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Civil Rights, The Early Years

Explore the early years of the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle for integration and equality. Discover the major goals, factors for success or failure, and the obstacles faced along the way. Learn about the positive climate for change and the early victories that paved the path for progress. Discover the importance of strong black organizations and leadership, and the role of nonviolence and black Christianity in the movement.

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Civil Rights, The Early Years

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  1. Civil Rights, The Early Years Integration and Equality

  2. Civil Rights: The Long View • Building blocks? Trends towards justice?: • Ideals of equality, liberty, freedom • Ideals of integration, public space • Nonviolence • Consumer society • Obstacles?: • Inequality, discrimination in U.S. society (Jim Crow, marriage laws, education), ideas racial purity; lack of legal or govt. protection/aid

  3. Major Goals • Desegregation • Schools • Public and private accommodations • Jobs • Transportation • Medical care • Neighborhoods, suburbs • Integration • Voting rights • Political representation • Equal protection/justice • Equal pay, opportunity • Education • Fair housing • End of discrimination • To be heard • Respect • Freedoms • End racism • Fair economy

  4. Major Goals • Integration • Schools • Workplaces • Military • Churches • Transportation • Public and private spaces • Economic advancement • Equality • Education • Voting rights • Treatment in public • Respect • Anti-discrimination • Equal opportunity

  5. Major Goals • Empowerment • Integration into mainstream American life • Desegregation • Respect and self-respect • End of poverty • End of racism and other forms of discrimination • Mainstream Civil Rights Movement was part of liberal movement • Question: Could liberalism solve issues of civil rights, poverty, and injustice?

  6. Factors in Success or Failure? • How to get support • Followers? • Political support? • Message? • Goals? • Strength of support? • Willingness to sacrifice? • Public perception • Opponents? • Money • Media coverage • Tactics

  7. Factors in Success or Failure • Recruitment: good slogan, appealing • Persuasion • Get media attention • Inspire action/change • Clarity of goals • Good leadership • Delegation of power, responsibility • Money • Decide on methods of action: violence, nonviolence, etc. • Change minds

  8. Positive Climate for Change • Liberal shift in politics and culture, optimism and nonconformity • Northern liberal support for racial equality • Jewish support b/c of immigrant, discrimination, and Holocaust experiences • JFK idealism • Cold War made it important for U.S. to prove to world that it was meeting its ideals – civil rights issue gave U.S. a black eye in world affairs

  9. Obstacles • De jure and de facto segregation (Jim Crow) in south and parts of north – Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 • Failure of Operation Dixie, effort to organize unions in south in late 1940s • Solid South, conservative southern white Democratic Party • Massive Resistance, White Councils formed to oppose desegregation in 1950s • Fickle white supporters – how to keep them on board

  10. Background Factors • Great Migration • WWII ideals – against Nazi racism • Returning black WWII veterans • Existing civil rights orgs and leaders • Strong church community • Growth in liberal white support • Cold War climate – had to prove superiority of U.S.

  11. Early Victories • Fighting for Fairness, Equality, and Desegregation • Precedent: pressuring government to respond • A. Philip Randolph and black pressure politics • 1st March on Wash., Fair Employment rules during WWII • 1948 desegregation of the military • Jackie Robinson and desegregation of baseball, 1947 • Symbolic power of “America’s pastime”

  12. Early Victories (continued) • Brown v. Board I & II, 1954, 1955 • Thurgood Marshall: segregated schools fostered sense of inferiority in black students • Left-of-center Supreme Court – New Deal appointees, moderate Republicans (Earl Warren) • Unanimous decision, but desegregation “with all deliberate speed”???? • Little Rock, Arkansas, 1957 • Little Rock 9 forced Ike & fed. govt. to act on civil rights, to use federal troops to protect students • Arkansas governor Orville Faubus opposed desegregation based on states rights rhetoric

  13. Southern Manifesto, 1956 • States rights over… education • Constitution does not lay out federal jurisdiction over education • Activist judiciary • No precedent for federal action • “90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races” – southern way of doing things • “outside meddlers” • Support for resistance

  14. Southern Manifesto Document

  15. Strong Black Organizations and Leadership • Strong black leadership in churches and civil rights organizations were necessary to movement • SCLC, MLK, Ella Baker, various church leaders • CORE, James Farmer, Bayard Rustin • SNCC, Ella Baker, Stokely Carmichael • NAACP • Unions, A. Philip Randolph • Northern black politicians • Links to northern white churches, politicians, Democratic Party, unions

  16. Nonviolence and Black Christianity • MLK: Nonviolence as ideal and strategy • Combination of Christian ideals and Gandhian nonviolence • Christian belief of turning the other cheek, but used as nonviolent strategy of resistance, protest, and for positive change • Nonviolence as strategy to overcome armed violence of southern people and officials • Conscious targeting of segregated public spaces or denial of public services • Goal of creating wider public pressure • Media exposure – TV coverage of police brutality against nonviolent protesters

  17. Nonviolence and Black Christianity (continued) • Different methods • Marches • Sit-downs, sit-ins • Mass jailings • Ideals: political and social problems had moral and religious underpinnings and solutions • Churches, SCLC, MLK: human equality under God, righteousness of their cause; inequality, desegregation were social and moral evils • Possibility of equality on earth, imagery and language of salvation, combined with realization of American ideals

  18. Major Battles • Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1956 - NAACP and Rosa Parks targeted bus system, segregated public service; MLK joined boycott leadership • Student Sit-ins at lunch counters – started in Greensboro, NC in 1960 • SNCC founded as a result - student protesters • Freedom Rides, 1961 – desegregation of interstate commerce, violence spurred JFK to action

