1. APUSH Out of Many, Chapter 28 “The Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1966 ” David A. Lawson, M. Ed. Faragher, et. al. Upper Saddle River, NJ ©2012

2. Origins of the Movement  Service during World War II – A million black soldiers, two million African American workers in the defense industry, 200,000 in the federal civil service, and over a million in unions.  African Americans were ready “to make the dream of America become flesh and blood, bread and butter, freedom and equality.” Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. of Harlem.  Truman supported civil rights through the Presidential Committee on Civil Rights (which produced the 1947 report To Secure These Rights), the desegregation of the military by executive order, and through a strong civil rights plank in the 1948 election. The Southern Democrats defected by forming the Dixiecrats, by Truman won with 70% of the northern black vote.

4. During World War II, NCAAP membership increased from 50,000 to 500,000. Court cases during the “separate but equal era” paved the way towards civil rights. Missouri v. ex. rel. Gaines (1939) said blacks had to be admitted to the U. of Missouri Law School or else they’d have to build another Morgan v. Virginia (1946) said that segregation on interstate buses was an “undue burden” on interstate commerce McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) said that segregation at the college level created a “badge of inferiority” Sweatt v. Painter (1950) said that the University of Texas had an inferior law school for African Americans and thus had to admit Herman Sweatt to the all-white school. Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas I (1954) ruled that segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal.” Thurgood Marshall was the NAACP lawyer and the Supreme Court led by Earl Warren outlawed segregation in a 9-0 decision. Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas II (1955) ruled that integration must be implemented “with all deliberate speed.”

9. The Brown v. Board decision was tested in Montgomery, Alabama with regards to their segregated bus system during 1955-1956 and in Little Rock, Arkansas, with regard to integrating Central High School in 1957. Both were triumphs for expanded civil rights. The Montgomery Improvement Association organized a yearlong boycott of the buses until the Supreme Court declared the system unconstitutional. It was at this time that Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King rose to prominence as leaders in the movement. Eisenhower called the National Guard to protect the Little Rock Nine students against Governor Orval Faubus and segregationists of Little Rock. Southern senators joined to sign the Southern Manifesto resolving to resist desegregation. Lyndon B. Johnson was one of three southern senators not to sign it. In 1960, the CORE idea of the sit-in protest began among students in Greensboro, NC, who insisted on being served at segregated lunch counters. The movement grew and spread to college communities nationwide.

13. No Easy Road to freedom, 1957- 1962  King co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 to harness the momentum of the MIA bus boycott for additional non-violent action.  In 1960, the CORE idea of the sit-in protest began among students in Greensboro, NC, who insisted on being served at segregated lunch counters. The movement grew and spread to college communities nationwide. The sit-ins led to nonviolent leadership by people such as Reverend James Lawson (who wanted a “Beloved Community” based on Christian/Gandhian ideals)and students like John Lewis, Diane Nash, Julian Bond, and others.  That same year Ella J. Baker founded a student group as an offshoot of the SCLC called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (usually called SNCC or “Snick”).

18. In the 1960 election, Kennedy won 70% of the black vote in spite of the strong Republican plank on civil rights. This was probably because African American voters had largely changed their allegiance to the Democrats since the New Deal, because Nixon minimized his identification with the movement, and because the Kennedy brothers helped get King out of jail in October 1960. The Kennedys were at first reserved in their support for the movement. JFK promised NAACP leader Roy Wilkins “minimum legislation, maximum executive action.” James Farmer and CORE began the Freedom Rides in 1961 to test the compliance of orders to ban segregation in bus terminals in the South. Their bus was firebombed in Anniston, Alabama (while local and federal authorities did nothing). In Montgomery, Alabama, the freedom riders were brutally beaten. Governor Patterson of Alabama, though under federal orders to protect the riders, did nothing. Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the Justice Department made the Interstate Commerce Commission issue clear rules regarding the ban on segregation. The Albany Movement of 1961-1962 largely failed because authorities like police chief Laurie Prichett jailed protestors nonviolently and boasted of their continued segregation. Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett attempted to keep James Meredith from enrolling at the U. of Mississippi, but JFK and RFK sent troops to open the school and to put down the mobs of angry whites.

23. The Movement at high tide, 1963- 1965  In 1963, the SCLC sought to bring an end to segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. African Americans formed 40% of the population, but only 12% of the registered voters. King and others planned to fill jails with protesters, boycott downtown businesses and enrage law enforcement Commissioner “Bull” Connor. The law used water cannons and German Shepherds to stop the protests, but the Justice Department got the city to end segregation.  JFK sent a civil rights bill to the Congress in June 1963, and the August March on Washington was held to pressure Congress to pass the bill.

28. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 put Lyndon Johnson in the White House. At the time Johnson assumed the presidency, the Civil Rights Bill was stalled in Congress. The president, eager to gain the support of liberals, used various methods to get Congress members and Senators to support the bill while working with various civil rights groups. The bill was passed in the House 290-130 and passed in the Senate over a Southern filibuster. Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964. The Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination in public and in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, among other measures. That summer, SNCC and CORE launched the Freedom Summer project in order to help black voters in Mississippi register to vote. African Americans compromised 42% of the state population but only 5% of the registered voters. They recruited 900 volunteers, mostly white college students. Three volunteers (Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney) were killed by local authorities and their bodies hidden in an earthen dam before discovery by the FBI. Other murders and beatings of volunteers occurred. Not only did the project help to register voters, but they also established schools.

32. In addition to the persecution of volunteers, other problems arose, including tension between SNCC members and white volunteers. Another problem was the denial of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (led by Fanny Lou Hamer) from sending delegates to the Democratic convention in Atlantic City in August 1964. Growing frustrated with nonviolent protest, electoral politics, and racist aggression, some SNCC members found themselves attracted to the methods encouraged by Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X. Unlike King’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance, Malcolm X encouraged African Americans to act in self-defense (but not to provoke hostilities) when abused. Although Malcolm eventually broke his association with the NOI (aka “The Black Muslims,” who later killed him in 1965), he helped black Americans to identify with their African roots to a far greater extent than King ever did. Two million more black Americans voted in the 1964 election than in the 1960 election, and 94% of them voted for Lyndon Johnson. But African Americans wanted further protection of their voting rights in the Deep South, which had been won by Johnson’s opponent, Barry Goldwater. The SCLC and SNCC targeted Selma, Alabama, for demonstrations in March 1965 because of their discriminatory voting policies.

36. Activists planned a march from Selma to Montgomery to give Governor George Wallace a list of grievances of treatment by authorities like Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark. Marchers were beaten, getting national attention, on “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965. A second march was planned, but federal courts attempted to stop the march. King suggested a compromise which alienated some of the SNCC activists and momentum stalled – until racist aggressors began attacking some white activists. On March 15, Johnson called for a Voting Rights Bill, and a week later, King led a march of 3,000 which grew to 30,000 without incident. The Voting Rights Act was passed in August. Black registered voters in Mississippi climbed from 7% to 59% by 1968, and throughout the South from 1 million to 3 million.

37. Forgotten minorities, 1945-65  Besides African Americans, other minority ethnic groups began to assert their long-denied rights in the years following World War II.  Latinos, Indians, Asian Americans, and women began efforts to increase their political, legal, and economic status.  Among Mexican-Americans, legal victories in Mendez v. Westminster (1947) and the Delgado case (1948) upholding lower court rulings ending segregation provided both legal and psychological boosts.  Nevertheless, the braceros program for migrant workers created situations in which workers moved into cities like Los Angeles and El Paso, and those who stayed illegally were subject to Eisenhower’s “Operation Wetback” which deported 3.7 million people. Legal Mexican immigrants had mixed feelings about this – their job opportunities were better, but those deported were part of la raza.  Puerto Ricans had been U.S. citizens by 1917, but they did not benefit from the sugar industry that America exploited. Consequently, many moved to the United States - in particular to East Harlem.

38. However, Puerto Rican citizens often moved back and forth depending on economic circumstances. They faced numerous challenges, among them being that they were discriminated against in spite of their citizenship, because many of them were black, and because the school systems did not serve Spanish speakers well. Indians found themselves subject to the government’s “termination” policy – the government’s refusal beginning in 1953 to acknowledge tribes at the prompting of mines and other businesses seeking Indian land. Assimilation, however, was a difficult adjustment. By the early 1960s, the National Congress of American Indians fought termination and the policy ended shortly thereafter. Court decisions helped tribes to retain their identities and cohesion. U.S. v. Wheeler (1978) recognized “unique and limited” sovereignty. Furthermore, Indians had difficulty uniting as a whole for rights and standing by their individual tribes. The National Indian Youth Council (founded in 1960) attempted to balance these contradictions. Nisei patriotism and the JACL in World War II helped to bring about the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, ending the ban on Japanese Americans and the ability of Issei to become American citizens. It wasn’t until 1965 that passed a new Immigration and Nationality Act that the annual number of Asian immigrants was allowed to increase from 100 to 20,000. By 1985, the Asian American population had increased from 1 million to 5 million.

40. Conclusion  The Civil Rights Movement, especially the decade between 1955-65, was perhaps the most important domestic trend in twentieth century American history.  However, after the Voting Rights Act and Immigration Act of 1965, many Africans began to doubt the efficacy of liberalism, white allies, and nonviolence while a conservative white backlash threatened to undo gains from the previous decade.  Martin Luther King described the shifting attitudes in 1967 when he said, “The promises of the Great Society have been shot down on the battlefields of Vietnam.”