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The civil rights movement was a
nonviolent Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...
social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
to abolish legalized institutional
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Intern ...
, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the United States. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although it made its largest
legislative A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers of government. Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known ...
gains in the 1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement's major nonviolent resistance and
civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a stat ...
campaigns eventually secured new protections in
federal law Federal law is the body of law created by the federal government of a country. A federal government is formed when a group of political units, such as states or provinces join in a federation, delegating their individual sovereignty and many ...
for the
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
of all
Americans Americans are the citizens and nationals of the United States of America.; ; Although direct citizens and nationals make up the majority of Americans, many dual citizens, expatriates, and permanent residents could also legally claim Amer ...
. After the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by state ...
and the subsequent abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, most of whom had recently been enslaved. For a short period of time, African American men voted and held political office, but as time went on they were increasingly deprived of
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
, often under the racist
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sou ...
, and African Americans were subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by white supremacists in the South. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal and civil rights, such as the civil rights movement (1865–1896) and the civil rights movement (1896–1954). The movement was characterized by
nonviolent Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...
mass protests and
civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a stat ...
following highly publicized events such as the lynching of
Emmett Till Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery ...
. These included
boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict s ...
s such as the
Montgomery bus boycott The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States ...
, "
sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to m ...
s" in Greensboro and
Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...
, and marches from Selma to Montgomery. At the culmination of a legal strategy pursued by African Americans, in 1954 the
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
struck down many of the laws that had allowed racial segregation and discrimination to be legal in the United States as unconstitutional. The
Warren Court The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...
made a series of landmark rulings against racist discrimination, including the separate but equal doctrine, such as '' Brown v. Board of Education'' (1954), ''
Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States ''Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States'', 379 U.S. 241 (1964), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Commerce Clause gave the U.S. Congress power to force private businesses to abide by Tit ...
'' (1964), and '' Loving v. Virginia'' (1967) which banned segregation in public schools and public accommodations, and struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage. The rulings played a crucial role in bringing an end to the segregationist
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sou ...
prevalent in the Southern states. In the 1960s, moderates in the movement worked with the
United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washi ...
to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that authorized oversight and enforcement of civil rights laws. The
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration req ...
explicitly banned all discrimination based on race, including racial segregation in schools, businesses, and in public accommodations. The
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The suffrage, Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of Federal government of the United States, federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President of the United ...
restored and protected voting rights by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minority voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and young people across the country began to take action. From 1964 through 1970, a wave of riots and protests in black communities dampened support from the white middle class, but increased support from private foundations. The emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from 1965 to 1975, challenged Black leaders of the movement for its cooperative attitude and its adherence to legalism and
nonviolence Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...
. Its leaders demanded not only legal equality, but also economic self-sufficiency for the community. Support for the Black Power movement came from African Americans who had seen little material improvement since the civil rights movement's peak in the mid-1960s, and still faced discrimination in jobs, housing, education and politics. Martin Luther King Jr. is often cited as the most visible leader of the movement. However, some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to any particular person, organization, or strategy.


Background


American Civil War and Reconstruction era

Before the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by state ...
, eight serving presidents had owned slaves, almost four million black people remained enslaved in the South, generally only white men with property could vote, and the
Naturalization Act of 1790 The Naturalization Act of 1790 (, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free Whi ...
limited U.S. citizenship to whites. Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the 13th Amendment (1865) that ended slavery; the 14th Amendment (1869) that gave black people citizenship, adding their total for
Congressional apportionment United States congressional apportionment is the process by which seats in the United States House of Representatives are distributed among the 50 states according to the most recent decennial census mandated by the United States Constitution ...
; and the 15th Amendment (1870) that gave black males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time). From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent Reconstruction era during which the federal government tried to establish free labor and the
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to the formation of insurgent movements such as the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Ca ...
, whose members attacked black and white
Republicans Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
in order to maintain
white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant, the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the Enforcement Acts. Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent paramilitary groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage, intimidating and suppressing black voters, and assassinating Republican officeholders.Black-American Representatives and Senators by Congress, 1870–Present
—U.S. House of Representatives
However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the
Federal Government A federation (also known as a federal state) is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government (federalism). In a federation, the self-govern ...
to get involved. Many Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of war.


Disenfranchisement after Reconstruction

After the disputed election of 1876, which resulted in the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops, whites in the South regained political control of the region's state legislatures. They continued to intimidate and violently attack blacks before and during elections to suppress their voting, but the last African Americans were elected to Congress from the South before disenfranchisement of blacks by states throughout the region, as described below. From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to disenfranchise African Americans and many Poor Whites by creating barriers to voter registration; voting rolls were dramatically reduced as blacks and poor whites were forced out of electoral politics. After the landmark
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
case of '' Smith v. Allwright'' (1944), which prohibited white primaries, progress was made in increasing black political participation in the Rim South and Acadiana – although almost entirely in urban areas and a few rural localities where most blacks worked outside plantations. The ''status quo ante'' of excluding African Americans from the political system lasted in the remainder of the South, especially
North Louisiana North Louisiana (french: Louisiane du Nord), also known locally as Sportsman's Paradise, (a name sometimes attributed to the state as a whole) is a region in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The region has two metropolitan areas: Shreveport-Bossier C ...
, Mississippi and Alabama, until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s to provide federal enforcement of constitutional voting rights. For more than sixty years, blacks in the South were essentially excluded from politics, unable to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government. Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries. During this period, the white-dominated
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...
maintained political control of the South. With whites controlling all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful
voting bloc A voting bloc is a group of voters that are strongly motivated by a specific common concern or group of concerns to the point that such specific concerns tend to dominate their voting patterns, causing them to vote together in elections. For exampl ...
in Congress. The
Republican Party Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party. Republican Party may also refer to: Africa *Republican Party (Liberia) * Republican Part ...
the "party of Lincoln" and the party to which most blacks had belongedshrank to insignificance except in remote Unionist areas of
Appalachia Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, ...
and the
Ozarks The Ozarks, also known as the Ozark Mountains, Ozark Highlands or Ozark Plateau, is a physiographic region in the U.S. states of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas. The Ozarks cover a significant por ...
as black voter registration was suppressed. The Republican
lily-white movement The lily-white movement was an anti-black political movement within the Republican Party in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a response to the political and socioeconomic gains made by African-Americans foll ...
also gained strength by excluding blacks. Until 1965, the "
Solid South The Solid South or Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the states of the Southern United States for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of Democratic Party (United States), Democrats in those states. T ...
" was a one-party system under the white Democrats. Excepting the previously noted historic Unionist strongholds the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office. In 1901, President
Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
invited Booker T. Washington, president of the
Tuskegee Institute Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature. The campus was d ...
, to dine at the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C., NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. preside ...
, making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers." Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African-American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, these actions were resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics. During the same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white southerners imposed
racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Intern ...
by law. Violence against blacks increased, with numerous
lynchings Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
through the turn of the century. The system of ''
de jure In law and government, ''de jure'' ( ; , "by law") describes practices that are legally recognized, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. In contrast, ("in fact") describes situations that exist in reality, even if not legall ...
'' state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged from the post-Reconstruction South became known as the "
Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
" system. The United States Supreme Court made up almost entirely of Northerners, upheld the constitutionality of those state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities in its 1896 decision '' Plessy v. Ferguson'', legitimizing them through the "
separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
" doctrine. Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat.Leon Litwack, ''Jim Crow Blues'', Magazine of History (OAH Publications, 2004) For those places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were served first. Elected in 1912, President
Woodrow Wilson Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of P ...
gave in to demands by Southern members of his cabinet and ordered segregation of workplaces throughout the federal government. The early 20th century is a period often referred to as the " nadir of American race relations", when the number of lynchings was highest. While tensions and
civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life ...
violations were most intense in the South, social discrimination affected African Americans in other regions as well. At the national level, the Southern bloc controlled important committees in Congress, defeated passage of federal laws against lynching, and exercised considerable power beyond the number of whites in the South. Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period: *
Racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Intern ...
. By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains. Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality. * Disenfranchisement. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more restrictive, essentially forcing black voters off the voting rolls. The number of African-American voters dropped dramatically, and they were no longer able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans, and U.S. states such as Alabama disenfranchised poor whites as well. * Exploitation. Increased economic oppression of blacks through the
convict lease Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor which was practiced historically in the Southern United States, the laborers being mainly African-American men; it was ended during the 20th century. (Convict labor in general continues; f ...
system, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination. * Violence. Individual, police, paramilitary, organizational, and mob racial violence against blacks (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in the West Coast). African Americans and other ethnic minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the Civil rights movement (1896–1954)). The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.& ...
(NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through
litigation - A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...
, education, and
lobbying In politics, lobbying, persuasion or interest representation is the act of lawfully attempting to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying, whic ...
efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision '' Brown v. Board of Education'' (1954), when the
Warren Court The Warren Court was the period in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States during which Earl Warren served as Chief Justice. Warren replaced the deceased Fred M. Vinson as Chief Justice in 1953, and Warren remained in office until ...
ruled that segregation of public schools in the US was unconstitutional and, by implication, overturned the "
separate but equal Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protecti ...
" doctrine established in '' Plessy v. Ferguson'' of 1896. Following the unanimous Supreme Court ruling, many states began to gradually integrate their schools, but some areas of the South resisted by closing public schools altogether. The integration of Southern public libraries followed demonstrations and protests that used techniques seen in other elements of the larger civil rights movement.Fultz, M. (2006). "Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation", ''Libraries & The Cultural Record'', 41(3), 338–346. This included sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance. For example, in 1963 in the city of
Anniston, Alabama Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County in Alabama and is one of two urban centers/principal cities of and included in the Anniston-Oxford Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 23,106. Acc ...
, two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library. Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries was generally quicker than the integration of other public institutions.


National issues

The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). In 1900 Reverend Matthew Anderson, speaking at the annual
Hampton Negro Conference The Hampton Negro Conference was a series of conferences held between 1897 and 1912 hosted by the Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Hampton, Virginia. It brought together Black leaders from across the Southern United States, as well a ...
in Virginia, said that "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage-earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South. There seems to be an apparent effort throughout the North, especially in the cities to debar the colored worker from all the avenues of higher remunerative labor, which makes it more difficult to improve his economic condition even than in the South." From 1910 to 1970, blacks sought better lives by migrating north and west out of the South. A total of nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the Great Migration, most during and after World War II. So many people migrated that the demographics of some previously black-majority states changed to a white majority (in combination with other developments). The rapid influx of blacks altered the demographics of Northern and Western cities; happening at a period of expanded European, Hispanic, and Asian immigration, it added to social competition and tensions, with the new migrants and immigrants battling for a place in jobs and housing. Reflecting social tensions after World War I, as veterans struggled to return to the workforce and labor unions were organizing, the Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.S. as a result of white race riots against blacks that took place in more than three dozen cities, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919 and the Omaha race riot of 1919. Urban problems such as crime and disease were blamed on the large influx of Southern blacks to cities in the north and west, based on stereotypes of rural southern African-Americans. Overall, blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for blacks were routed to the lowest status and restrictive in potential mobility. Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants,
redlining In the United States, redlining is a Discrimination, discriminatory practice in which services (Financial services, financial and otherwise) are withheld from potential customers who reside in neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" to investm ...
and racial steering". The Great Migration resulted in many African Americans becoming urbanized, and they began to realign from the Republican to the Democratic Party, especially because of opportunities under the
New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Con ...
of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Substantially under pressure from African-American supporters who began the March on Washington Movement, President Roosevelt issued the first federal order banning discrimination and created the Fair Employment Practice Committee. After both World Wars, black veterans of the military pressed for full civil rights and often led activist movements. In 1948, President
Harry Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Frankli ...
issued Executive Order 9981, which ended segregation in the military. Housing segregation became a nationwide problem following the Great Migration of black people out of the South. Racial covenants were employed by many real estate developers to "protect" entire subdivisions, with the primary intent to keep "
white White is the lightness, lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully diffuse reflection, reflect and scattering, scatter all the ...
" neighborhoods "white". Ninety percent of the housing projects built in the years following World War II were racially restricted by such covenants. Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...
,
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
,
Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
,
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...
,
Seattle Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
, and St. Louis. While many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward black people, many other whites migrated to more racially homogeneous
suburban A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separa ...
or
exurban An exurb (or alternately: exurban area) is an area outside the typically denser inner suburban area, at the edge of a metropolitan area, which has some economic and commuting connection to the metro area, low housing density, and growth. It ...
regions, a process known as white flight. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor "should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood." The result was the development of all-black ghettos in the North and West, where much housing was older, as well as South. The first anti-miscegenation law was passed by the
Maryland General Assembly The Maryland General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Maryland that convenes within the State House in Annapolis. It is a bicameral body: the upper chamber, the Maryland Senate, has 47 representatives and the lower cham ...
in 1691, criminalizing
interracial marriage Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities. In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In ...
. In a speech in
Charleston, Illinois Charleston is a city in, and the county seat of, Coles County, Illinois, United States. The population was 17,286, as of the 2020 census. The city is home to Eastern Illinois University and has close ties with its neighbor, Mattoon. Both are p ...
in 1858,
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people". By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes. By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states. While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor Sammy Davis Jr. faced a backlash for his involvement with white actress
Kim Novak Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter. Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, ...
. Davis briefly married a black dancer in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence.Lanzendorfer, Joy (August 9, 2017
"Hollywood Loved Sammy Davis Jr. Until He Dated a White Movie Star"
'' Smithsonian'' Retrieved February 23, 2021.
In 1958, officers in
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...
entered the home of
Mildred and Richard Loving Mildred Delores Loving (née Jeter; July 22, 1939 – May 2, 2008) and her husband Richard Perry Loving (October 29, 1933 – June 29, 1975) were an American married couple who were the plaintiffs in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case ''Lovin ...
and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years. Invigorated by the victory of ''Brown'' and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about
desegregation Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...
. They were faced with " massive resistance" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and
voter suppression Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting ...
. In defiance, African-American activists adopted a combined strategy of
direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to othe ...
,
nonviolence Nonviolence is the personal practice of not causing harm to others under any condition. It may come from the belief that hurting people, animals and/or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and it may refer to a general philosoph ...
, nonviolent resistance, and many events described as
civil disobedience Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders or commands of a government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a stat ...
, giving rise to the civil rights movement of 1954 to 1968.
A. Philip Randolph Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was an American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American led labor union. In ...
had planned a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to support demands for elimination of
employment discrimination Employment discrimination is a form of illegal discrimination in the workplace based on legally protected characteristics. In the U.S., federal anti-discrimination law prohibits discrimination by employers against employees based on age, race, ...
in the
defense industry The arms industry, also known as the arms trade, is a global industry which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and ...
; he called off the march when the Roosevelt administration met the demand by issuing Executive Order 8802, which barred racial discrimination and created an agency to oversee compliance with the order.


Protests begin

The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation that had typified the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century broadened after ''Brown'' to a strategy that emphasized "
direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to othe ...
": boycotts,
sit-in A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to m ...
s, Freedom Rides, marches or walks, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, standing in line, and, at times, civil disobedience. Churches, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges used by the NAACP and others. In 1952, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), led by T. R. M. Howard, a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned Tri-State Bank of
Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...
which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the White Citizens' Councils.David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, ''Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power'', Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp. 81, 99–100. After
Claudette Colvin Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up ...
was arrested for not giving up her seat on a
Montgomery, Alabama Montgomery is the capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for the Irish soldier Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River, on the coastal Plain of the Gulf of Mexico. In the 202 ...
bus in March 1955, a bus boycott was considered and rejected. But when
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "th ...
was arrested in December, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson of the Montgomery Women's Political Council put the bus boycott protest in motion. Late that night, she, John Cannon (chairman of the Business Department at Alabama State University) and others mimeographed and distributed thousands of leaflets calling for a boycott.Robinson, Jo Ann & Garrow, David J. (foreword by Coretta Scott King) ''The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It'' (1986) Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press The eventual success of the boycott made its spokesman Martin Luther King Jr., a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the successful
Tallahassee, Florida Tallahassee ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2020, the populatio ...
boycott of 1956–57. This movement also sparked the 1956 Sugar Bowl riots in Atlanta which later became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr. In 1957, King and Ralph Abernathy, the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, and other activists such as
Fred Shuttlesworth Frederick Lee Shuttlesworth (born Fred Lee Robinson, March 18, 1922 – October 5, 2011) was a U.S. civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a co-founder ...
, Ella Baker,
A. Philip Randolph Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was an American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American led labor union. In ...
, Bayard Rustin and
Stanley Levison Stanley David Levison (May 2, 1912 – September 12, 1979) was an American businessman and lawyer who became a lifelong activist in progressive causes. He is best known as an advisor to and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr., for whom he hel ...
, to form the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civ ...
(SCLC). The SCLC, with its headquarters in
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...
,
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to t ...
, did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made nonviolence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism. In 1959,
Septima Clarke Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898 – December 15, 1987) was an African American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and ci ...
, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins, with the help of Myles Horton's Highlander Folk School in
Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to ...
, began the first Citizenship Schools in
South Carolina )'' Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = "Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = G ...
's Sea Islands. They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on Johns Island. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere.


