The CR- Movement of the Sixties

Short Background on Segregation and civil Rights Plessy vs. Ferguson (the 1890s) ”separate but equal” in public schools, restaurants, public transportation, rest rooms etc. Discriminating Voter Legislation, registration to elections handled by state authorities. (Jim Crow)

Civil Rights Struggle in the South, what was it about Public School Integration Equal Access to Public Facilities Equitable voter registration

Schools, federal court cases “To separate students in grade and high school from others…solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority…that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone… we conclude that the doctrine of separate but unequal has no place in the system of public education”. Result: Abolition of the ”Separate but equal doctrine” Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka et al (1954), Little Rock, (1957), Follow- up Court Decision on e.g. busing programs.

Topeka and Little Rock

De-segregation of Public Facilities Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955) Lunch Counter Sit-Ins (1960) Freedom Rides (1961) Birmingham Demonstrations (1963) March on Washington (1963) Result: Civil Rights Act, 1965

Sit-ins

Voter registration Voter Registration Drives, Mississippi Summer Project (1964) Demonstrations and Marches incl. Selma to Montgomery March (1965) Result: Voting Rights Act (1965)

CR strategy in the South Legislative weapon. Direct Non-violent action ”The purpose of... direct action is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation”. Economic Weapon. The Church became a platform of the resistance. (Martin Luther King Jr., SCLC) Media played important role.

Problems by approx An increasingly obvious split in the African American Community. What was the struggle about? a.The right to participate on equal terms in American Society. b.The right to a separate African-American Culture. Non-violence put into question. The Political establishment responded to “the movement” wanted an end to the violence during the sit-ins and the freedom rides.

The North, a more radical movement By % of the black population in cities. 50% in the North. Labor Migrants. Poverty, social inequality remained. Despite new legislation, black ghettos in the North exploded a peak year. 83 dead that year.

Watts 1965, Detroit 1967

A Radicalized Black Movement Militant movements emanated from the Ghetto environment. Malcolm X, Nation of Islam. The Black Panther Party. A general radicalization of SNCC and CORE. Adopted the slogan ”Black Power”.

Three Continuations of the CR- movement

Black Panther 10 Point Program 1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. 2. We want full employment for our people. 3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man. 4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings. 5. We want education for our people We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society. 6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service. 7. We want an immediate end to police brutality. 8. We want freedom for all black men held in prisons and jails. 9. We want all black people to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities. 10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

Violence and FBI-operations Shootings in Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit involving BP members. Btw 1956 and 1971 the FBI concluded a massive counterintelligence program (known as COINTELPRO) that took 295 actions against black groups.

Interactions of Movements Robert Allen (Black Awakening in Capitalist America) Patricia Robinson (Poor Black Woman) “The poor black woman has begun to question the aggressive male domination and the class society which enforces it, capitalism”

Politics of Identity What would happen with Black identity in America? What would being American mean? Increased Black Militancy+ Black Power. White Ethnic Revival (Columbus Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Snooze Boulevard Festival).

WEB DuBois

Reasons Response to social and economic transformations. Response to deteriorating urban neighborhoods and feelings of powerlessness (among poor whites and blacks). Celebrate the group. Opposed the faceless anonymity that marked the mass consumption society. Oppose ethnic stereotyping (still quite common on Eastern europeans and Italians).

Voices from white ethnics during the late 1960s We became guinea Pigs for the experiments of the Liberal intellectuals and politicians. They bussed our kids… we begged for Law and Order and the liberals sneered and called us racist. We wanted to save and we got inflation. We´ve been used, manipulated and scorned. We are told we have to feel guilty. We´ve been poor all our lives and now we are being preached to by every son of a bitch who comes along. The ethnics are discovering they can´t trust the Mayflower boys.

Black power and ethnic revival, why? Black Power and ethnic activism sought to move beyond issues of individual rights and equality in order to address larger group needs and concerns. Group affiliation as a way to challenge liberal American individualism.