Old page wikitext, before the edit (old_wikitext) | '{{Redirect|American Civil Rights Movement|the earlier period|African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)}}
{{Redirect|Civil Rights Movement|the worldwide series of political movements|Movements for civil rights}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2015}}
{{Infobox civil conflict
| title = African-American Civil Rights Movement
| partof =
| image = File:Rustin Young Ryan Farmer Lewis.jpg
| caption = Four leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. From left: [[Bayard Rustin]], [[Andrew Young]], (N.Y. Cong. [[William Fitts Ryan|William Ryan]]), [[James L. Farmer, Jr.|James Farmer]], and [[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]] in 1965.
| date = 1954–68
| place = [[United States]], especially the [[Southern United States|South]]
| causes =
| goals = End of [[Jim Crow laws|racial segregation]]
| methods = [[nonviolence]], [[direct action]], [[voter registration]], [[boycott]], [[civil resistance]], [[civil disobedience]], [[community education]]
| status =
| result = [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|1964 Civil Rights Act]]<br />[[Voting Rights Act of 1965|1965 Voting Rights Act]]<br />[[Civil Rights Act of 1968|1968 Fair Housing Act]]
| side1 = '''[[African-Americans]]'''
*[[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People|NAACP]]
*[[Southern Christian Leadership Conference|SCLC]]
*[[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]]
*[[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|SNCC]]
*[[Black Panther Party|BPP]]
| side2 = {{flagicon|US}} '''[[United States federal government]]'''
| side3 = '''[[White supremacists]]'''
*[[Citizens' Councils]]
*[[Ku Klux Klan]]
*[[National Association of Realtors|National Association of Real Estate Boards]]<ref>[http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9951 Barbara J. Shircliffe "Review of Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development by Kevin Fox Gotham" Humanities and Social Science Online, November, 2004]</ref><ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=ywnaezNtrr0C&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=nareb,+segregation&source=bl&ots=ecGWsyQiWC&sig=_4i5GBCbh8duw59IvS6LEef75Gw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ugd-VOGBJKaCsQTVo4GQBQ&ved=0CFoQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=nareb%2C%20segregation&f=false Christopher Bonastia, Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government's Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs (Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 113-114]</ref>
| leadfigures1 = [[Ella Baker]]<br />[[James Bevel]]<br />[[James L. Farmer, Jr.|James Farmer]]<br />[[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]<br />[[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]]<br />[[Rosa Parks]]<br />[[Malcolm X]]<br />[[Medgar Evers]]
| leadfigures2 = [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]<br />[[John F. Kennedy]]<br />[[Lyndon B. Johnson]]<br /> [[Earl Warren]]
| leadfigures3 = [[Samuel Bowers]]<br />[[Jim Clark (sheriff)|Jim Clark]]<br />[[Bull Connor]]<br />[[James O. Eastland]]<br />[[George Wallace]]
| howmany1 =
| howmany2 =
| howmany3 =
| casualties1 =
| casualties2 =
| casualties3 =
| fatalities =
| injuries =
| arrests =
| detentions =
| charged =
| fined =
| casualties_label =
| notes =
}}
{{African American topics sidebar|right}}
The '''African-American Civil Rights Movement''' or '''1960s Civil Rights Movement''' encompasses [[social movement]]s in the United States whose goals were to end [[Jim Crow laws|racial segregation and discrimination]] against [[African American|black American]]s and to secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the [[Southern United States|South]].
The movement was characterized by major campaigns of [[civil resistance]]. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of [[Nonviolence|nonviolent]] protest and [[civil disobedience]] produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations that highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included [[boycott]]s such as the successful [[Montgomery Bus Boycott]] (1955–56) in Alabama; "[[sit-in]]s" such as the influential [[Greensboro sit-ins]] (1960) in North Carolina; [[Demonstration (people)|marches]], such as the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]] (1965) in Alabama; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities.
Noted legislative achievements during this phase of the civil rights movement were passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64">[http://finduslaw.com/civil_rights_act_of_1964_cra_title_vii_equal_employment_opportunities_42_us_code_chapter_21 Civil Rights Act of 1964]</ref> that banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations; the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]], that restored and protected voting rights; the [[Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965]], that dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and Germanic groups; and the [[Fair Housing Act of 1968]], that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and across the country young people were inspired to take action.
A wave of [[urban riots|inner city riots]] in black communities from 1964 through 1970 undercut support from the white community. The emergence of the [[Black Power]] movement, which lasted from about 1966 to 1975, challenged the established black leadership for its cooperative attitude and its nonviolence, and instead demanded political and economic self-sufficiency.
While most popular representations of the movement are centered on the leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., many scholars note that the movement was far too diverse to be credited to one person, organization, or strategy.<ref>[http://history.msu.edu/files/2010/04/Timothy-Tyson.pdf Timothy B. Tyson, "Robert F. Williams, 'Black Power,' and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle," ''Journal of American History'' 85, No. 2 (Sep., 1998): 540–570]</ref> Sociologist [[Doug McAdam]] has stated that, "in King's case, it would be inaccurate to say that he was the leader of the modern civil rights movement...but more importantly, there was no singular civil rights movement. The movement was, in fact, a coalition of thousands of local efforts nationwide, spanning several decades, hundreds of discrete groups, and all manner of strategies and tactics—legal, illegal, institutional, non-institutional, violent, non-violent. Without discounting King's importance, it would be sheer fiction to call him the leader of what was fundamentally an amorphous, fluid, dispersed movement."<ref>[http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/occupy-future/what-should-sustained-movement-look Doug McAdam "Occupy the Future:What Should a Sustained Movement Look Like?" ''Boston Review'', June 26, 2012]</ref>
==Background==
{{Refimprove section|date=April 2008}}
Following the [[American Civil War]], three constitutional amendments were passed, including the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]] that ended slavery; the [[14th Amendment to the United States Constitution|14th Amendment]] that gave African Americans citizenship, adding their total population of four million to the official population of southern states for Congressional apportionment; and the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|15th Amendment]] that gave African-American males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time). From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction Era]] trying to establish free labor and civil rights of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to insurgent movements such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]], whose members attacked black and white Republicans to maintain [[white supremacy]]. In 1871, President [[Ulysses S. Grant]], the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General [[Amos T. Akerman]], initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the [[Enforcement Acts]].<ref>
{{cite book|last1=Smith|first1=Jean Edward|title=Grant|date=2001|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=9780743217019|pages=244–247|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TssAXSdPTi4C&pg=PA544&dq=smith+Grant+enforcement+act+klansmen&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PH6gVN3FDISxogSbqoDQCA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=smith%20Grant%20enforcement%20act%20klansmen&f=false}}</ref>
Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act; by the early 1870s, other white supremacist groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage.<ref>{{cite web|last=Wormser|first=Richard|title=The Enforcement Acts (1870–71)|url=http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html|publisher=PBS: Jim Crow Stories|accessdate=May 12, 2012}}</ref>
After the [[United States presidential election, 1876|disputed election]] of 1876 resulted in the end of [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] and federal troops were withdrawn, whites in the South regained political control of the region's state legislatures by the end of the century, after having intimidated and violently attacked blacks during elections, and lost power during a biracial fusionist coalition of Populists and Republicans in the late century.
From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchise]] African Americans by creating barriers to voter registration; voting rolls were dramatically reduced as blacks were forced out of electoral politics. While progress was made in some areas, this status lasted in most southern states until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s to provide federal enforcement of constitutional voting rights. For more than 60 years, blacks in the South were not able to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.<ref>[http://baic.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-state.html Black-American Representatives and Senators by Congress, 1870–Present]—U.S. House of Representatives</ref> Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries.
During this period, the white-dominated [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] maintained political control of the South. Because whites controlled all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful voting block in Congress. The [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]]—the "party of Lincoln"—which had been the party that most blacks belonged to, shrank to insignificance as black voter registration was suppressed. Until 1965, the "[[solid South]]" was a one-party system under the Democrats. Outside a few areas (usually in remote Appalachia), the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Otis H Stephens, Jr|author2=John M Scheb, II|title=American Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=tFcwj2yrLcwC&pg=PA528|year=2007|publisher=Cengage Learning|page=528}}</ref> In 1901, President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] invited [[Booker T. Washington]] to dine at the White House, making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers." Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, this was resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics.<ref>{{cite book|author=Paul Finkelman, ed.|title=Encyclopedia of African American History|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=6gbQHxb_P0QC&pg=RA3-PA199|year=2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=199–200 of vol 4}}</ref>
During the same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white Democrats imposed racial [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] by law. Violence against blacks increased, with numerous [[lynchings]] through the turn of the century. The system of ''[[de jure]]'' state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged from the post-Reconstruction South became known as the "[[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]]" system. The [[United States Supreme Court]] upheld the constitutionality of those state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities in its 1896 decision [[Plessy v. Ferguson]] making [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] the law of the land. [[Racial segregation in the United States|Segregation]] remained intact into the mid-1950s, when many states began to gradually integrate their schools following the Supreme Court decision in [[Brown v. Board of Education]] that overturned [[Plessy v. Ferguson]]. The early 20th century is a period often referred to as the "[[nadir of American race relations]]". While problems and [[civil rights]] violations were most intense in the South, social discrimination and tensions affected African Americans in other regions, as well.<ref>C. Vann Woodward, ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow'', 3rd rev. ed. (Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 67–109.</ref> At the national level, the Southern bloc controlled important committees in Congress, defeated passage of laws against lynching, and exercised considerable power beyond the number of whites in the South.
Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period:
* [[Racial segregation]]. By law,<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/info/seglaws.htm Birmingham Segregation Laws] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains. Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.
* [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|Disenfranchisement]]. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more restrictive, essentially forcing black voters off the voting rolls. The number of African-American voters dropped dramatically, and they no longer were able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans and U.S. states such as Alabama disfranchised poor whites as well.
* [[Exploitation]]. Increased economic oppression of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination.
* Violence. Individual, police, paramilitary, organizational, and [[Mass racial violence in the United States|mob racial violence against blacks]] (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in California).
African Americans and other ethnic minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the [[African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)]]). The [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through [[litigation]], education, and [[lobbying]] efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' in 1954 when the Court rejected separate white and colored school systems and, by implication, overturned the "[[separate but equal]]" doctrine established in the ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' of 1896.
The integration of Southern public libraries involved many of the same characteristics seen in the larger Civil Rights Movement.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006">Fultz, M. (2006). Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation. Libraries & The Cultural Record, 41(3), 338–346.</ref> This includes sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006"/> For example, in 1963 in the city of [[Anniston, Alabama]], two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006"/> Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries were generally quicker than integration of other public institutions.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006" />
Black veterans of the military after both World Wars pressed for full civil rights and often led activist movements. In 1948 they gained integration in the military under President [[Harry Truman]], who issued an Executive Order to accomplish it. The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). From 1910 to 1970, African Americans sought better lives by migrating north and west out of the South. Nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]]. So many people migrated that the demographics of some previously black-majority states changed to white majority (in combination with other developments).
[[Housing segregation]] was a nationwide problem, persistent well outside the South. Although the federal government had become increasingly involved in mortgage lending and development in the 1930s and 40s, it did not reject the use of race-restrictive covenants until 1950.<ref>[http://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law Nikole Hannah-Jones "Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights" ProPublica, Oct. 28, 2012]</ref> Suburbanization was already connected with [[white flight]] by this time, a situation perpetuated by real estate agents' continuing [[Residential segregation|discrimination]]. In particular, from the 1930s to the 1960s the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor "''should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood.''"<ref>[http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/fairhousing/historical.html "How We Got Here: The Historical Roots of Housing Segregation" National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity]</ref>
Invigorated by the victory of ''Brown'' and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about [[desegregation]]. They were faced with "[[massive resistance]]" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and [[disfranchisement|voter suppression]]. In defiance, African American activists adopted a combined strategy of [[direct action]], [[nonviolence]], [[nonviolent resistance]], and many events described as [[civil disobedience]], giving rise to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of 1954–1968.
==Mass action replacing litigation==
The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation that had typified the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century broadened after ''Brown'' to a strategy that emphasized "direct action:" primarily boycotts, [[sit-in]]s, [[Freedom Rides]], marches and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. This mass action approach typified the movement from 1960 to 1968.
Churches, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges used by the NAACP and others.
In 1952, the [[Regional Council of Negro Leadership]] (RCNL), led by [[T. R. M. Howard]], a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter, organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned [[Tri-State Bank]] of [[Nashville]] which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the [[White Citizens' Councils]].<ref name="Beito and Beito">David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, ''Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power'', Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp.81. 99–100.</ref>
After Rosa Parks' arrest in December 1955, Jo Ann Gibson-Robinson of the Montgomery Women's Political Council seized the opportunity to put a long-considered Bus Boycott protest in motion. Late that night, she, two students, and John Cannon, chairman of the Business Department at Alabama State, mimeographed and distributed approximately 52,500 leaflets calling for a boycott of the buses.<ref>http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_robinson_jo_ann_1912_1992/ , retrieved February 1, 2015</ref><ref name="Robinson 1986">Robinson, Jo Ann & Garrow, David J. (forward by Coretta Scott King) The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (1986) ISBN 0-394-75623-1 Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press</ref>
The first day of the boycott having been successful, King and other civic and religious leaders created the [[Montgomery Improvement Association]]—so as to continue the [[Montgomery Bus Boycott]] The MIA managed to keep the boycott going for over a year until a federal court order required Montgomery to desegregate its buses. The success in Montgomery made its leader [[Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]] a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the highly successful [[Tallahassee, Florida]], boycott of 1956–57.<ref>[http://www.tallahassee.com/special/boycott/reader-smith.html "The Tallahassee Bus Boycott—Fifty Years Later]," ''The Tallahassee Democrat'', May 21, 2006</ref>
In 1957 Dr. King and Rev. [[Ralph Abernathy]], the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and Rev. [[T. J. Jemison]] of Baton Rouge; and other activists such as Rev. [[Fred Shuttlesworth]], [[Ella Baker]], [[A. Philip Randolph]], [[Bayard Rustin]] and [[Stanley Levison]], to form the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]]. The SCLC, with its headquarters in [[Atlanta]], Georgia, did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made non-violence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism.
In 1959, [[We Shall Overcome|Septima Clarke]], Bernice Robinson, and [[Esau Jenkins]], with the help of [[Myles Horton]]'s [[Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School]] in Tennessee, began the first Citizenship Schools in [[South Carolina]]'s [[Sea Islands]]. They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on [[Johns Island, South Carolina|Johns Island]]. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere.
==Key events==
{{Main|Timeline of the African-American civil rights movement}}
===''Brown v. Board of Education'', 1954===
{{Main|Brown v. Board of Education}}
In the Spring of 1951, black students in Virginia protested their unequal status in the state's segregated educational system. Students at [[R.R. Moton High School|Moton High School]] protested the overcrowded conditions and failing facility.<ref name="autogenerated55">Klarman, Michael J.,''Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights movement'' [electronic resource] : abridged edition of From Jim Crow to Civil Rights : The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007, p.55</ref> Some local leaders of the NAACP had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Jim Crow laws of school segregation. When the students did not budge, the NAACP joined their battle against school segregation. The NAACP proceeded with five cases challenging the school systems; these were later combined under what is known today as ''Brown v. Board of Education''.<ref name="autogenerated55"/>
[[File:Integration.jpg|thumb|250px|School integration, Barnard School, Washington, D.C., 1955]]
On May 17, 1954, the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] handed down its [[Judicial review|decision]] regarding the case called ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas'', in which the plaintiffs charged that the education of black children in separate public schools from their white counterparts was [[Constitutionality|unconstitutional]]. The Court stated that the
<blockquote>segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group.</blockquote>
The lawyers from the NAACP had to gather some plausible evidence in order to win the case of Brown vs. Education. Their way of addressing the issue of school segregation was to enumerate several arguments. One of them pertained to having an exposure to interracial contact in a school environment. It was said that it would, in turn, help to prevent children to live with the pressures that society exerts in regards to race. Therefore, having a better chance of living in democracy. In addition, another was in reference to the emphasis of how "'education' comprehends the entire process of developing and training the mental, physical and moral powers and capabilities of human beings".<ref>Risa L. Goluboff, ''The Lost Promise of Civil Rights'',Harvard University Press, MA:Cambridge,2007, p. 249–251</ref>
Risa Goluboff wrote that the NAACP's intention was to show the Court's that African American children were the victims of school segregation and their futures were at risk. The Court ruled that both ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" standard in general, and ''[[Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education]]'' (1899), which had applied that standard to schools, were unconstitutional.
The federal government filed a [[friend of the court brief]] in the case urging the judges to consider the effect that segregation had on America's image in the [[Cold War]]. Secretary of State [[Dean Acheson]] was quoted in the brief stating that ''"The United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country."
''<ref name="amphilsoc.org">[http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/480405.pdf Antonly Lester, "Brown v. Board of Education Overseas" PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY VOL. 148, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004]</ref><ref>[http://www.history.ucsb.edu/courses/tempdownload.php?attach_id=5781 Mary L Dudziak "Brown as a Cold War Case" ''Journal of American History'', June 2004]</ref>
''
The following year, in the case known as ''Brown II'', the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed".<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis54.htm#1954bvbe ''Brown v Board of Education'' Decision] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> ''[[Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas]]'' (1954) did not overturn ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (1896). ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' was segregation in transportation modes. ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' dealt with segregation in education. ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' did set in motion the future overturning of 'separate but equal'.
On May 18, 1954 [[Greensboro, North Carolina]] became the first city in the South to publicly announce that it would abide by the Supreme Court's ''Brown v. Board of Education'' ruling. "It is unthinkable,' remarked School Board Superintendent Benjamin Smith, 'that we will try to [override] the laws of the United States."<ref name="deseg"/> This positive reception for Brown, together with the appointment of African American Dr. David Jones to the school board in 1953, convinced numerous white and black citizens that Greensboro was heading in a progressive direction. Integration in Greensboro occurred rather peacefully compared to the process in Southern states such as Alabama, Arkansas, and Virginia where "[[massive resistance]]" was practiced by top officials and throughout the states. In Virginia, some counties closed their public schools rather than integrate, and many white Christian private schools were founded to accommodate students who used to go to public schools. Even in Greensboro, much local resistance to desegregation continued, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971.<ref name="deseg">[http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/topicalessays/schooldeseginteg.aspx Desegregation and Integration of Greensboro's Public Schools, 1954–1974]</ref>
Many Northern cities also had [[Racial segregation#United States of America|de facto segregation]] policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In [[Harlem (Manhattan)|Harlem]], New York for example, neither a single new school was built since the turn of the century, nor did a single nursery school exist – even as the [[Second Great Migration (African American)|Second Great Migration]] was causing overcrowding. Existing schools tended to be dilapidated and staffed with inexperienced teachers. ''Brown'' helped stimulate activism among New York City parents like [[Mae Mallory]] who, with support of the NAACP, initiated a successful lawsuit against the city and state on ''Brown'''s principles. Mallory and thousands of other parents bolstered the pressure of the lawsuit with a school boycott in 1959. During the boycott, some of the first [[freedom schools]] of the period were established. The city responded to the campaign by permitting more open transfers to high-quality, historically-white schools. (New York's African-American community, and Northern desegregation activists generally, now found themselves contending with the problem of [[white flight]], however.)<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=AkPnRoKK-XYC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=Inter+group+Committee+on+New+York%27s+Public+Schools,+mallory&source=bl&ots=32y_grSeLC&sig=ctJKYMbzX-n2-UoaAChbwAaAOyU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xcF9VPzAJ8vdsAT4oYGIBg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Inter%20group%20Committee%20on%20New%20York's%20Public%20Schools%2C%20mallory&f=false Melissa F. Weiner, Power, Protest, and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City (Rutgers University Press, 2010) p. 51-66]</ref><ref>[http://hisofblackamfall2014.voices.wooster.edu/files/2014/08/Adina_Back_Exposing_the_Whole_Segregation_Myth3.pdf Adina Back "Exposing the Whole Segregation Myth: The Harlem Nine and New York City Schools" in ''Freedom north: Black freedom struggles outside the South, 1940–1980'', Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, eds.(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 65-91]</ref>
===Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956===
{{Main|Rosa Parks|Montgomery Bus Boycott}}
On December 1, 1955, nine months after a 15-year-old high school student, [[Claudette Colvin]], refused to give up her seat on a public bus on Montgomery, Alabama to make room for a white passenger and was arrested, [[Rosa Parks]] (the "mother of the civil rights movement") did the same thing. Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the [[Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Center]] in Tennessee where nonviolent civil disobedience as a strategy had been discussed. Parks was arrested, tried, and convicted for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. After word of this incident reached the black community, 50 African-American leaders gathered and organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott to demand a bus system in which passengers would be treated equally.<ref name="ReferenceA">W. Chafe, ''The Unfinished Journey''</ref>
After the city rejected many of their suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by [[E.D. Nixon]], pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. In November 1956, a federal court ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated and the boycott ended.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
After the success of the original one-day bus boycott led by Jo Ann Robinson and the Montgomery Women's Political Council, black citizens decided to continue the boycott and established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], a Baptist minister, was elected President of this organization. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.<ref name="Robinson 1986"/>
===Desegregating Little Rock Central High School, 1957===
{{Main|Little Rock Nine}}
[[Image:101st Airborne at Little Rock Central High.jpg|thumb|275px|Troops from the [[327th Infantry Regiment|327th Regiment, 101st Airborne]] escorting the [[Little Rock Nine]] African-American students up the steps of Central High.]]
A crisis erupted in [[Little Rock, Arkansas]] when [[Governor of Arkansas]] [[Orval Faubus]] called out the [[National Guard of the United States|National Guard]] on September 4 to prevent entry to the [[Little Rock Nine|nine African-American students]] who had sued for the right to attend an integrated school, [[Little Rock Central High School]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis57.htm#1957lrsd The Little Rock Nine] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> The nine students had been chosen to attend Central High because of their excellent grades.
On the first day of school, only one of the nine students showed up because she did not receive the phone call about the danger of going to school. She was harassed by white protesters outside the school, and the police had to take her away in a patrol car to protect her. Afterward, the nine students had to carpool to school and be escorted by military personnel in [[jeep]]s.
Faubus was not a proclaimed segregationist. The Arkansas Democratic Party, which then controlled politics in the state, put significant pressure on Faubus after he had indicated he would investigate bringing Arkansas into compliance with the ''Brown'' decision. Faubus then took his stand against integration and against the Federal court ruling.
Faubus' resistance received the attention of President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], who was determined to enforce the orders of the Federal courts. Critics had charged he was lukewarm, at best, on the goal of desegregation of public schools. But, Eisenhower federalized the [[National Guard of the United States|National Guard]] in Arkansas and ordered them to return to their barracks. Eisenhower deployed elements of the [[101st Airborne Division]] to Little Rock to protect the students.
The students attended high school under harsh conditions. They had to pass through a gauntlet of spitting, jeering whites to arrive at school on their first day, and to put up with harassment from other students for the rest of the year. Although federal troops escorted the students between classes, the students were teased and even attacked by white students when the soldiers were not around. One of the Little Rock Nine, [[Minnijean Brown-Trickey|Minnijean Brown]], was suspended for spilling a bowl of chili on the head of a white student who was harassing her in the school lunch line. Later, she was expelled for verbally abusing a white female student.<ref>[http://www.america.gov/st/diversity-english/2007/August/20070824131706berehellek0.2049982.html Minnijean Brown Trickey, America.gov]</ref>
Only [[Ernest Green]] of the Little Rock Nine graduated from Central High School. After the 1957–58 school year was over, Little Rock closed its public school system completely rather than continue to integrate. Other school systems across the South followed suit.
===Robert F. Williams and the debate on nonviolence, 1959–1964===
The Jim Crow system employed "terror as a means of social control,"<ref>Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, How They Fail (Random House, 1977), 182</ref> with the most organized manifestations being the Ku Klux Klan and their collaborators in local police departments. This violence played a key role in blocking the progress of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s. Some black organizations in the South began practicing armed self-defense. The first to do so openly was the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP led by [[Robert F. Williams]]. Williams had rebuilt the chapter after its membership was terrorized out of public life by the Klan. He did so by encouraging a new, more working-class membership to arm itself thoroughly and defend against attack.<ref>[http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-1534.html Timothy B. Tyson, ''Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of "Black Power"'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 79–80]</ref> When Klan nightriders attacked the home of NAACP member Dr. Albert Perry in October 1957, Williams' militia exchanged gunfire with the stunned Klansmen, who quickly retreated. The following day, the city council held an emergency session and passed an ordinance banning KKK motorcades.<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 88–89</ref> One year later, Lumbee Indians in North Carolina would have a similarly successful armed stand-off with the Klan (known as the [[Battle of Hayes Pond]]) which resulted in KKK leader James W. "Catfish" Cole being convicted of incitement to riot.<ref>Nicholas Graham, [http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-postwar/6068 "January 1958: The Lumbees face the Klan"], This Month in North Carolina History</ref>
After the acquittal of several white men charged with sexually assaulting black women in Monroe, Williams announced to United Press International reporters that he would "meet violence with violence" as a policy. Williams' declaration was quoted on the front page of ''The New York Times'', and ''The Carolina Times'' considered it "the biggest civil rights story of 1959."<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 149</ref> NAACP National chairman Roy Wilkins immediately suspended Williams from his position, but the Monroe organizer won support from numerous NAACP chapters across the country. Ultimately, Wilkins resorted to bribing influential organizer Daisy Bates to campaign against Williams at the NAACP national convention and the suspension was upheld. The convention nonetheless passed a resolution which stated: "We do not deny, but reaffirm the right of individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults." <ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 159 -164</ref> Martin Luther King Jr. argued for Williams' removal,<ref>[http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_williams_robert_franklin_1925_1996/ "Williams, Robert Franklin" King Encyclopedia, eds. Tenisha Armstrong, et al, Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute website]</ref> but Ella Baker<ref>8. [http://books.google.com/books?id=SEfOhvXSvZsC&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=ella+baker,+robert+f.+williams&source=bl&ots=qled_pBnpu&sig=loieIqr_wSuO5JMte1unGYuD8n0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=COssUozSGuPE4AOkiICQDQ&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=ella%20baker%2C%20robert%20f.%20williams&f=false Barbara Ransby , ''Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision'' (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 213–216]</ref> and WEB Dubois<ref>[http://history.msu.edu/files/2010/04/Timothy-Tyson.pdf Timothy B. Tyson, "Robert F. Williams, 'Black Power,' and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle," Journal of American History 85, No. 2 (Sep., 1998): 540–570]</ref> both publicly praised the Monroe leader's position.