History


''Brown v. Board of Education'', 1954

In the spring of 1951, black students in
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography an ...
protested their unequal status in the state's segregated educational system. Students at Moton High School protested the overcrowded conditions and failing facility.Klarman, Michael J.,''Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement'' lectronic resource: abridged edition of ''From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality'', Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 55. Some local leaders of the NAACP had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Jim Crow laws of school segregation. When the students did not budge, the NAACP joined their battle against school segregation. The NAACP proceeded with five cases challenging the school systems; these were later combined under what is known today as ''Brown v. Board of Education''. Under the leadership of Walter Reuther, the
United Auto Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico ...
donated $75,000 to help pay for the NAACP's efforts at the Supreme Court. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice
Earl Warren Earl Warren (March 19, 1891 – July 9, 1974) was an American attorney, politician, and jurist who served as the 14th Chief Justice of the United States from 1953 to 1969. The Warren Court presided over a major shift in American constitutio ...
ruled unanimously in '' Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas'', that mandating, or even permitting, public schools to be segregated by race was
unconstitutional Constitutionality is said to be the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution; "Webster On Line" the status of a law, a procedure, or an act's accordance with the laws or set forth in the applicable constitution. When l ...
. Chief Justice Warren wrote in the court majority opinion that The lawyers from the NAACP had to gather plausible evidence in order to win the case of ''Brown vs. Board of Education''. Their method of addressing the issue of school segregation was to enumerate several arguments. One pertained to having exposure to interracial contact in a school environment. It was argued that interracial contact would, in turn, help prepare children to live with the pressures that society exerts in regards to race and thereby afford them a better chance of living in a democracy. In addition, another argument emphasized how "'education' comprehends the entire process of developing and training the mental, physical and moral powers and capabilities of human beings".
Risa Goluboff Risa Lauren Goluboff is an American lawyer and legal historian who serves as the 12th dean of the University of Virginia School of Law; she is the first woman to hold the position. She is also the Arnold H. Leon Professor of Law and a professor of ...
wrote that the NAACP's intention was to show the Courts that African American children were the victims of school segregation and their futures were at risk. The Court ruled that both '' Plessy v. Ferguson'' (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" standard in general, and ''
Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education ''Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education'', 175 U.S. 528 (1899), ("Richmond") was a class action suit decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is a landmark case, in that it sanctioned ''de jure'' segregation of races in Americ ...
'' (1899), which had applied that standard to schools, was unconstitutional. The federal government filed a friend of the court brief in the case urging the justices to consider the effect that segregation had on America's image in the Cold War. Secretary of State
Dean Acheson Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truma ...
was quoted in the brief stating that ''"The United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country."'' The following year, in the case known as ''Brown II'', the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed". '' Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas'' (1954) did not overturn '' Plessy v. Ferguson'' (1896). '' Plessy v. Ferguson'' was segregation in transportation modes. '' Brown v. Board of Education'' dealt with segregation in education. '' Brown v. Board of Education'' did set in motion the future overturning of 'separate but equal'. On May 18, 1954,
Greensboro, North Carolina Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte, North Car ...
, became the first city in the South to publicly announce that it would abide by the Supreme Court's ''Brown v. Board of Education'' ruling. "It is unthinkable,' remarked School Board Superintendent Benjamin Smith, 'that we will try to verridethe laws of the United States." This positive reception for Brown, together with the appointment of African American David Jones to the school board in 1953, convinced numerous white and black citizens that Greensboro was heading in a progressive direction. Integration in Greensboro occurred rather peacefully compared to the process in Southern states such as Alabama,
Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the ...
, and Virginia where " massive resistance" was practiced by top officials and throughout the states. In Virginia, some counties closed their public schools rather than integrate, and many white
Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words '' Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρ ...
private schools were founded to accommodate students who used to go to public schools. Even in Greensboro, much local resistance to desegregation continued, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971. Many Northern cities also had de facto segregation policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In
Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harl ...
, New York, for example, neither a single new school was built since the turn of the century, nor did a single nursery school exist – even as the Second Great Migration was causing overcrowding. Existing schools tended to be dilapidated and staffed with inexperienced teachers. ''Brown'' helped stimulate activism among
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...
parents like Mae Mallory who, with the support of the NAACP, initiated a successful lawsuit against the city and state on ''Brown'' principles. Mallory and thousands of other parents bolstered the pressure of the lawsuit with a school boycott in 1959. During the boycott, some of the first
freedom schools Freedom Schools were temporary, alternative, and free schools for African Americans mostly in the South. They were originally part of a nationwide effort during the Civil Rights Movement to organize African Americans to achieve social, political and ...
of the period were established. The city responded to the campaign by permitting more open transfers to high-quality, historically-white schools. (New York's African-American community, and Northern desegregation activists generally, now found themselves contending with the problem of white flight, however.)


Emmett Till's murder, 1955

Emmett Till Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery ...
, a 14-year-old African American from Chicago, visited his relatives in Money, Mississippi, for the summer. He allegedly had an interaction with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a small grocery store that violated the norms of Mississippi culture, and Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam brutally murdered young Emmett Till. They beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the  Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. After Emmett's mother, Mamie Till, came to identify the remains of her son, she decided she wanted to "let the people see what I have seen". Till's mother then had his body taken back to Chicago where she had it displayed in an open casket during the funeral services where many thousands of visitors arrived to show their respects. A later publication of an image at the funeral in ''
Jet Jet, Jets, or The Jet(s) may refer to: Aerospace * Jet aircraft, an aircraft propelled by jet engines ** Jet airliner ** Jet engine ** Jet fuel * Jet Airways, an Indian airline * Wind Jet (ICAO: JET), an Italian airline * Journey to Enceladus a ...
'' is credited as a crucial moment in the civil rights era for displaying in vivid detail the violent racism that was being directed at black people in America. In a column for ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', Vann R. Newkirk wrote: "The trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of
white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an
all-white jury Racial discrimination in jury selection is specifically prohibited by law in many jurisdictions throughout the world. In the United States, it has been defined through a series of judicial decisions. However, juries composed solely of one racial ...
. "Emmett's murder," historian Tim Tyson writes, "would never have become a watershed historical moment without Mamie finding the strength to make her private grief a public matter." The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S. The murder and resulting trial ended up markedly impacting the views of several young black activists. Joyce Ladner referred to such activists as the "Emmett Till generation." One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks later informed Till's mother that her decision to stay in her seat was guided by the image she still vividly recalled of Till's brutalized remains. The glass topped casket that was used for Till's Chicago funeral was found in a cemetery garage in 2009. Till had been reburied in a different casket after being exhumed in 2005. Till's family decided to donate the original casket to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American Culture and History, where it is now on display. In 2007, Bryant said that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her story in 1955.


Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, 1955–1956

On December 1, 1955, nine months after a 15-year-old high school student,
Claudette Colvin Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up ...
, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested,
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "th ...
did the same thing. Parks soon became the symbol of the resulting Montgomery bus boycott and received national publicity. She was later hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement". Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee where nonviolence as a strategy was taught by Myles Horton and others. After Parks' arrest, African Americans gathered and organized the Montgomery bus boycott to demand a bus system in which passengers would be treated equally. The organization was led by Jo Ann Robinson, a member of the Women's Political Council who had been waiting for the opportunity to boycott the bus system. Following Rosa Parks’ arrest, Jo Ann Robinson mimeographed 52,500 leaflets calling for a boycott. They were distributed around the city and helped gather the attention of civil rights leaders. After the city rejected many of its suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by E. D. Nixon, pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. This movement also sparked riots leading up to the 1956 Sugar Bowl. In November 1956, the United States Supreme Court upheld a district court ruling in the case of '' Browder v. Gayle'' and ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated, ending the boycott. Local leaders established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. Martin Luther King Jr. was elected President of this organization. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.


Little Rock Crisis, 1957

A crisis erupted in
Little Rock, Arkansas ( The "Little Rock") , government_type = Council-manager , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Frank Scott Jr. , leader_party = D , leader_title2 = Council , leader_name2 ...
, when
Governor of Arkansas A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
Orval Faubus Orval Eugene Faubus ( ; January 7, 1910 – December 14, 1994) was an American politician who served as the 36th Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967, as a member of the Democratic Party. In 1957, he refused to comply with a unanimous ...
called out the National Guard on September 4 to prevent entry to the nine African-American students who had sued for the right to attend an integrated school,
Little Rock Central High School Little Rock Central High School (LRCHS) is an accredited comprehensive public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States. The school was the site of forced desegregation in 1957 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation by ...
. Under the guidance of Daisy Bates, the nine students had been chosen to attend Central High because of their excellent grades. On the first day of school, 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford was the only one of the nine students who showed up because she did not receive the phone call about the danger of going to school. A photo was taken of Eckford being harassed by white protesters outside the school, and the police had to take her away in a patrol car for her protection. Afterwards, the nine students had to carpool to school and be escorted by military personnel in
jeep Jeep is an American automobile marque, now owned by multi-national corporation Stellantis. Jeep has been part of Chrysler since 1987, when Chrysler acquired the Jeep brand, along with remaining assets, from its previous owner American Motors ...
s. Faubus was not a proclaimed segregationist. The Arkansas Democratic Party, which then controlled politics in the state, put significant pressure on Faubus after he had indicated he would investigate bringing Arkansas into compliance with the ''Brown'' decision. Faubus then took his stand against integration and against the Federal court ruling. Faubus' resistance received the attention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was determined to enforce the orders of the Federal courts. Critics had charged he was lukewarm, at best, on the goal of desegregation of public schools. But, Eisenhower federalized the National Guard in Arkansas and ordered them to return to their barracks. Eisenhower deployed elements of the
101st Airborne Division The 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) ("Screaming Eagles") is a light infantry division of the United States Army that specializes in air assault operations. It can plan, coordinate, and execute multiple battalion-size air assault operat ...
to Little Rock to protect the students. The students attended high school under harsh conditions. They had to pass through a gauntlet of spitting, jeering whites to arrive at school on their first day, and to put up with harassment from other students for the rest of the year. Although federal troops escorted the students between classes, the students were teased and even attacked by white students when the soldiers were not around. One of the Little Rock Nine, Minnijean Brown, was suspended for spilling a bowl of chili on the head of a white student who was harassing her in the school lunch line. Later, she was expelled for verbally abusing a white female student. Only Ernest Green of the Little Rock Nine graduated from Central High School. After the 1957–1958 school year was over, Little Rock closed its public school system completely rather than continue to integrate. Other school systems across the South followed suit.


Method of nonviolence and nonviolence training

During the time period considered to be the "African-American civil rights" era, the predominant use of protest was nonviolent, or peaceful. Often referred to as pacifism, the method of nonviolence is considered to be an attempt to impact society positively. Although acts of racial discrimination have occurred historically throughout the United States, perhaps the most violent regions have been in the former Confederate states. During the 1950s and 1960s, the nonviolent protesting of the civil rights movement caused definite tension, which gained national attention. In order to prepare for protests physically and psychologically, demonstrators received training in nonviolence. According to former civil rights activist Bruce Hartford, there are two main branches of nonviolence training. There is the philosophical method, which involves understanding the method of nonviolence and why it is considered useful, and there is the tactical method, which ultimately teaches demonstrators "how to be a protestorhow to sit-in, how to picket, how to defend yourself against attack, giving training on how to remain cool when people are screaming racist insults into your face and pouring stuff on you and hitting you" (Civil Rights Movement Archive). The philosophical method of nonviolence, in the American civil rights movement, was largely inspired by
Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, Anti-colonial nationalism, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure ...
's "non-cooperation" policies during his involvement in the
Indian independence movement The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British Raj, British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged ...
which were intended to gain attention so that the public would either "intervene in advance," or "provide public pressure in support of the action to be taken" (Erikson, 415). As Hartford explains it, philosophical nonviolence training aims to "shape the individual person's attitude and mental response to crises and violence" (Civil Rights Movement Archive). Hartford and activists like him, who trained in tactical nonviolence, considered it necessary in order to ensure physical safety, instill discipline, teach demonstrators how to demonstrate, and form mutual confidence among demonstrators (Civil Rights Movement Archive). For many, the concept of nonviolent protest was a way of life, a culture. However, not everyone agreed with this notion. James Forman, former SNCC (and later Black Panther) member, and nonviolence trainer was among those who did not. In his autobiography, ''The Making of Black Revolutionaries'', Forman revealed his perspective on the method of nonviolence as "strictly a tactic, not a way of life without limitations." Similarly, Bob Moses, who was also an active member of SNCC, felt that the method of nonviolence was practical. When interviewed by author Robert Penn Warren, Moses said "There's no question that he ( Martin Luther King Jr.) had a great deal of influence with the masses. But I don't think it's in the direction of love. It's in a practical direction . . ." (Who Speaks for the Negro? Warren). According to a 2020 study in the ''American Political Science Review'', nonviolent civil rights protests boosted vote shares for the Democratic party in presidential elections in nearby counties, but violent protests substantially boosted white support for Republicans in counties near to the violent protests.


Sit-ins, 1958–1960

In July 1958, the NAACP Youth Council sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown
Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 397,532. The Wichita metro area had a population of 647,610 in 2020. It is located in ...
. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated. This movement was quickly followed in the same year by a student sit-in at a Katz Drug Store in
Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, an ...
led by Clara Luper, which also was successful. Mostly black students from area colleges led a sit-in at a Woolworth's store in
Greensboro, North Carolina Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte, North Car ...
. On February 1, 1960, four students,
Ezell A. Blair Jr. Jibreel Khazan (born Ezell Alexander Blair Jr.; October 18, 1941) is a civil rights activist who is best known as a member of the Greensboro Four, a group of African American college students who, on February 1, 1960, sat down at a segregated W ...
, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and
Franklin McCain Franklin Eugene McCain (January 3, 1941 – January 9, 2014) was an American civil rights activist and member of the Greensboro Four. McCain, along with fellow North Carolina A&T State University students Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil an ...
from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, an all-black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans from being served food there. The four students purchased small items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served. After being denied service, they produced their receipts and asked why their money was good everywhere else at the store, but not at the lunch counter. The protesters had been encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in. The Greensboro sit-in was quickly followed by other sit-ins in
Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...
;
Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...
; and Atlanta, Georgia."Atlanta Sit-Ins"
, ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia''
The most immediately effective of these was in Nashville, where hundreds of well organized and highly disciplined college students conducted sit-ins in coordination with a boycott campaign. As students across the south began to "sit-in" at the lunch counters of local stores, police and other officials sometimes used brutal force to physically escort the demonstrators from the lunch facilities. The "sit-in" technique was not newas far back as 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the then-segregated
Alexandria, Virginia Alexandria is an independent city in the northern region of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of downtown Washington, D.C. In 2020, the population was 159,467. ...
, library. In 1960 the technique succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement. On March 9, 1960, an Atlanta University Center group of students released An Appeal for Human Rights as a full page advertisement in newspapers, including the ''Atlanta Constitution'', ''Atlanta Journal'', and ''Atlanta Daily World''. Known as the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the group initiated the Atlanta Student Movement and began to lead sit-ins starting on March 15, 1960. By the end of 1960, the process of sit-ins had spread to every southern and border state, and even to facilities in
Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...
,
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Roc ...
, and
Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...
that discriminated against blacks. Demonstrators focused not only on lunch counters but also on parks, beaches, libraries, theaters, museums, and other public facilities. In April 1960 activists who had led these sit-ins were invited by SCLC activist Ella Baker to hold a conference at
Shaw University Shaw University is a Private university, private Baptists, Baptist Historically black colleges and universities, historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. It is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA. Founded on Decembe ...
, a historically black university in
Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the seat of Wake County in the United States. It is the second-most populous city in North Carolina, after Charlotte. Raleigh is the tenth-most populous city in the South ...
. This conference led to the formation of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segreg ...
(SNCC). SNCC took these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further, and organized the freedom rides. As the constitution protected interstate commerce, they decided to challenge segregation on interstate buses and in public bus facilities by putting interracial teams on them, to travel from the North through the segregated South.


