Organisations

• The Niagara Movement was founded by Du Bois in 1905 and pressed for more radical change. It laid the foundation for the NAACP.
• The NAACP was founded in 1909.
• The NAACP was instrumental in the campaign to integrate schools in Little Rock in 1959.
• The Rosa Parks incident was quickly taken up by the NAACP, leading to the boycott of city buses and the involvement of MLK. The NAACP thought ‘respectable’ Rosa Parks (married, hardworking) was an ideal focus to gain publicity, rather than pregnant teenager Claudette Colvin.
• CORE was founded in 1942, with two-thirds of its initial membership being white.
• CORE began the Freedom Rides in 1947, when eight white activists challenged segregation on buses in the South. This was repeated in 1961. This time, opposition, and publicity, was more pronounced.
• The Freedom Rides provoked mob violence in Anniston, Birmingham and Jackson Mississippi. They had an immediate result, with Kennedy authorising the desegregation of interstate transport.
• The NAACP Youth Council of 1958 organised sit-ins to challenge desegregated lunch counters, most notably in Greensboro North Carolina in 1960.
• By 1964 the civil rights movement was losing its unity, and many saw King and his organisation as little more than ‘Uncle Toms’ excessively dependant on white handouts.
• King’s limitations were shown when James Meredith, the first ever AA to enter the Uni of Mississippi in 1962, was shot and wounded in a march in 1966.
• The late 1960s saw increasing racial tension and radicalism. SNCC and CORE groups began to exclude whites and celebrate African culture, music, food and hair, and make much more radical political demands.
• Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther movement in Oakland California in 1966.
• Black Panthers:

  • weapons were carried openly and defence groups were formed against police brutality
  • the 1972 Black Power convention excluded whites
  • the salute was made by two AA athletes in the 1968 Olympics
• Black Panthers aims:

  • economic equality
  • end to capitalist exploitation
  • compensation in form of land and housing
  • separate juries for black people and protection from police intimidation
• The Black Panther’s goals were too diffuse to be easily realised. It gave rise to a new confidence and pride and a sense that white values could be challenged rather than accepted.
• Violence and the rise of militant AA groups in 1965 disappointed moderate civil rights supporters. Widespread rioting in ghettos in Northern cities resulted in 250 deaths, 10,000 serious injuries and 60,000 arrests.
• King’s later campaigns against poverty such as the 1967 Poor People’s campaign and campaigns against the Vietnam War were less successful.