Civil Rights Movement

Brown v. Board of Education

May 17, 1954

*After WWII, Thurgood Marshall focused his efforts on ending segregation in public schools.
*This case involving a young African American girl named Linda Brown, who was denied going to her neighborhood school in Topeka, Kansas, because of her race.
*On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
*It ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Dec 5, 1955

*The leader of this boycott was Martin Luther King, Jr.
*Instead of riding the bus, they organized car pools or walked to work.
*In November 1956, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of a special three-judge panel declaring Alabama’s laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional.
Link text

Little Rock 9 and the Desegregation of Schools

1957

*In September 1957, the school board in Little Rock, Arkansas, won a court order requiring that nine African American students be admitted to Central High, a school with 2,000 white students.
*Eisenhower immediately ordered the Army to send troops to Little Rock. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard.
*Governor Faubus ordered the three public high schools in Little Rock closed.
link text

The Sit-In Movement

1960

*Four young African Americans Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, and Franklin McCain started the whole movement.
*They created the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) instead of joining the NAACP or SNCC.
*The idea for what came to be called the Voter Education Project began with Robert Moses, an SNCC volunteer from New York.
link text

Freedom Riders

1961

*The whole creation of the Freedom Riders was to draw attention to its refusal to integrate bus terminals.
*In Birmingham the riders emerged from a bus to face a gang of young men armed with baseball bats, chains, and lead pipes. The gang beat the riders viciously.
*The attack on the Freedom Riders came less than four months after President John F. Kennedy took office. The new president felt compelled to get the violence under control.

James Meredith and the Desegregation of Southern Universities

1962

*Meredith was an African American air force veteran.
*President Kennedy dispatched 500 federal marshals to escort Meredith to the campus.
*Shortly after Meredith and the marshals arrived, an angry white mob attacked the campus, and a full-scale riot erupted.
*For the rest of the year, Meredith attended classes at the University of Mississippi under federal guard. He graduated in August.
Link text

The March on Washington

Aug 28, 1963

*Dr. King delivered a powerful speech outlining his dream of freedom and equality for all Americans.
*People in Congress tried desperately to stop whatever momentum the people had gathered.
*King’s speech and the peacefulness and dignity of the March on Washington built momentum for the civil rights bill.
Link text

Malcolm X and the Civil Rights Movement*

1965

*After seeing Muslims from many races worshipping together, he concluded that an integrated society was possible after all.
*After Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam, he continued to criticize the organization. Because of this, organization members shot and killed him in February 1965.
*Malcolm X’s ideas influenced a new generation of militant African American leaders who also preached black power, black nationalism, and economic self-sufficiency.

Voter Registration Among Minorities

Mar 7, 1965

*To prevent African Americans from registering to vote, Sheriff Jim Clark had deputized and armed dozens of white citizens.
*At Selma March, Clark’s men attacked demonstrators with clubs and electric cattle prods. Martin Luther King led demonstrations against them.
*The Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized the U.S. attorney general to send federal examiners to register qualified voters, bypassing local officials who often refused to register African Americans.

Urban Problems and the Black Panthers

1966

*African Americans, who often faced violence if they tried to register to vote.
*The Black Panthers believed that a revolution was necessary in the United States, and they urged African Americans to arm themselves and prepare to force whites to grant them equal rights.
*Eldridge Cleaver, who served as the minister of culture, articulated
many of the organization’s aims in his 1967 best-selling book, Soul on Ice.