Freedom Rides, 1961

Freedom Rides were journeys by civil rights activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision '' Boynton v. Virginia'' (1960), which ruled that segregation was unconstitutional for passengers engaged in interstate travel. Organized by CORE, the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.Freedom Rides
 – Civil Rights Movement Archive
During the first and subsequent Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the
Deep South The Deep South or the Lower South is a cultural and geographic subregion in the Southern United States. The term was first used to describe the states most dependent on plantations and slavery prior to the American Civil War. Following the war ...
to integrate seating patterns on buses and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains. That proved to be a dangerous mission. In
Anniston, Alabama Anniston is the county seat of Calhoun County in Alabama and is one of two urban centers/principal cities of and included in the Anniston-Oxford Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2010 census, the population of the city was 23,106. Acc ...
, one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives. In
Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...
, an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor gave Ku Klux Klan members fifteen minutes to attack an incoming group of freedom riders before having police "protect" them. The riders were severely beaten "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them." James Peck, a white activist, was beaten so badly that he required fifty stitches to his head. In a similar occurrence in Montgomery, Alabama, the Freedom Riders followed in the footsteps of Rosa Parks and rode an integrated Greyhound bus from Birmingham. Although they were protesting interstate bus segregation in peace, they were met with violence in Montgomery as a large, white mob attacked them for their activism. They caused an enormous, 2-hour long riot which resulted in 22 injuries, five of whom were hospitalized. Mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham temporarily halted the rides. SNCC activists from Nashville brought in new riders to continue the journey from Birmingham to New Orleans. In
Montgomery, Alabama Montgomery is the capital city of the U.S. state of Alabama and the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for the Irish soldier Richard Montgomery, it stands beside the Alabama River, on the coastal Plain of the Gulf of Mexico. In the 202 ...
, at the
Greyhound Bus Station The following is a list of stations or terminals used by Greyhound Lines, either currently in use or historic former Greyhound stations. Canada *Gare d'autocars de Montréal, Montreal *Union Station Bus Terminal, Toronto *Pacific Central Sta ...
, a mob charged another busload of riders, knocking
John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashvill ...
unconscious with a crate and smashing ''
Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for Cell growth, growth, reaction to Stimu ...
'' photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded
James Zwerg James Zwerg (born November 28, 1939) is an American retired minister who was involved with the Freedom Riders in the early 1960s. Early life Zwerg was born in Appleton, Wisconsin where he lived with his parents and older brother, Charles. His ...
, a white student from
Fisk University Fisk University is a private historically black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its campus is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1930, Fisk was the first Afric ...
, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth. On May 24, 1961, the freedom riders continued their rides into
Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the Capital city, capital of and the List of municipalities in Mississippi, most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, Mississippi, ...
, where they were arrested for "breaching the peace" by using "white only" facilities. New Freedom Rides were organized by many different organizations and continued to flow into the South. As riders arrived in Jackson, they were arrested. By the end of summer, more than 300 had been jailed in Mississippi. The jailed freedom riders were treated harshly, crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in heat. Others were transferred to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, where they were treated to harsh conditions. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe. Public sympathy and support for the freedom riders led John F. Kennedy's administration to order the
Interstate Commerce Commission The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was a regulatory agency in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. The agency's original purpose was to regulate railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to elimina ...
(ICC) to issue a new desegregation order. When the new ICC rule took effect on November 1, 1961, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they chose on the bus; "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals; separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and lunch counters began serving people regardless of skin color. The student movement involved such celebrated figures as John Lewis, a single-minded activist; James Lawson, the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics;
Diane Nash Diane Judith Nash (born May 15, 1938) is an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement. Nash's campaigns were among the most successful of the era. Her efforts included the first s ...
, an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; Bob Moses, pioneer of voting registration in Mississippi; and James Bevel, a fiery preacher and charismatic organizer, strategist, and facilitator. Other prominent student activists included Dion Diamond,
Charles McDew Charles "Chuck" McDew (June 23, 1938 – April 3, 2018)
, Bernard Lafayette, Charles Jones,
Lonnie King Lonnie C. King Jr. (August 30, 1936 – March 5, 2019) was an American civil rights leader. Beginning in 1960, he launched the Atlanta Student Movement, wrote the Appeal for Human Rights, and subsequently started the Committee on Appeal for Huma ...
,
Julian Bond Horace Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015) was an American social activist, leader of the civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the e ...
,
Hosea Williams Hosea Lorenzo Williams (January 5, 1926 – November 16, 2000) was an American civil rights leader, activist, ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist, and politician. He is best known as a trusted member of fellow famed civil ...
, and
Stokely Carmichael Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unit ...
.


Voter registration organizing

After the Freedom Rides, local black leaders in Mississippi such as Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, Medgar Evers, and others asked SNCC to help register black voters and to build community organizations that could win a share of political power in the state. Since Mississippi ratified its new constitution in 1890 with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests, it made registration more complicated and stripped blacks from voter rolls and voting. Also, violence at the time of elections had earlier suppressed black voting. By the mid-20th century, preventing blacks from voting had become an essential part of the culture of white supremacy. In June and July 1959, members of the black community in Fayette County, TN formed the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League to spur voting. At the time, there were 16,927 blacks in the county, yet only 17 of them had voted in the previous seven years. Within a year, some 1,400 blacks had registered, and the white community responded with harsh economic reprisals. Using registration rolls, the White Citizens Council circulated a blacklist of all registered black voters, allowing banks, local stores, and gas stations to conspire to deny registered black voters essential services. What's more, sharecropping blacks who registered to vote were getting evicted from their homes. All in all, the number of evictions came to 257 families, many of whom were forced to live in a makeshift Tent City for well over a year. Finally, in December 1960, the Justice Department invoked its powers authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to file a suit against seventy parties accused of violating the civil rights of black Fayette County citizens. In the following year the first voter registration project in McComb and the surrounding counties in the Southwest corner of the state. Their efforts were met with violent repression from state and local lawmen, the White Citizens' Council, and the Ku Klux Klan. Activists were beaten, there were hundreds of arrests of local citizens, and the voting activist Herbert Lee was murdered. White opposition to black voter registration was so intense in Mississippi that Freedom Movement activists concluded that all of the state's civil rights organizations had to unite in a coordinated effort to have any chance of success. In February 1962, representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP formed the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). At a subsequent meeting in August, SCLC became part of COFO. In the Spring of 1962, with funds from the Voter Education Project, SNCC/COFO began voter registration organizing in the Mississippi Delta area around
Greenwood Green wood is unseasoned wood. Greenwood or Green wood may also refer to: People * Greenwood (surname) Settlements Australia * Greenwood, Queensland, a locality in the Toowoomba Region * Greenwood, Western Australia, a suburb of Perth C ...
, and the areas surrounding Hattiesburg, Laurel, and Holly Springs. As in McComb, their efforts were met with fierce oppositionarrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. Registrars used the
literacy test A literacy test assesses a person's literacy skills: their ability to read and write have been administered by various governments, particularly to immigrants. In the United States, between the 1850s and 1960s, literacy tests were administered ...
to keep blacks off the voting roles by creating standards that even highly educated people could not meet. In addition, employers fired blacks who tried to register, and landlords evicted them from their rental homes. Despite these actions, over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state. Similar voter registration campaignswith similar responseswere begun by SNCC, CORE, and SCLC in
Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a U.S. state, state in the Deep South and South Central United States, South Central regions of the United States. It is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 20th-smal ...
,
Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = " Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...
, southwest
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to t ...
, and
South Carolina )'' Animis opibusque parati'' ( for, , Latin, Prepared in mind and resources, links=no) , anthem = "Carolina";" South Carolina On My Mind" , Former = Province of South Carolina , seat = Columbia , LargestCity = Charleston , LargestMetro = G ...
. By 1963, voter registration campaigns in the South were as integral to the Freedom Movement as desegregation efforts. After the passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration req ...
, protecting and facilitating voter registration despite state barriers became the main effort of the movement. It resulted in the passage of the
Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement ...
of 1965, which had provisions to enforce the constitutional right to vote for all citizens.


Integration of Mississippi universities, 1956–1965

Beginning in 1956,
Clyde Kennard Clyde Kennard (June 12, 1927July 4, 1963) was an American Korean War veteran and civil rights leader from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In the 1950s, he attempted several times to enroll at the all-white Mississippi Southern College (now the Univers ...
, a black
Korean War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Korean War , partof = the Cold War and the Korean conflict , image = Korean War Montage 2.png , image_size = 300px , caption = Clockwise from top: ...
-veteran, wanted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now the
University of Southern Mississippi The University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss or USM) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to a ...
) at Hattiesburg under the G.I. Bill. William David McCain, the college president, used the
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (also called the Sov-Com) was a state agency in Mississippi from 1956 to 1977 tasked with fighting desegregation and controlling civil rights activism. It was overseen by the Governor of Mississippi. T ...
, in order to prevent his enrollment by appealing to local black leaders and the segregationist state political establishment. The state-funded organization tried to counter the civil rights movement by positively portraying segregationist policies. More significantly, it collected data on activists, harassed them legally, and used economic boycotts against them by threatening their jobs (or causing them to lose their jobs) to try to suppress their work. Kennard was twice arrested on trumped-up charges, and eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in the state prison. After three years at hard labor, Kennard was paroled by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. Journalists had investigated his case and publicized the state's mistreatment of his
colon cancer Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, colon cancer, or rectal cancer, is the development of cancer from the colon or rectum (parts of the large intestine). Signs and symptoms may include blood in the stool, a change in bowel ...
. McCain's role in Kennard's arrests and convictions is unknown.William H. Tucker, ''The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund'', University of Illinois Press (May 30, 2007), pp 165–66.''Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction'', Edited by Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, Edward H. Sebesta, University of Texas Press (2008) pp. 284–85Jennie Brown, ''Medgar Evers'', Holloway House Publishing, 1994, pp. 128–132 While trying to prevent Kennard's enrollment, McCain made a speech in Chicago, with his travel sponsored by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. He described the blacks' seeking to desegregate Southern schools as "imports" from the North. (Kennard was a native and resident of Hattiesburg.) McCain said:
We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a segregated society...In all fairness, I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting...The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man's hands.
Note: Mississippi had passed a new constitution in 1890 that effectively disfranchised most blacks by changing electoral and voter registration requirements; although it deprived them of constitutional rights authorized under post-Civil War amendments, it survived U.S. Supreme Court challenges at the time. It was not until after the passage of the 1965
Voting Rights Act The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement ...
that most blacks in Mississippi and other southern states gained federal protection to enforce the constitutional right of citizens to vote. In September 1962, James Meredith won a lawsuit to secure admission to the previously segregated
University of Mississippi The University of Mississippi ( byname Ole Miss) is a public research university that is located adjacent to Oxford, Mississippi, and has a medical center in Jackson. It is Mississippi's oldest public university and its largest by enrollment. ...
. He attempted to enter campus on September 20, on September 25, and again on September 26. He was blocked by Mississippi
Governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...
Ross Barnett, who said, " school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor." The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Barnett and Lieutenant Governor Paul B. Johnson Jr. in
contempt Contempt is a pattern of attitudes and behaviour, often towards an individual or a group, but sometimes towards an ideology, which has the characteristics of disgust and anger. The word originated in 1393 in Old French contempt, contemps, ...
, ordering them arrested and fined more than $10,000 for each day they refused to allow Meredith to enroll. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent in a force of U.S. Marshals and deputized U.S. Border Patrol agents and
Federal Bureau of Prisons The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a United States federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Justice that is responsible for the care, custody, and control of incarcerated individuals who have committed federal crimes; that i ...
officers. On September 30, 1962, Meredith entered the campus under their escort. Students and other whites began rioting that evening, throwing rocks and firing on the federal agents guarding Meredith at Lyceum Hall. Rioters ended up killing two civilians, including a French journalist; 28 federal agents suffered gunshot wounds, and 160 others were injured. President John F. Kennedy sent U.S. Army and federalized Mississippi National Guard forces to the campus to quell the riot. Meredith began classes the day after the troops arrived. Kennard and other activists continued to work on public university desegregation. In 1965 Raylawni Branch and
Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong was a black Mississippi pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement. In September, 1965, she and Raylawni Branch, both local natives, integrated the University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg. They thus completed the p ...
became the first African-American students to attend the
University of Southern Mississippi The University of Southern Mississippi (Southern Miss or USM) is a Public university, public research university with its main campus located in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to a ...
. By that time, McCain helped ensure they had a peaceful entry.
University of Southern Mississippi Library
In 2006, Judge Robert Helfrich ruled that Kennard was factually innocent of all charges for which he had been convicted in the 1950s."Carrying the burden: the story of Clyde Kennard"
, District 125, Mississippi. Retrieved November 5, 2007


Albany Movement, 1961–1962

The SCLC, which had been criticized by some student activists for its failure to participate more fully in the freedom rides, committed much of its prestige and resources to a desegregation campaign in
Albany, Georgia Albany ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Georgia. Located on the Flint River, it is the seat of Dougherty County, and is the sole incorporated city in that county. Located in southwest Georgia, it is the principal city of the Albany, Georgia m ...
, in November 1961. King, who had been criticized personally by some SNCC activists for his distance from the dangers that local organizers facedand given the derisive nickname "De Lawd" as a resultintervened personally to assist the campaign led by both SNCC organizers and local leaders. The campaign was a failure because of the canny tactics of
Laurie Pritchett Laurie Pritchett (December 9, 1926 – November 13, 2000) was city Chief of Police in Albany, Georgia, best known for his actions in 1961 and 1962 suppressing the city's civil rights demonstrations by the Albany Movement. Early life Pritchett wa ...
, the local police chief, and divisions within the black community. The goals may not have been specific enough. Pritchett contained the marchers without violent attacks on demonstrators that inflamed national opinion. He also arranged for arrested demonstrators to be taken to jails in surrounding communities, allowing plenty of room to remain in his jail. Pritchett also foresaw King's presence as a danger and forced his release to avoid King's rallying the black community. King left in 1962 without having achieved any dramatic victories. The local movement, however, continued the struggle, and it obtained significant gains in the next few years.


Birmingham campaign, 1963

The Albany movement was shown to be an important education for the SCLC, however, when it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. Executive Director Wyatt Tee Walker carefully planned the early strategy and tactics for the campaign. It focused on one goalthe desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants, rather than total desegregation, as in Albany. The movement's efforts were helped by the brutal response of local authorities, in particular Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety. He had long held much political power but had lost a recent election for mayor to a less rabidly segregationist candidate. Refusing to accept the new mayor's authority, Connor intended to stay in office. The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins, kneel-ins at local churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a drive to register voters. The city, however, obtained an injunction barring all such protests. Convinced that the order was unconstitutional, the campaign defied it and prepared for
mass arrest A mass arrest occurs when police apprehend large numbers of suspects at once. This sometimes occurs at protests. Some mass arrests are also used in an effort to combat gang activity. This is sometimes controversial, and lawsuits sometimes result. I ...
s of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963. While in jail, King wrote his famous "
Letter from Birmingham Jail The "Letter from Birmingham Jail", also known as the "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and "The Negro Is Your Brother", is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. It says that people have a moral responsibility to ...
" on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement. Supporters appealed to the Kennedy administration, which intervened to obtain King's release. Walter Reuther, president of the
United Auto Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico ...
, arranged for $160,000 to bail out King and his fellow protestors. King was allowed to call his wife, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child and was released early on April 19. The campaign, however, faltered as it ran out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. James Bevel, SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, then came up with a bold and controversial alternative: to train high school students to take part in the demonstrations. As a result, in what would be called the Children's Crusade, more than one thousand students skipped school on May 2 to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church to join the demonstrations. More than six hundred marched out of the church fifty at a time in an attempt to walk to City Hall to speak to Birmingham's mayor about segregation. They were arrested and put into jail. In this first encounter, the police acted with restraint. On the next day, however, another one thousand students gathered at the church. When Bevel started them marching fifty at a time, Bull Connor finally unleashed police dogs on them and then turned the city's fire hoses water streams on the children. National television networks broadcast the scenes of the dogs attacking demonstrators and the water from the fire hoses knocking down the schoolchildren. Widespread public outrage led the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully in negotiations between the white business community and the SCLC. On May 10, the parties announced an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown, to create a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, to arrange for the release of jailed protesters, and to establish regular means of communication between black and white leaders. Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement
Fred Shuttlesworth Frederick Lee Shuttlesworth (born Fred Lee Robinson, March 18, 1922 – October 5, 2011) was a U.S. civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a co-founder ...
was particularly critical, since he was skeptical about the good faith of Birmingham's power structure from his experience in dealing with them. Parts of the white community reacted violently. They bombed the Gaston Motel, which housed the SCLC's unofficial headquarters, and the home of King's brother, the Reverend A. D. King. In response, thousands of blacks rioted, burning numerous buildings and one of them stabbed and wounded a police officer. Kennedy prepared to federalize the Alabama National Guard if the need arose. Four months later, on September 15, a conspiracy of Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young girls.


"Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's response, 1963

Birmingham was only one of over a hundred cities rocked by the chaotic protest that spring and summer, some of them in the North but mainly in the South. During the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. would refer to such protests as "the whirlwinds of revolt." In Chicago, blacks rioted through the South Side in late May after a white police officer shot a fourteen-year-old black boy who was fleeing the scene of a robbery.Nicholas Andrew Bryant, ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy And the Struggle for Black Equality'' (Basic Books, 2006), pg. 2 Violent clashes between black activists and white workers took place in both Philadelphia and Harlem in successful efforts to integrate state construction projects. On June 6, over a thousand whites attacked a sit-in in Lexington, North Carolina; blacks fought back and one white man was killed. Edwin C. Berry of the National Urban League warned of a complete breakdown in race relations: "My message from the beer gardens and the barbershops all indicate the fact that the Negro is ready for war." In
Cambridge, Maryland Cambridge is a city in Dorchester County, Maryland, United States. The population was 13,096 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Dorchester County and the county's largest municipality. Cambridge is the fourth most populous city in Mary ...
, a working‐class city on the
Eastern Shore Eastern Shore may refer to: * Eastern Shore (Nova Scotia), a region * Eastern Shore (electoral district), a provincial electoral district in Nova Scotia * Eastern Shore of Maryland, a region * Eastern Shore of Virginia, a region * Eastern Shore (Al ...
, Gloria Richardson of SNCC led a movement that pressed for desegregation but also demanded low‐rent public housing, job‐training, public and private jobs, and an end to police brutality. On June 11, struggles between blacks and whites escalated into violent rioting, leading Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes to declare
martial law Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory. Use Marti ...
. When negotiations between Richardson and Maryland officials faltered, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy directly intervened to negotiate a desegregation agreement. Richardson felt that the increasing participation of poor and working-class blacks was expanding both the power and parameters of the movement, asserting that "the people as a whole really do have more intelligence than a few of their leaders.ʺ In their deliberations during this wave of protests, the Kennedy administration privately felt that militant demonstrations were ʺbad for the countryʺ and that "Negroes are going to push this thing too far." On May 24, Robert Kennedy had a meeting with prominent black intellectuals to discuss the racial situation. The blacks criticized Kennedy harshly for vacillating on civil rights and said that the African-American community's thoughts were increasingly turning to violence. The meeting ended with ill will on all sides.Schlesinger, ''Robert Kennedy and His Times'' (1978), pp. 332–333. Nonetheless, the Kennedys ultimately decided that new legislation for equal public accommodations was essential to drive activists "into the courts and out of the streets." On June 11, 1963,
George Wallace George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best remembered for his staunch segregationist an ...
, Governor of Alabama, tried to block the integration of the
University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and largest of the publi ...
. President John F. Kennedy sent a military force to make Governor Wallace step aside, allowing the enrollment of Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood. That evening, President Kennedy addressed the nation on TV and radio with his historic civil rights speech, where he lamented "a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety." He called on Congress to pass new civil rights legislation, and urged the country to embrace civil rights as "a moral issue...in our daily lives." In the early hours of June 12, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, was assassinated by a member of the Klan. The next week, as promised, on June 19, 1963, President Kennedy submitted his Civil Rights bill to Congress.Civil Rights bill submitted, and date of JFK murder, plus graphic events of the March on Washington.
This is an Abbeville Press website, a large informative article apparently from the book ''The Civil Rights Movement'' ().


March on Washington, 1963

Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the chief planners of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which they proposed in 1962. In 1963, the Kennedy administration initially opposed the march out of concern it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, Randolph and King were firm that the march would proceed. With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. Concerned about the turnout, President Kennedy enlisted the aid of white church leaders and Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, to help mobilize white supporters for the march. The march was held on August 28, 1963. Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals: * meaningful civil rights laws * a massive federal works program * full and fair employment * decent housing * the right to vote * adequate integrated education. Of these, the march's major focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham. National media attention also greatly contributed to the march's national exposure and probable impact. In the essay "The March on Washington and Television News," historian William Thomas notes: "Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers". By carrying the organizers' speeches and offering their own commentary, television stations framed the way their local audiences saw and understood the event. The march was a success, although not without controversy. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the
Lincoln Memorial The Lincoln Memorial is a U.S. national memorial built to honor the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., across from the Washington Monument, and is in ...
, where King delivered his famous " I Have a Dream" speech. While many speakers applauded the Kennedy administration for the efforts it had made toward obtaining new, more effective civil rights legislation protecting the right to vote and outlawing segregation,
John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashvill ...
of SNCC took the administration to task for not doing more to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South. After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the
White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C., NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. preside ...
. While the Kennedy administration appeared sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had enough votes in Congress to do so. However, when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, the new President Lyndon Johnson decided to use his influence in
Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda.


Malcolm X joins the movement, 1964–1965

In March 1964,
Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of ...
(el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz), national representative of the
Nation of Islam The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...
, formally broke with that organization, and made a public offer to collaborate with any civil rights organization that accepted the right to self-defense and the philosophy of Black nationalism (which Malcolm said no longer required Black separatism). Gloria Richardson, head of the
Cambridge, Maryland Cambridge is a city in Dorchester County, Maryland, United States. The population was 13,096 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Dorchester County and the county's largest municipality. Cambridge is the fourth most populous city in Mary ...
, chapter of SNCC, and leader of the Cambridge rebellion, an honored guest at The March on Washington, immediately embraced Malcolm's offer. Mrs. Richardson, "the nation's most prominent woman ivil rightsleader," told ''
The Baltimore Afro-American The ''Baltimore Afro-American'', commonly known as ''The Afro'' or ''Afro News'', is a weekly African-American newspaper published in Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryl ...
'' that "Malcolm is being very practical...The federal government has moved into conflict situations only when matters approach the level of insurrection. Self-defense may force Washington to intervene sooner." Earlier, in May 1963, writer and activist
James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; ...
had stated publicly that "the Black Muslim movement is the only one in the country we can call
grassroots A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at t ...
, I hate to say it...Malcolm articulates for Negroes, their suffering...he corroborates their reality..." On the local level, Malcolm and the NOI had been allied with the Harlem chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) since at least 1962. On March 26, 1964, as the Civil Rights Act was facing stiff opposition in Congress, Malcolm had a public meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Capitol. Malcolm had tried to begin a dialog with King as early as 1957, but King had rebuffed him. Malcolm had responded by calling King an "
Uncle Tom Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''. The character was seen by many readers as a ground-breaking humanistic portrayal of a slave, one who uses nonresistance and gives his life to protec ...
", saying he had turned his back on black militancy in order to appease the white power structure. But the two men were on good terms at their face-to-face meeting. There is evidence that King was preparing to support Malcolm's plan to formally bring the U.S. government before the United Nations on charges of human rights violations against African Americans. Malcolm now encouraged Black nationalists to get involved in voter registration drives and other forms of community organizing to redefine and expand the movement. Civil rights activists became increasingly combative in the 1963 to 1964 period, seeking to defy such events as the thwarting of the Albany campaign, police repression and Ku Klux Klan terrorism in
Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...
, and the assassination of Medgar Evers. The latter's brother Charles Evers, who took over as Mississippi NAACP Field Director, told a public NAACP conference on February 15, 1964, that "non-violence won't work in Mississippi...we made up our minds...that if a white man shoots at a Negro in Mississippi, we will shoot back." The repression of sit-ins in
Jacksonville, Florida Jacksonville is a city located on the Atlantic coast of northeast Florida, the most populous city proper in the state and is the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020. It is the co ...
, provoked a riot in which black youth threw Molotov cocktails at police on March 24, 1964. Malcolm X gave numerous speeches in this period warning that such militant activity would escalate further if African Americans' rights were not fully recognized. In his landmark April 1964 speech " The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm presented an ultimatum to white America: "There's new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets." As noted in the PBS documentary ''
Eyes on the Prize ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement'' is an American television series and 14-part documentary about the 20th-century civil rights movement in the United States. The documentary originally aired on the PBS network, and it also ...
'', "Malcolm X had a far-reaching effect on the civil rights movement. In the South, there had been a long tradition of self-reliance. Malcolm X's ideas now touched that tradition". Self-reliance was becoming paramount in light of the 1964 Democratic National Convention's decision to refuse seating to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and instead to seat the regular state delegation, which had been elected in violation of the party's own rules, and by Jim Crow law instead. SNCC moved in an increasingly militant direction and worked with Malcolm X on two Harlem MFDP fundraisers in December 1964. When Fannie Lou Hamer spoke to Harlemites about the Jim Crow violence that she'd suffered in Mississippi, she linked it directly to the Northern police brutality against blacks that Malcolm protested against; When Malcolm asserted that African Americans should emulate the Mau Mau army of
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in efforts to gain their independence, many in SNCC applauded. During the Selma campaign for voting rights in 1965, Malcolm made it known that he'd heard reports of increased threats of lynching around Selma. In late January he sent an open telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, stating:
"if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans...you and your KKK friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence."
The following month, the Selma chapter of SNCC invited Malcolm to speak to a mass meeting there. On the day of Malcolm's appearance, President Johnson made his first public statement in support of the Selma campaign. Paul Ryan Haygood, a co-director of the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF) is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City. LDF is wholly independent and separate from the NAACP. Altho ...
, credits Malcolm with a role in gaining support by the federal government. Haygood noted that "shortly after Malcolm's visit to Selma, a federal judge, responding to a suit brought by the Department of Justice, required Dallas County, Alabama, registrars to process at least 100 Black applications each day their offices were open."


St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–1964

St. Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afri ...
was famous as the "Nation's Oldest City", founded by the Spanish in 1565. It became the stage for a great drama leading up to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. A local movement, led by Robert B. Hayling, a black dentist and Air Force veteran affiliated with the NAACP, had been picketing segregated local institutions since 1963. In the fall of 1964, Hayling and three companions were brutally beaten at a Ku Klux Klan rally. Nightriders shot into black homes, and teenagers Audrey Nell Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson, Samuel White, and Willie Carl Singleton (who came to be known as "The St. Augustine Four") sat in at a local Woolworth's lunch counter, seeking to get served. They were arrested and convicted of trespassing, and sentenced to six months in jail and reform school. It took a special act of the governor and cabinet of Florida to release them after national protests by the ''
Pittsburgh Courier The ''Pittsburgh Courier'' was an African-American weekly newspaper published in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the mo ...
'',
Jackie Robinson Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color lin ...
, and others. In response to the repression, the St. Augustine movement practiced armed self-defense in addition to nonviolent direct action. In June 1963, Hayling publicly stated that "I and the others have armed. We will shoot first and answer questions later. We are not going to die like Medgar Evers." The comment made national headlines. When Klan nightriders terrorized black neighborhoods in St. Augustine, Hayling's NAACP members often drove them off with gunfire. In October 1963, a Klansman was killed. In 1964, Hayling and other activists urged the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civ ...
to come to St. Augustine. Four prominent Massachusetts women – Mary Parkman Peabody, Esther Burgess, Hester Campbell (all of whose husbands were Episcopal bishops), and Florence Rowe (whose husband was vice president of the John Hancock Insurance Company) – also came to lend their support. The arrest of Peabody, the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, for attempting to eat at the segregated Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge in an integrated group, made front-page news across the country and brought the movement in St. Augustine to the attention of the world. Widely publicized activities continued in the ensuing months. When King was arrested, he sent a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to a northern supporter,
Rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...
Israel S. Dresner Israel Seymour Dresner (April 22, 1929 – January 13, 2022) was an American Reform rabbi who served as president of the Education Fund for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace. He was instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement, and a close friend to ...
. A week later, in the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place, while they were conducting a pray-in at the segregated Monson Motel. A well-known photograph taken in St. Augustine shows the manager of the Monson Motel pouring
hydrochloric acid Hydrochloric acid, also known as muriatic acid, is an aqueous solution of hydrogen chloride. It is a colorless solution with a distinctive pungent smell. It is classified as a strong acid. It is a component of the gastric acid in the dig ...
in the swimming pool while blacks and whites are swimming in it. As he did so he yelled that he was "cleaning the pool", a presumed reference to it now being, in his eyes, racially contaminated. The photograph was run on the front page of a Washington newspaper the day the Senate was to vote on passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.


Chester school protests, Spring 1964

From November 1963 through April 1964, the
Chester school protests The Chester school protests were a series of demonstrations that occurred from November 1963 through April 1964 in Chester, Pennsylvania. The demonstrations focused on ending the de facto segregation that resulted in the racial categorization of ...
were a series of civil rights protests led by
George Raymond George T. Raymond (May 10, 1914 – May 9, 1999) was an American civil rights leader from Pennsylvania who served as president of the Chester, Pennsylvania branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1942 ...
of the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.& ...
(NAACP) and Stanley Branche of the Committee for Freedom Now (CFFN) that made
Chester, Pennsylvania Chester is a city in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located within the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area, it is the only city in Delaware County and had a population of 32,605 as of the 2020 census. Incorporated in 1682, Chester ...
one of the key battlegrounds of the civil rights movement. James Farmer, the national director of the
Congress of Racial Equality The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about ...
called Chester "''the Birmingham of the North''". In 1962, Branche and the CFFN focused on improving conditions at the predominantly black Franklin Elementary school in Chester. Although the school was built to house 500 students, it had become overcrowded with 1,200 students. The school's average class size was 39, twice the number of nearby all-white schools. The school was built in 1910 and had never been updated. Only two bathrooms were available for the entire school. In November 1963, CFFN protesters blocked the entrance to Franklin Elementary school and the Chester Municipal Building resulting in the arrest of 240 protesters. Following public attention to the protests stoked by media coverage of the mass arrests, the mayor and school board negotiated with the CFFN and NAACP. The Chester Board of Education agreed to reduce class sizes at Franklin school, remove unsanitary toilet facilities, relocate classes held in the boiler room and coal bin and repair school grounds. Emboldened by the success of the Franklin Elementary school demonstrations, the CFFN recruited new members, sponsored voter registration drives and planned a citywide boycott of Chester schools. Branche built close ties with students at nearby
Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as ...
, Pennsylvania Military College and Cheyney State College in order to ensure large turnouts at demonstrations and protests. Branche invited Dick Gregory and
Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of ...
to Chester to participate in the "Freedom Now Conference" and other national civil rights leaders such as Gloria Richardson came to Chester in support of the demonstrations. In 1964, a series of almost nightly protests brought chaos to Chester as protestors argued that the Chester School Board had
de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with '' de jure'' ("by l ...
segregation of schools. The mayor of Chester, James Gorbey, issued "The Police Position to Preserve the Public Peace", a ten-point statement promising an immediate return to law and order. The city deputized firemen and trash collectors to help handle demonstrators. The State of Pennsylvania deployed 50 state troopers to assist the 77-member Chester police force. The demonstrations were marked by violence and charges of police brutality. Over six hundred people were arrested over a two-month period of civil rights rallies, marches, pickets, boycotts and sit-ins. Pennsylvania Governor
William Scranton William Warren Scranton (July 19, 1917 – July 28, 2013) was an American Republican Party politician and diplomat. Scranton served as the 38th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1967, and as United States Ambassador to the United Nations fr ...
became involved in the negotiations and convinced Branche to obey a court-ordered moratorium on demonstrations. Scranton created the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission to conduct hearings on the de facto segregation of public schools. All protests were discontinued while the commission held hearings during the summer of 1964. In November 1964, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission concluded that the Chester School Board had violated the law and ordered the Chester School District to desegregate the city's six predominantly African-American schools. The city appealed the ruling, which delayed implementation.


Freedom Summer, 1964

In the summer of 1964, COFO brought nearly 1,000 activists to Mississippimost of them white college students from the North and Westto join with local black activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools," and organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).The Mississippi Movement & the MFDP
 – Civil Rights Movement Archive
Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the outsiders and attempts to change their society. State and local governments, police, the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan used arrests, beatings, arson, murder, spying, firing, evictions, and other forms of intimidation and harassment to oppose the project and prevent blacks from registering to vote or achieving social equality. On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared: James Chaney, a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
activists, Andrew Goodman, a Queens College anthropology student; and
Michael Schwerner Michael Henry Schwerner (November 6, 1939 – June 21, 1964), was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field workers killed in rural Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Schwerner and two co-workers, James Chan ...
, a CORE organizer from
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the List of co ...
's
Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally ...
. They were found weeks later, murdered by conspirators who turned out to be local members of the Klan, some of the members of the
Neshoba County Neshoba County is located in the central part of the U.S. state of Mississippi. As of the 2020 census, the population was 29,087. Its county seat is Philadelphia. It was named after ''Nashoba'', a Choctaw chief. His name means "wolf" in the ...
sheriff's department. This outraged the public, leading the U.S. Justice Department along with the FBI (the latter which had previously avoided dealing with the issue of segregation and persecution of blacks) to take action. The outrage over these murders helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. From June to August, Freedom Summer activists worked in 38 local projects scattered across the state, with the largest number concentrated in the
Mississippi Delta The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yaz ...
region. At least 30 Freedom Schools, with close to 3,500 students, were established, and 28 community centers were set up. Over the course of the Summer Project, some 17,000 Mississippi blacks attempted to become registered voters in defiance of the red tape and forces of
white supremacy White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
arrayed against themonly 1,600 (less than 10%) succeeded. But more than 80,000 joined the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), founded as an alternative political organization, showing their desire to vote and participate in politics. Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it had a significant effect on the course of the civil rights movement. It helped break down the decades of people's isolation and repression that were the foundation of the
Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...
system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers. The progression of events throughout the South increased media attention to Mississippi.Veterans Roll Call
 – Civil Rights Movement Archive
The deaths of affluent northern white students and threats to non-Southerners attracted the full attention of the media spotlight to the state. Many black activists became embittered, believing the media valued the lives of whites and blacks differently. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers, almost all of whomblack and whitestill consider it to have been one of the defining periods of their lives.


