II: Challenging Segregation

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II Challenging Segregation

• Events which pressured the federal government to
  end segregation and ensure voting

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A. The Sit-in Movement

1. Started in Greensboro, NC _at_ Woolworths lunch
   counter
2. Mostly college students
3. Ella Baker instrumental in coordinating efforts
   on a national scale

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4. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC)

1. Goals desegregation and voter registration in
   rural areas
2. Mississippi Burning

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5. Fannie Lou Hamer

• Jailed and beaten for urging AA to register to
  vote
• Helped form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic
  Party (MFDP)
• Goal?
• To allow more AA as delegates in the
  Democratic party

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B. Freedom Rides

• 1. Began with CORE organization
• 2. Goal
• Test desegregation ruling on interstate
  bus routes and terminals
• 3. JFK makes deal w/Gov
• a. no violence in Ms and
• b. Riders can be arrested

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Bus 2
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KKK at terminal
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4. Kennedy and Civil Rights

• Supporter of the CRM
• AG RFK help get MLK out of jail after
  demonstration
• c. Slow to respond once in office need
  Southern Democrats to help pass bills
• d. ICC to desegregated interstate buses and
  terminals

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James Meredith Ole Miss
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Violence in Birmingham, Ala.

• Need to get JFK to respond
• MLK most seg. city in the U.S.
• Bull Connor, Safety commissioner/mayor candidate
• Responds with harsh force
• Televised
• Kennedy finally acts w/ Civil Rights Acts of 1964

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Birmingham, AlabamaLetter from MLK

• I guess it is easy for those who have never felt
  the stinging darts of segregation to say, Wait.
  But when you have seen hate-filled policemen
  curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black
  brothers and sisterswhen you see the vast
  majority of your twenty million Negro brothers
  smothering in the air-tight cage of povertywhen
  you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old
  son askingDaddy, why do white people treat
  colored people so mean?then you will understand
  why we find it difficult to wait.

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964

• I say, segregation now! Segregation tomorrow!
  Segregation forever!
• - George Wallace, Gov. of Alabama, 1963
• Medgar EversNAACP, veteran, assassinated by de
  la Beckwith
• Pres. Kennedy orders Wallace to desegregate U of
  Ala

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C. March on WashingtonAugust 28, 1963

• goal to persuade congress to pass Kennedys
  civil rights bill
• Equal education for all/law suits by federal
  govt
• video
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vPbUtL_0vAJk

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Civil Rights Act of 1964

1. Passed while Pres. LB Johnson in office
2. Illegal to discriminate based on race, religion,
   national origin, and gender in employment and
   public facilities.
3. EEOC bans employment discrimination based on
   race, religion, gender, and national origin

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The Struggle for Voting Rights

• Selma Campaign (Alabama 1965)
• 50 of population were AA - Only 3 registered
  voters
• Voter-registration drive organized in hopes of
  violent response by whites so that Johnsons
  admin. would pass voting act.

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Bloody Sunday Alabama state troopers attack
civil-rights demonstrators outside Selma,
Alabama, on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.
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Voting Rights Act 1965

• Got rid of literacy test
• Agents of the Federal govt could register voters
• Registered African American voters tripled in the
  South
• in Selma 10-60/4 yrs.
• 4. Voting and discrimination addressed, now on
  to social and economic equality poverty issues