Robert F. Williams – along with his wife, Mabel Williams – continued to play a leadership role in the Monroe movement, and to some degree, in the national movement. The Williamses published ''The Crusader'', a nationally circulated newsletter, beginning in 1960, and the influential book [http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text6/williamsnegroeswithguns.pdf ''Negroes With Guns''] in 1962. Williams did not call for full militarization in this period, but "flexibility in the freedom struggle."<ref>"[http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/9353_BlackPowerMovemPt2.pdf The Black Power Movement, Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams" A Guide to the Microfilm Editions of the Black Studies Research Sources (University Publications of America)]</ref> Williams was well-versed in legal tactics and publicity, which he had used successfully in the internationally known "[[Kissing Case]]" of 1958, as well as nonviolent methods, which he used at [[lunch counter]] sit-ins in Monroe – all with armed self-defense as a complementary tactic.
Williams led the Monroe movement in another armed stand-off with white supremacists during an August 1961 Freedom Ride; he had been invited to participate in the campaign by [[Ella Baker]] and [[James Forman]] of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The incident (along with his campaigns for peace with Cuba) resulted in him being targeted by the FBI and prosecuted for kidnapping; he was cleared of all charges in 1976.<ref name="Tyson 1998">Tyson, Journal of American History (Sep. 1998)</ref> Meanwhile, armed self-defense continued discreetly in the Southern movement with such figures as SNCC's [[Amzie Moore]],<ref name="Tyson 1998"/> [[Hartman Turnbow]],<ref>[[Taylor Branch]], ''[[Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963]]'' (Simon and Schuster, 1988), 781</ref> and [[Fannie Lou Hamer]]<ref>Simon Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights (University of Florida Press, 2007), 121–122; Mike Marqusee, "By Any Means Necessary" The Nation, September 24, 2004 – http://www.thenation.com/article/any-means-necessary#</ref> all willing to use arms to defend their lives from nightrides. Taking refuge from the FBI in Cuba, the Willamses broadcast the radio show [[Radio Free Dixie]] throughout the eastern United States via Radio Progresso beginning in 1962. In this period, Williams advocated guerilla warfare against racist institutions, and saw the large ghetto riots of the era as a manifestation of his strategy.
University of North Carolina historian Walter Rucker has written that "the emergence of Robert F Williams contributed to the marked decline in anti-black racial violence in the US…After centuries of anti-black violence, African-Americans across the country began to defend their communities aggressively – employing overt force when necessary. This in turn evoked in whites real fear of black vengeance…" This opened up space for African-Americans to use nonviolent demonstration with less fear of deadly reprisal.<ref>Walter Rucker, "Crusader in Exile: Robert F. Williams and the International Struggle for Black Freedom in America" The Black Scholar 36, No. 2-3 (Summer-Fall 2006): 19–33. [http://www.academia.edu/223267/_Crusader_in_Exile_Robert_F._Williams_and_the_Internationalized_Struggle_for_Black_Freedom_in_America._2006_ URL]</ref> Of the many civil rights activists who share this view, the most prominent was Rosa Parks. Parks gave the eulogy at Williams' funeral in 1996, praising him for "his courage and for his commitment to freedom," and concluding that "The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten."<ref>Timothy B. Tyson, [http://investigatinghistory.ashp.cuny.edu/m11d.html "Robert Franklin Williams: A Warrior For Freedom, 1925–1996"], Investigating U.S. History (City University of New York)</ref>
===Sit-ins, 1958–1960===
{{See also|Greensboro sit-ins|Nashville sit-ins}}
In July 1958, the [[NAACP Youth Council]] sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a [[Dockum Drug Store sit-in|Dockum Drug Store]] in downtown [[Wichita, Kansas]]. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated. This movement was quickly followed in the same year by a student sit-in at a Katz Drug Store in [[Oklahoma City]] led by [[Clara Luper]], which also was successful.<ref>[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6355095 "Kansas Sit-In Gets Its Due at Last"]; NPR; October 21, 2006</ref>
Mostly black students from area colleges led a sit-in at a [[F. W. Woolworth Company|Woolworth]]'s store in [[Greensboro, North Carolina]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960greensboro First Southern Sit-in, Greensboro NC] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> On February 1, 1960, four students, [[Ezell A. Blair, Jr.]], David Richmond, [[Joseph McNeil]], and [[Franklin McCain]] from [[North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University|North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College]], an all-black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans from being served there.<ref name="chafe">{{Cite book
|last=Chafe
|first=William Henry
|title=Civilities and civil rights : Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black struggle for freedom
|publisher=Oxford University Press
|year=1980
|location=New York
|page=81
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=EP7sduWSTkYC
|doi=
|id=
|isbn=0-19-502625-X }}</ref> The four students purchased small items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served. After being denied service, they produced their receipts and asked why their money was good everywhere else at the store, but not at the lunch counter.<ref>[http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/topicalessays/busdesegsitins.aspx Greensboro Sit-Ins at Woolworth's, February–July 1960]</ref>
The protesters had been encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in. The Greensboro sit-in was quickly followed by other sit-ins in [[Richmond, Virginia]];<ref>[http://southernspaces.org/2008/rising ''Southern Spaces'']</ref> [[Nashville, Tennessee]]; and [[Atlanta|Atlanta, Georgia]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960atlanta Atlanta Sit-ins] – Civil Rights Veterans</ref><ref name="Atlanta Sit-Ins">[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3615 "Atlanta Sit-Ins"], ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia''</ref> The most immediately effective of these was in Nashville, where hundreds of well organized and highly disciplined college students [[Nashville sit-ins|conducted sit-ins]] in coordination with a boycott campaign.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Nashville Way: Racial Etiquette and the Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City|first=Benjamin|last=Houston|year=2012|location=Athens, Georgia|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=0-8203-4326-9}}</ref><ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960nsm Nashville Student Movement] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
As students across the south began to "sit-in" at the lunch counters of local stores, police and other officials sometimes used brute force to physically escort the demonstrators from the lunch facilities.
The "sit-in" technique was not new—as far back as 1939, African-American attorney [[Samuel Wilbert Tucker]] organized a sit-in at the then-segregated [[Alexandria, Virginia]] library.<ref>{{cite web
|title=America's First Sit-Down Strike: The 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In
|url=http://oha.alexandriava.gov/bhrc/lessons/bh-lesson2_reading2.html
|publisher=City of Alexandria
|accessdate=2010-02-11
}}</ref> In 1960 the technique succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement.<ref name="davis">{{Cite book
|last=Davis
|first=Townsend
|title=Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement
|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company
|year=1998
|location=New York
|page=311
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=S7IYlI9KopkC
|doi=
|id=
|isbn=0-393-04592-7 }}</ref>
On March 9, 1960 an [[Atlanta University Center]] group of students released [[An Appeal for Human Rights]]<ref>[http://www.atlantastudentmovement.org/An_Appeal_for_Human_Rights.html An Appeal for Human Rights] – Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR)</ref> as a full page advertisement in newspapers, including the ''Atlanta Constitution'', ''Atlanta Journal'', and ''Atlanta Daily World''.<ref>[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3615 Atlanta Sit-Ins]</ref> Known as the [[Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights]] (COAHR), the group initiated the [[Atlanta Student Movement]]<ref>[http://www.atlantastudentmovement.org The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR) and the Atlanta Student Movement] – The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights and the Atlanta Student Movement</ref> and began to lead sit-ins starting on March 15, 1960.<ref name="Atlanta Sit-Ins"/><ref>[http://www.atlantahighered.org/civilrights/essay_detail.asp?phase=3 Students Begin to Lead] – The New Georgia Encyclopedia—Atlanta Sit-Ins</ref> By the end of 1960, the proces of sit-ins had spread to every southern and [[Border states (American Civil War)|border state]], and even to facilities in [[Nevada]], [[Illinois]], and [[Ohio]] that discriminated against blacks.
Demonstrators focused not only on lunch counters but also on parks, beaches, libraries, theaters, museums, and other public facilities. In April 1960 activists who had led these sit-ins were invited by SCLC activist [[Ella Baker]] to hold a conference at [[Shaw University]], a [[historically black university]] in Raleigh, North Carolina. This conference led to the formation of the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC).<ref name="carson">{{Cite book
|last=Carson
|first=Clayborne
|title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
|publisher=Harvard University Press
|year=1981
|location=Cambridge
|page=311
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Fm9v7KKj_UQC
|doi=
|id=
|isbn=0-674-44727-1 }}</ref> SNCC took these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further, and organized the freedom rides. As the constitution protected interstate commerce, they decided to challenge segregation on interstate buses and in public bus facilities by putting interracial teams on them, to travel from the North through the segregated South.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960sncc Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Founded] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
===Freedom Rides, 1961===
{{Main|Freedom Rider}}
Freedom Rides were journeys by Civil Rights activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision ''[[Boynton v. Virginia]],'' (1960) 364 U.S., which ruled that segregation was unconstitutional for passengers engaged in interstate travel. Organized by [[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]], the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.<ref name="Freedom Rides">[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961frides Freedom Rides] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
During the first and subsequent Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the [[Deep South]] to integrate seating patterns on buses and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains. That proved to be a dangerous mission. In [[Anniston, Alabama]], one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives.<ref name="Arsenault">{{cite book | last = Arsenault | first = Raymond | title = Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice | publisher = Oxford Press | year = 2006}}</ref>
In [[Birmingham, Alabama]], an [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner [[Eugene "Bull" Connor]] gave [[Ku Klux Klan]] members fifteen minutes to attack an incoming group of freedom riders before having police "protect" them. The riders were severely beaten "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them." [[James Peck (pacifist)|James Peck]], a white activist, was beaten so badly that he required fifty stitches to his head.<ref name="Arsenault"/>
In a similar occurrence in Montgomery, Alabama, the Freedom Riders followed in the footsteps of Rosa Parks and rode an integrated Greyhound bus from Birmingham. Although they were protesting interstate bus segregation in peace, they were met with violence in Montgomery as a large, white mob attacked them for their activism. They caused an enormous, 2-hour long riot which resulted in 22 injuries, five of whom were hospitalized.<ref>Black Protest (1961)</ref>
Mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham temporarily halted the rides. SNCC activists from Nashville brought in new riders to continue the journey from Birmingham to New Orleans. In [[Montgomery, Alabama]], at the [[Greyhound Bus Station (Montgomery, Alabama)|Greyhound Bus Station]], a mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking [[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]] unconscious with a crate and smashing ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' photographer [[Don Urbrock]] in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded [[James Zwerg]], a white student from [[Fisk University]], and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.<ref name="Arsenault" />
On May 24, 1961, the freedom riders continued their rides into [[Jackson, Mississippi]], where they were arrested for "breaching the peace" by using "white only" facilities. New freedom rides were organized by many different organizations and continued to flow into the South. As riders arrived in Jackson, they were arrested. By the end of summer, more than 300 had been jailed in Mississippi.<ref name="Freedom Rides"/>
:"...When the weary Riders arrive in Jackson and attempt to use 'white only' restrooms and lunch counters they are immediately arrested for Breach of Peace and Refusal to Obey an Officer. Says Mississippi Governor [[Ross Barnett]] in defense of segregation: 'The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him.' From lockup, the Riders announce 'Jail No Bail' — they will not pay fines for unconstitutional arrests and illegal convictions — and by staying in jail they keep the issue alive. Each prisoner will remain in jail for 39 days, the maximum time they can serve without loosing{{sic}} their right to appeal the unconstitutionality of their arrests, trials, and convictions. After 39 days, they file an appeal and post bond..."<ref name=westwind>{{cite web|last=Hartford|first=Bruce Hartford|title=Arrests in Jackson MS|url=http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961frpoints|work=The Civil Rights Movement Veterans website|publisher=Westwind Writers Inc.|accessdate=October 21, 2011}}</ref>
The jailed freedom riders were treated harshly, crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100-degree heat. Others were transferred to the [[Mississippi State Penitentiary]] at Parchman, where they were treated to harsh conditions. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe.
Public sympathy and support for the freedom riders led [[John F. Kennedy]]'s administration to order the [[Interstate Commerce Commission]] (ICC) to issue a new desegregation order. When the new ICC rule took effect on November 1, 1961, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they chose on the bus; "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals; separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and lunch counters began serving people regardless of skin color.
The student movement involved such celebrated figures as John Lewis, a single-minded activist; [[James Lawson (American activist)|James Lawson]], the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; [[Diane Nash]], an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; [[Robert Parris Moses|Bob Moses]], pioneer of voting registration in Mississippi; and [[James Bevel]], a fiery preacher and charismatic organizer and facilitator. Other prominent student activists included [[Charles McDew]], [[Bernard Lafayette]], [[Charles Jones (activist)|Charles Jones]], [[Lonnie C. King, Jr.|Lonnie King]], [[Julian Bond]], [[Hosea Williams]], and [[Stokely Carmichael]].
===Voter registration organizing===
After the Freedom Rides, local black leaders in Mississippi such as [[Amzie Moore]], [[Aaron Henry]], [[Medgar Evers]], and others asked SNCC to help register black voters and to build community organizations that could win a share of political power in the state. Since Mississippi ratified its new constitution in 1890 with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests, it made registration more complicated and stripped blacks from voter rolls and voting. In addition, violence at the time of elections had earlier suppressed black voting.
By the mid-20th century, preventing blacks from voting had become an essential part of the culture of white supremacy. In the fall of 1961, SNCC organizer [[Robert Parris Moses|Robert Moses]] began the first voter registration project in [[McComb, Mississippi|McComb]] and the surrounding counties in the Southwest corner of the state. Their efforts were met with violent repression from state and local lawmen, the [[White Citizens' Council]], and the [[Ku Klux Klan]]. Activists were beaten, there were hundreds of arrests of local citizens, and the voting activist Herbert Lee was murdered.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961mccomb Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb MS] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
White opposition to black voter registration was so intense in Mississippi that Freedom Movement activists concluded that all of the state's civil rights organizations had to unite in a coordinated effort to have any chance of success. In February 1962, representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP formed the [[Council of Federated Organizations]] (COFO). At a subsequent meeting in August, SCLC became part of COFO.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962cofo Council of Federated Organizations Formed in Mississippi] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
In the Spring of 1962, with funds from the [[Voter Education Project]], SNCC/COFO began voter registration organizing in the Mississippi Delta area around [[Greenwood, Mississippi|Greenwood]], and the areas surrounding [[Hattiesburg, Mississippi|Hattiesburg]], [[Laurel, Mississippi|Laurel]], and [[Holly Springs, Mississippi|Holly Springs]]. As in McComb, their efforts were met with fierce opposition—arrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. Registrars used the [[literacy test]] to keep blacks off the voting roles by creating standards that even highly educated people could not meet. In addition, employers fired blacks who tried to register, and landlords evicted them from their rental homes.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962greenwood Mississippi Voter Registration—Greenwood] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> Despite these actions, over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state.
Similar voter registration campaigns—with similar responses—were begun by SNCC, CORE, and SCLC in [[Louisiana]], [[Alabama]], southwest [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], and [[South Carolina]]. By 1963, voter registration campaigns in the South were as integral to the Freedom Movement as desegregation efforts. After passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64"/> protecting and facilitating voter registration despite state barriers became the main effort of the movement. It resulted in passage of the [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965, which had provisions to enforce the constitutional right to vote for all citizens.
===Integration of Mississippi universities, 1956–65===
{{Weasel|section|date=May 2010}}
[[Image:James Meredith OleMiss.jpg|thumb|275px|James Meredith walking to class accompanied by U.S. marshals.]]
Beginning in 1956, [[Clyde Kennard]], a black Korean War-veteran, wanted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now the [[University of Southern Mississippi]]) under the GI Bill at [[Hattiesburg]]. Dr. [[William David McCain]], the college president, used the [[Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission]], in order to prevent his enrollment by appealing to local black leaders and the segregationist state political establishment.
The state-funded organization tried to counter the civil rights movement by positively portraying segregationist policies. More significantly, it collected data on activists, harassed them legally, and used economic boycotts against them by threatening their jobs (or causing them to lose their jobs) to try to suppress their work.
Kennard was twice arrested on trumped-up charges, and eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in the state prison.<ref name="Kennard"/> After three years at [[hard labor]], Kennard was paroled by Mississippi Governor [[Ross Barnett]]. Journalists had investigated his case and publicized the state's mistreatment of his [[colon cancer]].<ref name="Kennard"/>
McCain's role in Kennard's arrests and convictions is unknown.<ref name="Funding">William H. Tucker, ''The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund,'' University of Illinois Press (May 30, 2007), pp 165–66.</ref><ref name="Confederacy">'''Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction''', Edited by Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, Edward H. Sebesta, University of Texas Press (2008) pp. 284–85</ref><ref name="report">{{cite web|url=http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=135 |title=A House Divided | |publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center |date= |accessdate=2010-10-30| archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20101028143514/http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=135| archivedate= October 28, 2010 | deadurl= no}}</ref><ref name="Evers">Jennie Brown, ''Medgar Evers'', Holloway House Publishing, 1994, pp. 128–132</ref> While trying to prevent Kennard's enrollment, McCain made a speech in Chicago, with his travel sponsored by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. He described the blacks' seeking to desegregate Southern schools as "imports" from the North. (Kennard was a native and resident of Hattiesburg.) McCain said:
<blockquote>We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregated]] society. ... In all fairness, I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting ... The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man's hands.<ref name="Funding" /><ref name="report" /><ref name="Evers" /></blockquote>
Note: Mississippi had passed a new constitution in 1890 that effectively [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchised]] most blacks by changing electoral and voter registration requirements; although it deprived them of constitutional rights authorized under post-Civil War amendments, it survived [[US Supreme Court]] challenges at the time. It was not until after passage of the 1965 [[Voting Rights Act]] that most blacks in Mississippi and other southern states gained federal protection to enforce the constitutional right of citizens to vote.
[[File:US Marshals at Ole Miss October 1962 cph.3c35522.jpg|thumb|US Army trucks loaded with US Marshals on the University of Mississippi campus.]]
In September 1962, [[James Meredith]] won a lawsuit to secure admission to the previously segregated [[University of Mississippi]]. He attempted to enter campus on September 20, on September 25, and again on September 26. He was blocked by Mississippi [[List of Governors of Mississippi|Governor]] [[Ross Barnett]], who said, "[N]o school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor." The [[Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals]] held Barnett and Lieutenant Governor [[Paul B. Johnson, Jr.]] in [[Contempt of court|contempt]], ordering them arrested and fined more than $10,000 for each day they refused to allow Meredith to enroll.<ref>''[[United States v. Barnett]]'', {{ussc|376|681|1964}}</ref>
Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]] sent in a force of [[United States Marshals Service|U.S. Marshals]]. On September 30, 1962, Meredith entered the campus under their escort. Students and other whites began rioting that evening, throwing rocks and firing on the U.S. Marshals guarding Meredith at Lyceum Hall. Two people, including a French journalist, were killed; 28 marshals suffered gunshot wounds; and 160 others were injured. President [[John F. Kennedy]] sent regular [[US Army]] forces to the campus to quell the riot. Meredith began classes the day after the troops arrived.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962olmiss "James Meredith Integrates Ole Miss"], Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
Kennard and other activists continued to work on public university desegregation. In 1965 [[Raylawni Branch]] and [[Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong]] became the first African-American students to attend the [[University of Southern Mississippi]]. By that time, McCain helped ensure they had a peaceful entry.<ref name="sketch">[http://www.lib.usm.edu/~archives/m393.htm?m393text.htm~mainFrameBiographical/Historical ], University of Southern Mississippi Library {{dead link|date=October 2010}}</ref> In 2006, Judge Robert Helfrich ruled that Kennard was factually innocent of all charges for which he had been convicted in the 1950s.<ref name="Kennard">[http://www6.district125.k12.il.us/~bbradfor/kennardmission.html "Carrying the burden: the story of Clyde Kennard"], District 125, Mississippi, Retrieved November 5, 2007</ref>
===Albany Movement, 1961–62===
{{Main|Albany Movement}}
The SCLC, which had been criticized by some student activists for its failure to participate more fully in the freedom rides, committed much of its prestige and resources to a desegregation campaign in [[Albany, Georgia]], in November 1961. King, who had been criticized personally by some SNCC activists for his distance from the dangers that local organizers faced—and given the derisive nickname "De Lawd" as a result—intervened personally to assist the campaign led by both SNCC organizers and local leaders.
The campaign was a failure because of the canny tactics of Laurie Pritchett, the local police chief, and divisions within the black community. The goals may not have been specific enough. Pritchett contained the marchers without violent attacks on demonstrators that inflamed national opinion. He also arranged for arrested demonstrators to be taken to jails in surrounding communities, allowing plenty of room to remain in his jail. Prichett also foresaw King's presence as a danger and forced his release to avoid King's rallying the black community. King left in 1962 without having achieved any dramatic victories. The local movement, however, continued the struggle, and it obtained significant gains in the next few years.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961albany Albany GA, Movement] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
===Birmingham Campaign, 1963===
{{Main|Birmingham Campaign|Birmingham riot of 1963}}
[[Image:Wallace at University of Alabama edit2.jpg|thumb|right|275px|Alabama governor [[George Wallace]] stands against desegregation at the [[University of Alabama]] and is confronted by US Deputy Attorney General [[Nicholas Katzenbach]] in 1963.]]
The Albany movement was shown to be an important education for the SCLC, however, when it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. Executive Director [[Wyatt Tee Walker]] carefully planned the early strategy and tactics for the campaign. It focused on one goal—the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants, rather than total desegregation, as in Albany.
The movement's efforts were helped by the brutal response of local authorities, in particular [[Bull Connor|Eugene "Bull" Connor]], the Commissioner of Public Safety. He had long held much political power, but had lost a recent election for mayor to a less rabidly segregationist candidate. Refusing to accept the new mayor's authority, Connor intended to stay in office.
The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins, kneel-ins at local churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a drive to register voters. The city, however, obtained an [[injunction]] barring all such protests. Convinced that the order was unconstitutional, the campaign defied it and prepared for [[mass arrest]]s of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963bham The Birmingham Campaign] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
While in jail, King wrote his famous "[[Letter from Birmingham Jail]]"<ref>[http://www.stanford.edu/group/King//popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf Letter from a Birmingham Jail] ~ King Research & Education Institute at Stanford Univ.</ref> on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement.<ref>Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) ''Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail".'' Baton Rouge: LSU Press. ISBN 0-8071-2655-1</ref> Supporters appealed to the Kennedy administration, which intervened to obtain King's release. King was allowed to call his wife, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child, and was released early on April 19.
The campaign, however, faltered as it ran out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. [[James Bevel]], SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, then came up with a bold and controversial alternative: to train high school students to take part in the demonstrations. As a result, in what would be called the [[Children's Crusade (civil rights)|Children's Crusade]], more than one thousand students skipped school on May 2 to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church to join the demonstrations. More than six hundred marched out of the church fifty at a time in an attempt to walk to City Hall to speak to Birmingham's mayor about segregation. They were arrested and put into jail.
In this first encounter the police acted with restraint. On the next day, however, another one thousand students gathered at the church. When Bevel started them marching fifty at a time, Bull Connor finally unleashed police dogs on them and then turned the city's fire hoses water streams on the children. National television networks broadcast the scenes of the dogs attacking demonstrators and the water from the fire hoses knocking down the schoolchildren.
[[Image:Congress of Racial Equality and members of the All Souls Church, Unitarian march in memory of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing victims.jpg|thumb|260px|[[Congress of Racial Equality]] march in Washington DC on September 22, 1963 in memory of the children killed in the Birmingham bombings.]]
Widespread public outrage led the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully in negotiations between the white business community and the SCLC. On May 10, the parties announced an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown, to create a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, to arrange for the release of jailed protesters, and to establish regular means of communication between black and white leaders.
Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement— the Rev. [[Fred Shuttlesworth]] was particularly critical, since he was skeptical about the good faith of Birmingham's power structure from his experience in dealing with them. Parts of the white community reacted violently. They [[Gaston Motel bombing|bombed]] the [[Arthur George Gaston|Gaston]] Motel, which housed the SCLC's unofficial headquarters, and the home of King's brother, the Reverend A. D. King. In response, [[Birmingham crisis|thousands of blacks rioted]], burning numerous buildings and stabbing a police officer.<ref>[http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9605/15/ Freedom-Now" ''Time'', May 17, 1963]; Glenn T. Eskew, ''But for Birmingham: The Local and National Struggles in the Civil Rights Movement'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 301.</ref>
Kennedy prepared to federalize the [[Alabama National Guard]] if the need arose. Four months later, on September 15, a conspiracy of Ku Klux Klan members [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing|bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church]] in Birmingham, killing four young girls.
