Module 15 lesson 3: Challenges and Changes in the Movement By: Aaron Le

African Americans Seek Greater Equality In the early 1960s civil rights groups were united in their calls for a newfound pride in black identity. They were also committed to changing the social and economic structures that will make people get out of a life of poverty. However, by 1965 the leading civil rights groups began to drift apart. Some younger leaders felt that the older leaders had made too many compromises. New leaders emerged as the movement turned its attention to the North, where African Americans still faced segregation but deeply entrenched and oppressive racial prejudice even though it is not legal. No governmental did anything to address the problems the black people were having.

Northern segregation The problems that African Americans in the North have was de facto segregation. Segregation not supported by laws practiced over and over again. De facto segregation can be harder to fight than de jure segregation, or segregation by law, because eliminating it requires changing the people itself rather than changing the laws. Activists in the 1960s would find it a lot more harder to convince whites to share economic and social power with African Americans than to convince them to share lunch counters and bus seats. Many southern state governments had resisted ending segregation, governments in all regions of the US often turned a blind eye to the problems of de facto segregation and inequality between the races.

More de facto segregation De facto segregation was increased after African Americans moved to cities in the north during/after World War II. This began a so called “white flight,” in which great numbers of whites moved out of large cities and move to the suburbs near the cities. By the mid 1960s most African Americans in the north lived in terrible slums in these cities, paying rent to landlords who never complied with housing and health ordinances. The schools for African American children grown terrible along with the neighborhoods they lived in. Unemployment rates were twice as high as those among whites.

White brutality and the response to it. In addition, many blacks were angry at the terrible treatment they received from the white police forces in the communities they live in. In 1966 King leaded a campaign in Chicago to end de facto segregation and create a so called “open city.” On July 10 he led an estimated 30,000 African Americans in a march to the City Hall. In late July, when King led demonstrators through a Chicago neighborhood, angry whites threw rocks and bottles at them. On August 5 hostile whites stoned King as he led 600 marchers. King left Chicago without accomplishing what he wanted to accomplish, yet he pledged to return to finish what he started.

Urban Violence Erupts In the mid-1960s racial clashes spread all around the country. In New York City in July 1964, one of the encounters between white police and African American teenagers ended with death of a 15-year-old student. This event made a six-day race riot in central Harlem a black neighborhood. On August 11, 1965, only five days after President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, one of the worst black riots in the nation’s history went through the streets of Watts, a predominantly African American neighborhood in Los Angeles. About thirty four people were killed. Hundreds of millions of dollars of property was destroyed. The next year, 1966, saw a lot more racial disturbances. And in 1967 alone, riots and violent clashes swept through more than 100 cities in all of the states.

Detroit riots One of the largest and most notorious riots of 1967 occurred in Detroit. On July 23 police raided an illegal saloon in one of Detroit’s largest African American neighborhoods. The arrest of 80+ occupants of the saloon caused crowds to gather. Eventually, tensions went overboard, and the crowds became violent. The violence continued many days, causing deaths of 43 people and millions of dollars of property damage. Some of the effects of the civil unrest lasted for many years to come.