The Civil Rights Movement

1. The Civil Rights Movement

2. SS8H11 The student will evaluate the role of Georgia in the modern civil rights movement. • a. Describe major developments in civil rights and Georgia’s role during the 1940s and 1950s; include the roles of Herman Talmadge, Benjamin Mays, the 1946 governor’s race and the end of the white primary, Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the 1956 state flag. • b. Analyze the role Georgia and prominent Georgians played in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s; include such events as the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Sibley Commission, admission of Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter to the University of Georgia, Albany Movement, March on Washington, Civil Rights Act, the election of Maynard Jackson as mayor of Atlanta, and the role of Lester Maddox. • c. Discuss the impact of Andrew Young on Georgia.

3. Civil Rights Leaders before the Civil Rights Movement • Booker T. Washington • W.E.B. Dubois • John & Lugenia Burns Hope • Alonzo Herndon • What did each of these people do? SS8H11

4. Civil Rights of the 1940 - 1950 SS8H11

5. Eugene Talmadge • The crazy one remember? • He represented the political corruption that plagued Georgia for many years. • He did not support the New Deal, FDR or going to war. • He also caused Georgia’s colleges to lose accreditation in the Cocking Affair • Finally, Georgians said “Enough!” and voted Ellis Arnall into office. SS8H11

6. Ellis ArnallGovernor from 1943-1947 • A very young Governor – made a very impressive amount of reforms that helped the state. • His downfall? The Federal Court system said that the southern states could NOT use White Primaries any more. • Unlike other southern state Governors, Ellis upheld the courts decision and ended White Primaries in Georgia. • Eugene Talmadge started going around saying that Ellis was a “traitor to the White race!!!” SS8H11

7. End of White Primaries • The Federal government made White Primaries illegal • Several southern states decided to continue the White Primaries regardless • Ellis Arnall respected the decision and forced Georgia to abide by the Federal ruling • He ended his political career by doing this. SS8H11

8. “Traitor to the White race!” SS8H11

9. Eugene Talmadge Governor for 1 month 1947 • Runs against Ellis Arnall – saying he’s a “liberal” and “anti-white” – and wins because racism is thick. • One month passes and he dies…. • Then the Three Governor Episode of 1946 takes place… • Herman Talmadge ends up in office – Eugene's son…. • Watch Herman Talmadge talk about it…. SS8H11

10. Herman TalmadgeGovernor 1948 - 1954 • He refused to support any meaningful civil rights reforms. • He followed in his father's footsteps as a defender of the "southern way of life” • However, he proved to be an able administrator, promoting economic development, increasing the state revenues, building infrastructure, and establishing a statewide public school system. • His staunch defense of segregation did nothing to support racial equality. SS8H11

11. Some steps towards equality… • The end of White Primaries (only because the Feds told them too though) • Benjamin Mays • Brown vs. Board of Education • Martin Luther King, Jr. SS8H11

12. Benjamin Mays http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to_vzugUQbQ • Born in Ninety-Six, South Carolina to tenant farmers and former slaves. • He overcame overwhelming odds to become educated, earning a B.A. from Bates College in Maine, and an M.A. and PhD at the University of Chicago. • In 1940 he became the President of Morehouse College. • There he enjoyed his greatest influence on events in the history of the United States, rising to national prominence. His most famous student at Morehouse was Martin Luther King Jr. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5YqctgW520 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T8RQ4Jp-mc SS8H11

13. Brown vs. Board of Education • In the early 1950's, racial segregation in public schools was the norm across America. Although all the schools in a given district were supposed to be equal, most black schools were far inferior to their white counterparts. • In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. • The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. • The Supreme Court struck down the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy for public education, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and required the desegregation of schools across America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTGHLdr-iak SS8H11

14. What was Georgia’s Reaction? • The confederate flag had come to represent the “Dixiecrats” who protested against desegregation. • Georgia’s General Assembly decided to adopt a flag containing a confederate emblem in 1956 as a form of protest against desegregation of schools. SS8H11