==="Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's Response, 1963===
{{Main|Gloria Richardson|Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|Civil Rights Address}}
Birmingham was only one of over a hundred cities rocked by chaotic protest that spring and summer, some of them in the North. During the March on Washington, Martin Luther King would refer to such protests as "the whirlwinds of revolt." In Chicago, blacks rioted through the South Side in late May after a white police officer shot a fourteen year old black boy who was fleeing the scene of a robbery.<ref name="Nicholas Andrew Bryant 2006 pg. 2">Nicholas Andrew Bryant, ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy And the Struggle for Black Equality'' (Basic Books, 2006), pg. 2</ref> Violent clashes between black activists and white workers took place in both Philadelphia and Harlem in successful efforts to integrate state construction projects.<ref>[http://intellhisblackamerica.voices.wooster.edu/files/2012/03/Thomas_Sugrue_Affirmative_Action_from_Below.pdf Thomas J Sugrue, "Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the Urban North, 1945–1969" ''The Journal of American History'', Vol. 91, Issue 1]</ref><ref>[http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/events/4279/civil_rights_movement/532945 Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission website, "The Civil Rights Movement"]</ref> On June 6, over a thousand whites attacked a sit-in in Lexington, North Carolina; blacks fought back and one white man was killed.<ref>T [http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/2922918/ he Daily Capital News(Missouri) June 14, 1963, pg. 4]</ref><ref>[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=BU8cAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YVEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2472,3798134&dq=north+carolina+1963+riot&hl=en The Dispatch (North Carolina), December 28, 1963]</ref> Edwin C. Berry of the National Urban League warned of a complete breakdown in race relations: "My message from the beer gardens and the barbershops all indicate the fact that the Negro is ready for war."<ref name="Nicholas Andrew Bryant 2006 pg. 2"/>
In Cambridge, Maryland, a working‐class city on the Eastern Shore, [[Gloria Richardson]] of SNCC led a movement that pressed for desegregation but also demanded low‐rent public housing, job‐training, public and private jobs, and an end to police brutality. On June 14, struggles between blacks and whites [[Cambridge riot of 1963|escalated]] to the point where local authorities declared [[martial law]], and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy directly intervened to negotiate a desegregation agreement.<ref>[http://teaching.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000000/000033/html/t33.html Maryland State Archives "The Cambridge Riots of 1963 and 1967"]</ref> Richardson felt that the increasing participation of poor and working-class blacks was expanding both the power and parameters of the movement, asserting that "The people as a whole really do have more intelligence than a few of their leaders.ʺ
In their deliberations during this wave of protests, the Kennedy administration privately felt that militant demonstrations were ʺbad for the countryʺ and that "Negroes are going to push this thing too far."<ref name="web1.millercenter.org">[http://web1.millercenter.org/apd/colloquia/pdf/col_2008_0410_jackson.pdf Thomas F. Jackson, "Jobs and Freedom: The Black Revolt of 1963 and the Contested Meanings of the March on Washginton" ''Virginia Foundation for the Humanities'' April 2, 2008, pg. 10–14]</ref> On May 24, Robert Kennedy had a [[Baldwin-Kennedy meeting|meeting with prominent black intellectuals]] to discuss the racial situation. The blacks criticized Kennedy harshly for vacillating on civil rights, and said that the African-American community's thoughts were increasingly turning to violence. The meeting ended with ill will on all sides.<ref>[http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/05/clip_job_miss_h.php Tony Ortega "Miss Lorraine Hansberry & Bobby Kennedy" Village Voice, May 4, 2009]</ref><ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=Za8TAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA356&lpg=PA356&dq=hansberry,+robert+kennedy&source=bl&ots=U23fO5jxDo&sig=SxK9weNsAcVegOx-ffCLA_1a5_k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NMM-VKSQG8LisATSpYHICA&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=hansberry%2C%20robert%20kennedy&f=false James Hilty, Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (Temple University Press, 2000), p. 355]</ref><ref name=Schlesinger333>Schlesinger, ''Robert Kennedy and His Times'' (1978), p. 332-333.</ref> Nonetheless, the Kennedys ultimately decided that new legislation for equal public accommodations was essential to drive activists "into the courts and out of the streets."<ref name="web1.millercenter.org"/><ref>[http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/4/1319.1.extract# "Book Reviews-The Bystander by Nicholas A. Bryant" ''The Journal of American History'' (2007) 93 (4)]</ref>
On June 11, 1963, [[George Wallace]], Governor of Alabama, tried to [[Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|block]]<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963tuscaloosa Standing In the Schoolhouse Door] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> the integration of the [[University of Alabama]]. President John F. Kennedy sent a military force to make Governor Wallace step aside, allowing the enrollment of [[Vivian Malone Jones]] and [[James Hood]]. That evening, President Kennedy addressed the nation on TV and radio with his historic [[Civil Rights Address|civil rights speech]], where he lamented "a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety." He called on Congress to pass new civil rights legislation, and urged the country to embrace civil rights as "a moral issue...in our daily lives."<ref>"Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights," June 11, 1963, [http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03CivilRights06111963.htm transcript from the JFK library.]</ref> In the early hours of June 12, [[Medgar Evers]], field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, was assassinated by a member of the Klan.<ref>[http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/evers_medgar/ Medgar Evers], a worthwhile article, on ''The Mississippi Writers Page'', a website of the University of Mississippi English Department.</ref><ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963medgar Medgar Evers Assassination] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> The next week, as promised, on June 19, 1963, President Kennedy submitted his Civil Rights bill to Congress.<ref name="abbeville">[http://www.abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp Civil Rights bill submitted, and date of JFK murder, plus graphic events of the March on Washington.] This is an Abbeville Press website, a large informative article apparently from the book ''The Civil Rights Movement'' (ISBN 0-7892-0123-2).</ref>
===March on Washington, 1963===
[[Image:March on Washington edit.jpg|thumb|200px|The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the [[National Mall]].]]
{{Main|March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom}}
[[Image:1963 march on washington.jpg|thumb|250px|Civil Rights March on Washington, leaders marching from the [[Washington Monument]] to the [[Lincoln Memorial]].]]
[[Image:1963 march lincoln memorial.jpg|thumb|230px|Civil Rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial.]]
A. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington, D.C. in 1941 to support demands for elimination of [[employment discrimination]] in defense industries; he called off the march when the [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] administration met the demand by issuing [[Executive Order 8802]] barring racial discrimination and creating an agency to oversee compliance with the order.
Randolph and [[Bayard Rustin]] were the chief planners of the second march, which they proposed in 1962. In 1963, the Kennedy administration initially opposed the march out of concern it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, Randolph and King were firm that the march would proceed.<ref>{{cite book| title= Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes| last= Rosenberg|first= Jonathan|first2=Zachary|last2=Karabell| page= 130| isbn= 0-393-05122-6| year= 2003| publisher=WW Norton & Co}}</ref> With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. Concerned about the turnout, President Kennedy enlisted the aid of additional church leaders and the [[United Auto Workers|UAW]] union to help mobilize demonstrators for the cause.<ref>{{cite book|title=Robert Kennedy and His Times|last=Schlesinger, Jr. |first= Arthur M. |pages= 350, 351| isbn=0-618-21928-5|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Books|origyear=1978 | year=2002}}</ref>
The march was held on August 28, 1963. Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals:
*meaningful civil rights laws
*a massive federal works program
*full and fair employment
*decent housing
*the right to vote
*adequate integrated education.
Of these, the march's major focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham.
[[File:Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd.) - NARA - 542015.tif|thumb|250px|Martin Luther King, Jr. at a Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.]]
National media attention also greatly contributed to the march's national exposure and probable impact. In his section "The March on Washington and Television News,"<ref name="southernspaces.org">{{cite web|url=http://southernspaces.org/2004/television-news-and-civil-rights-struggle-views-virginia-and-mississippi |title=Television News and the Civil Rights Struggle: The Views in Virginia and Mississippi |publisher=Southern Spaces |date=November 3, 2004 |accessdate=2012-11-08}}</ref> [http://southernspaces.org/2004/television-news-and-civil-rights-struggle-views-virginia-and-mississippi William Thomas] notes: "Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers". By carrying the organizers' speeches and offering their own commentary, television stations framed the way their local audiences saw and understood the event.<ref name="southernspaces.org"/>
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The march was a success, although not without controversy. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the [[Lincoln Memorial]], where King delivered his famous "[[I Have a Dream]]" speech. While many speakers applauded the Kennedy administration for the efforts it had made toward obtaining new, more effective civil rights legislation protecting the right to vote and outlawing segregation, [[John Lewis (U. S. politician)|John Lewis]] of [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|SNCC]] took the administration to task for not doing more to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South.
After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the [[White House]]. While the Kennedy administration appeared sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had the votes in Congress to do it. However when [[John F. Kennedy assassination|President Kennedy was assassinated]] on November 22, 1963,<ref name="abbeville" /> the new President [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Lyndon Johnson]] decided to use his influence in [[United States Congress|Congress]] to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda.
===Malcolm X joins the movement, 1964–1965===
{{Main|Malcolm X|Black Nationalism|The Ballot or the Bullet}}
In March 1964, Malcolm X (Malik El-Shabazz), national representative of the [[Nation of Islam]], formally broke with that organization, and made a public offer to collaborate with any civil rights organization that accepted the right to self-defense and the philosophy of Black nationalism (which Malcolm said no longer required [[Black separatism]]). [[Gloria Richardson]] – head of the Cambridge, Maryland chapter of [[SNCC]], leader of the Cambridge rebellion<ref>{{cite web|title=Cambridge, Maryland, activists campaign for desegregation, USA, 1962–1963|url=http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/cambridge-maryland-activists-campaign-desegregation-usa-1962-1963|website=Global Nonviolent Action Database|publisher=[[Swarthmore College]]|accessdate=January 13, 2015}}</ref> and an honored guest at The March on Washington – immediately embraced Malcolm's offer. Mrs. Richardson, "the nation's most prominent woman [civil rights] leader," told ''[[The Baltimore Afro-American]]'' that "Malcolm is being very practical…The federal government has moved into conflict situations only when matters approach the level of insurrection. Self-defense may force Washington to intervene sooner."<ref>[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1mY8AAAAIBAJ&sjid=DCoMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1694,6977757&dq=gloria+richardson+malcolm+x&hl=en "Mrs. Richardson OKs Malcolm" The Baltimore Afro-American, March 10, 1964]</ref> Earlier, in May 1963, [[James Baldwin]] had stated publicly that "the Black Muslim movement is the only one in the country we can call [[grassroots]], I hate to say it…Malcolm articulates for Negroes, their suffering…he corroborates their reality..."<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk/sfeature/sf_video_pop_04c_tr_qry.html "The Negro and the American Promise,"] produced by Boston public television station WGBH in 1963</ref> On the local level, Malcolm and the NOI had been allied with the Harlem chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) since at least 1962.<ref>Harlem CORE, [http://harlemcore.com/omeka/items/show/162 "Film clip of Harlem CORE chairman Gladys Harrington speaking on Malcolm X"].</ref>
On March 26, 1964, as the Civil Rights Act was facing stiff opposition in Congress, Malcolm had a public meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Capitol building. Malcolm had attempted to begin a dialog with Dr. King as early as 1957, but King had rebuffed him. Malcolm had responded by calling King an "[[Uncle Tom]]" who turned his back on black militancy in order to appease the white power structure. However, the two men were on good terms at their face-to-face meeting.<ref>[http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_malcolm_x_1925_1965/ "Malcolm X" The King Encyclopedia, eds. Tenisha Armstrong, et al, Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute website],</ref> There is evidence that King was preparing to support Malcolm's plan to formally bring the US government before the United Nations on charges of human rights violations against African-Americans.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=RownbjVryWIC&pg=PT429&lpg=PT429&dq=clarence+jones,+malcolm+x,+united+nations&source=bl&ots=0xcumJEZ4N&sig=KvZ_hKjkmnSwJ2vJXl1V1i1fNbM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vTkuUtyoCs__4AOEpIC4Ag&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=clarence%20jones%2C%20malcolm%20x%2C%20united%20nations&f=false Manning Marable, ''Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention'' (Penguin Books, 2011)]</ref> Malcolm now encouraged Black nationalists to get involved in voter registration drives and other forms of community organizing to redefine and expand the movement.<ref>[http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/mx.html American Public Radio, "Malcolm X: The Ballot or the Bullet-Background"]</ref>
Civil rights activists became increasingly combative in the 1963 to 1964 period, owing to events such as the thwarting of the Albany campaign, police repression and Ku Klux Klan [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing|terrorism]] in [[Birmingham campaign|Birmingham]], and the assassination of Medgar Evers. Mississippi NAACP Field Director Charles Evers–Medgar Evers' brother–told a public NAACP conference on February 15, 1964 that "non-violence won't work in Mississippi…we made up our minds…that if a white man shoots at a Negro in Mississippi, we will shoot back."<ref>Akinyele Umoja, ''We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement'' (NYU Press, 2013), p. 126</ref> The repression of sit-ins in Jacksonville, Florida provoked a riot that saw black youth throwing Molotov cocktails at police on March 24, 1964.<ref>Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, ''Regulating the Poor'' (Random House 1971), p. 238; [http://books.google.com/books?id=bBQvmMnKmbcC&pg=PA118&lpg=PA118&dq=jacksonville,+march+24,+1964&source=bl&ots=65daUV-O9j&sig=3ERGUYK-KdvJR4gwQRnxj6YZQhc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fE8uUsrfKNLH4AP_04DYCw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=snippet&q=fire%20bombs&f=false Abel A. Bartley, ''Keeping the Faith: Race, Politics and Social Development in Jacksonville, 1940–1970'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000), 111]</ref> Malcolm X gave extensive speeches in this period warning that such militant activity would escalate further if African-Americans' rights were not fully recognized. In his landmark April 1964 speech "[[The Ballot or the Bullet]]", Malcolm presented an ultimatum to white America: "There's new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets."<ref>[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~public/civilrights/a0146.html Malcolm X, "The Ballet or the Bullet, Cleveland version" April 3, 1964]</ref>
As noted in ''[[Eyes on the Prize]]'', "Malcolm X had a far reaching effect on the civil rights movement. In the South, there had been a long tradition of self reliance. Malcolm X's ideas now touched that tradition".<ref>Blackside Productions, ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement 1954–1985'', [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html"], The Time Has Come" Public Broadcasting System</ref> Self-reliance was becoming paramount in light of the [[1964 Democratic National Convention]]'s decision to refuse seating to the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (MFDP) and to seat the state delegation elected in violation of the party's rules through [[Jim Crow law]] instead.<ref>{{cite book | last = Lewis | first = John | title = Walking With the Wind | publisher = Simon & Schuster | year = 1998}}</ref> SNCC moved in an increasingly militant direction and worked with Malcolm X on two Harlem MFDP fundraisers in December 1964. When [[Fannie Lou Hamer]] spoke to Harlemites about the Jim Crow violence that she'd suffered in Mississippi, she linked it directly to the Northern police brutality against blacks that Malcolm protested against;<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/docs/flh64.htm Fannie Lou Hamer, Speech Delivered with Malcolm X at the Williams Institutional CME Church, Harlem, New York, December 20, 1964].</ref> When Malcolm asserted that African-Americans should emulate the [[Mau Mau]] army of Kenya in efforts to gain their independence, many in SNCC applauded.<ref>George Breitman, ed. ''Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements'' (Grove Press, 1965), pp. 106–109</ref> During the [[Selma to Montgomery marches|Selma campaign]] for voting rights in 1965, Malcolm made it known that he'd heard reports of increased threats of lynching around Selma, and responded in late January with an open telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, stating: "if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans…you and your KKK friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence."<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=EAhHl-0ERn8C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=malcolm+x,+george+lincoln+rockwell,+telegram&source=bl&ots=EeocwaU5IF&sig=0qsXCspnsUS9bPOLYN8n0UrkCso&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WNMxUpHGI4Ps8QSxn4HQBg&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAzgU#v=onepage&q=malcolm%20x%2C%20george%20lincoln%20rockwell%2C%20telegram&f=false Christopher Strain, ''Pure Fire:Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era'' (University of Georgia Press, 2005), pp. 92–93]</ref> The following month, the Selma chapter of SNCC invited Malcolm to speak to a mass meeting there. On the day of Malcolm's appearance, President Johnson made his first public statement in support of the Selma campaign.<ref>Juan Williams, et al, ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954–1965'' (Penguin Group, 1988), p. 262</ref> Paul Ryan Haygood, a co-director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, credits Malcolm with a role in stimulating the responsiveness of the federal government. Haygood noted that "shortly after Malcolm's visit to Selma, a federal judge, responding to a suit brought by the Department of Justice, required Dallas County registrars to process at least 100 Black applications each day their offices were open."<ref>Paul Ryan Haygood, [http://www.blackcommentator.com/127/127_guest_malcolm.html "Malcolm's Contribution to Black Voting Rights"], ''The Black Commentator''</ref>
===St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–64===
{{Main|St. Augustine movement}}
[[St. Augustine, Florida|St. Augustine]], on the northeast coast of Florida was famous as the "Nation's Oldest City," founded by the Spanish in 1565. It became the stage for a great drama leading up to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. A local movement, led by Dr. Robert B. Hayling, a black dentist and Air Force veteran, and affiliated with the NAACP, had been picketing segregated local institutions since 1963, as a result of which Dr. Hayling and three companions, James Jackson, Clyde Jenkins, and James Hauser, were brutally beaten at a Ku Klux Klan rally in the fall of that year.
Nightriders shot into black homes, and teenagers Audrey Nell Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson, Samuel White, and Willie Carl Singleton (who came to be known as "The St. Augustine Four") spent six months in jail and reform school after sitting in at the local Woolworth's lunch counter. It took a special action of the governor and cabinet of Florida to release them after national protests by the ''[[Pittsburgh Courier]]'', [[Jackie Robinson]], and others.
In response to the repression, the St. Augustine movement practiced armed self-defense in addition to nonviolent direct action. In June 1963, Dr. Hayling publicly stated that "I and the others have armed. We will shoot first and answer questions later. We are not going to die like Medgar Evers." The comment made national headlines.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug Civil Rights Movement Veterans. "St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1963"] ; [http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_hayling_robert_b_1929/ "Hayling, Robert B. (1929–)", Martin Luther King Jr. Research & Education Institute, Stanford University] ; [http://www.augustine.com/history/black_history/dr_robert_hayling/ "Black History: Dr. Robert B. Hayling"], Augustine.com; David J. Garrow, ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'' (Harper Collins, 1987) p 316–318</ref> When Klan nightriders terrorized black neighborhoods in St. Augustine, Hayling's NAACP members often drove them off with gunfire, and in October, a Klansman was killed.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug Civil Rights Movement Veterans. "St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1963"] ; [http://books.google.com/books?id=HecWJnClV3wC&pg=PA316&dq=garrow,+hayling,+armed&hl=en&sa=X&ei=veN3UouaHKLgsASmq4HIBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=garrow%2C%20hayling%2C%20armed&f=false David J. Garrow, ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'' (Harper Collins, 1987) p 317;]</ref>
In 1964, Dr. Hayling and other activists urged the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] to come to St. Augustine. The first action came during spring break, when Hayling appealed to northern college students to come to the Ancient City, not to go to the beach, but to take part in demonstrations. Four prominent Massachusetts women—Mrs. Mary Parkman Peabody, Mrs. Esther Burgess, Mrs. Hester Campbell (all of whose husbands were Episcopal bishops), and Mrs. Florence Rowe (whose husband was vice president of John Hancock Insurance Company) came to lend their support. The arrest of Mrs. Peabody, the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, for attempting to eat at the segregated Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge in an integrated group, made front page news across the country, and brought the civil rights movement in St. Augustine to the attention of the world.
Widely publicized activities continued in the ensuing months, as Congress saw the longest filibuster against a civil rights bill in its history. Dr. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]] was arrested at the Monson Motel in St. Augustine on June 11, 1964, the only place in Florida he was arrested. He sent a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to a northern supporter, [[Israel S. Dresner|Rabbi Israel Dresner]] of New Jersey, urging him to recruit others to participate in the movement. This resulted, a week later, in the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history—while conducting a pray-in at the Monson.
A famous photograph taken in St. Augustine shows the manager of the Monson Motel pouring acid in the swimming pool while blacks and whites are swimming in it. The horrifying photograph was run on the front page of the Washington newspaper the day the senate went to vote on passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
===Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964===
{{Main|Freedom Summer}}
In the summer of 1964, [[Council of Federated Organizations|COFO]] brought nearly 1,000 activists to Mississippi—most of them white college students—to join with local black activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools," and organize the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (MFDP).<ref name="crmvet.org">[http://www.crmvet.org/disc/mfdp.htm The Mississippi Movement & the MFDP] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the outsiders and attempts to change their society. State and local governments, police, the [[White Citizens' Council]] and the [[Ku Klux Klan]] used arrests, beatings, arson, murder, spying, firing, evictions, and other forms of intimidation and harassment to oppose the project and prevent blacks from registering to vote or achieving social equality.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/docs/msrv64.pdf Mississippi: Subversion of the Right to Vote] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared. [[James Chaney]], a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two [[Jewish]] activists, [[Andrew Goodman]], a [[Queens College, City University of New York|Queens College]] anthropology student; and [[Michael Schwerner]], a [[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]] organizer from [[Manhattan]]'s [[Lower East Side]], were found weeks later, murdered by conspirators who turned out to be local members of the Klan, some of them members of the [[Neshoba County, Mississippi|Neshoba County]] sheriff's department. This outraged the public, leading the U.S. Justice Department along with the FBI (the latter which had previously avoided dealing with the issue of segregation and persecution of blacks) to take action. The outrage over these murders helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. (See [[Mississippi civil rights workers murders]] for details).
From June to August, Freedom Summer activists worked in 38 local projects scattered across the state, with the largest number concentrated in the [[Mississippi Delta]] region. At least 30 Freedom Schools, with close to 3,500 students were established, and 28 community centers set up.<ref>{{Cite book
|last=McAdam
|first=Doug
|title=Freedom Summer
|publisher=Oxford University Press
|year=1988
|isbn=0-19-504367-7}}</ref>
Over the course of the Summer Project, some 17,000 Mississippi blacks attempted to become registered voters in defiance of the red tape and forces of [[white supremacy]] arrayed against them—only 1,600 (less than 10%) succeeded. But more than 80,000 joined the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (MFDP), founded as an alternative political organization, showing their desire to vote and participate in politics.<ref>{{Cite book
|last=Carson
|first=Clayborne
|title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
|publisher=Harvard University Press
|year=1981}}</ref>
Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it had a significant effect on the course of the Civil Rights Movement. It helped break down the decades of people's isolation and repression that were the foundation of the [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]] system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers. The progression of events throughout the South increased media attention to Mississippi.<ref name="crmvet1">[http://www.crmvet.org/vet/vethome.htm Veterans Roll Call] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
The deaths of affluent northern white students and threats to other northerners attracted the full attention of the media spotlight to the state. Many black activists became embittered, believing the media valued lives of whites and blacks differently. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers, almost all of whom—black and white—still consider it to have been one of the defining periods of their lives.<ref name="crmvet1"/>
===Civil Rights Act of 1964===
Although President Kennedy had [[Civil Rights Address|proposed civil rights legislation]] and it had support from Northern Congressmen and Senators of both parties, Southern Senators blocked the bill by threatening [[filibuster]]s. After considerable parliamentary maneuvering and 54 days of filibuster on the floor of the United States Senate, President Johnson got a bill through the Congress.{{sfn|Reeves|1993|pp=521–524}}
On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64"/> that banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations. The bill authorized the Attorney General to file lawsuits to enforce the new law. The law also nullified state and local laws that required such discrimination.
===Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964===
{{Main|Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party}}
[[Image:Lyndon Johnson meeting with civil rights leaders.jpg|thumb|300px|President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] meets with Civil Rights leaders [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], [[Whitney Young]], and [[James L. Farmer, Jr.|James Farmer]], January 1964.]]
Blacks in Mississippi had been disfranchised by statutory and constitutional changes since the late 19th century. In 1963 COFO held a Freedom Vote in Mississippi to demonstrate the desire of black Mississippians to vote. More than 80,000 people registered and voted in the mock election, which pitted an integrated slate of candidates from the "Freedom Party" against the official state Democratic Party candidates.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963msballot Freedom Ballot in MS] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
In 1964, organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white official party. When Mississippi voting registrars refused to recognize their candidates, they held their own primary. They selected [[Fannie Lou Hamer]], [[Annie Bell Robinson Devine|Annie Devine]], and [[Victoria Gray Adams|Victoria Gray]] to run for [[United States Congress|Congress]], and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.<ref name="crmvet.org" />
The presence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in [[Atlantic City, New Jersey]], was inconvenient, however, for the convention organizers. They had planned a triumphant celebration of the Johnson administration's achievements in civil rights, rather than a fight over racism within the Democratic Party. All-white delegations from other Southern states threatened to walk out if the official slate from Mississippi was not seated. Johnson was worried about the inroads that Republican [[Barry Goldwater]]'s campaign was making in what previously had been the white Democratic stronghold of the "Solid South", as well as support that [[George Wallace]] had received in the North during the Democratic primaries.
Johnson could not, however, prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee. There [[Fannie Lou Hamer]] testified eloquently about the beatings that she and others endured and the threats they faced for trying to register to vote. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?"
Johnson offered the MFDP a "compromise" under which it would receive two non-voting, at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would retain its seats. The MFDP angrily rejected the "compromise."
The MFDP kept up its agitation at the convention, after it was denied official recognition. When all but three of the "regular" Mississippi delegates left because they refused to pledge allegiance to the party, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic delegates and took the seats vacated by the official Mississippi delegates. National party organizers removed them. When they returned the next day, they found convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there the day before. They stayed and sang "freedom songs".
The 1964 Democratic Party convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the Civil Rights Movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP. The MFDP became more radical after Atlantic City. It invited [[Malcolm X]] to speak at one of its conventions and opposed the [[Vietnam War|war in Vietnam]].
===King awarded Nobel Peace Prize===
On December 10, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the [[Nobel Peace Prize]], the youngest man to receive the award; he was 35 years of age.<ref>[http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html MLK's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech] on December 10, 1964.</ref>
===Boycott of New Orleans by American Football League players, January 1965===
After the [[1964 American Football League season|1964]] professional [[American Football League]] season, the [[American Football League All-Star game|AFL All-Star Game]] had been scheduled for early 1965 in [[New Orleans]]' [[Tulane Stadium]]. After numerous black players were refused service by a number of [[New Orleans]] hotels and businesses, and white cabdrivers refused to carry black passengers, black and white players alike lobbied for a [[Boycott of the 1965 American Football League All-star game|boycott of New Orleans]]. Under the leadership of [[Buffalo Bills]]' players, including [[Cookie Gilchrist]], the players put up a unified front. The game was moved to [[Robertson Stadium|Jeppesen Stadium]] in [[Houston]].
The discriminatory practices that prompted the boycott were illegal under the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64" /> which had been signed in July 1964. This new law likely encouraged the AFL players in their cause. It was the first [[boycott]] by a professional sports event of an entire city.
===Selma Voting Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Act, 1965===
{{Main|Selma to Montgomery marches|Voting Rights Act}}
{{Listen
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[[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|SNCC]] had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in [[Selma, Alabama]], in 1963, but by 1965 had made little headway in the face of opposition from Selma's sheriff, Jim Clark. After local residents asked the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference|SCLC]] for assistance, King came to Selma to lead several marches, at which he was arrested along with 250 other demonstrators. The marchers continued to meet violent resistance from police. [[Jimmie Lee Jackson]], a resident of nearby Marion, was killed by police at a later march in February 17, 1965. Jackson's death prompted [[James Bevel]], director of the Selma Movement, to initiate a plan to march from Selma to [[Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery]], the state capital.
On March 7, 1965, acting on Bevel's plan, [[Hosea Williams]] of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk the 54 miles (87 km) from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Only six blocks into the march, at the [[Edmund Pettus Bridge]], state troopers and local law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, [[tear gas]], rubber tubes wrapped in barbed wire, and bull whips. They drove the marchers back into Selma. John Lewis was knocked unconscious and dragged to safety. At least 16 other marchers were hospitalized. Among those gassed and beaten was [[Amelia Boynton Robinson]], who was at the center of civil rights activity at the time.
The national broadcast of the news footage of lawmen attacking unresisting marchers' seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote provoked a national response, as had scenes from Birmingham two years earlier. The marchers were able to obtain a court order permitting them to make the march without incident two weeks later.
