2. Implementation of Jim Crow
• The struggle for civil rights began almost
immediately after the approval of the 13th
Amendment permanently abolished
slavery after the close of the Civil War.
• In the aftermath of the war and the
reconstruction of southern society that
followed, increasingly the south became
segregated along racial lines with the
federal government failing to guarantee
even the most basic civil rights to newly
freed slaves. To enforce this new system
of “Jim Crow” blacks were held in check
through fear, lawlessness and violence.
3. 1909: Booker T. Washington
• The reaction of blacks to this wide
spread system of segregation was
mixed. Blacks who protested were
often beaten and there homes and
churches destroyed. Many simply
accepted it because they had no
choice.
• Booker T Washington the most
celebrated black leader of his time
believed it best for blacks to forgo
there battle for civil and social rights
and instead focus on learning skills,
working hard and acquiring property.
4. 1909: NAACP is founded
• Many educated northern blacks
regarded Washington as too
accommodating and too
willing to surrender equal rights
• In 1909 W.E B Du Bois a
Harvard educated writer and
scholar, helped found the
NAACP, which emphasized the
use of legal strategies to end
discrimination.
5. 1948: President Truman
Signed Executive Order 9981
• The NAACP quickly established
itself in court battles as a vigorous
opponent of discrimination and its’
membership grew rapidly.
• In 1948 largely through the
attention drawn from the NAACP to
the heroic action of black soldiers
during world war II, president
Truman signed Executive Order "It is hereby declared to be the
9981. policy of the President that there
shall be equality of treatment and
opportunity for all persons in the
armed services without regard to
race, color, religion, or national
origin."
6. 1954
• On May17, 1954 The Supreme
Court in Brown Vs. Board of
Education of Topeka Kansas
overturns Plessey Vs. Vergeson the
1896 Supreme Court decision
which sanctioned “separate but
equal” unanimously agreeing that
segregation in schools is
unconstitutional
• It represented a major victory for
NAACP lawyer and future Supreme
Court Justice Thurgood Marshal
and paved the way for large scale
desegregation.
7. 1955: Rosa Parks
• On December 1st 1955 a 45-year-old seamstress
and NAACP member Rosa Parks refused to give
up her seat on a Montgomery Alabama bus. As
was true throughout the Deep South blacks were
supposed to give up their seats to whites and sit in
the back or stand.
• This brave action spawned a successful bus
boycott. For more then 10 months blacks in
Montgomery organized carpools rode black owned
taxis or simply walked to where they had to go.
• The leaders of the boycott then filed suit
challenging the constitutionality of bus segregation.
The boycott badly hurt Montgomery business and
their leaders were eager to see the dispute settled.
• Shortly before Christmas 1956 Dr. Martin Luther
King sat either white man at the front of the bus
8. 1957: The Little Rock Nine
• Three Years after Brown vs. Board of Education
some 700 school districts had desegregated mainly
in the border states. However, Schools in the deep
south were putting up strong resistance.
• In September 1957 school officials in Little Rock
Arkansas as a result of a high court order were
ready to desegregate Central High school. The
governor, Orval Faubus, tried to prevent it citing a
threat to public safety. On the first day of school
chanting crowds taunted the nine black students
later known as The Little Rock Nine” trying to enter
the school
• Television broadcast this public display of hate to the
nation. The country was appalled. President
Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National
Guard and sent in 1,100 U.S. Paratroopers to
protect the black students, exercising their legal right
to attend school. Governor Faubas then closed all
the Little Rock schools. It was until 1959 that Little
Rock schools were finally reopened and integrated.
9. 1960 Sit-Ins
• On February 1st 1960, in Greensboro North
Carolina, four black students from the North
Carolina Agricultural and Technical State
University sat down at the “whites-only’ lunch
counter at Woolworth’s department store.
• The students aware of the non-violent approach
used by Dr. Martin Luther King in Montgomery in
1957, were attempting to desegregate
Woolworth’s lunch counter. They sat all day but
were not served.
• The next day they returned with 23 classmates
and by the end of the week 1,000 students at
come to Greensboro to protest. Within two
months similar protests erupted in fifty four cities
in nine states
• Although they were attacked by the police and
often jailed they stuck to their non-violent
strategy and were successful in desegregating
several hundred lunch counters.
10. 1961 The Freedom Rides
• Over the spring and summer of 1961 The
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched “the
Freedom Rides” -bus trips through out the deep
south to test the supreme court order banning
segregation in intestate bus stations.
• They sought to shed light on the wide spread
violation of this law. At a stop in Alabama the
Freedom Riders were beaten with pipes, bicycle
chains and baseball bats. At other stops they were
mobbed and the tires of their busses slashed
• President Kennedy called for a cooling off at which
point James Farmer the head of CORE famously
lamented, “Blacks have been cooling off for 150
years. If we cool off any more we’ll be in a deep
freeze”.
• President Kennedy’s brother Attorney General
Robert Kennedy dispatched several hundred
federal marshals to stop the violence. At his urging
the Inter State Commerce Commission prohibited
the use of segregated facilities by interstate
carriers.
11. March on Birmingham
• 1963 was both tumultuous and
dramatic for the Civil Rights
Movement.
• In May of 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. confronted the rabid
segregationists of Birmingham
Alabama, with a protest march with
more then one thousand children.
• The police chief of Birmingham, Bill
Connor ordered torrential streams of
high-pressure water turned on them.
Americans were both shocked and
revolted to witness the televised
blasted of water, shock by electric
cattle prods and attack by dogs.
• Civil Rights demonstrations swept
throughout the south and added great
pressure through the Deep South to
desegregate.
12. 1963: “I Have A Dream Speech”
• On August 28th 1963 250,000
people including 50,000 whites
gathered on the Lincoln Memorial
to sing “We shall overcome” and
hear the Reverend Dr. Martin
Luther King Junior sermonize.
• The I Have a Dream” speech
represented a defining moment in
the fight for civil rights and called
for an end to racial inequality and
discrimination. Kings powerful
delivery had a tremendous
emotional effect on the people of
the nation, the world.
13. Civil Rights Act of 1964
• On July 2nd 1964, President Lyndon
B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, the most
comprehensive Civil Rights
Legislation since Reconstruction.
• The act outlawed racial
discrimination in public
accommodations such as
restaurants and hotels, empowered
the attorney general to bring legal
action against school segregation.,
strengthened voting rights and
barred discrimination in
employment on the basis race,
color, religion or national origin.
14. It’s Monumental Significance
• The struggle for civil rights demonstrates how in
a democratic society it is possible to initiate
societal change working within the framework
of the Democratic process.
• It tells us the story of how people with courage
and conviction and a common just cause
overcame powerful interests and formidable
obstacles.
• Through legal battles, non-violent protest and a
unified front it is possible to influence and
change the common perceptions of the
American public and in so doing enact change
through the American legislative process.
• A movement provoked by the injustice and
discrimination faced by American blacks
provides us all with inspiration: In the immortal
words of the Reverend Dr, Martin Luther King.:
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it
bends towards justice.