Civil Rights Act of 1964

Although President Kennedy had proposed civil rights legislation and it had support from Northern Congressmen and Senators of both parties, Southern Senators blocked the bill by threatening
filibuster A filibuster is a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent decision. It is sometimes referred to as "talking a bill to death" or "talking out ...
s. After considerable parliamentary maneuvering and 54 days of filibuster on the floor of the United States Senate, President Johnson got a bill through the Congress. On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration req ...
, which banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations. The bill authorized the Attorney General to file lawsuits to enforce the new law. The law also nullified state and local laws that required such discrimination.


Harlem riot of 1964

When police shot an unarmed black teenager in Harlem in July 1964, tensions escalated out of control. Residents were frustrated with racial inequalities. Rioting broke out, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, a major black neighborhood in Brooklyn, erupted next. That summer, rioting also broke out in Philadelphia, for similar reasons. The riots were on a much smaller scale than what would occur in 1965 and later. Washington responded with a pilot program called Project Uplift. Thousands of young people in Harlem were given jobs during the summer of 1965. The project was inspired by a report generated by HARYOU called '' Youth in the Ghetto''. HARYOU was given a major role in organizing the project, together with the
National Urban League The National Urban League, formerly known as the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, is a nonpartisan historic civil rights organization based in New York City that advocates on behalf of economic and social justice for African Am ...
and nearly 100 smaller community organizations. Permanent jobs at living wages were still out of reach of many young black men.


Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964

Blacks in Mississippi had been disfranchised by statutory and constitutional changes since the late 19th century. In 1963 COFO held a Freedom Ballot in Mississippi to demonstrate the desire of black Mississippians to vote. More than 80,000 people registered and voted in the mock election, which pitted an integrated slate of candidates from the "Freedom Party" against the official state Democratic Party candidates. In 1964, organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white official party. When Mississippi voting registrars refused to recognize their candidates, they held their own primary. They selected Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and
Victoria Gray Victoria Gray was the first patient ever to be treated with the gene-editing tool CRISPR CRISPR () (an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic org ...
to run for
Congress A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
, and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. The presence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in
Atlantic City, New Jersey Atlantic City, often known by its initials A.C., is a coastal resort city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States. The city is known for its casinos, Boardwalk (entertainment district), boardwalk, and beaches. In 2020 United States censu ...
, was inconvenient, however, for the convention organizers. They had planned a triumphant celebration of the Johnson administration's achievements in civil rights, rather than a fight over racism within the Democratic Party. All-white delegations from other Southern states threatened to walk out if the official slate from Mississippi was not seated. Johnson was worried about the inroads that Republican
Barry Goldwater Barry Morris Goldwater (January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998) was an American politician and United States Air Force officer who was a five-term U.S. Senator from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and the United States Republican Party, Republ ...
's campaign was making in what previously had been the white Democratic stronghold of the "Solid South", as well as support that
George Wallace George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best remembered for his staunch segregationist an ...
had received in the North during the Democratic primaries. Johnson could not, however, prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee. There Fannie Lou Hamer testified eloquently about the beatings that she and others endured and the threats they faced for trying to register to vote. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?" Johnson offered the MFDP a "compromise" under which it would receive two non-voting, at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would retain its seats. The MFDP angrily rejected the "compromise." The MFDP kept up its agitation at the convention after it was denied official recognition. When all but three of the "regular" Mississippi delegates left because they refused to pledge allegiance to the party, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic delegates and took the seats vacated by the official Mississippi delegates. National party organizers removed them. When they returned the next day, they found convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there the day before. They stayed and sang "freedom songs". The 1964 Democratic Party convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the civil rights movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP. The MFDP became more radical after Atlantic City. It invited
Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of ...
to speak at one of its conventions and opposed the war in Vietnam.


Selma Voting Rights Movement

SNCC had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in
Selma, Alabama Selma is a city in and the county seat of Dallas County, in the Black Belt region of south central Alabama and extending to the west. Located on the banks of the Alabama River, the city has a population of 17,971 as of the 2020 census. Abou ...
, in 1963, but by 1965 little headway had been made in the face of opposition from Selma's sheriff, Jim Clark. After local residents asked the SCLC for assistance, King came to Selma to lead several marches, at which he was arrested along with 250 other demonstrators. The marchers continued to meet violent resistance from the police.
Jimmie Lee Jackson Jimmie Lee Jackson (December 16, 1938 – February 26, 1965) was an African American civil rights activist in Marion, Alabama, and a deacon in the Baptist church. On February 18, 1965, while unarmed and participating in a peaceful voting righ ...
, a resident of nearby Marion, was killed by police at a later march on February 17, 1965. Jackson's death prompted James Bevel, director of the Selma Movement, to initiate and organize a plan to march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital. On March 7, 1965, acting on Bevel's plan,
Hosea Williams Hosea Lorenzo Williams (January 5, 1926 – November 16, 2000) was an American civil rights leader, activist, ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist, and politician. He is best known as a trusted member of fellow famed civil ...
of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk the 54 miles (87 km) from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Six blocks into the march, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the marchers left the city and moved into the county, state troopers, and local county law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs,
tear gas Tear gas, also known as a lachrymator agent or lachrymator (), sometimes colloquially known as "mace" after the early commercial aerosol, is a chemical weapon that stimulates the nerves of the lacrimal gland in the eye to produce tears. In ...
, rubber tubes wrapped in barbed wire, and bullwhips. They drove the marchers back into Selma. Lewis was knocked unconscious and dragged to safety. At least 16 other marchers were hospitalized. Among those gassed and beaten was Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was at the center of civil rights activity at the time. The national broadcast of the news footage of lawmen attacking unresisting marchers seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote provoked a national response and hundreds of people from all over the country came for a second march. These marchers were turned around by King at the last minute so as not to violate a federal injunction. This displeased many demonstrators, especially those who resented King's nonviolence (such as
James Forman James Forman (October 4, 1928 – January 10, 2005) was a prominent African-American leader in the civil rights movement. He was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revoluti ...
and Robert F. Williams). That night, local Whites attacked James Reeb, a voting rights supporter. He died of his injuries in a Birmingham hospital on March 11. Due to the national outcry at a White minister being murdered so brazenly (as well as the subsequent civil disobedience led by Gorman and other SNCC leaders all over the country, especially in Montgomery and at the White House), the marchers were able to lift the injunction and obtain protection from federal troops, permitting them to make the march across Alabama without incident two weeks later; during the march, Gorman, Williams, and other more militant protesters carried bricks and sticks of their own. Four Klansmen shot and killed
Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
homemaker
Viola Liuzzo Viola Fauver Liuzzo (née Gregg; April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was an American civil rights activist. In March 1965, Liuzzo heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan, to Selma, Alabama, in the wake of the ...
as she drove marchers back to Selma that night.


Voting Rights Act of 1965

Eight days after the first march, but before the final march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. In it he stated: On August 6, Johnson signed the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The suffrage, Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of Federal government of the United States, federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President of the United ...
, which suspended literacy tests and other subjective voter registration tests. It authorized Federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used and where African Americans were historically under-represented in voting rolls compared to the eligible population. African Americans who had been barred from registering to vote finally had an alternative to taking suits to local or state courts, which had seldom prosecuted their cases to success. If discrimination in voter registration occurred, the 1965 act authorized the
Attorney General of the United States The United States attorney general (AG) is the head of the United States Department of Justice, and is the chief law enforcement officer of the federal government of the United States. The attorney general serves as the principal advisor to the p ...
to send Federal examiners to replace local registrars. Within months of the bill's passage, 250,000 new black voters had been registered, one-third of them by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout at 74% and led the nation in the number of black public officials elected. In 1969, Tennessee had a 92.1% turnout among black voters; Arkansas, 77.9%; and Texas, 73.1%. Several whites who had opposed the Voting Rights Act paid a quick price. In 1966 Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma, Alabama, infamous for using cattle prods against civil rights marchers, was up for reelection. Although he took off the notorious "Never" pin on his uniform, he was defeated. At the election, Clark lost as blacks voted to get him out of office. Blacks' regaining the power to vote changed the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states. By 1989, there were more than 7,200 African Americans in office, including more than 4,800 in the South. Nearly every county where populations were majority black in Alabama had a black sheriff. Southern blacks held top positions in city, county, and state governments. Atlanta elected a black mayor,
Andrew Young Andrew Jackson Young Jr. (born March 12, 1932) is an American politician, diplomat, and activist. Beginning his career as a pastor, Young was an early leader in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian L ...
, as did
Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the Capital city, capital of and the List of municipalities in Mississippi, most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, Mississippi, ...
, with Harvey Johnson Jr., and
New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
Ernest Morial Ernest Nathan "Dutch" Morial (October 9, 1929 – December 24, 1989), was an American political figure and a leading civil rights advocate. He was the first African-American mayor of New Orleans, serving from 1978 to 1986. He was the father of Ma ...
. Black politicians on the national level included Barbara Jordan, elected as a Representative from Texas in Congress, and President Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young as
United States Ambassador to the United Nations The United States ambassador to the United Nations is the leader of the U.S. delegation, the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. The position is formally known as the permanent representative of the United States of America to the United Nation ...
.
Julian Bond Horace Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015) was an American social activist, leader of the civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the e ...
was elected to the Georgia State Legislature in 1965, although political reaction to his public opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War prevented him from taking his seat until 1967.
John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashvill ...
was first elected in 1986 to represent
Georgia's 5th congressional district Georgia's 5th congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. The district was represented by Democratic Party (United States), Democrat John Lewis from January 3, 1987 until his death on J ...
in the
United States House of Representatives The United States House of Representatives, often referred to as the House of Representatives, the U.S. House, or simply the House, is the lower chamber of the United States Congress, with the Senate being the upper chamber. Together the ...
, where he served from 1987 until his death in 2020.


Watts riot of 1965

The new Voting Rights Act of 1965 had no immediate effect on living conditions for poor blacks. A few days after the act became law, a riot broke out in the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. Like Harlem, Watts was a majority-black neighborhood with very high unemployment and associated poverty. Its residents confronted a largely white police department that had a history of abuse against blacks. While arresting a young man for drunk driving, police officers argued with the suspect's mother before onlookers. The spark triggered massive destruction of property through six days of rioting in Los Angeles. Thirty-four people were killed, and property valued at about $40 million was destroyed, making the Watts riots among the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992. With black militancy on the rise, ghetto residents directed acts of anger at the police. Black residents growing tired of police brutality continued to riot. Some young people joined groups such as the Black Panthers, whose popularity was based in part on their reputation for confronting police officers. Riots among blacks occurred in 1966 and 1967 in cities such as
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...
,
San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
,
Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...
,
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
,
Seattle Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
, Tacoma,
Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U ...
,
Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state lin ...
,
Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio Columbus may also refer to: Places ...
, Newark, Chicago, New York City (specifically in
Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Kings County is the most populous Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county in the State of New York, ...
, Harlem and
the Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New ...
), and worst of all in Detroit.


Fair housing movements, 1966–1968

The first major blow against housing segregation in the era, the
Rumford Fair Housing Act California Proposition 14 was a November 1964 initiative ballot measure that amended the California state constitution to nullify the 1963 Rumford Fair Housing Act, thereby allowing property sellers, landlords and their agents to openly discrim ...
, was passed in
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...
in 1963. It was overturned by white California voters and real estate lobbyists the following year with Proposition 14, a move which helped precipitate the Watts riots. In 1966, the
California Supreme Court The Supreme Court of California is the highest and final court of appeals in the courts of the U.S. state of California. It is headquartered in San Francisco at the Earl Warren Building, but it regularly holds sessions in Los Angeles and Sacra ...
invalidated Proposition 14 and reinstated the Rumford Fair Housing Act. Working and organizing for
fair housing Housing discrimination in the United States refers to the historical and current barriers, policies, and biases that prevent equitable access to housing. Housing discrimination became more pronounced after the abolition of slavery in 1865, typic ...
laws became a major project of the movement over the next two years, with Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and
Al Raby Albert Anderson Raby (1933 – November 23, 1988) was a teacher at Chicago's Hess Upper Grade Center who secured the support of Martin Luther King Jr. to desegregate schools and housing in Chicago between 1965 and 1967. Raby was a part of the civi ...
leading the Chicago Freedom Movement around the issue in 1966. In the following year, Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council also attracted national attention with a fair housing campaign in Milwaukee. Both movements faced violent resistance from white homeowners and legal opposition from conservative politicians. The Fair Housing Bill was the most contentious civil rights legislation of the era. Senator
Walter Mondale Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale (January 5, 1928 – April 19, 2021) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd vice president of the United States from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter. A U.S. senator from Minnesot ...
, who advocated for the bill, noted that over successive years, it was the most
filibuster A filibuster is a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent decision. It is sometimes referred to as "talking a bill to death" or "talking out ...
ed legislation in U.S. history. It was opposed by most Northern and Southern senators, as well as the National Association of Real Estate Boards. A proposed "Civil Rights Act of 1966" had collapsed completely because of its fair housing provision. Mondale commented that:


Nationwide riots of 1967

In 1967 riots broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 100 U.S. cities, including Detroit, Newark, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Washington, D.C. The largest of these was the 1967 Detroit riot. In Detroit, a large black middle class had begun to develop among those African Americans who worked at unionized jobs in the automotive industry. These workers complained of persisting racist practices, limiting the jobs they could have and opportunities for promotion. The
United Auto Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico ...
channeled these complaints into bureaucratic and ineffective grievance procedures. Violent white mobs enforced the segregation of housing up through the 1960s. Blacks who were not upwardly mobile were living in substandard conditions, subject to the same problems as poor African Americans in Watts and Harlem. When white Detroit Police Department (DPD) officers shut down an illegal bar and arrested a large group of patrons during the hot summer, furious black residents rioted. Rioters looted and destroyed property while snipers engaged in firefights from rooftops and windows, undermining the DPD's ability to curtail the disorder. In response, the Michigan Army National Guard and U.S. Army
paratrooper A paratrooper is a military parachutist—someone trained to parachute into a military operation, and usually functioning as part of an airborne force. Military parachutists (troops) and parachutes were first used on a large scale during Wor ...
s were deployed to reinforce the DPD and protect Detroit Fire Department (DFD) firefighters from attacks while putting out fires. Residents reported that police officers and National Guardsmen shot at black civilians and suspects indiscriminately. After five days, 43 people had been killed, hundreds injured, and thousands left homeless; $40 to $45 million worth of damage was caused. State and local governments responded to the riot with a dramatic increase in minority hiring. In the aftermath of the turmoil, the Greater Detroit Board of Commerce also launched a campaign to find jobs for ten thousand "previously unemployable" persons, a preponderant number of whom were black. Governor George Romney immediately responded to the riot of 1967 with a special session of the Michigan legislature where he forwarded sweeping housing proposals that included not only
fair housing Housing discrimination in the United States refers to the historical and current barriers, policies, and biases that prevent equitable access to housing. Housing discrimination became more pronounced after the abolition of slavery in 1865, typic ...
, but "important relocation, tenants' rights and code enforcement legislation." Romney had supported such proposals in 1965 but abandoned them in the face of organized opposition. The laws passed both houses of the legislature. Historian Sidney Fine wrote that: President Johnson created the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in response to a nationwide wave of riots. The commission's final report called for major reforms in employment and public policy in black communities. It warned that the United States was moving toward separate white and black societies.


Memphis, King assassination, and Civil Rights Act of 1968

As 1968 began, the fair housing bill was being filibustered once again, but two developments revived it. The
Kerner Commission The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member Presidential Commission established in July 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson in t ...
report on the 1967 ghetto riots was delivered to Congress on March 1, and it strongly recommended "a comprehensive and enforceable federal open housing law" as a remedy to the civil disturbances. The Senate was moved to end their filibuster that week. James Lawson invited King to
Memphis, Tennessee Memphis is a city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the County seat, seat of Shelby County, Tennessee, Shelby County in the southwest part of the state; it is situated along the Mississippi River. With a population of 633,104 at the 2020 Uni ...
, in March 1968 to support a sanitation workers' strike. These workers launched a campaign for union representation after two workers were accidentally killed on the job; they were seeking fair wages and improved working conditions. King considered their struggle to be a vital part of the
Poor People's Campaign The Poor People's Campaign, or Poor People's March on Washington, was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. It was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ( ...
he was planning. A day after delivering his stirring " I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon, which has become famous for his vision of American society, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Riots broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 110 cities across the United States in the days that followed, notably in Chicago,
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, and Washington, D.C. The day before King's funeral, April 8, a completely silent march with Coretta Scott King, SCLC, and UAW president Walter Reuther attracted approximately 42,000 participants. Armed National Guardsmen lined the streets, sitting on M-48 tanks, to protect the marchers, and helicopters circled overhead. On April 9, Mrs. King led another 150,000 people in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta. Her dignity revived courage and hope in many of the Movement's members, confirming her place as the new leader in the struggle for racial equality. Coretta Scott King said, Ralph Abernathy succeeded King as the head of the SCLC and attempted to carry forth King's plan for a Poor People's March. It was to unite blacks and whites to campaign for fundamental changes in American society and economic structure. The march went forward under Abernathy's plainspoken leadership but did not achieve its goals.