[[Image:Selma to Montgomery Marches.jpg|thumb|right|275px|Participants in the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]]]]
<!-- Commented out: [[Image:SelmaHeschelMarch.jpg|thumb|right|300px|The [[Selmato_Montgomery_marches#Third_March|3rd Selma Civil Rights March]]. From far left: [[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]], an unidentified nun; [[Ralph Abernathy]]; [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]; [[Ralph Bunche]]; [[Abraham Joshua Heschel|Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel]]; [[Fred Shuttlesworth]]. Second row: Between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Bunche is [[Maurice Davis (rabbi)|Rabbi Maurice Davis]]. Heschel later wrote, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."]] -->
After a second march on March 9 to the site of Bloody Sunday, local whites attacked Rev. [[James Reeb]], another voting rights supporter. He died of his injuries in a Birmingham hospital March 11. On March 25, four Klansmen shot and killed Detroit homemaker [[Viola Liuzzo]] as she drove marchers back to Selma at night after the successfully completed march to Montgomery.
Eight days after the first march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. In it he stated:
{{Quote|But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.}}
{{quote|Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.}}
Johnson signed the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]] on August 6. The 1965 act suspended [[Poll tax (United States)|poll tax]]es, literacy tests, and other subjective voter registration tests. It authorized Federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used. African Americans who had been barred from registering to vote finally had an alternative to taking suits to local or state courts, which had seldom prosecuted their cases to success. If discrimination in voter registration occurred, the 1965 act authorized the [[Attorney General of the United States]] to send Federal examiners to replace local registrars. Johnson reportedly told associates of his concern that signing the bill had lost the white South as voters for the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future.
The act had an immediate and positive effect for African Americans. Within months of its passage, 250,000 new black voters had been registered, one third of them by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout at 74% and led the nation in the number of black public officials elected. In 1969, Tennessee had a 92.1% turnout among black voters; Arkansas, 77.9%; and Texas, 73.1%.
Several whites who had opposed the Voting Rights Act paid a quick price. In 1966 [[Jim Clark (sheriff)|Sheriff Jim Clark]] of Alabama, infamous for using [[cattle prod]]s against civil rights marchers, was up for reelection. Although he took off the notorious "Never" pin on his uniform, he was defeated. At the election, Clark lost as blacks voted to get him out of office. Clark later served a prison term for drug dealing.
Blacks' regaining the power to vote changed the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states. By 1989, there were more than 7,200 African Americans in office, including more than 4,800 in the South. Nearly every [[Black Belt (U.S. region)|Black Belt]] county (where populations were majority black) in Alabama had a black sheriff. Southern blacks held top positions in city, county, and state governments.
Atlanta elected a black mayor, [[Andrew Young]], as did [[Jackson, Mississippi]], with [[Harvey Johnson, Jr.]], and [[New Orleans]], with [[Ernest Nathan Morial|Ernest Morial]]. Black politicians on the national level included [[Barbara Jordan]], elected as a Representative from Texas in Congress, and President Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young as [[United States Ambassador to the United Nations]]. [[Julian Bond]] was elected to the [[Georgia General Assembly|Georgia State Legislature]] in 1965, although political reaction to his public [[Opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War]] prevented him from taking his seat until 1967. [[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]] represents [[Georgia's 5th congressional district]] in the [[United States House of Representatives]], where he has served since 1987.
===Fair housing movements, 1966–1968===
The first major blow against housing segregation in the era, the Rumford Fair Housing Act, was passed in California in 1963. It was overturned by white California voters and real estate lobbyists the following year with [[Proposition 14]], a move which helped precipitate the [[Watts Riots]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=b8MeAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA271&lpg=PA271&dq=kerner+commission,+proposition+14&source=bl&ots=ign0EIfekd&sig=Y7kIO7SiTdOEcF1dfv0Oj2NikRw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2WiUVKa0OaTdsASnmoHYCA&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=kerner%20commission%2C%20proposition%2014&f=false Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 271-273]</ref><ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/11/local/la-me-watts11aug11 Valerie Reitman and Mitchell Landsberg "Watts Riots, 40 Years Later" The Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2005]</ref> In 1966, the California Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 14 and reinstated the Fair Housing Act.<ref>[http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0b69q1bw/entire_text/ "No on Proposition 14: California Fair Housing Initiative Collection" Online Archive of California]</ref>
Struggles for [[fair housing]] laws became a major project of the movement over the next two years, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the [[Chicago Freedom Movement]] around the issue in 1966. In the following year, Father [[James Groppi]] and the [[NAACP Youth Council]] also attracted national attention with a fair housing campaign in Milwaukee.<ref>[http://www.blackthursday.uwosh.edu/milwaukee.html "Milwaukee, Wisconsin: The Selma of the North" University of Wisconsin-Osh Kosh]</ref><ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/1985-11-05/news/mn-4337_1_roman-catholic-priest Burt Folkart "James Groppi, Ex-Priest, Civil Rights Activist, Dies" The Los Angeles Times, November 05, 1985|B]</ref> Both movements faced violent mob resistance from white homeowners and legal opposition from conservative politicians.
The fair housing bill was the most contentious civil rights legislation of the era. Senator [[Walter Mondale]], who advocated for the bill, noted that over successive years, it was the most [[filibuster]]ed legislation in US history. It was opposed by most Northern and Southern senators, as well as the National Association of Real Estate Boards. A proposed "Civil Rights Act of 1966" had collapsed completely because of its fair housing provision.<ref>[http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/wihr/pdfs/MilesWIHRSp09.pdf Darren Miles "Everett Dirksen's Role in Civil Rights Legislation" Western Illinois Historical Review, Vol. I Spring 2009]</ref> Mondale commented that:
:A lot of civil rights [legislation] was about making the South behave and taking the teeth from George Wallace, [but] this came right to the neighborhoods across the country. This was civil rights getting personal.<ref name="propublica.org">[http://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law Nikole Hannah-Jones, "Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law" Propublica, Oct. 28, 2012,]</ref>
===Memphis, King assassination and the Poor People's March 1968===
{{Main|Poor People's Campaign|Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.}}
{{listen
|filename=I've Been To The Mountaintop.ogg
|title="I've Been to the Mountaintop"
|description=Final 30 seconds of "[[I've Been to the Mountaintop]]" speech by [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]] These are the final words from his final public speech.
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[[File:Resurrection City Washington D.C. 1968.jpg|thumb|250px|A 3000-person shantytown called [[Poor People's Campaign#Resurrection City|Resurrection City]] was established on the [[National Mall]].]]
Rev. James Lawson invited King to [[Memphis, Tennessee]], in March 1968 to support a [[Memphis Sanitation Strike|sanitation workers' strike]]. These workers launched a campaign for [[trade union|union]] representation after two workers were accidentally killed on the job, and King considered their struggle to be a vital part of the [[Poor People's Campaign]] he was planning.
A day after delivering his stirring "[[I've Been to the Mountaintop]]" sermon, which has become famous for his vision of American society, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. [[King assassination riots|Riots]] broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 110 cities across the United States in the days that followed, notably in [[1968 Chicago riots|Chicago]], [[Baltimore riot of 1968|Baltimore]], and [[1968 Washington, D.C. riots|in Washington, D.C.]] The damage done in many cities destroyed black businesses and homes, and slowed economic development for a generation.
The day before [[Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.|King's funeral]], April 8, [[Coretta Scott King]] and three of the King children led 20,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis, holding signs that read, "Honor King: End Racism" and "Union Justice Now". Armed National Guardsmen lined the streets, sitting on [[M-48 tanks]], to protect the marchers, and helicopters circled overhead. On April 9 Mrs. King led another 150,000 people in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcoretta.htm |title=Coretta Scott King |publisher=Spartacus Educational Publishers|date= |accessdate=2010-10-30}}</ref> Her dignity revived courage and hope in many of the Movement's members, cementing her place as the new leader in the struggle for racial equality.
Coretta Scott King said,{{citation needed|date=June 2013}}
{{quote|[Martin Luther King, Jr.] gave his life for the poor of the world, the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. The day that Negro people and others in bondage are truly free, on the day want is abolished, on the day wars are no more, on that day I know my husband will rest in a long-deserved peace.}}
Rev. Ralph Abernathy succeeded King as the head of the SCLC and attempted to carry forth King's plan for a Poor People's March. It was to unite blacks and whites to campaign for fundamental changes in American society and economic structure. The march went forward under Abernathy's plainspoken leadership but did not achieve its goals.
{{See also|Orangeburg massacre}}
===Civil Rights Act of 1968===
As 1968 began, the fair housing bill was being [[filibustered]] once again, but two developments revived it.<ref name="propublica.org"/> The [[Kerner Commission]] report on the [[Long hot summer of 1967|1967 ghetto riots]] was delivered to Congress on March 1, and it strongly recommended "a comprehensive and enforceable federal open housing law" as a remedy to the civil disturbances. The Senate was moved to end their filibuster that week.<ref name="huduser.org">[http://www.huduser.org/portal/Periodicals/CITYSCPE/VOL4NUM3/mathias.pdf Honorable Charles Mathias, Jr. "Fair Housing Legislation: Not an Easy Row To Hoe" US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research]</ref>
As the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] deliberated the bill in April, Dr. King was assassinated, and the largest [[King assassination riots|wave of unrest]] since the Civil War swept the country.<ref>[http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1800/2148_ch1.pdf Peter B. Levy, "The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968" in ''Baltimore '68 : Riots and Rebirth in an American city''(Temple University Press, 2011), p. 6]</ref> Senator [[Charles M. Mathias|Charles Mathias]] wrote that
:some Senators and Representatives publicly stated they would not be intimidated or rushed into legislating because of the disturbances. Nevertheless, the news coverage of the riots and the underlying disparities in income, jobs, housing, and education, between White and Black Americans helped educate citizens and Congress about the stark reality of an enormous social problem. Members of Congress knew they had to act to redress these imbalances in American life to fulfill the dream that King had so eloquently preached.<ref name="huduser.org"/>
The House passed the legislation on April 10, and President Johnson signed it the next day. The [[Civil Rights Act of 1968]] prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin. It also made it a federal crime to "by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin."<ref>[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg73.pdf Public Law 90-284, Government Printing Office]</ref>
==Other issues==
===Competing ideas===
Despite the common notion that the ideas of [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], [[Malcolm X]] and [[Black Power]] only conflicted with each other and were the only ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement, there were other sentiments felt by many blacks. Fearing the events during the movement were occurring too quickly, there were some blacks who felt that leaders should take their activism at a slower pace. Others had reservations on how focused blacks were on the movement and felt that such attention was better spent on reforming issues within the black community.
Those who blatantly rejected integration usually had a legitimate rationale for doing so, such as fearing a change in the status quo they had been used to for so long, or fearing for their safety if they found themselves in environments where whites were much more present. However, there were also those who defended segregation for the sake of keeping ties with the white power structure from which many relied on for social and economic mobility above other blacks. Based on her interpretation of a 1966 study made by Donald Matthews and James Prothro detailing the relative percentage of blacks for integration, against it or feeling something else, Lauren Winner asserts that:
<blockquote>Black defenders of segregation look, at first blush, very much like black nationalists, especially in their preference for all-black institutions; but black defenders of segregation differ from nationalists in two key ways. First, while both groups criticize [[NAACP]]-style integration, nationalists articulate a third alternative to integration and [[Jim Crow]], while segregationists preferred to stick with the status quo. Second, absent from black defenders of segregation's political vocabulary was the demand for [[self-determination]]. They called for all-black institutions, but not autonomous all-black institutions; indeed, some defenders of segregation asserted that black people needed white paternalism and oversight in order to thrive.<ref>Winner, Lauren F. "Doubtless Sincere: New Characters in the Civil Rights Cast." In The Role of Ideas in the Civil Rights South, edited by Ted Ownby. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002, p. 158-159.</ref></blockquote>
Oftentimes, African-American community leaders would be staunch defenders of segregation. Church ministers, businessmen and educators were among those who wished to keep segregation and segregationist ideals in order to retain the privileges they gained from patronage from whites, such as monetary gains. In addition, they relied on segregation to keep their jobs and economies in their communities thriving. It was feared that if integration became widespread in the South, black-owned businesses and other establishments would lose a large chunk of their customer base to white-owned businesses, and many blacks would lose opportunities for jobs that were presently exclusive to their interests.<ref>Winner, Doubtless Sincere, 164–165.</ref> On the other hand, there were the everyday, average black people who criticized integration as well. For them, they took issue with different parts of the Civil Rights Movement and the potential for blacks to exercise consumerism and economic liberty without hindrance from whites.<ref>Winner, Doubtless Sincere, 166–167.</ref>
For Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and other leading activists and groups during the movement, these opposing viewpoints acted as an obstacle against their ideas. These different views made such leaders' work much harder to accomplish, but they were nonetheless important in the overall scope of the movement. For the most part, the black individuals who had reservations on various aspects of the movement and ideologies of the activists were not able to make a game-changing dent in their efforts, but the existence of these alternate ideas gave some blacks an outlet to express their concerns about the changing social structure.
===Avoiding the "Communist" label===
{{See also|The Communist Party and African-Americans}}
On December 17, 1951, the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party]]–affiliated [[Civil Rights Congress]] delivered the petition ''[[We Charge Genocide]]: "The Crime of Government Against the Negro People"'', often shortened to ''We Charge Genocide'', to the United Nations in 1951, arguing that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against [[lynching in the United States]], was guilty of [[genocide]] under Article II of the [[Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide|UN Genocide Convention]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis51.htm#1951genocide ''We Charge Genocide''] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> The petition was presented to the United Nations at two separate venues: [[Paul Robeson]], concert singer and activist, to a UN official in New York City, while [[William L. Patterson]], executive director of the CRC, delivered copies of the drafted petition to a UN delegation in Paris.<ref name="autogenerated1981">{{cite book
| last = Carson
| first = Clayborne
| title = In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| year = 1981}}</ref>
Patterson, the editor of the petition, was a leader in the Communist Party USA and head of the [[International Labor Defense]], a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African-Americans in cases involving issues of political or racial persecution. The ILD was known for leading the defense of the Scottsboro boys in Alabama in 1931, where the Communist Party had considerable influence among African Americans in the 1930s. This had largely declined by the late 1950s, although they could command international attention. As earlier Civil Rights figures such as Robeson, Du Bois and Patterson became more politically radical (and therefore targets of Cold War anti-Communism by the US. Government), they lost favor with both mainstream Black America and the NAACP.<ref name="autogenerated1981"/>
In order to secure a place in the mainstream and gain the broadest base, the new generation of civil rights activists believed they had to openly distance themselves from anything and anyone associated with the Communist party. According to Ella Baker, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference adopted "Christian" into its name to deter charges of Communism.<ref>[http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/html_use/G-0007.html Ella Baker Oral History [02:05:57 – 02:13:07<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</ref> The FBI under J Edgar Hoover had been concerned about communism since the early 20th century, and continued to label as "Communist" or "subversive" some of the civil rights activists, whom it kept under close surveillance. In the early 1960s, the practice of distancing the Civil Rights Movement from "Reds" was challenged by the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] who adopted a policy of accepting assistance and participation by anyone, regardless of political affiliation, who supported the SNCC program and was willing to "put their body on the line." At times this political openness put SNCC at odds with the NAACP.<ref name="autogenerated1981"/>
===Kennedy administration, 1961–63===
[[File:Robert Kennedy CORE rally speech2.jpg|thumb|right|275px|[[Robert F. Kennedy]] speaking to a Civil Rights crowd in front of the [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] building, June 1963.]]
During the years preceding his election to the presidency, [[John F. Kennedy]]'s record of voting on issues of racial discrimination had been minimal. Kennedy openly confessed to his closest advisors that during the first months of his presidency, his knowledge of the civil rights movement was "lacking".
For the first two years of the Kennedy administration, civil rights activists had mixed opinions of both the president and [[attorney general]], [[Robert F. Kennedy]]. Many viewed the administration with suspicion. A well of historical cynicism toward white liberal politics had left African Americans with a sense of uneasy disdain for any white politician who claimed to share their concerns for freedom. Still, many had a strong sense that the Kennedys represented a new age of political dialogue.
Although observers frequently assert the phrases "The Kennedy administration" or "President Kennedy" when discussing the executive and legislative support of the Civil Rights movement between 1960 and 1963, many of the initiatives resulted from Robert Kennedy's passion. Through his rapid education in the realities of racism{{Citation needed|date=March 2008}}, Robert Kennedy underwent a thorough conversion of purpose as Attorney-General. The President came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matters; the Attorney-General succeeded in urging the president to address the issue in a [[Civil Rights Address|speech to the nation]].<ref>Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, '''Robert Kennedy And His Times''' (2002)</ref>
Robert Kennedy first became seriously concerned with civil rights in mid-May 1961 during the [[Freedom Rides]], when photographs of the burning bus and savage beatings in [[Aniston]] and Birmingham were broadcast around the world. They came at an especially embarrassing time, as President Kennedy was about to have a [[Vienna summit|summit with the Soviet premier]] in Vienna. The White House was concerned with its image among the populations of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, and Robert Kennedy responded with an address for [[Voice of America]] stating that great progress had been made on the issue of race relations. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the administration worked to resolve the crisis with a minimum of violence and prevent the Freedom Riders from generating a fresh crop of headlines that might divert attention from the President's international agenda. The [[Freedom Riders (film)|''Freedom Riders'']] documentary notes that, "The back burner issue of civil rights had collided with the urgent demands of Cold War [[realpolitik]]."<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/issues/the-cold-war "Freedom Riders-The Cold War" ''Freedom Riders'', American Experience, PBS website]</ref>
On May 21, when a white mob attacked and burned the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where King was holding out with protesters, Robert Kennedy telephoned King to ask him to stay in the building until the U.S. Marshals and National Guard could secure the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked Robert Kennedy's commanding the force to break up an attack, which might otherwise have ended King's life.
With a very small majority in Congress, the president's ability to press ahead with legislation relied considerably on a balancing game with the Senators and Congressmen of the South. Without the support of Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, a former Senator who had years of experience in Congress and longstanding relations there, many of the Attorney-General's programs would not have progressed.
By late 1962, frustration at the slow pace of political change was balanced by the movement's strong support for legislative initiatives: housing rights, administrative representation across all US Government departments, safe conditions at the ballot box, pressure on the courts to prosecute racist criminals. King remarked by the end of the year,
<blockquote>This administration has reached out more creatively than its predecessors to blaze new trails, [notably in voting rights and government appointments]. Its vigorous young men [had launched] imaginative and bold forays [and displayed] a certain ''élan'' in the attention they give to civil-rights issues.<ref>Martin Luther King, Jr. '''Nation''' March 3, 1962</ref></blockquote>
From squaring off against Governor [[George Wallace]], to "tearing into" Vice-President Johnson (for failing to desegregate areas of the administration), to threatening corrupt white Southern judges with disbarment, to desegregating interstate transport, Robert Kennedy came to be consumed by the Civil Rights movement. He continued to work on these social justice issues in his bid for the presidency in 1968.
On the night of Governor Wallace's capitulation to African-American enrollment at the [[University of Alabama]], President Kennedy gave an [[Civil Rights Address|address]] to the nation, which marked the changing tide, an address that was to become a landmark for the ensuing change in political policy as to civil rights. In it President Kennedy spoke of the need to act decisively and to act now:
{{quote|"We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes? Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them."|President Kennedy|<ref>{{cite web|author=Michael E. Eidenmuller |url=http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcivilrights.htm |title=John F. Kennedy – Civil Rights Address |publisher=American Rhetoric |date=June 11, 1963 |accessdate=2010-10-30}}</ref>}}.
Assassination cut short the life and careers of both the Kennedy brothers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The essential groundwork of the Civil Rights Act 1964 had been initiated before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The dire need for political and administrative reform was driven home on [[Capitol Hill]] by the combined efforts of the Kennedy brothers, Dr. King (and other leaders) and President Lyndon Johnson.
In 1966, Robert Kennedy undertook a tour of South Africa in which he championed the cause of the anti-[[South Africa under apartheid|apartheid]] movement. His tour gained international praise at a time when few politicians dared to entangle themselves in the politics of South Africa. Kennedy spoke out against the oppression of the black population. He was welcomed by the black population as though a visiting head of state. In an interview with ''[[Look (American magazine)|LOOK]]'' Magazine he said:
{{quote|At the [[University of Natal]] in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence.|Robert Kennedy |''LOOK'' Magazine<ref>[http://www.rfksa.org/magazines/magazine.php?id=6 Ripple of Hope in the Land of Apartheid: Robert Kennedy in South Africa, June 1966]</ref>}}
===American Jewish community and the Civil Rights movement===
[[Image:March on washington Aug 28 1963.jpg|thumb|250px|Jewish civil rights activist [[Joseph L. Rauh, Jr.]] marching with [[Martin Luther King]] in 1963.]]
Many in the [[American Jews|Jewish]] community supported the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, statistically Jews were one of the most actively involved non-black groups in the Movement. Many Jewish students worked in concert with African Americans for CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full-time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era. Jews made up roughly half of the white northern volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi [[Freedom Summer]] project and approximately half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s.<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/relations.html ''From Swastika to Jim Crow'']—PBS Documentary</ref>
Jewish leaders were arrested while heeding a call from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in [[St. Augustine, Florida]], in June 1964, where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge—a nationally important civil rights landmark that was demolished in 2003 so that a Hilton Hotel could be built on the site. [[Abraham Joshua Heschel]], a writer, rabbi and professor of theology at the [[Jewish Theological Seminary of America]] in New York was outspoken on the subject of civil rights. He marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in the 1965 March on Selma. In the [[Mississippi Burning]] murders of 1964, the two white activists killed, [[Andrew Goodman]] and [[Michael Schwerner]], were both Jewish.
[[Brandeis University]], the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college university in the world, created the Transitional Year Program (TYP) in 1968, in part response to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. The faculty created it to renew the University's commitment to social justice. Recognizing Brandeis as a university with a commitment to academic excellence, these faculty members created a chance to disadvantaged students to participate in an empowering educational experience.
The program began by admitting 20 black males. As it developed, two groups have been given chances. The first group consists of students whose secondary schooling experiences and/or home communities may have lacked the resources to foster adequate preparation for success at elite colleges like Brandeis. For example, their high schools do not offer AP or honors courses nor high quality laboratory experiences.
Students selected had to have excelled in the curricula offered by their schools. The second group of students includes those whose life circumstances have created formidable challenges that required focus, energy, and skills that otherwise would have been devoted to academic pursuits. Some have served as heads of their households, others have worked full-time while attending high school full-time, and others have shown leadership in other ways.
The [[American Jewish Committee]], [[American Jewish Congress]], and [[Anti-Defamation League]] (ADL) actively promoted civil rights.
While Jews were very active in the civil rights movement in the South, in the North, many had experienced a more strained relationship with African Americans. In communities experiencing white flight, racial rioting, and urban decay, Jewish Americans were more often the last remaining whites in the communities most affected. With Black militancy and the [[Black Power]] movements on the rise, Black Anti-Semitism increased leading to strained relations between Blacks and Jews in Northern communities. In New York City, most notably, there was a major socio-economic class difference in the perception of African Americans by Jews.<ref>Cannato, Vincent "The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his struggle to save New York" Better Books, 2001. ISBN 0-465-00843-7</ref> Jews from better educated Upper Middle Class backgrounds were often very supportive of African American civil rights activities while the Jews in poorer urban communities that became increasingly minority were often less supportive largely in part due to more negative and violent interactions between the two groups.
{{See also|African-American – Jewish relations|New York City teacher's strike of 1968|Brownsville, Brooklyn}}
====Profile====
Despite large Jewish organisations such as the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress and the ADL being actively involved in the Movement, many Jewish individuals in the Southern states who supported civil rights for African-Americans tended to keep a low profile on "the race issue", in order to avoid attracting the attention of the anti-Black and antisemitic [[Ku Klux Klan]].<ref name="My Jewish Learning"/> However, Klan groups exploited the issue of African-American integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle to launch acts of violent antisemitism. As an example of this hatred, in one year alone, from November 1957 to October 1958, temples and other Jewish communal gatherings were bombed and desecrated in Atlanta, Nashville, Jacksonville, and Miami, and dynamite was found under synagogues in Birmingham, Charlotte, and Gastonia, North Carolina. Some rabbis received death threats, but there were no injuries following these outbursts of violence.<ref name="My Jewish Learning">{{cite book|last1=Sachar|first1=Howard|title=A History of Jews in America|url=http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1948-1980/America/Liberal_Politics/Black-Jewish_Relations/Civil_Rights_Movement.shtml?p=2|website=myjewishlearning.com|publisher=Vintage Books|accessdate=1 March 2015|date=2 November 1993}}</ref>
===Fraying of alliances===
King reached the height of popular acclaim during his life in 1964, when he was awarded the [[Nobel Peace Prize]]. His career after that point was filled with frustrating challenges. The liberal coalition that had gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964<ref name="cra64" /> and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began to fray.
King was becoming more estranged from the Johnson administration. In 1965 he broke with it by calling for peace negotiations and a halt to the bombing of Vietnam. He moved further left in the following years, speaking of the need for economic justice and thoroughgoing changes in American society. He believed change was needed beyond the civil rights gained by the movement.
King's attempts to broaden the scope of the Civil Rights Movement were halting and largely unsuccessful, however. King made several efforts in 1965 to take the Movement north to address issues of employment and housing discrimination. SCLC's campaign in Chicago publicly failed, as Chicago Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]] marginalized SCLC's campaign by promising to "study" the city's problems. In 1966, white demonstrators holding "white power" signs in notoriously racist [[Cicero, Illinois|Cicero]], a suburb of Chicago, threw stones at marchers demonstrating against [[housing segregation]].
===Race riots, 1963–70===
By the end of [[World War II]], more than half of the country's black population lived in Northern and Western industrial cities rather than Southern rural areas.{{Citation needed|date=June 2007}} Migrating to those cities for better job opportunities, education and to escape legal segregation, African Americans often found segregation that existed in fact rather than in law.
While after the 1920s, the [[Ku Klux Klan]] was not prevalent, by the 1960s other problems prevailed in northern cities. Beginning in the 1950s, deindustrialization and restructuring of major industries: railroads and meatpacking, steel industry and car industry, markedly reduced working-class jobs, which had earlier provided middle-class incomes. As the last population to enter the industrial job market, blacks were disadvantaged by its collapse. At the same time, investment in highways and private development of suburbs in the postwar years had drawn many ethnic whites out of the cities to newer housing in expanding suburbs. Urban blacks who did not follow the middle class out of the cities became concentrated in the older housing of [[inner city]] neighborhoods, among the poorest in most major cities.
