1. Changing Racial Attitudes from 1947 to 1978
Civil Rights Movement
Changing Racial Attitudes from 1947 to 1978

2. Civil Rights Movement: Late 1940s
Truman desegregated US military by executive order in 1946
Jackie Robinson, 1947

3. Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
NAACP Legal Defense fund sought out anti-segregation cases and brought them to federal court
Oliver Brown sued the Topeka, KS school board when his young daughter was forced to travel across town to attend a black school.
USSC declared school segregation unconstitutional

4. US Supreme Court and Desegregation
The federal courts, led by the USSC, were largely responsible for ending segregation in America.
The courts, and the justices who led the way were harshly criticized and even threatened.

5. Little Rock, Arkansas (1957)
9 black students were to be admitted to Little Rock Central HS
Gov. Orval Faubus called out National Guard to prevent their entry
Ike was forced to act.
Nationalized AR National Guard
Sent in federal troops to enforce desegregation

6. Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, AL city bus in Dec
She was arrested.
A boycott of Montgomery’s buses was organized by local civil rights leaders including. . .

7. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Just 27 at the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King quickly became the face of the black civil rights movement.
His charisma, eloquence, and political savvy made him popular and effective with both blacks and whites.

8. Early 1960s: Sit-ins
College students initiated the first anti-segregation sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC in 1960.

9. Early 1960s: Freedom Rides
During the summer of 1961, both black and white college students rode buses together through the South to protest segregated transportation facilities.
Attacks against the buses were common.
Organized by new pro-civil rights groups SNCC and CORE

10. Birmingham Violence, 1962
MLK’s SCLC targeted the fiercely-segregated city of Birmingham, Alabama for a series of peaceful demonstrations.
Birmingham’s police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor unleashed his forces on the protesters.
The brutality of the police shocked the nation.
JFK began to more actively support civil rights legislation.

11. Birmingham, 1962

12. March on Washington, 1963

13. Civil Rights Act of 1964
Banned discrimination/segregation in “all public accomodations”
Forbade job/hiring discrimination

14. Voting Rights Act of 1965
Allowed federal government to register voters
Black voting increased dramatically

15. Black Nationalism Nation of Islam Elijah Muhammad Malcolm X
Black Power Movement
Radicalization of SNCC (Stokely Carmichael)
Black Panthers

16. Assassination of MLK April 4, 1968
King was shot to death by a sniper on his motel balcony in Memphis, TN.
He was in Memphis promoting his anti-poverty campaign.

17. Riots 100+ killed in days of rioting in 1965 Watts Riot in LA
Massive rioting across the country in wake of MLK assassination, April 1968
Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission)
“two societies: one black, one white, separate and unequal”

18. Civil Rights in the 1970s School Busing Affirmative Action
de facto v. de jure segregation
Charlotte, NC
Boston (1974)
Affirmative Action
Bakke v. UC (1978)
USSC outlawed racial quotas
An Anti-busing rally at Boston’s City Hall Plaza turns violent on April 5, 1976

19. Civil Rights in the 1980s
The Reagan Administration continued the Nixon Administration’s policy of less “federal infringement upon states’ rights”
This meant more relaxed enforcement of civil rights laws.
Reagan, for example, directed the IRS to cease a ban on tax exemptions for private schools that discriminated against blacks.
Part of Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy”?

20. Civil Rights in the 1990s
The videotaped beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles police once again brought race relations to the forefront in America.
Police officers involved were acquitted by a white jury at trial.
Riots broke out in South Central Los Angeles in the wake of the 1992 verdict.
51 dead, 2000 injured, $1 billion+ property damage

21. The Murder of Medgar Evers June 1963
Byron De La Beckwith
Medgar Evers

22. Freedom Summer Mississippi, 1964
Three young civil rights workers, in MS to register black voters, were murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
The local police were accomplices to the crime.