THE CIVIL RIGHTS

MOVEMENT
PRESENTED BY KOUGNIZIAN KOMLAN JEROME BRILLIANT
LECTURER: JOHNSON ADEBOYE
INTRODUCTION

• In the middle of the 20th century, a nationwide movement for equal rights for African
Americans and for an end to racial segregation and exclusion arose across the United
States. This movement took many forms, and its participants used a wide range of means
to make their demands felt, including sit-ins, boycotts, protest marches, freedom rides,
and lobbying government officials for legislative action. They faced opposition on many
fronts and fell victim to bombings and beatings, arrest and assassination. By the end of
the 1960s, the civil rights movement had brought about dramatic changes in the law and
in public practice, and had secured legal protection of rights and freedoms for African
Americans that would shape American life for decades to come.
OUTLINE

• JIM CROWS LAWS • The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting
• THE BROWN Vs BOARD OF EDUCATION Rights Act of 1965
CASE • Bloody Sunday after the civil rights act of
• EMMETT TILL 1964 and before the voting rights act of 1965

• Rosa parks and the Montgomery bus boycott • SNCC and CORE

• “Massive resistance” and the Little Rock Nine • Black power

• Civil Rights Act of 1957 • Civil rights leaders assassinated

• The March on Washington • Fair housing act of 1968

• During Reconstruction, Black people took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for
equality and the right to vote.
• In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted
Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they’d once
enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.
• To marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they’d made during Reconstruction, “Jim Crow”
laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century. Black people couldn’t use the same public facilities as white people,
live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn’t vote because
they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.
• Jim Crow laws weren’t adopted in northern states; however, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to
buy a house or get an education. To make matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.
• Moreover, southern segregation gained ground in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for Black
and white people could be “separate but equal."
THE BROWN VS BOARD OF EDUCATION CASE

• Linda Brown, a third grader, was required by law to attend a school for black children in her hometown of Topeka, Kansas. To do
so, Linda walked six blocks, crossing dangerous railroad tracks, and then boarded a bus that took her to Monroe Elementary. Yet,
only seven blocks from her house was Sumner Elementary, a school attended by white children, and which, save for segregation,
Linda would otherwise have attended.
• The Topeka, Kansas chapter of the NAACP recruited Linda’s father, Oliver Brown, along with a dozen other local black parents,
to file suit against the Topeka Board of Education in 1951. By the time the case made it to the US Supreme Court in 1954, it had
been combined with four other similar school segregation cases into a single unified case.

• In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) a unanimous Supreme Court declared that racial segregation in public schools
is unconstitutional.
• The Court declared “separate” educational facilities “inherently unequal.”
• The case electrified the nation, and remains a landmark in legal history and a milestone in civil rights history.
EMMETT TILL

• In 1955, two white men brutally murdered African American teenager Emmett Till for
reportedly flirting with a white woman in the town of Money, Mississippi.
• Till's mother Mamie held an open-casket funeral so that the world could see the violence that
murderous racists had inflicted on her son's body. The funeral drew over 100,000 mourners.
• Till's murderers stood trial one month later, in a case that received a great deal of media
attention across the United States and the world. Both men were acquitted.
• Till's death, and the acquittal of his murderers, laid bare the savagery of racism in the United
States and served as an inspiration to a generation of civil rights activists.
ROSA PARKS AND THE MONTGOMERY BUS
BOYCOTT
• On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama for
refusing to give up her bus seat so that white passengers could sit in it.
• Rosa Parks' arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, during which the black citizens of
Montgomery refused to ride the city’s buses in protest over the bus system’s policy of racial segregation.
It was the first mass-action of the modern civil rights era, and served as an inspiration to other civil rights
activists across the nation.
• Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist minister who endorsed nonviolent civil disobedience, emerged as
leader of the Boycott.
• Following a November 1956 ruling by the Supreme Court that segregation on public buses was
unconstitutional, the bus boycott ended successfully. It had lasted 381 days.
“MASSIVE RESISTANCE” AND THE LITTLE ROCK
NINE
• A campaign of "Massive Resistance" by whites emerged in the South to oppose the
Supreme Court’s ruling that public schools be desegregated in Brown v. Board (1954).
• Southern congressmen issued a “Southern Manifesto” denouncing the Court’s ruling.
Governors and state legislatures employed a variety of tactics to slow or stop school
desegregation; white Citizens’ Councils emerged to lead local resistance.
• In September 1957, President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Central High School in
Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the Court’s desegregation order.
CIVIL RIGHTS OF 1957

• Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for
Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were
confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass.
• Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the
South, the Eisenhower administration pressured Congress to consider new civil rights legislation.
• On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the
first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone
who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a commission to investigate voter
fraud.
THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON

• Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the
March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph,
Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.
• More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main
purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march
was King’s speech in which he continually stated, “I have a dream…”
• King’s “I Have a Dream” speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality
and freedom. He envisioned a world where people were judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of
their character.
• The March on Washington was highly publicized in the news media, and helped to gather momentum for the
passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964 AND VOTING
RIGHTS ACT OF1965
• The two most significant pieces of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction were passed within two years
of each other. Between the two, these Acts outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or
national origin. They banned discrimination in public accommodations, public education, and employment,
and prohibited race-based restrictions on voting. Such sweeping legislation had been a longtime goal of the
civil rights movement, and it brought many of the laws and practices of the Jim Crow Era to an end.
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most comprehensive civil rights legislation ever enacted by Congress.
It contained extensive measures to dismantle Jim Crow segregation and combat racial discrimination.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed barriers to black enfranchisement in the South, banning poll taxes,
literacy tests, and other measures that effectively prevented African Americans from voting.
• Segregationists attempted to prevent the implementation of federal civil rights legislation at the local level.
BLOODY SUNDAY AFTER THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964
AND BEFORE THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965

• On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn
as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest
the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and
to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.
• As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama state
and local police sent by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of
desegregation. Refusing to stand down, protesters moved forward and were viciously
beaten and teargassed by police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.
SNCC AND CORE

• The Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) was formed in 1942 as an interracial organization
committed to achieving integration through nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience.
• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), formed in 1960, focused on
mobilizing local communities in nonviolent protests to expose injustice and demand federal action.
• CORE and SNCC—together with other organizations such as the NAACP and the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference—led the Civil Right Movement’s campaigns of the early 1960s, which
included sit-ins, Freedom Rides, voter registration drives, and the 1963 March on Washington.
• By the late 1960s both CORE and SNCC became disillusioned with the slow rate of progress
associated with nonviolence and turned toward the growing Black Power movement.
BLACK POWER

• “Black Power” refers to a militant ideology that aimed not at integration and
accommodation with white America, but rather preached black self-reliance, self-defense,
and racial pride.
• Malcolm X was the most influential thinker of what became known as the Black Power
movement, and inspired others like Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee and Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party.
• The Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, operated as both a black self-defense
militia and a provider of services to the black community.
CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS ASSASSINATED

• The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late
1960s. On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-
American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.
• On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King
Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room's balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots
followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through
additional civil rights laws.
FAIR HOUSING ACT OF 1968

• The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King’s assassination.
It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion. It
was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.
• The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans.
The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about
legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment
and housing practices.
CONCLUSION

• The Civil Rights Movement is an umbrella term for the many varieties of activism that
sought to secure full political, social, and economic rights for African Americans in the
period from 1946 to 1968.
• Civil rights activism involved a diversity of approaches, from bringing lawsuits in court,
to lobbying the federal government, to mass direct action, to black power.
• The efforts of civil rights activists resulted in many substantial victories, but also met
with the fierce opposition of white supremacists.
SOURCES

• A&E Television Networks. (n.d.). Civil Rights Movement: Timeline, Key Events & Leaders. History.com.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-movement
• The Civil Rights Movement : the post war united states, 1945-1968 : U.S. history primary source timeline :
classroom materials at the Library of Congress : library of Congress. The Library of Congress. (n.d.).
https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/post-war-united-states-
1945-1968/civil-rights-movement/
• Events and dates. African American Civil Rights Movement. (n.d.).
http://www.african-american-civil-rights.org/events-and-dates/
• Khan Academy. (n.d.). The Civil Rights Movement: An introduction (article). Khan Academy.
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/civil-rights-movement/a/introduction-to-the-civil-
rights-movement
THANK YOU