American youth decide to rebel against injustice

Looting, burning, often their own neighborhoods

Rodney King Trial

Police officers beat black man excessively

Courts find in favor of the police

Blacks revolt