Civil Rights Movement

I.A stimulus predating movement: WWII 

A. Segregated military until July 1948

B.Pres. Truman’s Executive Order 9981 forbids discrimination/segregation in military

C. Inconsistency: blacks fight German bigotry but then come home to segregation

II.Two Major Tactics of Civil Rights Movement

A. Nonviolent Direct Action: sometimes involves illegal, although nonviolent, protest

B. Legal strategy: challenging constitutional status of segregation in the courts

III.A. Philip Randolph threatens march of 100,000 on Washington, D.C. in 1941

A. Example of nonviolent direct action, modeled on Ghandi’s approach in India

B. To prevent, Roosevelt’s executive order prohibits discrimination in defense plants

IV.Congress of Racial Equality or CORE (founded 1942)

A. Organizes lunch counter sit-ins and, starting in 1947, freedom rides

B. Another example of nonviolent direct action

V.NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall wins in Smith v. Allwright (1944)

A.Supreme rules that whites primaries are unconstitutional--example of legal strategy

VII.Brown v. the Board of Education (1954)

A. Chief Justice Earl Warren concludes separate education facilities are inherently unequal

VIII.Montgomery Bus Boycott lead by Martin Luther King

A. Rosa Parks refuses to yield seat to white passenger on 12/1/55

B. Objective: end discourtesies to blacks, hire black bus drivers, end segregated seating

C. King projected into national spotlight as American Ghandi

IX.President Eisenhower dispatches federal troops to Little Rock Arkansas, 1957

A. Governor Orval Faubus orders National Guard to keep 9 blacks from Central High

B.1000 troops dispatched in state-federal confrontation

X.James Meredith Attempts to enroll at University of Mississippi (1962) 

A. Governor Ross Barnett asks statewide television audience to resist federal policy

B. Several hundred federal marshals and troops ensure compliance

XI.Southern Christian Leadership Conference fights segregation in Birmingham (1963)

A. Often considered most segregated city in U.S.

B. Segregation of hotels and restaurants did not violate federal law

C. King defies court order and continues protest--involves breaking law

D.Violent response of white power structure to nonviolent protest:

1. Bull Connor’s police use dogs, beatings, fire hoses (100 lbs/ sq. inch)

XII.SCLC March from Selma to Montgomery to protest voting restrictions (1965)

A.Peaceful marchers in prayer attacked by police using billy clubs on Pettus Bridge

B. Skull of John Lewis (a leader of SNCC) fractured

C. Later, 3 white pastors who joined demonstration attacked and James Peeb dies

D. Viola Liuzo, Detroit housewife who aided marchers, shot to death

E.Helped pave path for Voting Rights Act of 1965

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