15. Steps against equality… • Changing the Georgia Flag in 1956 http://www.todayingeorgiahistory.org/content/georgia-flag-change SS8H11

16. The 1956 Legislative Session: Preserving Segregation • There will be no mixing of the races in the public schools and college classrooms of Georgia anywhere or at any time as long as I am governor....All attempts to mix the races, whether they be in the classrooms, on the playgrounds, in public conveyances or in any other area of close personal contact on terms of equity, peril the mores of the South....the tragic decision of the United States Supreme Court on May 17, 1954, poses a threat to the unparalleled harmony and growth that we have attained here in the South for both races under the framework of established customs. Day by day, Georgia moves nearer a showdown with this Federal Supreme Court – a tyrannical court ruthlessly seeking to usurp control of state-created, state-developed, and state-financed schools and colleges....The next portent looming on the horizon is a further declaration that a State’s power to prohibit mixed marriages is unconstitutional. • Governor Marvin S. Griffin • State of the State Address • January 10, 1956 Watch today in Georgia History SS8H11

17. Civil Rights in the 1960’s & 1970’s • http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1997/mlk/links.html SS8H11

18. Benjamin Mays & The Civil Rights Movement • During King's years as an undergraduate at Morehouse in the mid-1940s, the two developed a close relationship that continued until King's death in 1968. • http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/kingweb/about_king/encyclopedia/mays_benjamin.htm SS8H11

19. Martin Luther King, Jr. • He is most known for being an iconic figure in the Civil Rights Movement using non-violent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. • He was a Baptist minister. • He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. • He helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference – and served as the first President. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ank52Zi_S0 SS8H11

20. Martin Luther King, Jr. • In 1963 – He delivered the “I have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington – leading to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. • In 1964, he became the youngest person (35) to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination. • He was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. in 1968. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmOBbxgxKvo

21. Southern Christian Leadership Conference - SCLC • Following the successful non-violent Montgomery Bus Boycott – Dr. King invited 60 ministers to Ebenezer Church in Atlanta – to form an organization to coordinate and supporting non-violent direct action as a method of desegregating bus systems throughout the entire NATION!! (mostly the south). • They coordinated the Albany Movement, the Birmingham Campaign, and the March on Washington.

22. Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) • On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. where they had been denied service. This sparked a wave of other sit-ins in college towns across the South. • The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (pronounced "snick"), was created on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh two months later to coordinate these sit-ins, support their leaders, and publicize their activities. • SNCC sought to coordinate youth-led nonviolent, direct-action campaigns against segregation and other forms of racism. SNCC members played an integral role in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington, and such voter education projects as the Mississippi Freedom Summer. • Georgia’s SNCC Chapter focused its energy on Albany and Atlanta. SS8H11

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24. http://www.accd.edu/pac/faculty/rhines/Colorline.htm

25. Sibley Commission • In 1960, Georgia’s General Assembly created the General Assembly Committee on Schools. They elected John Sibley to be the Commissioner of the Committee therefore it was commonly called the Sibley Commission. • The purpose of the Sibley Commission was to gather state residence's opinions about desegregation. • John Sibley was a staunch segregationist but felt that total resistance to integration would not work. He wanted local schools to decide for themselves. After polling the public the committee found that 60% of Georgians did not want to integrate schools. • However, before the General Assembly could make a decision, a Federal Judge ordered UGA to admit two black students: Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter. Georgia decided to back down from total resistance and repealed the law that cut funds to schools and colleges if they integrated. SS8H11

26. Instead the Sibley Commission gave local school systems the choice to desegregate and the tools to keep segregation intact if they wanted to. • This slowed down desegregation but allowed a period of transition into integration. • The report issued by the Sibley Commission laid the foundation for the end of massive resistance to desegregation in the state and helped avoid a showdown between Vandiver and the federal government. SS8H11