Because jobs in new service areas and parts of the economy were being created in suburbs, unemployment was much higher in many black than in white neighborhoods, and crime was frequent. African Americans rarely owned the stores or businesses where they lived. Many were limited to menial or blue-collar jobs, although union organizing in the 1930s and 1940s had opened up good working environments for some. African Americans often made only enough money to live in dilapidated tenements that were privately owned, or poorly maintained public housing. They also attended schools that were often the worst academically in the city and that had fewer white students than in the decades before WWII.
The racial makeup of most major city police departments, largely ethnic white (especially Irish), was a major factor in adding to racial tensions. Even a black neighborhood such as Harlem had a ratio of one black officer for every six white officers.<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873963-6,00.html "No Place Like Home"] Time Magazine.</ref> The majority-black city of [[Newark, New Jersey]] had only 145 blacks among its 1322 police officers.<ref name="Herman">[http://www.cornwall.rutgers.edu/pdf/Herman-July%202002-Report.pdf Dr. Max Herman, "Ethnic Succession and Urban Unrest in Newark and Detroit During the Summer of 1967"], Rutgers University, July 2002</ref> Police forces in Northern cities were largely composed of white ethnics, descendants of 19th-century immigrants: mainly Irish, Italian, and Eastern European officers. They had established their own power bases in the police departments and in territories in cities. Some would routinely harass blacks with or without provocation.<ref>[http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/index.htm Max A. Herman, ed. "The Detroit and Newark Riots of 1967"], Rutgers-Newark University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology</ref>
====Harlem riot of 1964====
{{Further|Harlem riot of 1964}}
One of the first major race riots took place in [[Harlem]], New York, in the summer of 1964. A white Irish-American police officer, Thomas Gilligan, shot 15-year-old James Powell, who was black, for allegedly charging him armed with a knife. It was found that Powell was unarmed. A group of black citizens demanded Gilligan's suspension. Hundreds of young demonstrators marched peacefully to the 67th Street police station on July 17, 1964, the day after Powell's death.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF1503/Jacoby/Jacoby.html |title=How a Campaign for Racial Trust Turned Sour |publisher=Aliciapatterson.org |date=July 17, 1964 |accessdate=2010-10-30}}</ref>
The police department did not suspend Gilligan. Although the precinct had promoted the [[New York Police Department|NYPD]]'s first black station commander, neighborhood residents were frustrated with racial inequalities. They looted and burned anything that was not black-owned in the neighborhood.{{citation needed|date=August 2011}} [[Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn|Bedford-Stuyvesant]], a major black neighborhood in [[Brooklyn]] erupted next. That summer, [[1964 Philadelphia race riot|rioting also broke out in Philadelphia]], for similar reasons.
In the aftermath of the riots of July 1964, the federal government funded a pilot program called [[Project Uplift]]. Thousands of young people in Harlem were given jobs during the summer of 1965. The project was inspired by a report generated by [[Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited|HARYOU]] called ''[[Youth in the Ghetto]].''<ref>''Youth in the Ghetto: A Study of the Consequences of Powerlessness,'' Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc., 1964</ref> HARYOU was given a major role in organizing the project, together with the [[National Urban League]] and nearly 100 smaller community organizations.<ref>''Poverty and Politics in Harlem,'' Alphnso Pinkney and Roger Woock, College & University Press Services, Inc., 1970</ref> Permanent jobs at living wages were still out of reach of many young black men.
[[Image:Wattsriots-policearrest-loc.jpg|thumb|Police arrest a man during the [[Watts Riots]], August 1965.]]
====Watts riot (1965)====
{{Further|Watts Riots}}
In 1965, President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] signed the Voting Rights Act, but the new law had no immediate effect on living conditions for blacks. A few days after the act became law, a riot broke out in the [[South Los Angeles|South Central]] Los Angeles neighborhood of [[Watts, Los Angeles|Watts]]. Like Harlem, Watts was an impoverished neighborhood with very high unemployment. Its residents were supervised by a largely white police department that had a history of abuse against blacks.
While arresting a young man for drunk driving, police officers argued with the suspect's mother before onlookers. The conflict triggered a massive destruction of property through six days of rioting. Thirty-four people were killed and property valued at about $30 million was destroyed, making the [[Watts Riots]] among the most expensive in American history.
With black militancy on the rise, ghetto residents directed acts of anger at the police. Black residents growing tired of police brutality continued to riot. Some young people joined groups such as the [[Black Panther Party|Black Panthers]], whose popularity was based in part on their reputation for confronting police officers. Riots among blacks occurred in 1966 and 1967 in cities such as [[Atlanta]], San Francisco, [[Oakland, California|Oakland]], [[Baltimore]], [[Seattle]], [[Tacoma]], [[Hough Riots|Cleveland]], [[Cincinnati]], [[Columbus, Ohio|Columbus]], [[1967 Newark riots|Newark]], Chicago, New York City (specifically in [[Brooklyn]], Harlem and the [[Bronx]]), and worst of all in Detroit.
====Detroit riot of 1967====
{{Further|Detroit riot of 1967}}
In Detroit, a small [[black middle class]] had begun to develop among those African-Americans who worked at unionized jobs in the [[automotive industry]]; these workers still contended with unsafe working conditions and racist practices, concerns which the [[United Auto Workers]] channeled into bureaucratic and ineffective grievance procedures.<ref>[http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3527 Karen Miller (University of Michigan) "Review of 'Detroit:I Do Mind Dying" H-Net Online]</ref> White mobs enforced the segregation of housing up through the 1960s; upon learning that a new homebuyer was black, whites would congregate outside the home picketing, often breaking windows, committing arson, and attacking their new neighbors.<ref name="pbs.org">[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/profiles/57_mi.html "Michigan: Riots and Police Brutality" American Experience-Eyes on the Prize website]</ref> Blacks who were not upwardly mobile were living in substandard conditions, subject to the same problems as African-Americans in Watts and Harlem.
When white police officers shut down an illegal bar and arrested a large group of patrons during the hot summer, furious residents rioted. Blacks looted and destroyed property for five days, and National Guardsmen and federal troops patrolled in tanks through the streets. Residents reported that police officers shot at black people before even determining if the suspects were armed or dangerous. After five days, 41 people had been killed, hundreds injured and thousands left homeless. $40 to $45 million worth of damage was caused.<ref name="pbs.org"/>
State and local governments responded to the riot with a dramatic increase in minority hiring. Mayor Cavanaugh in May 1968 appointed a Special Task Force on Police Recruitment and Hiring, and by July 1972, blacks made up 14 percent of the Detroit police, more than double their percentage in 1967.<ref>Sidney Fine, ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000) p. 325</ref> The Michigan government used its reviews of contracts issued by the state to secure a 21 percent increase in nonwhite employment.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=dTfA5R1m0XoC&pg=PA335&lpg=PA335&dq=sidney+fine,+expanding&source=bl&ots=weUYLlIJ36&sig=NJJb0SO2jPGIOVGklzX_sVnSOvg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Wo5OVN9GjN-wBI6cgdgN&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=riot%2C%20employment&f=false Sidney Fine, ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000), p. 327]</ref> In the aftermath of the turmoil, the Greater Detroit Board of Commerce launched a campaign to find jobs for ten thousand "previously unemployable" persons, a preponderant number of whom were black.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=dTfA5R1m0XoC&pg=PA335&lpg=PA335&dq=sidney+fine,+expanding&source=bl&ots=weUYLlIJ36&sig=NJJb0SO2jPGIOVGklzX_sVnSOvg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Wo5OVN9GjN-wBI6cgdgN&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=riot%2C%20employment&f=false Sidney Fine, ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000), p. 326]</ref>
Prior to the disorder, Detroit enacted no ordinances to end [[housing segregation]], and few had been enacted in the state of Michigan at all.<ref name="law.msu.edu">[https://www.law.msu.edu/clinics/rhc/MI_Housing_Disc.pdf Sidney Fine, "Michigan and Housing Discrimination 1949–1969" Michigan Historical Review, Fall 1997]</ref> Governor [[George Romney (politician)|George Romney]] immediately responded to the riot of 1967 with a special session of the Michigan legislature where he forwarded sweeping housing proposals that included not only [[fair housing]], but "important relocation, [[tenant rights|tenants' rights]] and code enforcement legislation." Romney had supported such proposals in 1965, but abandoned them in the face of organized opposition. White conservative resistance was powerful in 1967 as well, but this time Romney did not relent and once again proposed the housing laws at the regular 1968 session of the legislature.
The governor publicly warned that if the housing measures were not passed, "it will accelerate the recruitment of revolutionary insurrectionists." The laws passed both houses of the legislature. The ''[[Michigan Historical Review]]'' wrote that: ''"The Michigan Fair Housing Act, which took effect on November 15, 1968, was stronger than the federal fair housing law…and than just about all the existing state fair housing acts. It is probably more than a coincidence that the state that had experienced the most severe racial disorder of the 1960s also adopted one of the strongest state fair housing acts."''<ref name="law.msu.edu"/>
Detroit's decline had begun in the 1950s, during which the city lost almost a tenth of its population.<ref>[http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/07/23/detroit-bad-policies-bear-bitter-fruit/PHY6nyuDHfvpr3qreIPahK/story.html Edward L. Glaeser "In Detroit, bad policies bear bitter fruit" The Boston Globe, July 23, 2013]</ref> It has been argued – including by [[Coleman Young|Mayor Coleman Young]] – that the [[1967 Detroit riot|riot]] was the primary accelerator of "[[white flight]]", an ethnic succession by which white residents moved out of inner-city neighborhoods into the suburbs.<ref>Coleman Young, ''Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young'' (1994) p.179.</ref> In contrast, urban affairs experts largely blame a Supreme Court decision against NAACP lawsuits on school desegregation – 1974's ''[[Milliken v. Bradley]]'' case – which maintained the suburban schools as a lily-white refuge.<ref name=Meinke2011>{{cite journal|last=Meinke|first=Samantha|title=Milliken v Bradley: The Northern Battle for Desegregation|journal=Michigan Bar Journal|date=September 2011|volume=90|issue=9|pages=20–22|url=http://www.michbar.org/journal/pdf/pdf4article1911.pdf|accessdate=July 27, 2012}}</ref><ref>[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2095718?uid=3739832&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104726323541 James, David R. (December 1989). "City Limits on Racial Equality: The Effects of City-Suburb Boundaries on Public-School Desegregation, 1968–1976". American Sociological Review 54 (6). Retrieved 29 July 2012.]</ref><ref>[http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/squandered-opportunities-leave-detroit-isolated/page/0/2 Mike Alberti, "Squandered opportunities leave Detroit isolated" RemappingDebate.org]</ref> In his [[dissenting opinion]], Supreme Court Justice [[William O. Douglas]] wrote that the ''Milliken'' decision perpetuated "[[Covenant (law)#Exclusionary covenants|restrictive covenants]]" that "maintained...black [[ghettos]]."<ref>[[s:Milliken v. Bradley/Dissent Douglas|Milliken v. Bradley/Dissent Douglas – Wikisource, the free online library]]. En.wikisource.org. Retrieved on 2013-07-16. See also: [[s:Milliken v. Bradley/Dissent Marshall|"Milliken v. Bradley" by Thurgood Marshall, Dissenting Opinion]]</ref> (Detroit lost 12.8% of its white population in the 1950s, 15.2% of its white population in the 1960s, and 21.2% of its white population in the 1970s.)<ref>[http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/MItab.pdf Gibson, Campbell; Kay Jung (February 2005). "Table 23. Michigan – Race and Hispanic Origin for Selected Large Cities and Other Places: Earliest Census to 1990". United States Census Bureau.]</ref>
====Nationwide riots of 1967====
{{Further|Long Hot Summer of 1967}}
In additon to Detroit, over 100 US cities experienced riots in 1967, including Newark, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Washington D.C.<ref>[http://www.thirteen.org/newark/history3.html "A Walk Through Newark: History of Newark-The Riots" WNET-Thirteen]</ref> President Johnson created the [[Kerner Commission|National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders]] in 1967. The commission's final report called for major reforms in employment and public assistance for black communities. It warned that the United States was moving toward separate white and black societies.
====King riots (1968)====
{{Further|King assassination riots}}
In April 1968 after the assassination of Dr. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]] in [[Memphis, Tennessee]], rioting broke out in cities across the country from frustration and despair. These included Cleveland, [[Baltimore riot of 1968|Baltimore]], [[1968 Washington, D.C. riots|Washington, D.C.]], [[1968 Chicago riots|Chicago]], New York City and [[Louisville riots of 1968|Louisville, Kentucky]]. As in previous riots, most of the damage was done in black neighborhoods. In some cities, it has taken more than a quarter of a century for these areas to recover from the damage of the riots; in others, little recovery has been achieved.
Programs in [[affirmative action]] resulted in the hiring of more black police officers in every major city. Today blacks make up a proportional majority of the police departments in cities such as Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans, Atlanta, Newark, and Detroit. Civil rights laws have reduced employment discrimination.
The conditions that led to frequent rioting in the late 1960s have receded, but not all the problems have been solved. With industrial and economic restructuring, hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs disappeared since the later 1950s from the old industrial cities. Some moved South, as has much population following new jobs, and others out of the U.S. altogether. Civil unrest broke out in [[Arthur McDuffie|Miami in 1980]], in [[1992 Los Angeles riots|Los Angeles in 1992]], and in [[2001 Cincinnati riots|Cincinnati in 2001]].
{{See also|Mass racial violence in the United States}}
===Black power, 1966===
{{Main|Black Power}}
During the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964, numerous tensions within the civil rights movement came to the forefront. Many blacks in [[SNCC]] developed concerns that white activists from the North were taking over the movement. The massive presence of white students was also not reducing the amount of violence that SNCC suffered, but seemed to be increasing it. Additionally, there was profound disillusionment at Lyndon Johnson's denial of voting status for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.<ref>[http://www.academia.edu/384127/SNCC_the_Federal_Government_and_the_Road_to_Black_Power Tom Adam Davies "SNCC, the Federal Government and the Road to Black Power" Paper given at the Historians of the Twentieth Century United States Conference in July 2010]</ref><ref>[http://www.studythepast.com/4333_spring12/acrm/ACRM%205.1.pdf Allen J. Matusow "From Civil Rights to Black Power: The Case of SNCC" in Twentieth Century America: Recent Interpretations (Harcourt Press, 1972), p. 367-378]</ref> Meanwhile, during [[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]]'s work in Louisiana that summer, that group found the federal government would not respond to requests to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or to protect the lives of activists who challenged segregation. For the Louisiana campaign to survive it had to rely on a local African-American militia called the [[Deacons for Defense and Justice]], who used arms to repel white supremacist violence and police repression. CORE's collaboration with the Deacons was effective against breaking Jim Crow in numerous Louisiana areas.<ref>[http://www.thenation.com/article/any-means-necessary?page=0,0 Mike Marqussee "By Any Means Necessary" The Nation, June 17, 2004]</ref><ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/25hicks.html Douglas Martin, "Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81" The New York Times, April 24, 2010]</ref>
In 1965, SNCC helped organize an independent political party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), in the heart of Alabama Klan territory, and permitted its black leaders to openly promote the use of armed self-defense. Meanwhile, the Deacons for Defense and Justice expanded into Mississippi and assisted [[Charles Evers]]' NAACP chapter with a successful campaign in [[Natchez, Mississippi|Natchez]].<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=8H9Me8LZ488C&pg=PA206&lpg=PA206&dq=charles+evers,+deacons&source=bl&ots=oyfEEGJ0yw&sig=qjfZvFuPiytuz1nIe8hU--vrND4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_huHVLv9FILqggTx14LABA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=charles%20evers%2C%20deacons&f=false Lance Hill, ''The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement'' (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) p. 200-204]</ref> The same year, the [[Watts Rebellion]] took place in Los Angeles, and seemed to show that most black youth were now committed to the use of violence to protest inequality and oppression.
During the [[March Against Fear]] in 1966, SNCC and CORE fully embraced the slogan of "black power" to describe these trends towards militancy and self-reliance. In Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael declared, ''"I'm not going to beg the white man for anything that I deserve, I'm going to take it. We need power."''<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html "The Time Has Come, 1964–1966" Eyes on the Prize, Blackside Productions, PBS American Experience]</ref>
Several people engaging in the Black Power movement started to gain more of a sense in black pride and identity as well. In gaining more of a sense of a cultural identity, several blacks demanded that whites no longer refer to them as "Negroes" but as "Afro-Americans." Up until the mid-1960s, blacks had dressed similarly to whites and [[Hair straightening|straightened their hair]]. As a part of gaining a unique identity, blacks started to wear loosely fit [[dashiki]]s and had started to grow their hair out as a natural [[afro]]. The afro, sometimes nicknamed the "'fro," remained a popular black hairstyle until the late 1970s.
Black Power was made most public, however, by the [[Black Panther Party]], which was founded by [[Huey Newton]] and [[Bobby Seale]] in [[Oakland, California]], in 1966. This group followed the ideology of [[Malcolm X]], a former member of the [[Nation of Islam (1955–68)|Nation of Islam]], using a "by-any-means necessary" approach to stopping inequality. They sought to rid African American neighborhoods of [[police brutality]] and created a ten-point plan amongst other things.
Their dress code consisted of black leather jackets, berets, slacks, and light blue shirts. They wore an afro hairstyle. They are best remembered for setting up free breakfast programs, referring to police officers as "pigs", displaying shotguns and a [[raised fist]], and often using the statement of "[[Power to the people (slogan)|Power to the people]]".
Black Power was taken to another level inside prison walls. In 1966, [[George Jackson (Black Panther)|George Jackson]] formed the [[Black Guerrilla Family]] in the California [[San Quentin State Prison]]. The goal of this group was to overthrow the white-run government in America and the prison system. In 1970, this group displayed their dedication after a white prison guard was found not guilty of shooting and killing three black prisoners from the prison tower. They retaliated by killing a white prison guard.
{{listen
|filename=Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) sample.ogg
|title="Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud"
|description=[[James Brown]]'s "[[Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud]]" from ''[[Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud (album)|Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud]]''
|filetype=[[Ogg]]}}
Numerous popular cultural expressions associated with black power appeared at this time. Released in August 1968, the number one [[Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs|Rhythm & Blues single]] for the [[Billboard Year-End]] list was [[James Brown]]'s "[[Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud]]".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/yearend_chart_display.jsp?f=Hot+R%26B/Hip-Hop+Songs&g=Year-end+Singles&year=1968 |title=Year End Charts – Year-end Singles – Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs |publisher=Billboard.com |date= |accessdate=2009-09-08 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071211040751/www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/yearend_chart_display.jsp?f=Hot+R%26B/Hip-Hop+Songs&g=Year-end+Singles&year=1968 |archivedate=December 11, 2007}}</ref> In October 1968, [[Tommie Smith]] and [[John Carlos]], while being awarded the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the [[1968 Summer Olympics]], donned human rights badges and each raised a black-gloved Black Power salute during their podium ceremony.
King was not comfortable with the "Black Power" slogan, which sounded too much like [[black nationalism]] to him. When King was murdered in 1968, Stokely Carmichael stated that whites murdered the one person who would prevent rampant rioting and that blacks would burn every major city to the ground.
==Prison reform==
===''Gates v. Collier''===
[[File:MississippiStatePen.jpg|thumb|250px|[[Mississippi State Penitentiary]].]]
Conditions at the [[Mississippi State Penitentiary]] at Parchman, then known as Parchman Farm, became part of the public discussion of civil rights after activists were imprisoned there. In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders came to the South to test the [[desegregation]] of public facilities. By the end of June 1963, Freedom Riders had been convicted in [[Jackson, Mississippi]].<ref>{{Cite news
|title=Riding On
|work=Time
|publisher=Time Inc.
|date=July 7, 2007
|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872521,00.html?promoid=googlep
|accessdate=2007-10-23 }}</ref> Many were jailed in Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Mississippi employed the [[trusty system (prison)|trusty system]], a hierarchical order of inmates that used some inmates to control and enforce punishment of other inmates.<ref>{{cite web
| url=http://www.dsl.psu.edu/civilrights/chapter1.html
| title=ACLU Parchman Prison
| publisher=
| accessdate=2007-11-29
}}</ref>
In 1970 the civil rights lawyer [[Roy Haber]] began taking statements from inmates. He collected 50 pages of details of murders, rapes, beatings and other abuses suffered by the inmates from 1969 to 1971 at Mississippi State Penitentiary. In a [[landmark case]] known as ''[[Gates v. Collier]]'' (1972), four inmates represented by Haber sued the superintendent of Parchman Farm for violating their rights under the [[United States Constitution]].
Federal Judge William C. Keady found in favor of the inmates, writing that Parchman Farm violated the civil rights of the inmates by inflicting [[cruel and unusual punishment]]. He ordered an immediate end to all unconstitutional conditions and practices. Racial segregation of inmates was abolished. And the trustee system, which allow certain inmates to have power and control over others, was also abolished.<ref name="hnet">{{cite web
| url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459
| title=Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
| publisher=
| accessdate=2006-08-28
| archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20060826214105/http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459| archivedate= August 26, 2006 | deadurl= no}}</ref>
The prison was renovated in 1972 after the scathing ruling by Judge Keady; he wrote that the prison was an affront to "modern standards of decency." Among other reforms, the accommodations were made fit for human habitation. The system of "trusties" was abolished. (The prison had armed [[Life imprisonment|lifers]] with rifles and given them authority to oversee and guard other inmates, which led to many abuses and murders.)<ref>{{cite web
| last=Goldman
| first=Robert M. Goldman
|date=April 1997
| url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459
| title="Worse Than Slavery": Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice – book review
| format=
| publisher=Hnet-online
| language=
| accessdate=2006-08-29
| archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20060829200032/http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459| archivedate= August 29, 2006 | deadurl= no}}</ref>
In integrated correctional facilities in northern and western states, blacks represented a disproportionate number of the prisoners, in excess of their proportion of the general population. They were often treated as second-class citizens by white correctional officers. Blacks also represented a disproportionately high number of [[death row]] inmates. [[Eldridge Cleaver]]'s book ''[[Soul on Ice (book)|Soul on Ice]]'' was written from his experiences in the California correctional system; it contributed to black militancy.<ref>{{Cite book
|last=Cleaver
|first=Eldridge
|title=Soul on Ice
|publisher=McGraw-Hill
|year=1967
|location=New York, NY}}</ref>
==Cold War==
There was an international context for the actions of the U.S. Federal government during these years. It had stature to maintain in Europe and a need to appeal to the people in the [[Third World]].<ref>[http://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-Civil-Rights-Twentieth-Century/dp/0691152438 Dudziak, M.L.: ''Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy'']</ref>
In ''Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy'', the historian Mary L. Dudziak wrote that Communists critical of the United States accused the nation for its hypocrisy in portraying itself as the "leader of the free world," when so many of its citizens were subjected to severe racial discrimination and violence. She argued that this was a major factor in the government moving to support civil rights legislation.
==Documentary films==
* ''[[Freedom on My Mind]]'', 110 minutes, 1994, Producer/Directors: Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford, 1994 Academy Award Nominee, Best Documentary Feature
* ''[[Eyes on the Prize]]'' (1987 and 1990), PBS television series; released again in 2006 and 2009.
* ''[[Dare Not Walk Alone]]'', about the civil rights movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Nominated in 2009 for an [[NAACP]] Image Award.
* ''Crossing in St. Augustine'' (2010), produced by [[Andrew Young]], who participated in the civil rights movement in St. Augustine in 1964. Information available from AndrewYoung.Org.
* ''[[Freedom Riders (TV documentary)|Freedom Riders]]'' (2010), 120 min. PBS, [[American Experience]].
==Activist organizations==
;National/regional civil rights organizations
* [[Congress of Racial Equality]] (CORE)
* [[Deacons for Defense and Justice]]
* [[Leadership Conference on Civil Rights]] (LCCR)
* Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR)
* [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP)
* [[National Council of Negro Women]] (NCNW)
* [[Organization of Afro-American Unity]]
* [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] (SCLC)
* [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC)
* Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF)
* Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC)
;National economic empowerment organizations
* [[Operation Breadbasket]]
* [[Urban League]]
;Local civil rights organizations
* [[Albany Movement]] (Albany, GA)
* [[Council of Federated Organizations]] (Mississippi)
* [[Montgomery Improvement Association]] (Montgomery, AL)
* [[Regional Council of Negro Leadership]] (Mississippi)
* [[Women's Political Council]] (Montgomery, AL)
==Individual activists==
<!-- Note if adding: List is in alphabetical order by last name. After addition, adjust the --col-4-- tags as necessary.-->
{{div col|3}}
* [[Ralph Abernathy]]
* [[Victoria Gray Adams]]
* [[Maya Angelou]]
* [[Ella Baker]]
* [[James Baldwin (writer)|James Baldwin]]
* [[Marion Barry]]
* [[Daisy Bates (civil rights activist)|Daisy Bates]]
* [[Fay Bellamy Powell]]
* [[James Bevel]]
* [[Claude Black]]
* [[Unita Blackwell]]
* [[Julian Bond]]
* [[Amelia Boynton]]
* [[Anne Braden]]
* [[Carl Braden]]
* [[Mary Fair Burks]]
* [[Stokely Carmichael]]
* [[Septima Clark]]
* [[Albert Cleage]]
* [[Charles E. Cobb, Jr.]]
* [[Annie Lee Cooper]]
* [[Dorothy Cotton]]
* [[Claudette Colvin]]
* [[Jonathan Daniels]]
* [[Annie Devine]]
* [[Doris Derby]]
* [[Marian Wright Edelman]]
* [[Medgar Evers]]
* [[Myrlie Evers-Williams]]
* [[James L. Farmer, Jr.]]
