4.4

Cards (15)

  • The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in 1909 as an interracial organization that fought discrimination and racial violence primary through legal campaigns. W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett were among the founders. Rosa Parks, a local NAACP secretary, helped to launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955).
  • The National Urban League was founded in New York City in 1910 as an interracial organization. The Urban League assisted African Americans migrating from the rural South during the Great Migration, helping them acclimate to northern urban life and secure housing and jobs. The Urban League would later support A. Philip Randolph’s 1941 March on Washington and work directly with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) during the civil rights movement.
    • The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was a civil rights organization established by Black and White students in Chicago in 1942. CORE collaborated with other organizations to organize sit-ins, voter registration drives, and the Freedom Rides of 1961.
  • The SCLC was established in 1957. Under its first president, Martin Luther King, Jr., the SCLC coordinated the actions of churches and other local organizations to launch major protests, such as the Selma Voting Rights March (1965).
  • The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in 1960 when Ella Baker assisted students interested in the SCLC’s activism in founding their own organization after the students organized and staged the Greensboro sit-ins.
  • The main leaders of the civil rights movement were known as the “Big Six.” These leaders included Martin Luther King Jr. (SCLC), James Farmer (CORE), John Lewis (SNCC), and Roy Wilkins (NAACP), along with A. Philip Randolph (an activist in the labor movement and organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) and Whitney Young (National Urban League).
  • The major civil rights organizations unified African Americans with different experiences and perspectives through a common desire to eliminate racial discrimination and inequality. Together, these organizations launched a national movement built on the shared strategy of nonviolent, direct, and racially inclusive protest.
  • Local branches of the major civil rights organizations launched campaigns reliant on wide-ranging strategies, including marches, sit-ins, litigation, other forms of nonviolent civil disobedience, and the use of mass media.
  • Nonviolent forms of civil disobedience were often met with violence.
  • After the assassinations of Dr. King and members of CORE, some CORE and SNCC members began to lose faith in the effectiveness of nonviolent strategies. Some members and leaders transitioned away from their commitment to nonviolence toward separatist, Black nationalist principles.
  • African American and White civil rights activists partnered as Freedom Riders to protest segregation in the U.S. South. Black and White Freedom Riders traveled on the same interstate buses to challenge segregated transportation practices in the U.S. South. The violence used against the Freedom Riders to enforce segregation generated national attention.
  • The March on Washington was organized by Bayard Rustin and the Big Six leaders of the major civil rights organizations and an alliance with four White leaders from religious and labor organizations. The March on Washington in 1963 was a massive peaceful protest that drew over 250,000 participants. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech, calling for an end to discrimination and racism.
  • Bayard Rustin faced discrimination for being openly gay, but nonetheless was a significant advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. and leader of the civil rights movement. In addition to his work on the 1963 March, he was an organizer of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Pioneering lawyer Pauli Murray, despite being denied admission to Harvard Law School for being a woman, developed guidelines for desegregation that are widely cited as critical to the Brown v. Board of Education and other decisions.
  • The coordinated efforts of the civil rights movement resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, and religion.
  • The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory barriers in voting.