1. Introduction & Background
Civil Rights
Introduction & Background

2. Introduction What are civil rights?
Where are they “guaranteed?”
Rights to full legal, economic, political & social equality by virtue of citizenship
Guaranteed in U.S. Constitution (including 13th & 14th Amendments) & acts of Congress (civil liberties, due process, equal protection, freedom from discrimination)
Does treating people equally mean treating them the same?
A man & woman apply for job as shoe sales person…
2 patients come to the doc with a headache. 1 has a brain tumor the other a headache..
2 students enter school with stairs to entrance. 1 is in a wheelchair…
2 students live in the same school district. They are the same age but different races…

3. History of Civil Rights
Colonial America
Early slavery
1800s
Abolition movement – End slavery (Frederick Douglass)
Civil War
Reconstruction
13th -
14th -
15th -
Late 1800s
Legalized racism in the South (Jim Crow laws)

4. Early Figures Booker T. Washington WEB DuBois
Blacks should work within the systems
Economic value
Ex. Tuskegee School
WEB DuBois
Founded NAACP
End racism, violence & segregation
Improve legal rights
*Used the courts to achieve change

5. Atlanta Compromise
“… No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is not at the bottom of life we must begin, & not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities… In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one hand in all things essential to mutual progress.”
- Booker T. Washington

6. Important Events Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 Great Depression
Upheld constitutionality of racial segregation
Railroads
“separate but equal” is OK
Great Depression
1930s: Blacks suffered as a group > voted for New Deal
Shift from voting for Republicans to Democrats
FDR: fails civil rights because he fears lack of support from whites

7. Early Civil Rights Victories
1940
NAACP Legal Defense Fund founded by Thurgood Marshall
1941
Ban against discrimination in defense industry (A. Phillip Randolph)
1942
Funding of CORE
1947
Integration of MLB with Jackie Robinson
1948
Truman desegregates military

8. Integrating Schools Brown v. Board of Education
Separate schools for blacks & whites violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection
Clear ruling but lack of enforcement or deadline

9. School Integration continued
Little Rock Nine
1957 Gov. Orval Faubus violated court order to integrate Arkansas
9 Black students harassed on 1st day of school
Eisenhower tried to talk to Gov. but Sept. 24th he announced on TV sending in federal troops

10. Little Rock Nine

11. Montgomery Bus Boycott
Bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama
Blacks made up 2/3 of all riders
Couldn’t sit in front rows, couldn’t share row with whites…
In 1955, Rosa Parks sat in the black section but when the white section filled, she refused to move > arrested

13. Boycott continued Boycott
NAACP called for 1-day boycott (90% of riders obliged)
Boycott led by Martin Luther King Jr.
Churches set up carpools (rolling churches) but whites denied insurance
*1956 Supreme Court ruled segregation on buses unconstitutional

15. Non-Violent Resistance
SCLC emerges
Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by MLK Jr.
Inspired by success of bus boycott
Committed to non-violence

16. Non-Violent Influence
Based on influence from Gandhi
CORE & SCLC used non-violence
Organizations set up training on how to resist & passive behavior
Led to the sit-in movement