* [[Karl Fleming]]
* [[Sarah Mae Flemming]]
* [[James Forman]]
* [[Frankie Muse Freeman]]
* [[Dick Gregory]]
* [[Prathia Hall]]
* [[Fannie Lou Hamer]]
* [[Lorraine Hansberry]]
* [[Lola Hendricks]]
* [[Aaron Henry]]
* [[Myles Horton]]
* [[T. R. M. Howard]]
* [[Winson Hudson]]
* [[Jesse Jackson]]
* [[Jimmie Lee Jackson]]
* [[Esau Jenkins]]
* [[Gloria Johnson-Powell]]
* [[Clyde Kennard]]
* [[Coretta Scott King]]
* [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]
* [[Bernard Lafayette]]
* [[W. W. Law]]
* [[James Lawson (American activist)|James Lawson]]
* [[John Lewis (American politician)|John Lewis]]
* [[Viola Liuzzo]]
* [[Joseph Lowery]]
* [[Autherine Lucy]]
* [[Clara Luper]]
* [[Thurgood Marshall]]
* [[James Meredith]]
* [[Loren Miller (judge)|Loren Miller]]
* [[Jack Minnis]]
* [[Anne Moody]]
* [[Harry T. Moore]]
*[[E. Frederic Morrow]]
* [[Robert Parris Moses]]
* [[William Moyer|Bill Moyer]]
* [[Diane Nash]]
* [[Denise Nicholas]]
* [[E. D. Nixon]]
* [[David Nolan (American author)|David Nolan]]
* [[James Orange]]
* [[Nan Grogan Orrock]]
* [[Rosa Parks]]
* [[Rutledge Pearson]]
* [[George Raymond Jr.]]
* [[James Reeb]]
* [[Gloria Richardson]]
* [[Amelia Boynton Robinson]]
* [[Jo Ann Robinson]]
* [[Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson]]
* [[Bayard Rustin]]
* [[Cleveland Sellers]]
* [[Charles Sherrod]]
* [[Fred Shuttlesworth]]
* [[Modjeska Monteith Simkins]]
* Rev. [[Charles Kenzie Steele]]
* [[Dempsey Travis]]
* [[C. T. Vivian]]
* [[Wyatt Tee Walker]]
* [[Hosea Williams]]
* [[Robert F. Williams]]
* [[Malcolm X]]
* [[Andrew Young]]
{{div col end}}
===Related activists and artists===
{{div col|3}}
* [[Joan Baez]]
* [[Harry Belafonte]]
* [[Ralph Bunche]]
* [[Guy Carawan]]
* [[Robert L. Carter|Robert Carter]]
* [[William Sloane Coffin]]
* [[Ossie Davis]]
* [[Ruby Dee]]
* [[James Dombrowski]]
* [[W. E. B. Du Bois]]
* [[Virginia Durr]]
* [[Bob Dylan]]
* [[John Hope Franklin]]
* [[Jack Greenberg (lawyer)|Jack Greenberg]]
* [[Anna Arnold Hedgeman]]
* [[Dorothy Height]]
* [[Charlton Heston]]
* [[Mahalia Jackson]]
* [[Clarence Jordan]]
* [[Stetson Kennedy]]
* [[Arthur Kinoy]]
* [[William Kunstler]]
* [[Staughton Lynd]]
* [[Constance Baker Motley]]
* [[Nichelle Nichols]]
* [[Phil Ochs]]
* [[Odetta]]
* [[Sidney Poitier]]
* [[A. Philip Randolph]]
* [[Paul Robeson]]
* [[Jackie Robinson]]
* [[Pete Seeger]]
* [[Nina Simone]]
* [[Norman Thomas]]
* [[Roy Wilkins]]
* [[Whitney Young]]
* [[Howard Zinn]]
{{div col end}}
==See also==
{{Portal|African American|Social movements|1950s|1960s}}
{{Commons category|History of civil rights in the United States}}
* [[African-American Civil Rights Movement (1865–95)]]
* [[African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)]]
* [[Timeline of the African American Civil Rights Movement]]
* [[List of civil rights leaders]]
* [[Executive Order 9981]], ending segregated units in the United States military
* [[Photographers of the American Civil Rights Movement]]
* "[[We Shall Overcome]]", unofficial movement anthem
* [[List of Kentucky women in the civil rights era]]
* [[African-American Civil Rights Movement in popular culture]]
'''History preservation:'''
* [[Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project]]
* [[Read's Drug Store]] (Baltimore), site of a 1955 desegregation sit-in
'''Post-Civil Rights Movement:'''
* [[Post–Civil Rights Era African-American history]]
==References==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}
==Further reading==
{{div col|2}}
* Abel, Elizabeth. ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520261839 Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow]''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
* Arsenault, Raymond. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=RZAA-hS178UC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice].'' New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-513674-8
* Barnes, Catherine A. ''Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit,'' Columbia University Press, 1983.
* Berger, Martin A. ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520268647 Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography]''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
* Beito, David T. and Beito, Linda Royster, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=dS4eA77qau0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power],'' University of Illinois Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-252-03420-6
* [[Taylor Branch|Branch, Taylor]]. ''[[At Canaan's Edge: America In the King Years, 1965–1968]].'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. ISBN 0-684-85712-X
* Branch, Taylor. ''Parting the waters : America in the King years, 1954–1963.'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988; ''Pillar of fire : America in the King years, 1963–1965.'' (1998); ''Branch, Taylor. At Canaan's edge: America in the King years, 1965-68''(2007).
* Breitman, George. ''The Assassination of Malcolm X.'' New York: Pathfinder Press. 1976.
* [[Clayborne Carson|Carson, Clayborne]]. ''In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1980. ISBN 0-374-52356-8.
* Carson, Clayborne; Garrow, David J.; Kovach, Bill; Polsgrove, Carol, eds. ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941–1963'' and ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963–1973.'' New York: [[Library of America]], 2003. ISBN 1-931082-28-6 and ISBN 1-931082-29-4.
* Chandra, Siddharth and Angela Williams-Foster. "The 'Revolution of Rising Expectations,' Relative Deprivation, and the Urban Social Disorders of the 1960s: Evidence from State-Level Data." ''Social Science History,'' 29(2):299–332, 2005.
* Dann, Jim. ''Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers, Memories of Mississippi 1964–65''. Baraka Books 2013. ISBN 978-1-926824-87-1
* Fairclough, Adam. ''To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference & Martin Luther King''. The University of Georgia Press, 1987.
* [[Eric Foner|Foner, Eric]] and Joshua Brown, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=10NdBej1_JEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction].'' Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2005. p. 225–238. ISBN 978-0-375-70274-7
* [[David Garrow|Garrow, David J]]. ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference''. 800 pages. New York: William Morrow, 1986. ISBN 0-688-04794-7.
* Garrow, David J. ''The FBI and Martin Luther King''. New York: W.W. Norton. 1981. Viking Press Reprint edition. 1983. ISBN 0-14-006486-9. Yale University Press; Revised and Expanded edition. 2006. ISBN 0-300-08731-4.
* Greene, Christina. ''Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham''. North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
* Horne, Gerald. ''The Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s''. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1995. Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press ed edition. October 1, 1997. ISBN 0-306-80792-0
* Kirk, John A. ''Martin Luther King, Jr.''. London: Longman, 2005. ISBN 0-582-41431-8
* Kirk, John A. ''Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970''. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8130-2496-X
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3651/is_200004/ai_n8888452 Kousser, J. Morgan, "The Supreme Court And The Undoing of the Second Reconstruction," ''National Forum,'' (Spring 2000).]
* Kryn, Randy. "James L. Bevel, The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement", 1984 paper with 1988 addendum, printed in "We Shall Overcome, Volume II" edited by David Garrow, New York: Carlson Publishing Co., 1989.
* Malcolm X (with the assistance of [[Alex Haley]]). ''[[The Autobiography of Malcolm X]].'' New York: Random House, 1965. Paperback ISBN 0-345-35068-5. Hardcover ISBN 0-345-37975-6.
* [[Manning Marable|Marable, Manning]]. ''Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1982''. 249 pages. University Press of Mississippi, 1984. ISBN 0-87805-225-9.
* [[Doug McAdam|McAdam, Doug]]. ''Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1982.
* [[Doug McAdam|McAdam, Doug]], 'The US Civil Rights Movement: Power from Below and Above, 1945–70', in [[Adam Roberts (scholar)|Adam Roberts]] and [[Timothy Garton Ash]] (eds.), ''Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present.'' Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-955201-6.
* Minchin, Timothy J. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=hb3ETCCaWV4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960–1980]''. University of North Carolina Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8078-2470-4.
* Morris, Aldon D. ''The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change''. New York: The Free Press, 1984. ISBN 0-02-922130-7
* [[Jason Sokol|Sokol, Jason.]] ''[[There Goes My Everything (book)|There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945–1975]]''. New York: Knopf, 2006.
* Payne, Charles M. ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520251762 I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle]''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
* Patterson, James T. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=OPvoFu_l3oYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Brown v. Board of Education, a Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy].'' Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-515632-3
* Raiford, Leigh. ''[http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1771 Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle]''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
* Ransby, Barbara. ''Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, a Radical Democratic Vision''. The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
* {{cite book | last = Reeves | first = Richard |authorlink=Richard Reeves (American writer) | year = 1993 | title = President Kennedy: Profile of Power | publisher = Simon & Schuster | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-671-64879-4 | ref = harv }}
* Shawki, Ahmed ''Black Liberation and Socialism'' ([[Haymarket Books]], 2006), ISBN 1-931859-26-4.
* Sitkoff, Howard. ''The Struggle for Black Equality'' (2nd ed. 2008)
* Tsesis, Alexander. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=A94zj6PYV7gC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law]''. (Yale University Press, 2008). ISBN 978-0-300-11837-7
* [[Juan Williams|Williams, Juan]]. ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965''. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. ISBN 0-14-009653-1
{{div col end}}
===Historiography and memory===
* Fairclough, Adam. "Historians and the Civil Rights Movement." ''Journal of American Studies'' (1990) 24#3 pp: 387-398.
* Frost, Jennifer. "Using "Master Narratives" to Teach History: The Case of the Civil Rights Movement." ''History Teacher'' (2012) 45#3 pp: 437-446. [http://www.africanafrican.com/folder11/world%20history4/harlem%20renaissance/M12_Frost.pdf Online]
* Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. "The long civil rights movement and the political uses of the past." ''Journal of American History'' (2005) 91#4 pp: 1233-1263.
* Lawson, Steven F. "Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement," ''American Historical Review'' (1991) 96#2 , pp. 456–471 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2163219 in JSTOR]
* Sandage, Scott A. "A marble house divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the civil rights movement, and the politics of memory, 1939-1963." ''Journal of American History'' (1993): 135-167. [http://www.journalofamericanhistory.orgwww.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/lincoln/bibliography/articles/pdf/LIJ-Article-1990s.pdf Online]
===Primary sources===
* Holsaert, Faith et al. [http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/54yed3wd9780252035579.html ''Hands on the Freedom Plow Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC'']. University of Illinois Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-252-03557-9.
==External links==
{{div col|2}}
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* [http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/ Civil Rights Greensboro] provides access to archival resources documenting the modern civil rights era in Greensboro, North Carolina, from the 1940s to the early 1980s
* [http://www.accordfreedomtrail.org St. Augustine Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Trail marking its sites.]
* [http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/civilrights/home.html Civil Rights Resource Guide, from the Library of Congress]
* [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart9.html The Civil Rights Era] Library of Congress
* [http://crdl.usg.edu/voci/go/crdl/home Civil Rights Digital Library] Digital Library of Georgia
* [http://www.crmvet.org Civil Rights Movement Veterans] ~ Movement history, personal stories, documents, and photos.
* [http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65 Civil Rights Movement 1955–1965]
* [http://www.american.edu/bgriff/H207web/civrights/CivilRightsOutline.htm Civil Rights as a People's Movement] American University Course Syllabus
* [http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1998/1/98.01.06.x.html Let Justice Roll Down: The Civil Rights Movement Through Film] Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
* [http://www.usm.edu/crdp/ University of Southern Mississippi's Civil Rights Documentation Project], includes an extensive Timeline
* [http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcivilrights.htm President Kennedy's Address to the nation on Civil Rights]
* [http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/what.htm What Was Jim Crow?] ''(The racial caste system that precipitated the Civil Rights Movement)''
* [http://www.sitins.com/index.shtml History and images of the sit-in movement]
* [http://www.wdashistory.org WDAS Radio's Enduring Impact on the Civil Rights Movement]
* [http://www.atlantastudentmovement.org The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights and the Atlanta Student Movement]
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2716 The Georgia Movement]
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Feature.jsp?id=s-51&sug=y Black Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement]
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1057&sug=y The Albany Movement] (entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia)
* [http://microsites.jfklibrary.org/olemiss/home/ Materials relating to the desegregation of Ole Miss in 1962]
* [http://www.floridamemory.com/OnlineClassroom/PhotoAlbum/civil_rights.cfm Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Florida] from the State Archives of Florida
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{{div col end}}
{{African-American Civil Rights Movement|state=uncollapsed}}
{{Navboxes
| list =
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{{DEFAULTSORT:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-68)}}
[[Category:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68)|1955]]
[[Category:History of civil rights in the United States]]
[[Category:Community organizing]]
[[Category:Nonviolent resistance movements]]
[[Category:Defunct American political movements]]
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New page wikitext, after the edit (new_wikitext) | '{{Redirect|American Civil Rights Movement|the earlier period|African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)}}
{{Redirect|Civil Rights Movement|the worldwide series of political movements|Movements for civil rights}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2015}}
{{Infobox civil conflict
| title = African-American Civil Rights Movementyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
| partof =
| image = File:Rustin Young Ryan Farmer Lewis.jpg
| caption = Four leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. From left: [[Bayard Rustin]], [[Andrew Young]], (N.Y. Cong. [[William Fitts Ryan|William Ryan]]), [[James L. Farmer, Jr.|James Farmer]], and [[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]] in 1965.
| date = 1954–68
| place = [[United States]], especially the [[Southern United States|South]]
| causes =
| goals = End of [[Jim Crow laws|racial segregation]]
| methods = [[nonviolence]], [[direct action]], [[voter registration]], [[boycott]], [[civil resistance]], [[civil disobedience]], [[community education]]
| status =
| result = [[Civil Rights Act of 1964|1964 Civil Rights Act]]<br />[[Voting Rights Act of 1965|1965 Voting Rights Act]]<br />[[Civil Rights Act of 1968|1968 Fair Housing Act]]
| side1 = '''[[African-Americans]]'''
*[[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People|NAACP]]
*[[Southern Christian Leadership Conference|SCLC]]
*[[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]]
*[[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|SNCC]]
*[[Black Panther Party|BPP]]
| side2 = {{flagicon|US}} '''[[United States federal government]]'''
| side3 = '''[[White supremacists]]'''
*[[Citizens' Councils]]
*[[Ku Klux Klan]]
*[[National Association of Realtors|National Association of Real Estate Boards]]<ref>[http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9951 Barbara J. Shircliffe "Review of Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development by Kevin Fox Gotham" Humanities and Social Science Online, November, 2004]</ref><ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=ywnaezNtrr0C&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=nareb,+segregation&source=bl&ots=ecGWsyQiWC&sig=_4i5GBCbh8duw59IvS6LEef75Gw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ugd-VOGBJKaCsQTVo4GQBQ&ved=0CFoQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=nareb%2C%20segregation&f=false Christopher Bonastia, Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government's Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs (Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 113-114]</ref>
| leadfigures1 = [[Ella Baker]]<br />[[James Bevel]]<br />[[James L. Farmer, Jr.|James Farmer]]<br />[[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]<br />[[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]]<br />[[Rosa Parks]]<br />[[Malcolm X]]<br />[[Medgar Evers]]
| leadfigures2 = [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]]<br />[[John F. Kennedy]]<br />[[Lyndon B. Johnson]]<br /> [[Earl Warren]]
| leadfigures3 = [[Samuel Bowers]]<br />[[Jim Clark (sheriff)|Jim Clark]]<br />[[Bull Connor]]<br />[[James O. Eastland]]<br />[[George Wallace]]
| howmany1 =
| howmany2 =
| howmany3 =
| casualties1 =
| casualties2 =
| casualties3 =
| fatalities =
| injuries =
| arrests =
| detentions =
| charged =
| fined =
| casualties_label =
| notes =
}}
{{African American topics sidebar|right}}
The '''African-American Civil Rights Movement''' or '''1960s Civil Rights Movement''' encompasses [[social movement]]s in the United States whose goals were to end [[Jim Crow laws|racial segregation and discrimination]] against [[African American|black American]]s and to secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the [[Southern United States|South]].
The movement was characterized by major campaigns of [[civil resistance]]. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of [[Nonviolence|nonviolent]] protest and [[civil disobedience]] produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations that highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included [[boycott]]s such as the successful [[Montgomery Bus Boycott]] (1955–56) in Alabama; "[[sit-in]]s" such as the influential [[Greensboro sit-ins]] (1960) in North Carolina; [[Demonstration (people)|marches]], such as the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]] (1965) in Alabama; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities.
Noted legislative achievements during this phase of the civil rights movement were passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64">[http://finduslaw.com/civil_rights_act_of_1964_cra_title_vii_equal_employment_opportunities_42_us_code_chapter_21 Civil Rights Act of 1964]</ref> that banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations; the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]], that restored and protected voting rights; the [[Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965]], that dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and Germanic groups; and the [[Fair Housing Act of 1968]], that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and across the country young people were inspired to take action.
A wave of [[urban riots|inner city riots]] in black communities from 1964 through 1970 undercut support from the white community. The emergence of the [[Black Power]] movement, which lasted from about 1966 to 1975, challenged the established black leadership for its cooperative attitude and its nonviolence, and instead demanded political and economic self-sufficiency.
While most popular representations of the movement are centered on the leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., many scholars note that the movement was far too diverse to be credited to one person, organization, or strategy.<ref>[http://history.msu.edu/files/2010/04/Timothy-Tyson.pdf Timothy B. Tyson, "Robert F. Williams, 'Black Power,' and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle," ''Journal of American History'' 85, No. 2 (Sep., 1998): 540–570]</ref> Sociologist [[Doug McAdam]] has stated that, "in King's case, it would be inaccurate to say that he was the leader of the modern civil rights movement...but more importantly, there was no singular civil rights movement. The movement was, in fact, a coalition of thousands of local efforts nationwide, spanning several decades, hundreds of discrete groups, and all manner of strategies and tactics—legal, illegal, institutional, non-institutional, violent, non-violent. Without discounting King's importance, it would be sheer fiction to call him the leader of what was fundamentally an amorphous, fluid, dispersed movement."<ref>[http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/occupy-future/what-should-sustained-movement-look Doug McAdam "Occupy the Future:What Should a Sustained Movement Look Like?" ''Boston Review'', June 26, 2012]</ref>
==Background==
{{Refimprove section|date=April 2008}}
Following the [[American Civil War]], three constitutional amendments were passed, including the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]] that ended slavery; the [[14th Amendment to the United States Constitution|14th Amendment]] that gave African Americans citizenship, adding their total population of four million to the official population of southern states for Congressional apportionment; and the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|15th Amendment]] that gave African-American males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time). From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction Era]] trying to establish free labor and civil rights of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to insurgent movements such as the [[Ku Klux Klan]], whose members attacked black and white Republicans to maintain [[white supremacy]]. In 1871, President [[Ulysses S. Grant]], the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General [[Amos T. Akerman]], initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the [[Enforcement Acts]].<ref>
{{cite book|last1=Smith|first1=Jean Edward|title=Grant|date=2001|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=9780743217019|pages=244–247|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TssAXSdPTi4C&pg=PA544&dq=smith+Grant+enforcement+act+klansmen&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PH6gVN3FDISxogSbqoDQCA&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=smith%20Grant%20enforcement%20act%20klansmen&f=false}}</ref>
Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act; by the early 1870s, other white supremacist groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage.<ref>{{cite web|last=Wormser|first=Richard|title=The Enforcement Acts (1870–71)|url=http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html|publisher=PBS: Jim Crow Stories|accessdate=May 12, 2012}}</ref>
After the [[United States presidential election, 1876|disputed election]] of 1876 resulted in the end of [[Reconstruction era of the United States|Reconstruction]] and federal troops were withdrawn, whites in the South regained political control of the region's state legislatures by the end of the century, after having intimidated and violently attacked blacks during elections, and lost power during a biracial fusionist coalition of Populists and Republicans in the late century.
From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchise]] African Americans by creating barriers to voter registration; voting rolls were dramatically reduced as blacks were forced out of electoral politics. While progress was made in some areas, this status lasted in most southern states until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s to provide federal enforcement of constitutional voting rights. For more than 60 years, blacks in the South were not able to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.<ref>[http://baic.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-state.html Black-American Representatives and Senators by Congress, 1870–Present]—U.S. House of Representatives</ref> Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries.
During this period, the white-dominated [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] maintained political control of the South. Because whites controlled all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful voting block in Congress. The [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican Party]]—the "party of Lincoln"—which had been the party that most blacks belonged to, shrank to insignificance as black voter registration was suppressed. Until 1965, the "[[solid South]]" was a one-party system under the Democrats. Outside a few areas (usually in remote Appalachia), the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Otis H Stephens, Jr|author2=John M Scheb, II|title=American Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=tFcwj2yrLcwC&pg=PA528|year=2007|publisher=Cengage Learning|page=528}}</ref> In 1901, President [[Theodore Roosevelt]] invited [[Booker T. Washington]] to dine at the White House, making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers." Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, this was resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics.<ref>{{cite book|author=Paul Finkelman, ed.|title=Encyclopedia of African American History|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=6gbQHxb_P0QC&pg=RA3-PA199|year=2009|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=199–200 of vol 4}}</ref>
During the same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white Democrats imposed racial [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] by law. Violence against blacks increased, with numerous [[lynchings]] through the turn of the century. The system of ''[[de jure]]'' state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged from the post-Reconstruction South became known as the "[[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]]" system. The [[United States Supreme Court]] upheld the constitutionality of those state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities in its 1896 decision [[Plessy v. Ferguson]] making [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]] the law of the land. [[Racial segregation in the United States|Segregation]] remained intact into the mid-1950s, when many states began to gradually integrate their schools following the Supreme Court decision in [[Brown v. Board of Education]] that overturned [[Plessy v. Ferguson]]. The early 20th century is a period often referred to as the "[[nadir of American race relations]]". While problems and [[civil rights]] violations were most intense in the South, social discrimination and tensions affected African Americans in other regions, as well.<ref>C. Vann Woodward, ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow'', 3rd rev. ed. (Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 67–109.</ref> At the national level, the Southern bloc controlled important committees in Congress, defeated passage of laws against lynching, and exercised considerable power beyond the number of whites in the South.
Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period:
* [[Racial segregation]]. By law,<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/info/seglaws.htm Birmingham Segregation Laws] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains. Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.
* [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|Disenfranchisement]]. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more restrictive, essentially forcing black voters off the voting rolls. The number of African-American voters dropped dramatically, and they no longer were able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans and U.S. states such as Alabama disfranchised poor whites as well.
* [[Exploitation]]. Increased economic oppression of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination.
* Violence. Individual, police, paramilitary, organizational, and [[Mass racial violence in the United States|mob racial violence against blacks]] (and Latinos in the Southwest and Asians in California).
African Americans and other ethnic minorities rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the [[African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)]]). The [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through [[litigation]], education, and [[lobbying]] efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' in 1954 when the Court rejected separate white and colored school systems and, by implication, overturned the "[[separate but equal]]" doctrine established in the ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' of 1896.
The integration of Southern public libraries involved many of the same characteristics seen in the larger Civil Rights Movement.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006">Fultz, M. (2006). Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation. Libraries & The Cultural Record, 41(3), 338–346.</ref> This includes sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006"/> For example, in 1963 in the city of [[Anniston, Alabama]], two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006"/> Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries were generally quicker than integration of other public institutions.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006" />
Black veterans of the military after both World Wars pressed for full civil rights and often led activist movements. In 1948 they gained integration in the military under President [[Harry Truman]], who issued an Executive Order to accomplish it. The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). From 1910 to 1970, African Americans sought better lives by migrating north and west out of the South. Nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the [[Great Migration (African American)|Great Migration]]. So many people migrated that the demographics of some previously black-majority states changed to white majority (in combination with other developments).
[[Housing segregation]] was a nationwide problem, persistent well outside the South. Although the federal government had become increasingly involved in mortgage lending and development in the 1930s and 40s, it did not reject the use of race-restrictive covenants until 1950.<ref>[http://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law Nikole Hannah-Jones "Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights" ProPublica, Oct. 28, 2012]</ref> Suburbanization was already connected with [[white flight]] by this time, a situation perpetuated by real estate agents' continuing [[Residential segregation|discrimination]]. In particular, from the 1930s to the 1960s the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor "''should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood.''"<ref>[http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/fairhousing/historical.html "How We Got Here: The Historical Roots of Housing Segregation" National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity]</ref>
Invigorated by the victory of ''Brown'' and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about [[desegregation]]. They were faced with "[[massive resistance]]" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and [[disfranchisement|voter suppression]]. In defiance, African American activists adopted a combined strategy of [[direct action]], [[nonviolence]], [[nonviolent resistance]], and many events described as [[civil disobedience]], giving rise to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of 1954–1968.
==Mass action replacing litigation==
The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation that had typified the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century broadened after ''Brown'' to a strategy that emphasized "direct action:" primarily boycotts, [[sit-in]]s, [[Freedom Rides]], marches and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. This mass action approach typified the movement from 1960 to 1968.
Churches, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges used by the NAACP and others.
In 1952, the [[Regional Council of Negro Leadership]] (RCNL), led by [[T. R. M. Howard]], a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter, organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned [[Tri-State Bank]] of [[Nashville]] which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the [[White Citizens' Councils]].<ref name="Beito and Beito">David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, ''Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power'', Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp.81. 99–100.</ref>
After Rosa Parks' arrest in December 1955, Jo Ann Gibson-Robinson of the Montgomery Women's Political Council seized the opportunity to put a long-considered Bus Boycott protest in motion. Late that night, she, two students, and John Cannon, chairman of the Business Department at Alabama State, mimeographed and distributed approximately 52,500 leaflets calling for a boycott of the buses.<ref>http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_robinson_jo_ann_1912_1992/ , retrieved February 1, 2015</ref><ref name="Robinson 1986">Robinson, Jo Ann & Garrow, David J. (forward by Coretta Scott King) The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (1986) ISBN 0-394-75623-1 Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press</ref>
The first day of the boycott having been successful, King and other civic and religious leaders created the [[Montgomery Improvement Association]]—so as to continue the [[Montgomery Bus Boycott]] The MIA managed to keep the boycott going for over a year until a federal court order required Montgomery to desegregate its buses. The success in Montgomery made its leader [[Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]] a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the highly successful [[Tallahassee, Florida]], boycott of 1956–57.<ref>[http://www.tallahassee.com/special/boycott/reader-smith.html "The Tallahassee Bus Boycott—Fifty Years Later]," ''The Tallahassee Democrat'', May 21, 2006</ref>
In 1957 Dr. King and Rev. [[Ralph Abernathy]], the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and Rev. [[T. J. Jemison]] of Baton Rouge; and other activists such as Rev. [[Fred Shuttlesworth]], [[Ella Baker]], [[A. Philip Randolph]], [[Bayard Rustin]] and [[Stanley Levison]], to form the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]]. The SCLC, with its headquarters in [[Atlanta]], Georgia, did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made non-violence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism.