28. Hamilton Holmes & Charlayne Hunter • Watch Today in Georgia History: Desegregation of UGA SS8H11

29. Albany Movement • Three members of the SNCC went to Albany to increase voter registration as to get rid of lingering Jim Crow laws. • After a number of Blacks had been arrested for sitting in “White Only” seats on buses Black citizens organized a non-violent protest. • But…The Police Chief Pritchett saw how bad it looked for police to beat non-violent protestors and he did not want the media giving people any more reasons to encourage these protests – so he told his cops they could not be violent in any way. • This was not what King had hoped for…. SS8H11

30. Albany Movement • Pritchett began filing up jails with the protestors – but not just his jails. He sent over 1000 to jails all over the local area. This meant that the media didn’t get a shot at a “full jail” – which King was hoping for. • When the media moment finally came, it was not the one King had hoped for. By July 24, 1962, many of Albany’s African Americans had grown frustrated at the lack of progress. That evening, a crowd of 2,000 blacks armed with bricks, bottles, and rocks attacked a group of Albany policemen and Georgia highway patrolmen. One trooper lost two teeth. But Laurie Pritchett’s well-schooled officers did not retaliate, and the chief was quick to seize the initiative: “Did you see them nonviolent rocks?” he asked. • King moved swiftly to limit the damage. He cancelled a planned mass demonstration and declared a day of penance. But a federal injunction against further demonstrations in Albany added to the difficulties: Up till then, the civil rights cause had had the law on its side. Further action in Albany would allow segregationists to portray King and his followers as lawbreakers. • Watch Today in Georgia SS8H11

31. March on Washington • At eight o'clock on the morning of August 28, with only fifty people on the monument grounds, it appeared that the event would be smaller than anticipated. However, by ten o'clock there was a huge crowd of people. By the end of the day, 250,000 people had gathered. Participants included blacks, whites, actors, and about three hundred Congressional representatives. CBS provided continuous televised coverage of the march. When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. began his "I Have a Dream" speech, NBC and ABC interrupted their programming to bring it live to viewers. King had originally planned to deliver a different speech, but in the middle of his planned address, he departed from his text. Although it was a speech he had given on many other occasions, to those who listened it was a powerful indictment of the injustices perpetuated against African Americans. SS8H11

32. Martin Luther King, Jr. • “I have a dream,” proclaimed King, “that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Ultimately, proclaimed King at the end of his speech, he believed that one day blacks and whites would come together and sing the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.” SS8H11

33. Civil Rights Act of 1964 • In the 1960 presidential election campaign John F. Kennedy argued for a new Civil Rights Act. After the election it was discovered that over 70 per cent of the African American vote went to Kennedy. However, during the first two years of his presidency, Kennedy failed to put forward his promised legislation. The Civil Rights bill was brought before Congress in 1963 and in a speech on television on 11th June, Kennedy pointed out that: "The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much." SS8H11

34. The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also required employers to provide equal employment opportunities. Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was evidence of discriminated based on color, race or national origin. The Civil Rights Act also attempted to deal with the problem of African Americans being denied the vote in the Deep South. The legislation stated that uniform standards must prevail for establishing the right to vote. Schooling to sixth grade constituted legal proof of literacy and the attorney general was given power to initiate legal action in any area where he found a pattern of resistance to the law. SS8H11

35. Maynard Jackson • Elected mayor of Atlanta in 1973, Maynard Jackson was the first African American to serve as mayor of a major southern city. Jackson served eight years and then returned for a third term following the mayorship of Andrew Young. As a result of affirmative action programs instituted by Jackson in his first two terms, the portion of city business going to minority firms rose dramatically. A lawyer in the securities field, Jackson remained a highly influential force in city politics after leaving elected office. Before and during his third term, he worked closely with Young, Atlanta Olympics organizing committee chair Billy Payne, and others to bring the 1996 Olympic Games to Atlanta. • Today in Georgia History - Maynard Jackson SS8H11

