Civil Rights

1. Civil Rights

2. Groups involved in civil rights • NAACP - (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) • UNIA - (Universal Negro Improvement Association) • CORE – (The Congress of Racial Equality) • SCLC – (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) • SNCC – (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) • Nation of Islam

3. People Involved • Marcus Garvey • Leader of the UNIA • Wanted black people to return to Africa • Had a newspaper called “The Negro World” • Booker T. Washington • Born as a slave • Was a respected teacher in black schools • Believed that black people were inferior to white people • W . E. B. Du Bois • First leader of the NAACP • Disagreed with the ideas od Booker T. Washington Marcus Garvey

4. Martin Luther King • Martin Luther King was the president of the SCLC . • He was one of the people who organised the Montgomery Bus Boycott • King used non-violent protest after studying the tactics of Mahatma Gandhi. • - “In our protest there will be no cross burnings. No white person will be taken from his house by a hooded negro mob and brutally murdered. There will be no threats or bullying. Love your enemies and pray for them.” • He believes that civil disobedience was the way to gain civil rights in America. • With that came arrests and arrests gain publicity.

5. Montgomery Bus Boycott 1955 • Segregation laws didn’t allow blacks and whites to sit together on buses. • Rosa Parks was returning home from work on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. • When asked to give her seat up for a white man she refused. • She was arrested and this caused a year long boycott of the Montgomery Bus Service. • Eventually the courts ruled that the Bus Service should be desegregated. This was after the company that ran the service was on the brink of going bust.

6. Sit-Ins • This campaign started in Greensboro, Alabama on the 1 February 1960. • What were Sit-Ins? • Black students would order food at a white people only lunch counter. Only to be refused. • When asked to move they refused and returned to the same lunch counter the next day with 80 more protesters, some of whom were white. • The idea of sit-ins spread quickly, by the start of 1961 it was estimated that around 70,000 people had taken part. • News of the sit-ins was broadcast throughout America on television, gaining the civil right movement publicity. • Many white people also showed solidarity with the black protesters and joined the sit-ins. • Dozens of lunch counters in the South were desegregated by the summer of 1960.  

7. Freedom rides 1961 • In 1960, the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in rest rooms, waiting rooms and restaurants was illegal • CORE tested the Supreme Court Ruling, by travelling by bus from Washington to New Orleans. • The Freedom Riders faced threats and violence as they travelled south. Martin Luther King even urged the Freedom Riders to call off their protest several times as he was worried about their safety. • Many white people were against the violent attacks on the busses. • Eventually the government ended segregation in airports, railway and busses.

8. Malcolm X • He was a member of the Nation of Islam. • He opposed MLK and believed in the use of violence in protest. • The ‘X’ represents his African name. • He was seen a threat by the federal government and followed everywhere by the FBI. • He went on a pilgrimage to Mecca to see blacks and whites living in harmony. • This completely changed his opinion on white people.