In 1959, [[We Shall Overcome|Septima Clarke]], Bernice Robinson, and [[Esau Jenkins]], with the help of [[Myles Horton]]'s [[Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School]] in Tennessee, began the first Citizenship Schools in [[South Carolina]]'s [[Sea Islands]]. They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on [[Johns Island, South Carolina|Johns Island]]. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere.
==Key events==
{{Main|Timeline of the African-American civil rights movement}}
===''Brown v. Board of Education'', 1954===
{{Main|Brown v. Board of Education}}
In the Spring of 1951, black students in Virginia protested their unequal status in the state's segregated educational system. Students at [[R.R. Moton High School|Moton High School]] protested the overcrowded conditions and failing facility.<ref name="autogenerated55">Klarman, Michael J.,''Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights movement'' [electronic resource] : abridged edition of From Jim Crow to Civil Rights : The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007, p.55</ref> Some local leaders of the NAACP had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Jim Crow laws of school segregation. When the students did not budge, the NAACP joined their battle against school segregation. The NAACP proceeded with five cases challenging the school systems; these were later combined under what is known today as ''Brown v. Board of Education''.<ref name="autogenerated55"/>
[[File:Integration.jpg|thumb|250px|School integration, Barnard School, Washington, D.C., 1955]]
On May 17, 1954, the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]] handed down its [[Judicial review|decision]] regarding the case called ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas'', in which the plaintiffs charged that the education of black children in separate public schools from their white counterparts was [[Constitutionality|unconstitutional]]. The Court stated that the
<blockquote>segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group.</blockquote>
The lawyers from the NAACP had to gather some plausible evidence in order to win the case of Brown vs. Education. Their way of addressing the issue of school segregation was to enumerate several arguments. One of them pertained to having an exposure to interracial contact in a school environment. It was said that it would, in turn, help to prevent children to live with the pressures that society exerts in regards to race. Therefore, having a better chance of living in democracy. In addition, another was in reference to the emphasis of how "'education' comprehends the entire process of developing and training the mental, physical and moral powers and capabilities of human beings".<ref>Risa L. Goluboff, ''The Lost Promise of Civil Rights'',Harvard University Press, MA:Cambridge,2007, p. 249–251</ref>
Risa Goluboff wrote that the NAACP's intention was to show the Court's that African American children were the victims of school segregation and their futures were at risk. The Court ruled that both ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" standard in general, and ''[[Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education]]'' (1899), which had applied that standard to schools, were unconstitutional.
The federal government filed a [[friend of the court brief]] in the case urging the judges to consider the effect that segregation had on America's image in the [[Cold War]]. Secretary of State [[Dean Acheson]] was quoted in the brief stating that ''"The United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country."
''<ref name="amphilsoc.org">[http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/480405.pdf Antonly Lester, "Brown v. Board of Education Overseas" PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY VOL. 148, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004]</ref><ref>[http://www.history.ucsb.edu/courses/tempdownload.php?attach_id=5781 Mary L Dudziak "Brown as a Cold War Case" ''Journal of American History'', June 2004]</ref>
''
The following year, in the case known as ''Brown II'', the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed".<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis54.htm#1954bvbe ''Brown v Board of Education'' Decision] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> ''[[Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas]]'' (1954) did not overturn ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' (1896). ''[[Plessy v. Ferguson]]'' was segregation in transportation modes. ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' dealt with segregation in education. ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' did set in motion the future overturning of 'separate but equal'.
On May 18, 1954 [[Greensboro, North Carolina]] became the first city in the South to publicly announce that it would abide by the Supreme Court's ''Brown v. Board of Education'' ruling. "It is unthinkable,' remarked School Board Superintendent Benjamin Smith, 'that we will try to [override] the laws of the United States."<ref name="deseg"/> This positive reception for Brown, together with the appointment of African American Dr. David Jones to the school board in 1953, convinced numerous white and black citizens that Greensboro was heading in a progressive direction. Integration in Greensboro occurred rather peacefully compared to the process in Southern states such as Alabama, Arkansas, and Virginia where "[[massive resistance]]" was practiced by top officials and throughout the states. In Virginia, some counties closed their public schools rather than integrate, and many white Christian private schools were founded to accommodate students who used to go to public schools. Even in Greensboro, much local resistance to desegregation continued, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971.<ref name="deseg">[http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/topicalessays/schooldeseginteg.aspx Desegregation and Integration of Greensboro's Public Schools, 1954–1974]</ref>
Many Northern cities also had [[Racial segregation#United States of America|de facto segregation]] policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In [[Harlem (Manhattan)|Harlem]], New York for example, neither a single new school was built since the turn of the century, nor did a single nursery school exist – even as the [[Second Great Migration (African American)|Second Great Migration]] was causing overcrowding. Existing schools tended to be dilapidated and staffed with inexperienced teachers. ''Brown'' helped stimulate activism among New York City parents like [[Mae Mallory]] who, with support of the NAACP, initiated a successful lawsuit against the city and state on ''Brown'''s principles. Mallory and thousands of other parents bolstered the pressure of the lawsuit with a school boycott in 1959. During the boycott, some of the first [[freedom schools]] of the period were established. The city responded to the campaign by permitting more open transfers to high-quality, historically-white schools. (New York's African-American community, and Northern desegregation activists generally, now found themselves contending with the problem of [[white flight]], however.)<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=AkPnRoKK-XYC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=Inter+group+Committee+on+New+York%27s+Public+Schools,+mallory&source=bl&ots=32y_grSeLC&sig=ctJKYMbzX-n2-UoaAChbwAaAOyU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xcF9VPzAJ8vdsAT4oYGIBg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Inter%20group%20Committee%20on%20New%20York's%20Public%20Schools%2C%20mallory&f=false Melissa F. Weiner, Power, Protest, and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City (Rutgers University Press, 2010) p. 51-66]</ref><ref>[http://hisofblackamfall2014.voices.wooster.edu/files/2014/08/Adina_Back_Exposing_the_Whole_Segregation_Myth3.pdf Adina Back "Exposing the Whole Segregation Myth: The Harlem Nine and New York City Schools" in ''Freedom north: Black freedom struggles outside the South, 1940–1980'', Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, eds.(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 65-91]</ref>
===Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956===
{{Main|Rosa Parks|Montgomery Bus Boycott}}
On December 1, 1955, nine months after a 15-year-old high school student, [[Claudette Colvin]], refused to give up her seat on a public bus on Montgomery, Alabama to make room for a white passenger and was arrested, [[Rosa Parks]] (the "mother of the civil rights movement") did the same thing. Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the [[Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Center]] in Tennessee where nonviolent civil disobedience as a strategy had been discussed. Parks was arrested, tried, and convicted for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. After word of this incident reached the black community, 50 African-American leaders gathered and organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott to demand a bus system in which passengers would be treated equally.<ref name="ReferenceA">W. Chafe, ''The Unfinished Journey''</ref>
After the city rejected many of their suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by [[E.D. Nixon]], pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. In November 1956, a federal court ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated and the boycott ended.<ref name="ReferenceA"/>
After the success of the original one-day bus boycott led by Jo Ann Robinson and the Montgomery Women's Political Council, black citizens decided to continue the boycott and established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], a Baptist minister, was elected President of this organization. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.<ref name="Robinson 1986"/>
===Desegregating Little Rock Central High School, 1957===
{{Main|Little Rock Nine}}
[[Image:101st Airborne at Little Rock Central High.jpg|thumb|275px|Troops from the [[327th Infantry Regiment|327th Regiment, 101st Airborne]] escorting the [[Little Rock Nine]] African-American students up the steps of Central High.]]
A crisis erupted in [[Little Rock, Arkansas]] when [[Governor of Arkansas]] [[Orval Faubus]] called out the [[National Guard of the United States|National Guard]] on September 4 to prevent entry to the [[Little Rock Nine|nine African-American students]] who had sued for the right to attend an integrated school, [[Little Rock Central High School]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis57.htm#1957lrsd The Little Rock Nine] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> The nine students had been chosen to attend Central High because of their excellent grades.
On the first day of school, only one of the nine students showed up because she did not receive the phone call about the danger of going to school. She was harassed by white protesters outside the school, and the police had to take her away in a patrol car to protect her. Afterward, the nine students had to carpool to school and be escorted by military personnel in [[jeep]]s.
Faubus was not a proclaimed segregationist. The Arkansas Democratic Party, which then controlled politics in the state, put significant pressure on Faubus after he had indicated he would investigate bringing Arkansas into compliance with the ''Brown'' decision. Faubus then took his stand against integration and against the Federal court ruling.
Faubus' resistance received the attention of President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], who was determined to enforce the orders of the Federal courts. Critics had charged he was lukewarm, at best, on the goal of desegregation of public schools. But, Eisenhower federalized the [[National Guard of the United States|National Guard]] in Arkansas and ordered them to return to their barracks. Eisenhower deployed elements of the [[101st Airborne Division]] to Little Rock to protect the students.
The students attended high school under harsh conditions. They had to pass through a gauntlet of spitting, jeering whites to arrive at school on their first day, and to put up with harassment from other students for the rest of the year. Although federal troops escorted the students between classes, the students were teased and even attacked by white students when the soldiers were not around. One of the Little Rock Nine, [[Minnijean Brown-Trickey|Minnijean Brown]], was suspended for spilling a bowl of chili on the head of a white student who was harassing her in the school lunch line. Later, she was expelled for verbally abusing a white female student.<ref>[http://www.america.gov/st/diversity-english/2007/August/20070824131706berehellek0.2049982.html Minnijean Brown Trickey, America.gov]</ref>
Only [[Ernest Green]] of the Little Rock Nine graduated from Central High School. After the 1957–58 school year was over, Little Rock closed its public school system completely rather than continue to integrate. Other school systems across the South followed suit.
===Robert F. Williams and the debate on nonviolence, 1959–1964===
The Jim Crow system employed "terror as a means of social control,"<ref>Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, How They Fail (Random House, 1977), 182</ref> with the most organized manifestations being the Ku Klux Klan and their collaborators in local police departments. This violence played a key role in blocking the progress of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s. Some black organizations in the South began practicing armed self-defense. The first to do so openly was the Monroe, North Carolina chapter of the NAACP led by [[Robert F. Williams]]. Williams had rebuilt the chapter after its membership was terrorized out of public life by the Klan. He did so by encouraging a new, more working-class membership to arm itself thoroughly and defend against attack.<ref>[http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-1534.html Timothy B. Tyson, ''Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of "Black Power"'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 79–80]</ref> When Klan nightriders attacked the home of NAACP member Dr. Albert Perry in October 1957, Williams' militia exchanged gunfire with the stunned Klansmen, who quickly retreated. The following day, the city council held an emergency session and passed an ordinance banning KKK motorcades.<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 88–89</ref> One year later, Lumbee Indians in North Carolina would have a similarly successful armed stand-off with the Klan (known as the [[Battle of Hayes Pond]]) which resulted in KKK leader James W. "Catfish" Cole being convicted of incitement to riot.<ref>Nicholas Graham, [http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-postwar/6068 "January 1958: The Lumbees face the Klan"], This Month in North Carolina History</ref>
After the acquittal of several white men charged with sexually assaulting black women in Monroe, Williams announced to United Press International reporters that he would "meet violence with violence" as a policy. Williams' declaration was quoted on the front page of ''The New York Times'', and ''The Carolina Times'' considered it "the biggest civil rights story of 1959."<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 149</ref> NAACP National chairman Roy Wilkins immediately suspended Williams from his position, but the Monroe organizer won support from numerous NAACP chapters across the country. Ultimately, Wilkins resorted to bribing influential organizer Daisy Bates to campaign against Williams at the NAACP national convention and the suspension was upheld. The convention nonetheless passed a resolution which stated: "We do not deny, but reaffirm the right of individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults." <ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 159 -164</ref> Martin Luther King Jr. argued for Williams' removal,<ref>[http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_williams_robert_franklin_1925_1996/ "Williams, Robert Franklin" King Encyclopedia, eds. Tenisha Armstrong, et al, Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute website]</ref> but Ella Baker<ref>8. [http://books.google.com/books?id=SEfOhvXSvZsC&pg=PA213&lpg=PA213&dq=ella+baker,+robert+f.+williams&source=bl&ots=qled_pBnpu&sig=loieIqr_wSuO5JMte1unGYuD8n0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=COssUozSGuPE4AOkiICQDQ&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=ella%20baker%2C%20robert%20f.%20williams&f=false Barbara Ransby , ''Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision'' (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 213–216]</ref> and WEB Dubois<ref>[http://history.msu.edu/files/2010/04/Timothy-Tyson.pdf Timothy B. Tyson, "Robert F. Williams, 'Black Power,' and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle," Journal of American History 85, No. 2 (Sep., 1998): 540–570]</ref> both publicly praised the Monroe leader's position.
Robert F. Williams – along with his wife, Mabel Williams – continued to play a leadership role in the Monroe movement, and to some degree, in the national movement. The Williamses published ''The Crusader'', a nationally circulated newsletter, beginning in 1960, and the influential book [http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text6/williamsnegroeswithguns.pdf ''Negroes With Guns''] in 1962. Williams did not call for full militarization in this period, but "flexibility in the freedom struggle."<ref>"[http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/9353_BlackPowerMovemPt2.pdf The Black Power Movement, Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams" A Guide to the Microfilm Editions of the Black Studies Research Sources (University Publications of America)]</ref> Williams was well-versed in legal tactics and publicity, which he had used successfully in the internationally known "[[Kissing Case]]" of 1958, as well as nonviolent methods, which he used at [[lunch counter]] sit-ins in Monroe – all with armed self-defense as a complementary tactic.
Williams led the Monroe movement in another armed stand-off with white supremacists during an August 1961 Freedom Ride; he had been invited to participate in the campaign by [[Ella Baker]] and [[James Forman]] of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The incident (along with his campaigns for peace with Cuba) resulted in him being targeted by the FBI and prosecuted for kidnapping; he was cleared of all charges in 1976.<ref name="Tyson 1998">Tyson, Journal of American History (Sep. 1998)</ref> Meanwhile, armed self-defense continued discreetly in the Southern movement with such figures as SNCC's [[Amzie Moore]],<ref name="Tyson 1998"/> [[Hartman Turnbow]],<ref>[[Taylor Branch]], ''[[Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963]]'' (Simon and Schuster, 1988), 781</ref> and [[Fannie Lou Hamer]]<ref>Simon Wendt, The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights (University of Florida Press, 2007), 121–122; Mike Marqusee, "By Any Means Necessary" The Nation, September 24, 2004 – http://www.thenation.com/article/any-means-necessary#</ref> all willing to use arms to defend their lives from nightrides. Taking refuge from the FBI in Cuba, the Willamses broadcast the radio show [[Radio Free Dixie]] throughout the eastern United States via Radio Progresso beginning in 1962. In this period, Williams advocated guerilla warfare against racist institutions, and saw the large ghetto riots of the era as a manifestation of his strategy.
University of North Carolina historian Walter Rucker has written that "the emergence of Robert F Williams contributed to the marked decline in anti-black racial violence in the US…After centuries of anti-black violence, African-Americans across the country began to defend their communities aggressively – employing overt force when necessary. This in turn evoked in whites real fear of black vengeance…" This opened up space for African-Americans to use nonviolent demonstration with less fear of deadly reprisal.<ref>Walter Rucker, "Crusader in Exile: Robert F. Williams and the International Struggle for Black Freedom in America" The Black Scholar 36, No. 2-3 (Summer-Fall 2006): 19–33. [http://www.academia.edu/223267/_Crusader_in_Exile_Robert_F._Williams_and_the_Internationalized_Struggle_for_Black_Freedom_in_America._2006_ URL]</ref> Of the many civil rights activists who share this view, the most prominent was Rosa Parks. Parks gave the eulogy at Williams' funeral in 1996, praising him for "his courage and for his commitment to freedom," and concluding that "The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten."<ref>Timothy B. Tyson, [http://investigatinghistory.ashp.cuny.edu/m11d.html "Robert Franklin Williams: A Warrior For Freedom, 1925–1996"], Investigating U.S. History (City University of New York)</ref>
===Sit-ins, 1958–1960===
{{See also|Greensboro sit-ins|Nashville sit-ins}}
In July 1958, the [[NAACP Youth Council]] sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a [[Dockum Drug Store sit-in|Dockum Drug Store]] in downtown [[Wichita, Kansas]]. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated. This movement was quickly followed in the same year by a student sit-in at a Katz Drug Store in [[Oklahoma City]] led by [[Clara Luper]], which also was successful.<ref>[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6355095 "Kansas Sit-In Gets Its Due at Last"]; NPR; October 21, 2006</ref>
Mostly black students from area colleges led a sit-in at a [[F. W. Woolworth Company|Woolworth]]'s store in [[Greensboro, North Carolina]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960greensboro First Southern Sit-in, Greensboro NC] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> On February 1, 1960, four students, [[Ezell A. Blair, Jr.]], David Richmond, [[Joseph McNeil]], and [[Franklin McCain]] from [[North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University|North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College]], an all-black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans from being served there.<ref name="chafe">{{Cite book
|last=Chafe
|first=William Henry
|title=Civilities and civil rights : Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black struggle for freedom
|publisher=Oxford University Press
|year=1980
|location=New York
|page=81
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=EP7sduWSTkYC
|doi=
|id=
|isbn=0-19-502625-X }}</ref> The four students purchased small items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served. After being denied service, they produced their receipts and asked why their money was good everywhere else at the store, but not at the lunch counter.<ref>[http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/topicalessays/busdesegsitins.aspx Greensboro Sit-Ins at Woolworth's, February–July 1960]</ref>
The protesters had been encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in. The Greensboro sit-in was quickly followed by other sit-ins in [[Richmond, Virginia]];<ref>[http://southernspaces.org/2008/rising ''Southern Spaces'']</ref> [[Nashville, Tennessee]]; and [[Atlanta|Atlanta, Georgia]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960atlanta Atlanta Sit-ins] – Civil Rights Veterans</ref><ref name="Atlanta Sit-Ins">[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3615 "Atlanta Sit-Ins"], ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia''</ref> The most immediately effective of these was in Nashville, where hundreds of well organized and highly disciplined college students [[Nashville sit-ins|conducted sit-ins]] in coordination with a boycott campaign.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Nashville Way: Racial Etiquette and the Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City|first=Benjamin|last=Houston|year=2012|location=Athens, Georgia|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=0-8203-4326-9}}</ref><ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960nsm Nashville Student Movement] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
As students across the south began to "sit-in" at the lunch counters of local stores, police and other officials sometimes used brute force to physically escort the demonstrators from the lunch facilities.
The "sit-in" technique was not new—as far back as 1939, African-American attorney [[Samuel Wilbert Tucker]] organized a sit-in at the then-segregated [[Alexandria, Virginia]] library.<ref>{{cite web
|title=America's First Sit-Down Strike: The 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In
|url=http://oha.alexandriava.gov/bhrc/lessons/bh-lesson2_reading2.html
|publisher=City of Alexandria
|accessdate=2010-02-11
}}</ref> In 1960 the technique succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement.<ref name="davis">{{Cite book
|last=Davis
|first=Townsend
|title=Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement
|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company
|year=1998
|location=New York
|page=311
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=S7IYlI9KopkC
|doi=
|id=
|isbn=0-393-04592-7 }}</ref>
On March 9, 1960 an [[Atlanta University Center]] group of students released [[An Appeal for Human Rights]]<ref>[http://www.atlantastudentmovement.org/An_Appeal_for_Human_Rights.html An Appeal for Human Rights] – Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR)</ref> as a full page advertisement in newspapers, including the ''Atlanta Constitution'', ''Atlanta Journal'', and ''Atlanta Daily World''.<ref>[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3615 Atlanta Sit-Ins]</ref> Known as the [[Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights]] (COAHR), the group initiated the [[Atlanta Student Movement]]<ref>[http://www.atlantastudentmovement.org The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR) and the Atlanta Student Movement] – The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights and the Atlanta Student Movement</ref> and began to lead sit-ins starting on March 15, 1960.<ref name="Atlanta Sit-Ins"/><ref>[http://www.atlantahighered.org/civilrights/essay_detail.asp?phase=3 Students Begin to Lead] – The New Georgia Encyclopedia—Atlanta Sit-Ins</ref> By the end of 1960, the proces of sit-ins had spread to every southern and [[Border states (American Civil War)|border state]], and even to facilities in [[Nevada]], [[Illinois]], and [[Ohio]] that discriminated against blacks.
Demonstrators focused not only on lunch counters but also on parks, beaches, libraries, theaters, museums, and other public facilities. In April 1960 activists who had led these sit-ins were invited by SCLC activist [[Ella Baker]] to hold a conference at [[Shaw University]], a [[historically black university]] in Raleigh, North Carolina. This conference led to the formation of the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC).<ref name="carson">{{Cite book
|last=Carson
|first=Clayborne
|title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
|publisher=Harvard University Press
|year=1981
|location=Cambridge
|page=311
|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Fm9v7KKj_UQC
|doi=
|id=
|isbn=0-674-44727-1 }}</ref> SNCC took these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further, and organized the freedom rides. As the constitution protected interstate commerce, they decided to challenge segregation on interstate buses and in public bus facilities by putting interracial teams on them, to travel from the North through the segregated South.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960sncc Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Founded] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
===Freedom Rides, 1961===
{{Main|Freedom Rider}}
Freedom Rides were journeys by Civil Rights activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision ''[[Boynton v. Virginia]],'' (1960) 364 U.S., which ruled that segregation was unconstitutional for passengers engaged in interstate travel. Organized by [[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]], the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.<ref name="Freedom Rides">[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961frides Freedom Rides] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
During the first and subsequent Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the [[Deep South]] to integrate seating patterns on buses and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains. That proved to be a dangerous mission. In [[Anniston, Alabama]], one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives.<ref name="Arsenault">{{cite book | last = Arsenault | first = Raymond | title = Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice | publisher = Oxford Press | year = 2006}}</ref>
In [[Birmingham, Alabama]], an [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner [[Eugene "Bull" Connor]] gave [[Ku Klux Klan]] members fifteen minutes to attack an incoming group of freedom riders before having police "protect" them. The riders were severely beaten "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them." [[James Peck (pacifist)|James Peck]], a white activist, was beaten so badly that he required fifty stitches to his head.<ref name="Arsenault"/>
In a similar occurrence in Montgomery, Alabama, the Freedom Riders followed in the footsteps of Rosa Parks and rode an integrated Greyhound bus from Birmingham. Although they were protesting interstate bus segregation in peace, they were met with violence in Montgomery as a large, white mob attacked them for their activism. They caused an enormous, 2-hour long riot which resulted in 22 injuries, five of whom were hospitalized.<ref>Black Protest (1961)</ref>
Mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham temporarily halted the rides. SNCC activists from Nashville brought in new riders to continue the journey from Birmingham to New Orleans. In [[Montgomery, Alabama]], at the [[Greyhound Bus Station (Montgomery, Alabama)|Greyhound Bus Station]], a mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking [[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]] unconscious with a crate and smashing ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' photographer [[Don Urbrock]] in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded [[James Zwerg]], a white student from [[Fisk University]], and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.<ref name="Arsenault" />
On May 24, 1961, the freedom riders continued their rides into [[Jackson, Mississippi]], where they were arrested for "breaching the peace" by using "white only" facilities. New freedom rides were organized by many different organizations and continued to flow into the South. As riders arrived in Jackson, they were arrested. By the end of summer, more than 300 had been jailed in Mississippi.<ref name="Freedom Rides"/>
:"...When the weary Riders arrive in Jackson and attempt to use 'white only' restrooms and lunch counters they are immediately arrested for Breach of Peace and Refusal to Obey an Officer. Says Mississippi Governor [[Ross Barnett]] in defense of segregation: 'The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him.' From lockup, the Riders announce 'Jail No Bail' — they will not pay fines for unconstitutional arrests and illegal convictions — and by staying in jail they keep the issue alive. Each prisoner will remain in jail for 39 days, the maximum time they can serve without loosing{{sic}} their right to appeal the unconstitutionality of their arrests, trials, and convictions. After 39 days, they file an appeal and post bond..."<ref name=westwind>{{cite web|last=Hartford|first=Bruce Hartford|title=Arrests in Jackson MS|url=http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961frpoints|work=The Civil Rights Movement Veterans website|publisher=Westwind Writers Inc.|accessdate=October 21, 2011}}</ref>
The jailed freedom riders were treated harshly, crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100-degree heat. Others were transferred to the [[Mississippi State Penitentiary]] at Parchman, where they were treated to harsh conditions. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe.
Public sympathy and support for the freedom riders led [[John F. Kennedy]]'s administration to order the [[Interstate Commerce Commission]] (ICC) to issue a new desegregation order. When the new ICC rule took effect on November 1, 1961, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they chose on the bus; "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals; separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and lunch counters began serving people regardless of skin color.
The student movement involved such celebrated figures as John Lewis, a single-minded activist; [[James Lawson (American activist)|James Lawson]], the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; [[Diane Nash]], an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; [[Robert Parris Moses|Bob Moses]], pioneer of voting registration in Mississippi; and [[James Bevel]], a fiery preacher and charismatic organizer and facilitator. Other prominent student activists included [[Charles McDew]], [[Bernard Lafayette]], [[Charles Jones (activist)|Charles Jones]], [[Lonnie C. King, Jr.|Lonnie King]], [[Julian Bond]], [[Hosea Williams]], and [[Stokely Carmichael]].
===Voter registration organizing===
After the Freedom Rides, local black leaders in Mississippi such as [[Amzie Moore]], [[Aaron Henry]], [[Medgar Evers]], and others asked SNCC to help register black voters and to build community organizations that could win a share of political power in the state. Since Mississippi ratified its new constitution in 1890 with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests, it made registration more complicated and stripped blacks from voter rolls and voting. In addition, violence at the time of elections had earlier suppressed black voting.