  19. Major Battles • Birmingham protests, 1963, Bull Connor’s violence spurred JFK TV broadcast against racism and segregation • March on Washington, 1963, MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, garnered public support • M on W and JFK assassination = push for 1964 Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination in employment, equal access to public accommodations and schools • Freedom Summer, 1965, murders of volunteers, marches, voter registration in south, Selma march • Created pressure for Voting Rights Act of 1965 and 24th Const. Amend., both outlawed barring of black voters

  20. Civil Rights and the Democratic Party: Sympathies and Tensions • Case Study: MS Freedom Democrats and the 1964 Democratic Convention, Atlantic City, NJ • Fannie Lou Hamer, sharecropper turned SNCC civil rights activist • Went to SNCC meeting, tried to register to vote, kicked off plantation, beaten • Became fundraiser for SNCC and ran for Congress in MS, black votes not counted

  21. Hamer and MS Freedom Democrats challenged all-white MS Democratic Party and delegates to 1964 Dem. Convention • Failed to get seated, but spurred Voting Rights Act and changes within Democratic Party

  22. 1960 Presidential Election • JFK = Blue = 49.7% • Nixon = Red = 49.5%

  23. 1964 Presidential Election • LBJ = Blue = 61.1% • Goldwater = Red = 38.5%

  24. Presidential Civil Rights • Pushed by civil rights movement • Liberals attempted to live up to ideals (Truman, JFK, LBJ) • Eisenhower, detached, but was pushed to act at Little Rock • JFK, overly cautious, was pushed to protect protesters; optimism became spur to action • LBJ, believed in racial equality • Pushed for Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965)

  25. LBJ’s Great Society & War on Poverty • Attention to “the other America” – those who had not been able to share in postwar affluence: poor, working poor, African Am., Appalachia • LBJ used JFK assassination as reason to pursue social goals, continue JFK’s legacy • Great Society and War on Poverty: set of social programs to complete the New Deal • Empowerment – Comm. Action Programs, Headstart, Legal Services, VISTA • Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security expanded (“welfare”), public housing • Affirmative Action rules, 1968 • Community Action Programs used by blacks to fight for political and social problems, not always the form or kind liberal whites wanted

  26. Conclusions • Successes: framing of civil rights as moral, ethical problem, full attainment of American ideals • Attainment of legal desegregation and voting rights • Pushed Democratic Party to become party of civil rights, justice, and equality • Decrease in poverty rate, 1960-1970, 23% to 15% • Programs: Medicaid, Medicare, Headstart, Affirm.A. • Continuing Issues: • Would de facto desegregation and civil rights be attained in north or south? • Would Democratic coalition remain intact? • What impact would Vietnam War have on civil rights and American politics?

  27. Civil Rights, Further Issues • Black Power, Stokely Carmichael: • Black unification to achieve civil rights – why? • Questioned integration • Questioned nonviolence • Take a stand, fight back

  28. Civil Rights, Further Issues • Malcolm X:

  29. The New Left: Port Huron Statement, 1962

  30. Jerry Rubin, ‘Self-Portrait of a Child of Amerika,’ 1970 I am a child of Amerika. If I'm ever sent to Death Row for my revolutionary "crimes," I'll order as my last meal: a hamburger, french fries and a Coke. I dig big cities. I love to read the sports pages and gossip columns, listen to the radio and watch color TV. I dig department stores, huge supermarkets and airports. I feel secure (though not necessarily hungry) when I see Howard Johnson's on the expressway. I groove on Hollywood movies‑even bad ones. I speak only one language‑English.

  31. I love rock 'n' roll. I collected baseball players' cards when I was a kid and wanted to play second base for the Cincinnati Reds, my home team. I got a car when I was sixteen after flunking my first driver's test and crying for a week waiting to take it a second time. I went to the kind of high school where you had to pass a test to get in. I graduated in the bottom half of the class. My classmates voted me the "busiest" senior in the school. I had short, short, short hair. I dug Catcher in the Rye. I didn't have pimples.

  32. I became an ace young reporter for the Cincinnati Post and Times‑Star. "Son," the managing editor said to me, "someday you're going to be a helluva reporter, maybe the greatest reporter this city's ever seen." I loved Adlai Stevenson. My father drove a truck delivering bread and later became an organizer in the Bakery Drivers' Union. He dug Jimmy Hoffa (so do I). He died of heart failure at fifty‑two. My mother had a college degree and played the piano. She died of cancer at the age of fifty‑one. I took care of my brother, Gil, from the time he was thirteen. I dodged the draft. I went to Oberlin College for a year, graduated from the University of Cincinnati, spent 1 1/2 years in Israel and started graduate school at Berkeley.

  33. I dropped out. I dropped out of the White Race and the Amerikan nation. I dig being free. I like getting high. I don't own a suit or tie. I live for the revolution. I'm a yippie! I am an orphan of Amerika.

  34. Common Enemies or Targets?

  35. Major Goals • Empowerment • Integration into mainstream American life • Desegregation • Respect and self-respect • End of poverty • End of racism and other forms of discrimination • Mainstream Civil Rights Movement was part of liberal movement • Question: Could liberalism solve issues of civil rights, poverty, and injustice?

  36. Factors in Success or Failure • Recruitment: good slogan, appealing • Persuasion • Get media attention • Inspire action/change • Clarity of goals • Good leadership • Delegation of power, responsibility • Money • Decide on methods of action: violence, nonviolence, etc. • Change minds

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