Civil Rights Act of 1968

The
House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...
had been deliberating its Fair Housing Act in early April, before King's assassination and the aforementioned wave of unrest that followed, the largest since the Civil War. Senator Charles Mathias wrote: The House passed the legislation on April 10, less than a week after King was murdered, and President Johnson signed it the next day. The
Civil Rights Act of 1968 The Civil Rights Act of 1968 () is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots. Titles II through VII comprise the Indian Civil Rights Act, which app ...
prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin. It also made it a federal crime to "by force or by the threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone...by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin."


''Gates v. Collier''

Conditions at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, then known as Parchman Farm, became part of the public discussion of civil rights after activists were imprisoned there. In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders came to the South to test the
desegregation Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...
of public facilities. By the end of June 1963, Freedom Riders had been convicted in
Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the Capital city, capital of and the List of municipalities in Mississippi, most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, Mississippi, ...
. Many were jailed in Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Mississippi employed the trusty system, a hierarchical order of inmates that used some inmates to control and enforce punishment of other inmates. In 1970 the civil rights lawyer Roy Haber began taking statements from inmates. He collected 50 pages of details of murders, rapes, beatings and other abuses suffered by the inmates from 1969 to 1971 at Mississippi State Penitentiary. In a landmark case known as '' Gates v. Collier'' (1972), four inmates represented by Haber sued the superintendent of Parchman Farm for violating their rights under the United States Constitution. Federal Judge William C. Keady found in favor of the inmates, writing that Parchman Farm violated the civil rights of the inmates by inflicting
cruel and unusual punishment Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase in common law describing punishment that is considered unacceptable due to the suffering, pain, or humiliation it inflicts on the person subjected to the sanction. The precise definition varies by jurisd ...
. He ordered an immediate end to all unconstitutional conditions and practices. Racial segregation of inmates was abolished, as was the trusty system, which allowed certain inmates to have power and control over others. The prison was renovated in 1972 after the scathing ruling by Keady, who wrote that the prison was an affront to "modern standards of decency." Among other reforms, the accommodations were made fit for human habitation. The system of trusties was abolished. (The prison had armed lifers with rifles and given them authority to oversee and guard other inmates, which led to many cases of abuse and murders.) In integrated correctional facilities in northern and western states, blacks represented a disproportionate number of prisoners, in excess of their proportion of the general population. They were often treated as second-class citizens by white correctional officers. Blacks also represented a disproportionately high number of
death row Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution ( ...
inmates.
Eldridge Cleaver Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party. In 1968, Cleaver wrote '' Soul on Ice'', a collection of essays that, at the time of i ...
's book '' Soul on Ice'' was written from his experiences in the California correctional system; it contributed to black militancy.


Legacy

Civil rights protest activity had an observable impact on white American's views on race and politics over time. White people who live in counties in which civil rights protests of historical significance occurred have been found to have lower levels of racial resentment against blacks, are more likely to identify with the
Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...
as well as more likely to support affirmative action. One study found that non-violent activism of the era tended to produce favorable media coverage and changes in public opinion focusing on the issues organizers were raising, but violent protests tended to generate unfavorable media coverage that generated public desire to restore law and order. The 1964 Act was passed to end discrimination in various fields based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in the areas of employment and public accommodation. The 1964 Act did not prohibit sex discrimination against persons employed at educational institutions. A parallel law, Title VI, had also been enacted in 1964 to prohibit discrimination in federally funded private and public entities. It covered race, color, and national origin but excluded sex. Feminists during the early 1970s lobbied Congress to add sex as a protected class category. In 1972,
Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educa ...
was enacted to fill this gap and prohibit discrimination in all federally funded education programs. Title IX, or the Education Amendments of 1972 was later renamed the '' Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act'' following Mink's death in 2002.


Characteristics


African-American women

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
women in the civil rights movement were pivotal to its success. They volunteered as activists, advocates, educators, clerics, writers, spiritual guides, caretakers and politicians for the civil rights movement; leading and participating in organizations that contributed to the cause of civil rights.
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "th ...
's refusal to sit at the back of a public bus resulted in the year-long
Montgomery bus boycott The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States ...
, and the eventual
desegregation Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups, usually referring to races. Desegregation is typically measured by the index of dissimilarity, allowing researchers to determine whether desegregation efforts are having impact o ...
of interstate travel in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...
. Women were members of the NAACP because they believed it could help them contribute to the cause of civil rights. Some of those involved with the Black Panthers were nationally recognized as leaders, and still others did editorial work on the ''Black Panther'' newspaper spurring internal discussions about gender issues. Ella Baker founded the SNCC and was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement. Female students involved with the SNCC helped to organize sit-ins and the Freedom Rides. At the same time many elderly black women in towns across the Southern US cared for the organization's volunteers at their homes, providing the students food, a bed, healing aid and motherly love. Other women involved also formed church groups, bridge clubs, and professional organizations, such as the National Council of Negro Women, to help achieve freedom for themselves and their race. Several who participated in these organizations lost their jobs because of their involvement.


Sexist discrimination

Many women who participated in the movement experienced gender discrimination and sexual harassment. In the SCLC, Ella Baker's input was discouraged in spite of her being the oldest and most experienced person on the staff. There are many other accounts and examples.


Avoiding the "Communist" label

On December 17, 1951, the
Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...
–affiliated Civil Rights Congress delivered the petition '' We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People'' to the United Nations, arguing that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against
lynching in the United States Lynching was the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial killings which began in the United States' Antebellum South, pre–Civil War South in the 1830s and ended during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Although the victims ...
, was guilty of
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the L ...
under Article II of the
UN Genocide Convention The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of its prohibition. It was ...
(see
Black genocide In the United States, black genocide is the notion that the mistreatment of African Americans by both the United States government and white Americans, both in the past and the present, amounts to genocide. The decades of lynchings and long-term ...
). The petition was presented to the United Nations at two separate venues:
Paul Robeson Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his ...
, a concert singer and activist, presented it to a UN official in New York City, while William L. Patterson, executive director of the CRC, delivered copies of the drafted petition to a UN delegation in Paris. Patterson, the editor of the petition, was a leader of the Communist Party USA and head of the International Labor Defense, a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African Americans who were involved in cases that involved issues of political or racial persecution. The ILD was known for leading the defense of the Scottsboro Boys in
Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = " Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...
in 1931, where the Communist Party had a considerable amount of influence among African Americans in the 1930s. This influence had largely declined by the late 1950s, although it could command international attention. As earlier civil rights figures such as Robeson, Du Bois and Patterson became more politically radical (and therefore targets of Cold War
anti-Communism Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and ...
by the U.S. Government), they lost favor with mainstream Black America as well as with the NAACP. In order to secure a place in the political mainstream and gain the broadest base of support, the new generation of civil rights activists believed that it had to openly distance itself from anything and anyone associated with the Communist party. According to Ella Baker, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference added the word "Christian" to its name in order to deter charges that it was associated with
Communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society ...
. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI had been concerned about communism since the early 20th century, and it kept civil rights activists under close surveillance and labeled some of them "Communist" or "subversive", a practice that continued during the civil rights movement. In the early 1960s, the practice of distancing the civil rights movement from "Reds" was challenged by the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segreg ...
which adopted a policy of accepting assistance and participation from anyone who supported the SNCC's political program and was willing to "put their body on the line, regardless of political affiliation." At times the SNCC's policy of political openness put it at odds with the NAACP.


Grassroots leadership

While most popular representations of the movement are centered on the leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to one person, organization, or strategy. Sociologist Doug McAdam has stated that, "in King's case, it would be inaccurate to say that he was the leader of the modern civil rights movement...but more importantly, there was no singular civil rights movement. The movement was, in fact, a coalition of thousands of local efforts nationwide, spanning several decades, hundreds of discrete groups, and all manner of strategies and tacticslegal, illegal, institutional, non-institutional, violent, non-violent. Without discounting King's importance, it would be sheer fiction to call him the leader of what was fundamentally an amorphous, fluid, dispersed movement." Decentralized grassroots leadership has been a major focus of movement scholarship in recent decades through the work of historians John Dittmer, Charles Payne, Barbara Ransby, and others.


Tactics and non-violence

The Jim Crow system employed "terror as a means of social control," with the most organized manifestations being the
Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Ca ...
and their collaborators in local police departments. This violence played a key role in blocking the progress of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s. Some black organizations in the South began practicing armed self-defense. The first to do so openly was the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the
NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.&nb ...
led by Robert F. Williams. Williams had rebuilt the chapter after its membership was terrorized out of public life by the Klan. He did so by encouraging a new, more working-class membership to arm itself thoroughly and defend against attack. When Klan nightriders attacked the home of NAACP member Albert Perry in October 1957, Williams' militia exchanged gunfire with the stunned Klansmen, who quickly retreated. The following day, the city council held an emergency session and passed an ordinance banning KKK motorcades. One year later, Lumbee Indians in North Carolina would have a similarly successful armed stand-off with the Klan (known as the Battle of Hayes Pond) which resulted in KKK leader James W. "Catfish" Cole being convicted of incitement to riot. After the acquittal of several white men charged with sexually assaulting black women in Monroe, Williams announced to United Press International reporters that he would "meet violence with violence" as a policy. Williams' declaration was quoted on the front page of ''The New York Times'', and ''The Carolina Times'' considered it "the biggest civil rights story of 1959". NAACP National chairman Roy Wilkins immediately suspended Williams from his position, but the Monroe organizer won support from numerous NAACP chapters across the country. Ultimately, Wilkins resorted to bribing influential organizer Daisy Bates to campaign against Williams at the NAACP national convention and the suspension was upheld. The convention nonetheless passed a resolution which stated: "We do not deny, but reaffirm the right of individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults." Martin Luther King Jr. argued for Williams' removal, but Ella Baker and WEB Dubois both publicly praised the Monroe leader's position. Williamsalong with his wife, Mabel Williamscontinued to play a leadership role in the Monroe movement, and to some degree, in the national movement. The Williamses published ''The Crusader'', a nationally circulated newsletter, beginning in 1960, and the influential book ''Negroes With Guns'' in 1962. Williams did not call for full militarization in this period, but "flexibility in the freedom struggle." Williams was well-versed in legal tactics and publicity, which he had used successfully in the internationally known " Kissing Case" of 1958, as well as nonviolent methods, which he used at lunch counter sit-ins in Monroeall with armed self-defense as a complementary tactic. Williams led the Monroe movement in another armed stand-off with white supremacists during an August 1961 Freedom Ride; he had been invited to participate in the campaign by Ella Baker and
James Forman James Forman (October 4, 1928 – January 10, 2005) was a prominent African-American leader in the civil rights movement. He was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revoluti ...
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The incident (along with his campaigns for peace with Cuba) resulted in him being targeted by the FBI and prosecuted for kidnapping; he was cleared of all charges in 1976.Tyson, ''Journal of American History'' (September 1998) Meanwhile, armed self-defense continued discreetly in the Southern movement with such figures as SNCC's Amzie Moore, Hartman Turnbow, and Fannie Lou Hamer all willing to use arms to defend their lives from nightrides. Taking refuge from the FBI in Cuba, the Willamses broadcast the radio show '' Radio Free Dixie'' throughout the eastern United States via Radio Progresso beginning in 1962. In this period, Williams advocated guerilla warfare against racist institutions and saw the large ghetto riots of the era as a manifestation of his strategy.
University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sys ...
historian Walter Rucker has written that "the emergence of Robert F Williams contributed to the marked decline in anti-black racial violence in the U.S....After centuries of anti-black violence, African Americans across the country began to defend their communities aggressivelyemploying overt force when necessary. This in turn evoked in whites real fear of black vengeance..." This opened up space for African Americans to use nonviolent demonstrations with less fear of deadly reprisal. Of the many civil rights activists who share this view, the most prominent was Rosa Parks. Parks gave the eulogy at Williams' funeral in 1996, praising him for "his courage and for his commitment to freedom," and concluding that "The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten."


Popular reactions


American Jews

Many in the
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
community supported the civil rights movement. In fact, statistically, Jews were one of the most actively involved non-black groups in the Movement. Many Jewish students worked in concert with African Americans for CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full-time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era. Jews made up roughly half of the white northern and western volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi
Freedom Summer Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississip ...
project and approximately half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s. Jewish leaders were arrested while heeding a call from Martin Luther King Jr. in
St. Augustine, Florida St. Augustine ( ; es, San Agustín ) is a city in the Southeastern United States and the county seat of St. Johns County on the Atlantic coast of northeastern Florida. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, it is the oldest continuously inhabit ...
, in June 1964, where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge.
Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972) was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Judaism, Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the ...
, a writer, rabbi, and professor of theology at the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) is a Conservative Jewish education organization in New York City, New York. It is one of the academic and spiritual centers of Conservative Judaism and a major center for academic scholarship in Jewish studi ...
in New York, was outspoken on the subject of civil rights. He marched arm-in-arm with King in the 1965
Selma to Montgomery march The Selma to Montgomery marches were three Demonstration (protest), protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery. The marches were organized ...
. In the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, the two white activists killed, Andrew Goodman and
Michael Schwerner Michael Henry Schwerner (November 6, 1939 – June 21, 1964), was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field workers killed in rural Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Schwerner and two co-workers, James Chan ...
, were both Jewish. Brandeis University, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college university in the world, created the Transitional Year Program (TYP) in 1968, in part response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The faculty created it to renew the university's commitment to social justice. Recognizing Brandeis as a university with a commitment to academic excellence, these faculty members created a chance for disadvantaged students to participate in an empowering educational experience. The American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) actively promoted civil rights. While Jews were very active in the civil rights movement in the South, in the North, many had experienced a more strained relationship with African Americans. It has been argued that with Black militancy and the Black Power movements on the rise, "Black Anti-Semitism" increased leading to strained relations between Blacks and Jews in Northern communities. In New York City, most notably, there was a major socio-economic class difference in the perception of African Americans by Jews. Jews from better educated Upper-Middle-Class backgrounds were often very supportive of African American civil rights activities while the Jews in poorer urban communities that became increasingly minority were often less supportive largely in part due to more negative and violent interactions between the two groups. According to political scientist Michael Rogin, Jewish-Black hostility was a two-way street extending to earlier decades. In the post-World War II era, Jews were granted white privilege and most moved into the middle-class while Blacks were left behind in the ghetto. Urban Jews engaged in the same sort of conflicts with Blacks—over integration busing, local control of schools, housing, crime, communal identity, and class divides—that other white ethnics did, leading to Jews participating in white flight. The culmination of this was the New York City teachers' strike of 1968, 1968 New York City teachers' strike, pitting largely Jewish schoolteachers against predominantly Black parents in Brownsville, New York.


Public profile

Many Jews in the Southern states who supported civil rights for African Americans tended to keep a low profile on "the race issue", in order to avoid attracting the attention of the anti-Black and antisemitic Ku Klux Klan. However, Klan groups exploited the issue of African-American integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle in order to commit violently antisemitic hate crimes. As an example of this hatred, in one year alone, from November 1957 to October 1958, temples and other Jewish communal gatherings were bombed and desecrated in
Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...
,
Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and t ...
, Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville, and Miami, and dynamite was found under synagogues in Birmingham, Alabama, Birmingham, Charlotte, North Carolina, Charlotte, and Gastonia, North Carolina. Some rabbis received death threats, but there were no injuries following these outbursts of violence.


Black segregationists

Despite the common notion that the ideas of Martin Luther King Jr.,
Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of ...
and Black Power only conflicted with each other and were the only ideologies of the civil rights movement, there were other sentiments felt by many blacks. Fearing the events during the movement was occurring too quickly, there were some blacks who felt that leaders should take their activism at an incremental pace. Others had reservations on how focused blacks were on the movement and felt that such attention was better spent on reforming issues within the black community. While Conservatives, in general, supported integration, some defended incrementally phased out segregation as a backstop against assimilation. Based on her interpretation of a 1966 study made by Donald Matthews and James Prothro detailing the relative percentage of blacks for integration, against it or feeling something else, Lauren Winner asserts that: Oftentimes, African-American community leaders would be staunch defenders of segregation. Church ministers, businessmen, and educators were among those who wished to keep segregation and segregationist ideals in order to retain the privileges they gained from patronage from whites, such as monetary gains. In addition, they relied on segregation to keep their jobs and economies in their communities thriving. It was feared that if integration became widespread in the South, black-owned businesses and other establishments would lose a large chunk of their customer base to white-owned businesses, and many blacks would lose opportunities for jobs that were presently exclusive to their interests. On the other hand, there were the everyday, average black people who criticized integration as well. For them, they took issue with different parts of the civil rights movement and the potential for blacks to exercise consumerism and economic liberty without hindrance from whites. For Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and other leading activists and groups during the movement, these opposing viewpoints acted as an obstacle against their ideas. These different views made such leaders' work much harder to accomplish, but they were nonetheless important in the overall scope of the movement. For the most part, the black individuals who had reservations on various aspects of the movement and ideologies of the activists were not able to make a game-changing dent in their efforts, but the existence of these alternate ideas gave some blacks an outlet to express their concerns about the changing social structure.


