Unit 22: Civil Rights Movement

• The Civil Rights movement aimed to make changes
• Rise of African American influence

  • Migration
  • 1921 Tulsa Race Riots/Massacre
  • New Deal
  • World War II
  • NAACP
  • Thurgood Marshall
  • Brown v. Board of Education
• Hidden Figures


  Three African-American women at NASA -- Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson -- serve as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit
• Hidden Figures


  • Women's rights, African American rights, cold war, space race
• Scenes from Hidden Figures

  • 1 (3:00), (39:00), 12 (47:40), 13 (50:35)
• Music in the Civil Rights movement

  Jazz, folk, R&B and gospel were used to help change America in the 1950s and 1960s
• Analyzing song lyrics


  1. Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit"

  2. The Impressions' "People Get Ready"

  3. Nina Simone's "I Wish I Knew (How It Would Feel to be Free)"

  4. Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come"
• Brown v. Board of Education


  1896 Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" doctrine was unconstitutional and could not be applied to public education
• Brown v. Board of Education

  1. Mamie Tape

  2. Oliver Brown sued Topeka, Kansas Board of Education in 1951

  3. Ruling May 17, 1954

  4. Supreme Court required desegregation of schools
• Reactions to Brown v. Board of Education

  • African Americans rejoiced
  • White Americans disagreed but accepted
  • Deep South: fear and angry resistance
  • KKK threatened people advocating acceptance
  • President Eisenhower privately disagreed
  • Southern Manifesto 90 members of Congress said Supreme Court overstepped bounds, violated states' rights, refused to comply with ruling
• Little Rock, Arkansas


  1. Fall 1957 Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus defied Brown decision of integration

  2. Arkansas National Guard troops stopped 9 African American students from attending Central High School in Little Rock

  3. President Eisenhower sent soldiers to protect the 9 students
• Montgomery Bus Boycott


  • 1955- Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, arrested for violating segregation laws
  • NAACP secretary Claudette Colvin
  • African Americans refused to use entire bus system until bus company agreed to change its segregation policy
  • Martin Luther King Jr. became spokesperson for protest movement
• Over the year, 50,000 did not use buses during the Montgomery Bus Boycott
• The bus company did not change its policy during the Montgomery Bus Boycott
• The Supreme Court ruled in 1956 that bus segregation was unconstitutional
• Leaders and strategies of the Civil Rights movement

  • NAACP
  • National Urban League
  • CORE
  • SCLC
  • SNCC
• NAACP


  • Interracial, appealed to educated middle and upper class black, W.E.B. Du Bois a founding member
  • Secure full legal equality for all Americans, remove voting barriers
  • Won legal battles in housing and education, Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968
• National Urban League


  • Assisted with economic issues, helped blacks moving out of south to find homes and jobs, fought for fair treatment at work
• CORE


  • Interracial, founded by pacifists, brought about change through peaceful confrontation
• SCLC


  • Martin Luther King Jr. founding member, advocated nonviolent protest, shifted focus of civil rights movement to the South
• SNCC


  • Robert Moses and John Lewis were influential leaders, gave young blacks (mostly students) to become actively involved in the civil rights movement, sought more immediate change
• Martin Luther King Jr.

  Leader in civil rights movement, symbol of nonviolent protest, influenced by Mohandas K. Gandhi
• SCLC headquarters was in Atlanta
• Sit-ins


  Protestors sit down at segregated lunch counter (or other public place) and refuse to move, performed by CORE and SNCC, forced business owners to decide between serving protestors and disruption/ loss of business, protestors often violently attacked or arrested, thousands of students involved after movement gained support of SCLC
• The Butler


  • The second day of the sit-in at the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth lunch counter, February 2, 1960. From left: Ronald Martin, Robert Patterson, and Mark Martin. The Greensboro protest sparked a wave of sit-ins across the South, mostly by college students, demanding an end to segregation in restaurants and other public places.
• Freedom Rides


  Interracial C.R. activists ride buses to test if southern states' enforce Supreme Court's ban of segregation on interstate buses, organized by CORE and SNCC (1961) (John Lewis one of original 13), sparked violence in Anniston, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi, national reaction led to federal marshals protecting the freedom riders
• Birmingham Marches


  MLK Jr. and C.R. activists nonviolently protest segregation in Birmingham, King thrown in jail, released, continued demonstration, police brutality: Police dogs, high-pressure fire hoses, beat fallen protestors and sent them to jail, television cameras record events, aired nationally, desegregation of city facilities/ fairer hiring practices
• March on Washington


  A. Philip Randolph led march of over 250,000 people to call for "jobs and freedom", famous celebrities in attendance, Martin Luther King: "I Have a Dream" speech, calls for racial equality and end of discrimination, put pressure to have bill passed by President Kennedy to advance civil rights
• John Lewis said "Dr. King had the power, the ability, and the capacity to transform those steps on the Lincoln Memorial into a monumental area that will forever be recognized. By speaking the way he did, he educated, he inspired, he informed not just the people there, but people throughout America and unborn generations."
• Southern terror


  • Emmett Till (1955, Mississippi)
  • George Wallace (1962)
  • 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (Birmingham, Alabama- September 15, 1963)
• The radical movement


  Many blacks unhappy with slow CR progress-economic and social discrimination still exists, deep divide within CR movement with emergence of more radical and militant political leaders
• Malcolm X


  Most famous radical and militant civil rights leader, joined The Nation of Islam, opposed integration, advocated black separation and self-help, violence when necessary
• Elijah Muhammad


  Leader of Nation of Islam who taught that Allah (God) would bring about a "Black Nation" unifying all nonwhite people, enemy = white society, be righteous, self-sufficient, and wait for Allah
• Black Nationalism


  A belief in the separate identity and racial unity of the African American community, idea spread by Malcolm X
• Malcolm X: '"No sane black man really wants integration! No sane white man really wants integration! …for the black man in America the only solution is complete separation from the white man."'
• Martin Luther King Jr.: '"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."'
• Malcolm X said "Dr. King wants the same thing I want. Freedom."
• Transformation of Malcolm X


  Most of life: resistance of integration, hatred of whites, left Nation of Islam, made religious journey to Mecca, the holy city of Islam, witnessed millions of Muslims of all races worshipping peacefully together, changed views: ready to work with other CR leaders and white Americans, murdered 9 months later by Nation of Islam members
• Black Power movement

  SNCC shifted to be more radical under Stokely Carmichael, tired of non-violent protest, called on SNCC workers to carry guns for self-defense, "black power" call for blacks to unite, recognize heritage, build community, define goals and lead own organizations
• Stokely Carmichael: '"This is the twenty-seventh time I have been arrested and I ain't going to jail no more!...The only way we gonna stop them white men from whippin' us is to take over. We been sayin freedom for six years—and we ain't got nothin'. What we gonna start saying now is 'black power!'"'