36. Lester Maddox • Lester Maddox was raised poor and dropped out of high school. • He later opened a restaurant called Pickrick, where after segregation was made illegal – he refused to allow Black folks into his restaurant. After a picture appeared in a newspaper of Maddox and several others chasing Black activists out of the restaurant, many people all over the nation believed him to be a violent racist. • Georgian’s, however, elected him to be the Governor in 1966. • Today in Georgia history: Lester Maddox SS8H11

37. Lester Maddox • Strangely enough… Maddox turned out to be very progressive. • He backed prison reforms. • Appointed more African Americans to government positions than all previous Georgia governors, including the 1st Black State Patrol officer and the first black official to the board of corrections. • He became especially popular for Black voters. • When he could no longer be governor, he ran for Lt. Gov. but couldn’t get along with Jimmy Carter – who was the Governor. He then ran for President but did not win. • Towards the end of his life he said that he had no regrets about his segregationist beliefs or any other political stance he took. • He died in 1993 after a long struggle with cancer. SS8H11

38. Andrew Young • Andrew Young was born to a wealthy family in New Orleans during the height of the Jim Crow laws. • After attending college he became a Pastor of Bethany Congregational Church in Thomasville, Georgia, in 1955. • Young left the church for a position with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the church-centered, Atlanta-based civil rights organization led by Martin Luther King Jr. • Young taught workshops on nonviolence and identified young potential leaders to work with. SS8H11

39. Young became a trusted aide to Martin Luther King Jr., eventually rising to the executive directorship of the SCLC. He was instrumental in organizing voter registration and desegregation campaigns in Albany; Birmingham and Selma, Alabama; and Washington, D.C., among other places. He was with King when the civil rights leader was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. • He won Georgia's Fifth District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 and became the first African American since Reconstruction to be elected to Congress from Georgia. Young's election was momentous: he and Barbara Jordan, a Democrat who was also elected to the House (from Texas) in 1972, became two of the first black southerners in Congress in the twentieth century. The voter registration campaigns Young had helped organize throughout the South in the 1950s and 1960s bore fruit and would eventually result in the election of thousands of African American candidates to higher office in the coming decades. SS8H11

40. While in Congress, Young fought for the poor and working-class. He supported Jimmy Carter during his presidential campaign and named Young ambassador to the United Nations. • Young helped Carter transform the basis of American foreign policy, making human rights a central focus and arguing that economic development in the Third World, particularly in Africa, was in the best interest of the United States. Young was among the first to call for an end to apartheid in South Africa, and he fought for U.S. recognition of Communist Vietnam. He was forced to resign the position in 1979 for having met with a representative of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). At that time the PLO was considered a terrorist organization, and U.S. officials were officially forbidden to meet with its members. SS8H11

41. Young returned to Atlanta and in 1981 was elected the city's mayor. His election signaled the institutionalization of the revolution in black political power he had helped to create in Georgia. For the first time an African American mayor (Maynard Jackson) handed over the keys of a major city to another African American. Young won reelection in 1985. • Atlanta’s Center for International Studies is named after him. • Young is currently a professor at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. He has remained active in Georgia's civic affairs. He served as co-chair of the Atlanta Committee for the 1996 Olympic Games and has been vocal on such issues as economic development and the state flag. He has continued to foster economic development in the developing world as a business consultant and as chairman of the Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund. • Young had four children with his first wife, Jean Childs, who died of cancer in 1994. He married his second wife, Carolyn, in 1996. Young has published two books, A Way Out of No Way (1994) and An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America (1996). SS8H11

42. Andrew Young • Pastor • Executive Director of SCLC • Voter Registration • 1st Black southerner to serve in Congress as a House of Representative • Ambassador under Jimmy Carter • Mayor of Atlanta • Helped get the Olympic Games to Georgia • Professor • Today in Georgia History – Andrew Young