"Black Power" militants

During the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964, numerous tensions within the civil rights movement came to the forefront. Many blacks in SNCC developed concerns that white activists from the North and West were taking over the movement. The participation by numerous white students was not reducing the amount of violence that SNCC suffered, but seemed to exacerbate it. Additionally, there was profound disillusionment at Lyndon Johnson's denial of voting status for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention. Meanwhile, during CORE's work in Louisiana that summer, that group found the federal government would not respond to requests to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or to protect the lives of activists who challenged segregation. The Louisiana campaign survived by relying on a local African-American militia called the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who used arms to repel white supremacist violence and police repression. CORE's collaboration with the Deacons was effective in disrupting Jim Crow in numerous Louisiana areas. In 1965, SNCC helped organize an independent political party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt, also Klan territory. It permitted its black leaders to openly promote the use of armed self-defense. Meanwhile, the Deacons for Defense and Justice expanded into Mississippi and assisted Charles Evers' NAACP chapter with a successful campaign in Natchez, Mississippi, Natchez. Charles had taken the lead after his brother Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963. The same year, the 1965 Watts Rebellion took place in Los Angeles. Many black youths were committed to the use of violence to protest inequality and oppression. During the March Against Fear in 1966, initiated by James Meredith, SNCC and CORE fully embraced the slogan of "black power" to describe these trends towards militancy and self-reliance. In Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael declared, "I'm not going to beg the white man for anything that I deserve, I'm going to take it. We need power." Some people engaging in the Black Power movement claimed a growing sense of black pride and identity. In gaining more of a sense of a cultural identity, blacks demanded that whites no longer refer to them as "Negroes" but as "Afro-Americans," similar to other ethnic groups, such as Irish Americans and Italian Americans. Until the mid-1960s, blacks had dressed similarly to whites and often Hair straightening, straightened their hair. As a part of affirming their identity, blacks started to wear African-based dashikis and grow their hair out as a natural afro. The afro, sometimes nicknamed the "'fro," remained a popular black hairstyle until the late 1970s. Other variations of traditional African styles have become popular, often featuring braids, extensions, and dreadlocks. The Black Panther Party (BPP), which was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, in 1966, gained the most attention for Black Power nationally. The group began following the revolutionary pan-Africanism of late-period
Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of ...
, using a "by-any-means necessary" approach to stopping racial inequality. They sought to rid African-American neighborhoods of police brutality and to establish socialist dual power, community control in the ghettos. While they conducted armed confrontation with police, they also set up free breakfast and healthcare programs for children. Between 1968 and 1971, the BPP was one of the most important black organizations in the country and had support from the NAACP, SCLC, Peace and Freedom Party, and others. Black Power was taken to another level inside prison walls. In 1966, George Jackson (Black Panther), George Jackson formed the Black Guerrilla Family in the California San Quentin State Prison. The goal of this group was to overthrow the white-run government in America and the prison system. In 1970, this group displayed their dedication after a white prison guard was found not guilty of shooting and killing three black prisoners from the prison tower. They retaliated by killing a white prison guard. Numerous popular cultural expressions associated with black power appeared at this time. Released in August 1968, the number one Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, Rhythm & Blues single for the Billboard Year-End, ''Billboard'' Year-End list was James Brown's "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud". In October 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, while being awarded the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the 1968 Summer Olympics, donned human rights badges and each raised a black-gloved Black Power salute during their podium ceremony. King was not comfortable with the "Black Power" slogan, which sounded too much like black nationalism to him. When King was assassinated in 1968, Stokely Carmichael said that whites had murdered the one person who would prevent rampant rioting and that blacks would burn every major city to the ground. Riots broke out in more than 100 cities across the country. Some cities did not recover from the damage for more than a generation; other city neighborhoods never recovered.


Native Americans

King and the civil rights movement inspired the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its leaders. Native Americans had been dehumanized as "merciless Indian savages" in the United States Declaration of Independence, and in King's 1964 book ''Why We Can't Wait'' he wrote: "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race." John Echohawk, a member of the Pawnee people, Pawnee tribe and the executive director and one of the founders of the Native American Rights Fund, stated: “Inspired by Dr. King, who was advancing the civil rights agenda of equality under the laws of this country, we thought that we could also use the laws to advance our Indianship, to live as tribes in our territories governed by our own laws under the principles of tribal sovereignty that had been with us ever since 1831. We believed that we could fight for a policy of self-determination that was consistent with U.S. law and that we could govern our own affairs, define our own ways and continue to survive in this society". Native Americans were also active supporters of King's movement throughout the 1960s, which included a sizable Native American contingent at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.


Northern Ireland

Due to policies of Segregation in Northern Ireland, segregation and disenfranchisement present in Northern Ireland many Irish activists took inspiration from American civil rights activists. People's Democracy (Ireland), People's Democracy had organized a Burntollet Bridge incident, "Long March" from Belfast to Derry which was inspired by the Selma to Montgomery marches. During the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland protesters often sang the American protest song We Shall Overcome and sometimes referred to themselves as the "negroes of Northern Ireland".


Soviet Union

There was an international context for the actions of the U.S. federal government during these years. The Soviet media frequently covered Racism in the United States, racial discrimination in the U.S. Deeming American criticism of Human rights in the Soviet Union, its own human rights abuses hypocritical, the Soviet government would respond by stating "And you are lynching Negroes". In his 1934 book ''Russia Today: What Can We Learn from It?'', Sherwood Eddy wrote: "In the most remote villages of Russia today Americans are frequently asked what they are going to do to the Scottsboro boys, Scottsboro Negro boys and why they lynch Negroes." In ''Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy'', the historian Mary L. Dudziak wrote that Communists who were critical of the United States accused it of practicing hypocrisy when it portrayed itself as the "leader of the free world," while so many of its citizens were being subjected to severe racial discrimination and violence; she argued that this was a major factor in moving the government to support civil rights legislation.


White moderates

A majority of White Southerners have been estimated to have neither supported or resisted the civil rights movement. Many did not enjoy the idea of expanding civil rights but were uncomfortable with the language and often violent tactics used by those who resisted the civil rights movement as part of the Massive resistance. Many only reacted to the movement once forced to by their changing environment, and when they did their response was usually whatever they felt would disturb their daily life the least. Most of their personal reactions, whether eventually in support or resistance were not in extreme.


White segregationists

King reached the height of popular acclaim during his life in 1964, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After that point his career was filled with frustrating challenges. The Liberalism, liberal coalition that had gained passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration req ...
and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 The suffrage, Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of Federal government of the United States, federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President of the United ...
began to fray. King was becoming more estranged from the Johnson administration. In 1965 he broke with it by calling for peace negotiations and a halt to the Operation Rolling Thunder, bombing of Vietnam. He moved further Left-wing politics, left in the following years, speaking about the need for economic justice and thoroughgoing changes in American society. He believed that change was needed beyond the civil rights which had been gained by the movement. However, King's attempts to broaden the scope of the civil rights movement were halting and largely unsuccessful. In 1965 King made several attempts to take the Movement north in order to address housing discrimination. The SCLC's campaign in Chicago publicly failed, because Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley marginalized the SCLC's campaign by promising to "study" the city's problems. In 1966, white demonstrators in notoriously racist Cicero, Illinois, Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, held "white power" signs and threw stones at marchers who were demonstrating against housing segregation. Politicians and journalists quickly blamed this white backlash (sociology), backlash on the movement's shift towards Black Power in the mid-1960s; today most scholars believe the backlash was a phenomenon that was already developing in the mid-1950s, and it was embodied in the " massive resistance" movement in the South where even the few moderate white leaders (including
George Wallace George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best remembered for his staunch segregationist an ...
, who had once been endorsed by the NAACP) shifted to openly racist positions. Northern and Western racists opposed the southerners on a regional and cultural basis, but also held segregationist attitudes which became more pronounced as the civil rights movement headed north and west. For instance, prior to the Watts riot, California whites had already mobilized to California Proposition 14 (1964), repeal the state's 1963 fair housing law. Even so, the backlash which occurred at the time was not able to roll back the major civil rights victories which had been achieved or swing the country into reaction. Social historians Matthew Lassiter and Barbara Ehrenreich note that the backlash's primary constituency was
suburban A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separa ...
and middle-class, not working-class whites: "among the white electorate, one half of blue-collar voters…cast their ballot for [the liberal presidential candidate] 38th Vice President of the United States, Hubert Humphrey in 1968…only in the South did
George Wallace George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best remembered for his staunch segregationist an ...
draw substantially more blue-collar than white-collar support."


Political responses


Eisenhower administration, 1953-1961

While not a key focus of his administration, President Eisenhower made several conservative strides toward making America a racially integrated country. The year he was elected, Eisenhower desegregated Washington D.C. after hearing a story about an African American man who was unable to rent a hotel room, buy a meal, access drinking water, and attend a movie. Shortly after this act, Eisenhower utilized Hollywood personalities to pressure movie theatres into desegregating as well. Under the previous administration, President Truman signed executive order 9981 to desegregate the military. However, Truman's executive order had hardly been enforced. President Eisenhower made it a point to enforce the executive order. By October 30, 1954, there were no segregated combat units in the United States. Not only this, but Eisenhower also desegregated the Veterans Administration and military bases in the South, including federal schools for military dependents. Expanding his work beyond the military, Eisenhower formed two non-discrimination committees, one to broker nondiscrimination agreements with government contractors, and a second to end discrimination within government departments and agencies. The first major piece of Civil Rights legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was also passed under the Eisenhower administration. President Eisenhower proposed, championed, and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The legislation established the Civil Rights Commission and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and banned intimidating, coercing, and other means of interfering with a citizen's right to vote. Eisenhower's work in desegregating the judicial system is also notable. The judges he appointed were liberal when it came to the subject of Civil Rights/ desegregation and he actively avoided placing segregationists in federal courts.


Kennedy administration, 1961–1963

For the first two years of the Kennedy administration, civil rights activists had mixed opinions of both the president and United States Attorney General, Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy. A well of historical skepticism toward liberal politics had left African Americans with a sense of uneasy disdain for any white politician who claimed to share their concerns for freedom, particularly ones connected to the historically pro-segregationist Democratic Party. Still, many were encouraged by the discreet support Kennedy gave to King, and the administration's willingness, after dramatic pressure from civil disobedience, to bring forth racially egalitarian initiatives. Many of the initiatives resulted from Robert Kennedy's passion. The younger Kennedy gained a rapid education in the realities of racism through events such as the Baldwin-Kennedy meeting. The president came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matter, resulting in the landmark Civil Rights Address of June 1963 and the introduction of the first major civil rights act of the decade. Robert Kennedy first became concerned with civil rights in mid-May 1961 during the Freedom Rides, when photographs of the burning bus and savage beatings in Anniston, Alabama, Anniston and Birmingham were broadcast around the world. They came at an especially embarrassing time, as President Kennedy was about to have a Vienna summit, summit with the Soviet premier in Vienna. The White House was concerned with its image among the populations of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, and Robert Kennedy responded with an address for Voice of America stating that great progress had been made on the issue of race relations. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the administration worked to resolve the crisis with a minimum of violence and prevent the Freedom Riders from generating a fresh crop of headlines that might divert attention from the President's international agenda. The Freedom Riders (film), ''Freedom Riders'' documentary notes that, "The back burner issue of civil rights had collided with the urgent demands of Cold War realpolitik." On May 21, when a white mob attacked and burned the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where King was holding out with protesters, Robert Kennedy telephoned King to ask him to stay in the building until the U.S. Marshals and National Guard could secure the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked Kennedy for deploying the force to break up an attack that might otherwise have ended King's life. With a very small majority in Congress, the president's ability to press ahead with legislation relied considerably on a balancing game with the Senators and Congressmen of the South. Without the support of Vice-President Johnson, a former Senator who had years of experience in Congress and longstanding relations there, many of the Attorney-General's programs would not have progressed. By late 1962, frustration at the slow pace of political change was balanced by the movement's strong support for legislative initiatives, including administrative representation across all U.S. Government departments and greater access to the ballot box. From squaring off against Governor
George Wallace George Corley Wallace Jr. (August 25, 1919 – September 13, 1998) was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. A member of the Democratic Party, he is best remembered for his staunch segregationist an ...
, to "tearing into" Vice-President Johnson (for failing to desegregate areas of the administration), to threatening corrupt white Southern judges with disbarment, to desegregating interstate transport, Robert Kennedy came to be consumed by the civil rights movement. He continued to work on these social justice issues in his bid for the presidency in 1968. On the night of Governor Wallace's capitulation to African-American enrollment at the
University of Alabama The University of Alabama (informally known as Alabama, UA, or Bama) is a public research university in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Established in 1820 and opened to students in 1831, the University of Alabama is the oldest and largest of the publi ...
, President Kennedy gave an Civil Rights Address, address to the nation, which marked the changing tide, an address that was to become a landmark for the ensuing change in political policy as to civil rights. In 1966, Robert Kennedy visited South Africa and voiced his objections to apartheid, the first time a major US politician had done so: Robert Kennedy's relationship with the movement was not always positive. As attorney general, he was called to account by activists—who booed him at a June 1963 speech—for the Justice Department's own poor record of hiring blacks. He also presided over Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO program. This program ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of Communist front groups, a category in which the paranoid Hoover included most civil rights organizations. Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs. According to Tim Weiner, "RFK knew much more about this surveillance than he ever admitted." Although Kennedy only gave approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so." Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of the black leader's life they deemed important; they then used this information to harass King. Kennedy directly ordered surveillance on
James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; ...
after their antagonistic racial summit in 1963.


Johnson administration: 1963–1969

Lyndon Johnson made civil rights one of his highest priorities, coupling it with a whites war on poverty. However increasing the opposition to the War in Vietnam, coupled with the cost of the war, undercut support for his domestic programs. Under Kennedy, major civil rights legislation had been stalled in Congress. His assassination changed everything. On one hand, President Lyndon Johnson was a much more skillful negotiator than Kennedy but he had behind him a powerful national momentum demanding immediate action on moral and emotional grounds. Demands for immediate action originated from unexpected directions, especially white Protestant church groups. The Justice Department, led by Robert Kennedy, moved from a posture of defending Kennedy from the quagmire minefield of racial politics to acting to fulfill his legacy. The violent death and public reaction dramatically moved the conservative Republicans, led by Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, whose support was the margin of victory for the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Civil Rights Act of 1964 () is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It prohibits unequal application of voter registration req ...
. The act immediately ended de jure (legal) segregation and the era of Jim Crow. With the civil rights movement at full blast, Lyndon Johnson coupled black entrepreneurship with his war on poverty, setting up special programs in the Small Business Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and other agencies. This time there was money for loans designed to boost minority business ownership. Richard Nixon greatly expanded the program, setting up the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) in the expectation that black entrepreneurs would help defuse racial tensions and possibly support his reelection .


In popular culture

The 1954 to 1968 civil rights movement contributed strong cultural threads to American and international theater, song, film, television, and folk art.


Activist organizations


National/regional civil rights organizations

*
Congress of Racial Equality The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about ...
(CORE) * Deacons for Defense and Justice * Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) * Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) *
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E.& ...
(NAACP) * National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) * Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) *
Southern Christian Leadership Conference The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civ ...
(SCLC) *
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced ) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segreg ...
(SNCC) * Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) * Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC)


National economic empowerment organizations

* Operation Breadbasket * Urban League


Local civil rights organizations

* Albany Movement (Albany, Georgia) * Council of Federated Organizations (Mississippi) * Montgomery Improvement Association (Montgomery, Alabama) * Regional Council of Negro Leadership (Mississippi) * Women's Political Council (Montgomery, Alabama)


Individual activists

* Ralph Abernathy * Victoria Gray Adams * Muhammad Ali * Maya Angelou * Louis Austin * Ella Baker *
James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; ...
* Marion Barry * Daisy Bates * Harry Belafonte * Fay Bellamy Powell * James Bevel * Claude Black (minister), Claude Black * Unita Blackwell *
Julian Bond Horace Julian Bond (January 14, 1940 – August 15, 2015) was an American social activist, leader of the civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While he was a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the e ...
* Anne Braden * Carl Braden * Stanley Branche * Ralph Bunche * Mary Fair Burks *
Stokely Carmichael Kwame Ture (; born Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael; June 29, 1941November 15, 1998) was a prominent organizer in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Born in Trinidad, he grew up in the Unit ...
* James Chaney * Shirley Chisholm * Septima Poinsette Clark * Xernona Clayton * Albert Cleage *
Eldridge Cleaver Leroy Eldridge Cleaver (August 31, 1935 – May 1, 1998) was an American writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party. In 1968, Cleaver wrote '' Soul on Ice'', a collection of essays that, at the time of i ...
* Charles E. Cobb Jr. * John Conyers * Sam Cooke * Annie Lee Cooper * Dorothy Cotton *
Claudette Colvin Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939) is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up ...
* Jonathan Daniels * Ossie Davis * Ruby Dee * Annie Devine * Doris Derby * Marian Wright Edelman * Medgar Evers * James Farmer, James L. Farmer Jr. * Walter Fauntroy, Walter E. Fauntroy * Karl Fleming * Sarah Mae Flemming *
James Forman James Forman (October 4, 1928 – January 10, 2005) was a prominent African-American leader in the civil rights movement. He was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revoluti ...
* Frankie Muse Freeman * Andrew Goodman * Fred Gray (attorney), Fred Gray * Jack Greenberg (lawyer), Jack Greenberg * Dick Gregory * Prathia Hall * Fannie Lou Hamer * Lorraine Hansberry * Robert Hayling * Dorothy Height * Lola Hendricks * Aaron Henry * Libby Holman * Myles Horton * T. R. M. Howard * Winson Hudson * Jesse Jackson *
Jimmie Lee Jackson Jimmie Lee Jackson (December 16, 1938 – February 26, 1965) was an African American civil rights activist in Marion, Alabama, and a deacon in the Baptist church. On February 18, 1965, while unarmed and participating in a peaceful voting righ ...
* Mahalia Jackson * Esau Jenkins * Clarence B. Jones * Barbara Jordan * Vernon Jordan *
Clyde Kennard Clyde Kennard (June 12, 1927July 4, 1963) was an American Korean War veteran and civil rights leader from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. In the 1950s, he attempted several times to enroll at the all-white Mississippi Southern College (now the Univers ...
* Coretta Scott King * Martin Luther King Jr. * Bernard Lafayette * James Lawson * Bernard Lee (activist), Bernard Lee *
John Lewis John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashvill ...
*
Stanley Levison Stanley David Levison (May 2, 1912 – September 12, 1979) was an American businessman and lawyer who became a lifelong activist in progressive causes. He is best known as an advisor to and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr., for whom he hel ...
*
Viola Liuzzo Viola Fauver Liuzzo (née Gregg; April 11, 1925 – March 25, 1965) was an American civil rights activist. In March 1965, Liuzzo heeded the call of Martin Luther King Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan, to Selma, Alabama, in the wake of the ...
* Audre Lorde * Joseph Lowery * Autherine Lucy * Clara Luper * Thurgood Marshall * Benjamin Mays *
Franklin McCain Franklin Eugene McCain (January 3, 1941 – January 9, 2014) was an American civil rights activist and member of the Greensboro Four. McCain, along with fellow North Carolina A&T State University students Ezell Blair Jr., Joseph McNeil an ...
* Floyd McKissick * James Meredith * Loren Miller (judge), Loren Miller * Jack Minnis * Anne Moody * Harry T. Moore * E. Frederic Morrow * Bob Moses * William Moyer, Bill Moyer * Elijah Muhammad *
Diane Nash Diane Judith Nash (born May 15, 1938) is an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement. Nash's campaigns were among the most successful of the era. Her efforts included the first s ...
* Denise Nicholas * E. D. Nixon * David Nolan (American author), David Nolan * James Orange * Nan Grogan Orrock *
Rosa Parks Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has honored her as "th ...
* Rutledge Pearson * Adam Clayton Powell Jr. * Gloria Johnson-Powell *
A. Philip Randolph Asa Philip Randolph (April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979) was an American labor unionist and civil rights activist. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first successful African-American led labor union. In ...
*
George Raymond George T. Raymond (May 10, 1914 – May 9, 1999) was an American civil rights leader from Pennsylvania who served as president of the Chester, Pennsylvania branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1942 ...
* George Raymond Jr. * James Reeb * Frederick D. Reese * Walter Reuther * Gloria Richardson * David Richmond (activist), David Richmond *
Paul Robeson Paul Leroy Robeson ( ; April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his ...
* Amelia Boynton Robinson *
Jackie Robinson Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color lin ...
* Jo Ann Robinson * Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson * Bayard Rustin *
Michael Schwerner Michael Henry Schwerner (November 6, 1939 – June 21, 1964), was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field workers killed in rural Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Schwerner and two co-workers, James Chan ...
* Cleveland Sellers * Charles Sherrod *
Fred Shuttlesworth Frederick Lee Shuttlesworth (born Fred Lee Robinson, March 18, 1922 – October 5, 2011) was a U.S. civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama. He was a co-founder ...
* Modjeska Monteith Simkins * Nina Simone * Charles Kenzie Steele * Annie Stein * Dempsey Travis * C. T. Vivian * Wyatt Tee Walker * Roy Wilkins *
Hosea Williams Hosea Lorenzo Williams (January 5, 1926 – November 16, 2000) was an American civil rights leader, activist, ordained minister, businessman, philanthropist, scientist, and politician. He is best known as a trusted member of fellow famed civil ...
* Robert F. Williams *
Malcolm X Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of ...
*
Andrew Young Andrew Jackson Young Jr. (born March 12, 1932) is an American politician, diplomat, and activist. Beginning his career as a pastor, Young was an early leader in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian L ...
* Whitney Young


See also

* Civil rights movement (1896–1954) * Civil rights movement (1865–1896) * American Indian Movement * Asian American movement * Chicano Movement * History of civil rights in the United States * List of civil rights leaders * List of Kentucky women in the civil rights era * List of photographers of the civil rights movement * South Carolina in the civil rights movement * Timeline of the civil rights movement * "We Shall Overcome," the unofficial anthem of the movement


History preservation

* Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument * Civil Rights Movement Archive * Freedom Riders National Monument * Read's Drug Store (Baltimore), the site of a 1955 desegregation sit-in * Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project * Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950–1970


Post–civil rights movement

* Black Lives Matter * Post–civil rights era in African-American history


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * Back, Adina
Exposing the Whole Segregation Myth: The Harlem Nine and New York City Schools
in ''Freedom north: Black freedom struggles outside the South, 1940–1980'', Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, eds.(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). * Bartley, Abel A.
Keeping the Faith: Race, Politics and Social Development in Jacksonville, 1940–1970
' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000) * Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) ''Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"''. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. * Beito, David T. and Beito, Linda Royster,
Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power
', University of Illinois Press, 2009. * Branch, Taylor. ''Parting the waters: America in the King years, 1954–1963''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988 * Breitman, George ed. ''Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements'' (Grove Press, 1965) * Brown, Jennie ''Medgar Evers'', Holloway House Publishing, 1994 * Bryant, Nicholas Andrew ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy And the Struggle for Black Equality'' (Basic Books, 2006) * Cannato, Vincent "The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his struggle to save New York" Better Books, 2001. * * * * * Crump, Spencer ''Black riot in Los Angeles: the story of the Watts tragedy'' (1966) * * * Dudziak, M.L.:
Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy
' * * Eskew, Glenn T. ''But for Birmingham: The Local and National Struggles in the Civil Rights Movement'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1997) * Fine, Sidney ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000) * * * Garrow, David J. ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'' (Harper Collins, 1987) * * Goluboff, Risa L. ''The Lost Promise of Civil Rights'', Harvard University Press, MA: Cambridge, 2007. * * * Hill, Lance
The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement
' (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) * * * * * Klarman, Michael J., ''Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement'' lectronic resource: abridged edition of ''From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality'', Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007. * Levy, Peter B.
The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968
in ''Baltimore '68 : Riots and Rebirth in an American city'' (Temple University Press, 2011) * * Locke, Hubert G. ''The Detroit riot of 1967'' (Wayne State University Press, 1969) * Rayford Logan, Logan, Rayford,''The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson''. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. * * Marable, Manning
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
' (Penguin Books, 2011) * Matusow, Allen J.
From Civil Rights to Black Power: The Case of SNCC" in Twentieth Century America: Recent Interpretations
(Harcourt Press, 1972) * Pinkney, Alphnso and Woock, Roger ''Poverty and Politics in Harlem'', College & University Press Services, Inc., 1970 * Piven, Francis Fox and Cloward, Richard ''Regulating the Poor'' (Random House 1971) * Piven, Francis Fox and Cloward, Richard ''Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, How They Fail'' (Random House, 1977) * Ransby, Barbar
''Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision''
(University of North Carolina Press, 2003). * * Robinson, Jo Ann & Garrow, David J. (foreword by Coretta Scott King) ''The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It'' (1986) Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press. * * Saito, Leland T. (1998). ''Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb''. University of Illinois Press. * * * * * * * Strain, Christopher
Pure Fire:Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era
' (University of Georgia Press, 2005) * Sugrue, Thomas J. ''Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North '' (2008)- 720pp comprehensive history of civil rights issue in the North, 1930s -2000
online
* Sugrue, Thomas J. ''The origins of the urban crisis : race and inequality in postwar Detroit'' (2014
online
* Tucker, William H. ''The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund'', University of Illinois Press (May 30, 2007) * Tyson, Timothy B. ''Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of "Black Power"'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1999) * Umoja, Akinyele ''We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement'' (NYU Press, 2013) * Weems, Robert E. Jr., ''Business in Black and White: American presidents and Black Entrepreneurs'' (2009) * * Wendt, Simon The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights (University of Florida Press, 2007). * Juan Williams, Williams, Juan. ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965''. Penguin Books, 1987. . * Winner, Lauren F. "Doubtless Sincere: New Characters in the Civil Rights Cast." In The Role of Ideas in the Civil Rights South, edited by Ted Ownby. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002 * Woodward, C. Vann ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow'', 3rd rev. ed. (Oxford University Press, 1974). * Young, Coleman ''Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young'' (1994) * Zarefsky, David ''President Johnson's war on poverty: Rhetoric and history'' (2005)


Further reading

* Elizabeth Abel, Abel, Elizabeth.
Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow
'. (U of California Press, 2010). * Barnes, Catherine A. ''Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit'' (Columbia UP, 1983). * Berger, Martin A.
Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography
'. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. * Berger, Maurice.
For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights
'. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010. * Branch, Taylor. ''Pillar of fire: America in the King years, 1963–1965''. (1998) * Taylor Branch, Branch, Taylor. ''At Canaan's Edge: America In the King Years, 1965–1968''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. * Chandra, Siddharth and Angela Williams-Foster. "The 'Revolution of Rising Expectations,' Relative Deprivation, and the Urban Social Disorders of the 1960s: Evidence from State-Level Data." ''Social Science History'', (2005) 29#2 pp:299–332
in JSTOR
* Cox, Julian. ''Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956–1968,'' Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2008. * Ellis, Sylvia. ''Freedom's Pragmatist: Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights'' (U Press of Florida, 2013). * Fairclough, Adam. ''To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference & Martin Luther King''. The University of Georgia Press, 1987. * Faulkenbury, Evan
Poll Power: The Voter Education Project and the Movement for the Ballot in the American South
Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019. * Garrow, David J. ''The FBI and Martin Luther King''. New York: W.W. Norton. 1981. Viking Press Reprint edition. 1983. . Yale University Press; Revised and Expanded edition. 2006. . * Greene, Christina. ''Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham''. North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. * Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. ''Black Women in America'' (3 Vol. 2nd ed. 2005; several multivolume editions). Short biographies by scholars. * Horne, Gerald. ''The Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s''. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1995. Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press ed edition. October 1, 1997. * Jones, Jacqueline. ''Labor of love, labor of sorrow: Black women, work, and the family, from slavery to the present'' (2009). * Kasher, Steven. ''The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History'', New York: Abbeville Press, 1996. * Keppel, Ben. ''Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture'' (LSU Press, 2016). xiv, 225 pp. * Kirk, John A. ''Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970''. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002. * Kirk, John A. ''Martin Luther King Jr.'' London: Longman, 2005. .
Kousser, J. Morgan, "The Supreme Court And The Undoing of the Second Reconstruction," ''National Forum'', (Spring 2000).
* Kryn, Randall L. "James L. Bevel, The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement", 1984 paper with 1988 addendum, printed in ''We Shall Overcome, Volume II'' edited by David Garrow, New York: Carlson Publishing Co., 1989. * Lowery, Charles D. ''Encyclopedia of African-American civil rights: from emancipation to the present'' (Greenwood, 1992)
online
* Manning Marable, Marable, Manning. ''Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1982''. 249 pages. University Press of Mississippi, 1984. . * Doug McAdam, McAdam, Doug. ''Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1982. * Doug McAdam, McAdam, Doug, 'The US Civil Rights Movement: Power from Below and Above, 1945–70', in Adam Roberts (scholar), Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), ''Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present''. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. . * Minchin, Timothy J.
Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960–1980
'. University of North Carolina Press, 1999. . * Morris, Aldon D. ''The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change''. New York: The Free Press, 1984. * * Charles M. Payne, Payne, Charles M.
I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
'. U of California Press, 1995. * Patterson, James T
Brown v. Board of Education : a civil rights milestone and its troubled legacy
Brown v. Board of Education'', a Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy]''. Oxford University Press, 2002. . * Raiford, Leigh.
Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle
''. (U of North Carolina Press, 2011). * * Sitkoff, Howard. ''The Struggle for Black Equality'' (2nd ed. 2008) * Smith, Jessie Carney, ed. ''Encyclopedia of African American Business'' (2 vol. Greenwood 2006)
excerpt
* Jason Sokol, Sokol, Jason. ''There Goes My Everything (book), There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945–1975''. (Knopf, 2006). * Alexander Tsesis, Tsesis, Alexander.
We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law
'. (Yale University Press, 2008). * Stephen Tuck, Tuck, Stephen. ''We Ain't What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama'' (2011).


Historiography and memory

* * * * * * * * Lang, Clarence. "Locating the civil rights movement: An essay on the Deep South, Midwest, and border South in Black Freedom Studies." ''Journal of Social History'' 47.2 (2013): 371–400
Online
* * * * * * * *


Autobiographies and memoirs

* Carson, Clayborne; Garrow, David J.; Kovach, Bill; Polsgrove, Carol, eds. ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941–1963'' and ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963–1973''. New York: Library of America, 2003. and . * Dann, Jim. ''Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers, Memories of Mississippi 1964–65''. Baraka Books, 2013. . * Holsaert, Faith et al. ''Hands on the Freedom Plow Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC''. University of Illinois Press, 2010. . * Malcolm X (with the assistance of Alex Haley). ''The Autobiography of Malcolm X''. New York: Random House, 1965. Paperback . Hardcover .


External links


Voices from the Southern Civil Rights Movement
Exhibit – Provided by the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Civil Rights Digital Library
nbsp;– Provided by the Digital Library of Georgia.
Civil Rights Movement Archive
~ Provides movement history, personal stories, documents, and photos. Hosted by Tougaloo College.
Civil Rights Movement Timeline
– Provided by History (American TV network), History.com on December 4, 2017, and updated on January 19, 2021
Archived
from the original on January 19, 2021.
Civil Rights in America
nbsp;– Provided by The National Archives (United Kingdom), The National Archives of the United Kingdom.
Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950–1970
nbsp;– Provided by the University of Virginia. * Provided by the Library of Congress: *
The Civil Rights Era
nbsp;– Part of ''The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship'' presentation. *
Voices of Civil Rights
nbsp;– A project with the collaboration of AARP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).
We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement
nbsp;– Provided by the National Park Service. * Provided by Southern Poverty Law Center: *
"Teaching the Movement: The State Standards We Deserve"
nbsp;– Part of "Teaching Tolerance" project published on September 19, 2011. *
"Teaching Tolerance Publishes Guide for Teaching the Civil Rights Movement"
nbsp;– Part of "Teaching Tolerance" project published on March 26, 2014. *
"Teaching the Movement 2014: The State of Civil Rights Education in the United States"
nbsp;– Part of "Teaching Tolerance" project published in 2014.
Civil Rights Teaching
nbsp;– Provided by Teaching for Change, a 501(c)(3) organization.
SNCC Digital Gateway
nbsp;– Profiles and primary documents on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the national civil rights movement organization led by young people. A project of the SNCC Legacy Project, Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, and Duke University Libraries.
Collection: "U.S. Civil Rights Movement"
from the University of Michigan Museum of Art {{Portal bar, Freedom of speech, Journalism, Language, Law, Society, United States Civil rights movement, 1954 establishments in the United States 1968 disestablishments in the United States 20th-century social movements History of African-American civil rights, 1954-1968 1950s in the United States 1960s in the United States Articles containing video clips Community organizing Defunct American political movements History of civil rights in the United States Movements for civil rights Nonviolent resistance movements Politics of the Southern United States Social movements in the United States