By the mid-20th century, preventing blacks from voting had become an essential part of the culture of white supremacy. In the fall of 1961, SNCC organizer [[Robert Parris Moses|Robert Moses]] began the first voter registration project in [[McComb, Mississippi|McComb]] and the surrounding counties in the Southwest corner of the state. Their efforts were met with violent repression from state and local lawmen, the [[White Citizens' Council]], and the [[Ku Klux Klan]]. Activists were beaten, there were hundreds of arrests of local citizens, and the voting activist Herbert Lee was murdered.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961mccomb Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb MS] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
White opposition to black voter registration was so intense in Mississippi that Freedom Movement activists concluded that all of the state's civil rights organizations had to unite in a coordinated effort to have any chance of success. In February 1962, representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP formed the [[Council of Federated Organizations]] (COFO). At a subsequent meeting in August, SCLC became part of COFO.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962cofo Council of Federated Organizations Formed in Mississippi] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
In the Spring of 1962, with funds from the [[Voter Education Project]], SNCC/COFO began voter registration organizing in the Mississippi Delta area around [[Greenwood, Mississippi|Greenwood]], and the areas surrounding [[Hattiesburg, Mississippi|Hattiesburg]], [[Laurel, Mississippi|Laurel]], and [[Holly Springs, Mississippi|Holly Springs]]. As in McComb, their efforts were met with fierce opposition—arrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. Registrars used the [[literacy test]] to keep blacks off the voting roles by creating standards that even highly educated people could not meet. In addition, employers fired blacks who tried to register, and landlords evicted them from their rental homes.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962greenwood Mississippi Voter Registration—Greenwood] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> Despite these actions, over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state.
Similar voter registration campaigns—with similar responses—were begun by SNCC, CORE, and SCLC in [[Louisiana]], [[Alabama]], southwest [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]], and [[South Carolina]]. By 1963, voter registration campaigns in the South were as integral to the Freedom Movement as desegregation efforts. After passage of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64"/> protecting and facilitating voter registration despite state barriers became the main effort of the movement. It resulted in passage of the [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965, which had provisions to enforce the constitutional right to vote for all citizens.
===Integration of Mississippi universities, 1956–65===
{{Weasel|section|date=May 2010}}
[[Image:James Meredith OleMiss.jpg|thumb|275px|James Meredith walking to class accompanied by U.S. marshals.]]
Beginning in 1956, [[Clyde Kennard]], a black Korean War-veteran, wanted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now the [[University of Southern Mississippi]]) under the GI Bill at [[Hattiesburg]]. Dr. [[William David McCain]], the college president, used the [[Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission]], in order to prevent his enrollment by appealing to local black leaders and the segregationist state political establishment.
The state-funded organization tried to counter the civil rights movement by positively portraying segregationist policies. More significantly, it collected data on activists, harassed them legally, and used economic boycotts against them by threatening their jobs (or causing them to lose their jobs) to try to suppress their work.
Kennard was twice arrested on trumped-up charges, and eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in the state prison.<ref name="Kennard"/> After three years at [[hard labor]], Kennard was paroled by Mississippi Governor [[Ross Barnett]]. Journalists had investigated his case and publicized the state's mistreatment of his [[colon cancer]].<ref name="Kennard"/>
McCain's role in Kennard's arrests and convictions is unknown.<ref name="Funding">William H. Tucker, ''The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund,'' University of Illinois Press (May 30, 2007), pp 165–66.</ref><ref name="Confederacy">'''Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction''', Edited by Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, Edward H. Sebesta, University of Texas Press (2008) pp. 284–85</ref><ref name="report">{{cite web|url=http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=135 |title=A House Divided | |publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center |date= |accessdate=2010-10-30| archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20101028143514/http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=135| archivedate= October 28, 2010 | deadurl= no}}</ref><ref name="Evers">Jennie Brown, ''Medgar Evers'', Holloway House Publishing, 1994, pp. 128–132</ref> While trying to prevent Kennard's enrollment, McCain made a speech in Chicago, with his travel sponsored by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. He described the blacks' seeking to desegregate Southern schools as "imports" from the North. (Kennard was a native and resident of Hattiesburg.) McCain said:
<blockquote>We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregated]] society. ... In all fairness, I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting ... The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man's hands.<ref name="Funding" /><ref name="report" /><ref name="Evers" /></blockquote>
Note: Mississippi had passed a new constitution in 1890 that effectively [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disfranchised]] most blacks by changing electoral and voter registration requirements; although it deprived them of constitutional rights authorized under post-Civil War amendments, it survived [[US Supreme Court]] challenges at the time. It was not until after passage of the 1965 [[Voting Rights Act]] that most blacks in Mississippi and other southern states gained federal protection to enforce the constitutional right of citizens to vote.
[[File:US Marshals at Ole Miss October 1962 cph.3c35522.jpg|thumb|US Army trucks loaded with US Marshals on the University of Mississippi campus.]]
In September 1962, [[James Meredith]] won a lawsuit to secure admission to the previously segregated [[University of Mississippi]]. He attempted to enter campus on September 20, on September 25, and again on September 26. He was blocked by Mississippi [[List of Governors of Mississippi|Governor]] [[Ross Barnett]], who said, "[N]o school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor." The [[Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals]] held Barnett and Lieutenant Governor [[Paul B. Johnson, Jr.]] in [[Contempt of court|contempt]], ordering them arrested and fined more than $10,000 for each day they refused to allow Meredith to enroll.<ref>''[[United States v. Barnett]]'', {{ussc|376|681|1964}}</ref>
Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]] sent in a force of [[United States Marshals Service|U.S. Marshals]]. On September 30, 1962, Meredith entered the campus under their escort. Students and other whites began rioting that evening, throwing rocks and firing on the U.S. Marshals guarding Meredith at Lyceum Hall. Two people, including a French journalist, were killed; 28 marshals suffered gunshot wounds; and 160 others were injured. President [[John F. Kennedy]] sent regular [[US Army]] forces to the campus to quell the riot. Meredith began classes the day after the troops arrived.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962olmiss "James Meredith Integrates Ole Miss"], Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
Kennard and other activists continued to work on public university desegregation. In 1965 [[Raylawni Branch]] and [[Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong]] became the first African-American students to attend the [[University of Southern Mississippi]]. By that time, McCain helped ensure they had a peaceful entry.<ref name="sketch">[http://www.lib.usm.edu/~archives/m393.htm?m393text.htm~mainFrameBiographical/Historical ], University of Southern Mississippi Library {{dead link|date=October 2010}}</ref> In 2006, Judge Robert Helfrich ruled that Kennard was factually innocent of all charges for which he had been convicted in the 1950s.<ref name="Kennard">[http://www6.district125.k12.il.us/~bbradfor/kennardmission.html "Carrying the burden: the story of Clyde Kennard"], District 125, Mississippi, Retrieved November 5, 2007</ref>
===Albany Movement, 1961–62===
{{Main|Albany Movement}}
The SCLC, which had been criticized by some student activists for its failure to participate more fully in the freedom rides, committed much of its prestige and resources to a desegregation campaign in [[Albany, Georgia]], in November 1961. King, who had been criticized personally by some SNCC activists for his distance from the dangers that local organizers faced—and given the derisive nickname "De Lawd" as a result—intervened personally to assist the campaign led by both SNCC organizers and local leaders.
The campaign was a failure because of the canny tactics of Laurie Pritchett, the local police chief, and divisions within the black community. The goals may not have been specific enough. Pritchett contained the marchers without violent attacks on demonstrators that inflamed national opinion. He also arranged for arrested demonstrators to be taken to jails in surrounding communities, allowing plenty of room to remain in his jail. Prichett also foresaw King's presence as a danger and forced his release to avoid King's rallying the black community. King left in 1962 without having achieved any dramatic victories. The local movement, however, continued the struggle, and it obtained significant gains in the next few years.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961albany Albany GA, Movement] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
===Birmingham Campaign, 1963===
{{Main|Birmingham Campaign|Birmingham riot of 1963}}
[[Image:Wallace at University of Alabama edit2.jpg|thumb|right|275px|Alabama governor [[George Wallace]] stands against desegregation at the [[University of Alabama]] and is confronted by US Deputy Attorney General [[Nicholas Katzenbach]] in 1963.]]
The Albany movement was shown to be an important education for the SCLC, however, when it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. Executive Director [[Wyatt Tee Walker]] carefully planned the early strategy and tactics for the campaign. It focused on one goal—the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants, rather than total desegregation, as in Albany.
The movement's efforts were helped by the brutal response of local authorities, in particular [[Bull Connor|Eugene "Bull" Connor]], the Commissioner of Public Safety. He had long held much political power, but had lost a recent election for mayor to a less rabidly segregationist candidate. Refusing to accept the new mayor's authority, Connor intended to stay in office.
The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins, kneel-ins at local churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a drive to register voters. The city, however, obtained an [[injunction]] barring all such protests. Convinced that the order was unconstitutional, the campaign defied it and prepared for [[mass arrest]]s of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963bham The Birmingham Campaign] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
While in jail, King wrote his famous "[[Letter from Birmingham Jail]]"<ref>[http://www.stanford.edu/group/King//popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf Letter from a Birmingham Jail] ~ King Research & Education Institute at Stanford Univ.</ref> on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement.<ref>Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) ''Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King, Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail".'' Baton Rouge: LSU Press. ISBN 0-8071-2655-1</ref> Supporters appealed to the Kennedy administration, which intervened to obtain King's release. King was allowed to call his wife, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child, and was released early on April 19.
The campaign, however, faltered as it ran out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. [[James Bevel]], SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, then came up with a bold and controversial alternative: to train high school students to take part in the demonstrations. As a result, in what would be called the [[Children's Crusade (civil rights)|Children's Crusade]], more than one thousand students skipped school on May 2 to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church to join the demonstrations. More than six hundred marched out of the church fifty at a time in an attempt to walk to City Hall to speak to Birmingham's mayor about segregation. They were arrested and put into jail.
In this first encounter the police acted with restraint. On the next day, however, another one thousand students gathered at the church. When Bevel started them marching fifty at a time, Bull Connor finally unleashed police dogs on them and then turned the city's fire hoses water streams on the children. National television networks broadcast the scenes of the dogs attacking demonstrators and the water from the fire hoses knocking down the schoolchildren.
[[Image:Congress of Racial Equality and members of the All Souls Church, Unitarian march in memory of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing victims.jpg|thumb|260px|[[Congress of Racial Equality]] march in Washington DC on September 22, 1963 in memory of the children killed in the Birmingham bombings.]]
Widespread public outrage led the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully in negotiations between the white business community and the SCLC. On May 10, the parties announced an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown, to create a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, to arrange for the release of jailed protesters, and to establish regular means of communication between black and white leaders.
Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement— the Rev. [[Fred Shuttlesworth]] was particularly critical, since he was skeptical about the good faith of Birmingham's power structure from his experience in dealing with them. Parts of the white community reacted violently. They [[Gaston Motel bombing|bombed]] the [[Arthur George Gaston|Gaston]] Motel, which housed the SCLC's unofficial headquarters, and the home of King's brother, the Reverend A. D. King. In response, [[Birmingham crisis|thousands of blacks rioted]], burning numerous buildings and stabbing a police officer.<ref>[http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9605/15/ Freedom-Now" ''Time'', May 17, 1963]; Glenn T. Eskew, ''But for Birmingham: The Local and National Struggles in the Civil Rights Movement'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 301.</ref>
Kennedy prepared to federalize the [[Alabama National Guard]] if the need arose. Four months later, on September 15, a conspiracy of Ku Klux Klan members [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing|bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church]] in Birmingham, killing four young girls.
==="Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's Response, 1963===
{{Main|Gloria Richardson|Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|Civil Rights Address}}
Birmingham was only one of over a hundred cities rocked by chaotic protest that spring and summer, some of them in the North. During the March on Washington, Martin Luther King would refer to such protests as "the whirlwinds of revolt." In Chicago, blacks rioted through the South Side in late May after a white police officer shot a fourteen year old black boy who was fleeing the scene of a robbery.<ref name="Nicholas Andrew Bryant 2006 pg. 2">Nicholas Andrew Bryant, ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy And the Struggle for Black Equality'' (Basic Books, 2006), pg. 2</ref> Violent clashes between black activists and white workers took place in both Philadelphia and Harlem in successful efforts to integrate state construction projects.<ref>[http://intellhisblackamerica.voices.wooster.edu/files/2012/03/Thomas_Sugrue_Affirmative_Action_from_Below.pdf Thomas J Sugrue, "Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the Urban North, 1945–1969" ''The Journal of American History'', Vol. 91, Issue 1]</ref><ref>[http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/events/4279/civil_rights_movement/532945 Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission website, "The Civil Rights Movement"]</ref> On June 6, over a thousand whites attacked a sit-in in Lexington, North Carolina; blacks fought back and one white man was killed.<ref>T [http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/2922918/ he Daily Capital News(Missouri) June 14, 1963, pg. 4]</ref><ref>[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=BU8cAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YVEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2472,3798134&dq=north+carolina+1963+riot&hl=en The Dispatch (North Carolina), December 28, 1963]</ref> Edwin C. Berry of the National Urban League warned of a complete breakdown in race relations: "My message from the beer gardens and the barbershops all indicate the fact that the Negro is ready for war."<ref name="Nicholas Andrew Bryant 2006 pg. 2"/>
In Cambridge, Maryland, a working‐class city on the Eastern Shore, [[Gloria Richardson]] of SNCC led a movement that pressed for desegregation but also demanded low‐rent public housing, job‐training, public and private jobs, and an end to police brutality. On June 14, struggles between blacks and whites [[Cambridge riot of 1963|escalated]] to the point where local authorities declared [[martial law]], and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy directly intervened to negotiate a desegregation agreement.<ref>[http://teaching.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000000/000033/html/t33.html Maryland State Archives "The Cambridge Riots of 1963 and 1967"]</ref> Richardson felt that the increasing participation of poor and working-class blacks was expanding both the power and parameters of the movement, asserting that "The people as a whole really do have more intelligence than a few of their leaders.ʺ
In their deliberations during this wave of protests, the Kennedy administration privately felt that militant demonstrations were ʺbad for the countryʺ and that "Negroes are going to push this thing too far."<ref name="web1.millercenter.org">[http://web1.millercenter.org/apd/colloquia/pdf/col_2008_0410_jackson.pdf Thomas F. Jackson, "Jobs and Freedom: The Black Revolt of 1963 and the Contested Meanings of the March on Washginton" ''Virginia Foundation for the Humanities'' April 2, 2008, pg. 10–14]</ref> On May 24, Robert Kennedy had a [[Baldwin-Kennedy meeting|meeting with prominent black intellectuals]] to discuss the racial situation. The blacks criticized Kennedy harshly for vacillating on civil rights, and said that the African-American community's thoughts were increasingly turning to violence. The meeting ended with ill will on all sides.<ref>[http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/05/clip_job_miss_h.php Tony Ortega "Miss Lorraine Hansberry & Bobby Kennedy" Village Voice, May 4, 2009]</ref><ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=Za8TAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA356&lpg=PA356&dq=hansberry,+robert+kennedy&source=bl&ots=U23fO5jxDo&sig=SxK9weNsAcVegOx-ffCLA_1a5_k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NMM-VKSQG8LisATSpYHICA&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=hansberry%2C%20robert%20kennedy&f=false James Hilty, Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector (Temple University Press, 2000), p. 355]</ref><ref name=Schlesinger333>Schlesinger, ''Robert Kennedy and His Times'' (1978), p. 332-333.</ref> Nonetheless, the Kennedys ultimately decided that new legislation for equal public accommodations was essential to drive activists "into the courts and out of the streets."<ref name="web1.millercenter.org"/><ref>[http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/4/1319.1.extract# "Book Reviews-The Bystander by Nicholas A. Bryant" ''The Journal of American History'' (2007) 93 (4)]</ref>
On June 11, 1963, [[George Wallace]], Governor of Alabama, tried to [[Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|block]]<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963tuscaloosa Standing In the Schoolhouse Door] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> the integration of the [[University of Alabama]]. President John F. Kennedy sent a military force to make Governor Wallace step aside, allowing the enrollment of [[Vivian Malone Jones]] and [[James Hood]]. That evening, President Kennedy addressed the nation on TV and radio with his historic [[Civil Rights Address|civil rights speech]], where he lamented "a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety." He called on Congress to pass new civil rights legislation, and urged the country to embrace civil rights as "a moral issue...in our daily lives."<ref>"Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights," June 11, 1963, [http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03CivilRights06111963.htm transcript from the JFK library.]</ref> In the early hours of June 12, [[Medgar Evers]], field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, was assassinated by a member of the Klan.<ref>[http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/evers_medgar/ Medgar Evers], a worthwhile article, on ''The Mississippi Writers Page'', a website of the University of Mississippi English Department.</ref><ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963medgar Medgar Evers Assassination] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> The next week, as promised, on June 19, 1963, President Kennedy submitted his Civil Rights bill to Congress.<ref name="abbeville">[http://www.abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp Civil Rights bill submitted, and date of JFK murder, plus graphic events of the March on Washington.] This is an Abbeville Press website, a large informative article apparently from the book ''The Civil Rights Movement'' (ISBN 0-7892-0123-2).</ref>
===March on Washington, 1963===
[[Image:March on Washington edit.jpg|thumb|200px|The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the [[National Mall]].]]
{{Main|March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom}}
[[Image:1963 march on washington.jpg|thumb|250px|Civil Rights March on Washington, leaders marching from the [[Washington Monument]] to the [[Lincoln Memorial]].]]
[[Image:1963 march lincoln memorial.jpg|thumb|230px|Civil Rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial.]]
A. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington, D.C. in 1941 to support demands for elimination of [[employment discrimination]] in defense industries; he called off the march when the [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] administration met the demand by issuing [[Executive Order 8802]] barring racial discrimination and creating an agency to oversee compliance with the order.
Randolph and [[Bayard Rustin]] were the chief planners of the second march, which they proposed in 1962. In 1963, the Kennedy administration initially opposed the march out of concern it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, Randolph and King were firm that the march would proceed.<ref>{{cite book| title= Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes| last= Rosenberg|first= Jonathan|first2=Zachary|last2=Karabell| page= 130| isbn= 0-393-05122-6| year= 2003| publisher=WW Norton & Co}}</ref> With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. Concerned about the turnout, President Kennedy enlisted the aid of additional church leaders and the [[United Auto Workers|UAW]] union to help mobilize demonstrators for the cause.<ref>{{cite book|title=Robert Kennedy and His Times|last=Schlesinger, Jr. |first= Arthur M. |pages= 350, 351| isbn=0-618-21928-5|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Books|origyear=1978 | year=2002}}</ref>
The march was held on August 28, 1963. Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals:
*meaningful civil rights laws
*a massive federal works program
*full and fair employment
*decent housing
*the right to vote
*adequate integrated education.
Of these, the march's major focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham.
[[File:Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd.) - NARA - 542015.tif|thumb|250px|Martin Luther King, Jr. at a Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C.]]
National media attention also greatly contributed to the march's national exposure and probable impact. In his section "The March on Washington and Television News,"<ref name="southernspaces.org">{{cite web|url=http://southernspaces.org/2004/television-news-and-civil-rights-struggle-views-virginia-and-mississippi |title=Television News and the Civil Rights Struggle: The Views in Virginia and Mississippi |publisher=Southern Spaces |date=November 3, 2004 |accessdate=2012-11-08}}</ref> [http://southernspaces.org/2004/television-news-and-civil-rights-struggle-views-virginia-and-mississippi William Thomas] notes: "Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers". By carrying the organizers' speeches and offering their own commentary, television stations framed the way their local audiences saw and understood the event.<ref name="southernspaces.org"/>
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The march was a success, although not without controversy. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the [[Lincoln Memorial]], where King delivered his famous "[[I Have a Dream]]" speech. While many speakers applauded the Kennedy administration for the efforts it had made toward obtaining new, more effective civil rights legislation protecting the right to vote and outlawing segregation, [[John Lewis (U. S. politician)|John Lewis]] of [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|SNCC]] took the administration to task for not doing more to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South.
After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the [[White House]]. While the Kennedy administration appeared sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had the votes in Congress to do it. However when [[John F. Kennedy assassination|President Kennedy was assassinated]] on November 22, 1963,<ref name="abbeville" /> the new President [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Lyndon Johnson]] decided to use his influence in [[United States Congress|Congress]] to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda.
===Malcolm X joins the movement, 1964–1965===
{{Main|Malcolm X|Black Nationalism|The Ballot or the Bullet}}
In March 1964, Malcolm X (Malik El-Shabazz), national representative of the [[Nation of Islam]], formally broke with that organization, and made a public offer to collaborate with any civil rights organization that accepted the right to self-defense and the philosophy of Black nationalism (which Malcolm said no longer required [[Black separatism]]). [[Gloria Richardson]] – head of the Cambridge, Maryland chapter of [[SNCC]], leader of the Cambridge rebellion<ref>{{cite web|title=Cambridge, Maryland, activists campaign for desegregation, USA, 1962–1963|url=http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/cambridge-maryland-activists-campaign-desegregation-usa-1962-1963|website=Global Nonviolent Action Database|publisher=[[Swarthmore College]]|accessdate=January 13, 2015}}</ref> and an honored guest at The March on Washington – immediately embraced Malcolm's offer. Mrs. Richardson, "the nation's most prominent woman [civil rights] leader," told ''[[The Baltimore Afro-American]]'' that "Malcolm is being very practical…The federal government has moved into conflict situations only when matters approach the level of insurrection. Self-defense may force Washington to intervene sooner."<ref>[http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1mY8AAAAIBAJ&sjid=DCoMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1694,6977757&dq=gloria+richardson+malcolm+x&hl=en "Mrs. Richardson OKs Malcolm" The Baltimore Afro-American, March 10, 1964]</ref> Earlier, in May 1963, [[James Baldwin]] had stated publicly that "the Black Muslim movement is the only one in the country we can call [[grassroots]], I hate to say it…Malcolm articulates for Negroes, their suffering…he corroborates their reality..."<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk/sfeature/sf_video_pop_04c_tr_qry.html "The Negro and the American Promise,"] produced by Boston public television station WGBH in 1963</ref> On the local level, Malcolm and the NOI had been allied with the Harlem chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) since at least 1962.<ref>Harlem CORE, [http://harlemcore.com/omeka/items/show/162 "Film clip of Harlem CORE chairman Gladys Harrington speaking on Malcolm X"].</ref>
On March 26, 1964, as the Civil Rights Act was facing stiff opposition in Congress, Malcolm had a public meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Capitol building. Malcolm had attempted to begin a dialog with Dr. King as early as 1957, but King had rebuffed him. Malcolm had responded by calling King an "[[Uncle Tom]]" who turned his back on black militancy in order to appease the white power structure. However, the two men were on good terms at their face-to-face meeting.<ref>[http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_malcolm_x_1925_1965/ "Malcolm X" The King Encyclopedia, eds. Tenisha Armstrong, et al, Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute website],</ref> There is evidence that King was preparing to support Malcolm's plan to formally bring the US government before the United Nations on charges of human rights violations against African-Americans.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=RownbjVryWIC&pg=PT429&lpg=PT429&dq=clarence+jones,+malcolm+x,+united+nations&source=bl&ots=0xcumJEZ4N&sig=KvZ_hKjkmnSwJ2vJXl1V1i1fNbM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vTkuUtyoCs__4AOEpIC4Ag&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=clarence%20jones%2C%20malcolm%20x%2C%20united%20nations&f=false Manning Marable, ''Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention'' (Penguin Books, 2011)]</ref> Malcolm now encouraged Black nationalists to get involved in voter registration drives and other forms of community organizing to redefine and expand the movement.<ref>[http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/mx.html American Public Radio, "Malcolm X: The Ballot or the Bullet-Background"]</ref>
Civil rights activists became increasingly combative in the 1963 to 1964 period, owing to events such as the thwarting of the Albany campaign, police repression and Ku Klux Klan [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing|terrorism]] in [[Birmingham campaign|Birmingham]], and the assassination of Medgar Evers. Mississippi NAACP Field Director Charles Evers–Medgar Evers' brother–told a public NAACP conference on February 15, 1964 that "non-violence won't work in Mississippi…we made up our minds…that if a white man shoots at a Negro in Mississippi, we will shoot back."<ref>Akinyele Umoja, ''We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement'' (NYU Press, 2013), p. 126</ref> The repression of sit-ins in Jacksonville, Florida provoked a riot that saw black youth throwing Molotov cocktails at police on March 24, 1964.<ref>Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, ''Regulating the Poor'' (Random House 1971), p. 238; [http://books.google.com/books?id=bBQvmMnKmbcC&pg=PA118&lpg=PA118&dq=jacksonville,+march+24,+1964&source=bl&ots=65daUV-O9j&sig=3ERGUYK-KdvJR4gwQRnxj6YZQhc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fE8uUsrfKNLH4AP_04DYCw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=snippet&q=fire%20bombs&f=false Abel A. Bartley, ''Keeping the Faith: Race, Politics and Social Development in Jacksonville, 1940–1970'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000), 111]</ref> Malcolm X gave extensive speeches in this period warning that such militant activity would escalate further if African-Americans' rights were not fully recognized. In his landmark April 1964 speech "[[The Ballot or the Bullet]]", Malcolm presented an ultimatum to white America: "There's new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets."<ref>[http://xroads.virginia.edu/~public/civilrights/a0146.html Malcolm X, "The Ballet or the Bullet, Cleveland version" April 3, 1964]</ref>
As noted in ''[[Eyes on the Prize]]'', "Malcolm X had a far reaching effect on the civil rights movement. In the South, there had been a long tradition of self reliance. Malcolm X's ideas now touched that tradition".<ref>Blackside Productions, ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement 1954–1985'', [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html"], The Time Has Come" Public Broadcasting System</ref> Self-reliance was becoming paramount in light of the [[1964 Democratic National Convention]]'s decision to refuse seating to the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (MFDP) and to seat the state delegation elected in violation of the party's rules through [[Jim Crow law]] instead.<ref>{{cite book | last = Lewis | first = John | title = Walking With the Wind | publisher = Simon & Schuster | year = 1998}}</ref> SNCC moved in an increasingly militant direction and worked with Malcolm X on two Harlem MFDP fundraisers in December 1964. When [[Fannie Lou Hamer]] spoke to Harlemites about the Jim Crow violence that she'd suffered in Mississippi, she linked it directly to the Northern police brutality against blacks that Malcolm protested against;<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/docs/flh64.htm Fannie Lou Hamer, Speech Delivered with Malcolm X at the Williams Institutional CME Church, Harlem, New York, December 20, 1964].</ref> When Malcolm asserted that African-Americans should emulate the [[Mau Mau]] army of Kenya in efforts to gain their independence, many in SNCC applauded.<ref>George Breitman, ed. ''Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements'' (Grove Press, 1965), pp. 106–109</ref> During the [[Selma to Montgomery marches|Selma campaign]] for voting rights in 1965, Malcolm made it known that he'd heard reports of increased threats of lynching around Selma, and responded in late January with an open telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, stating: "if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans…you and your KKK friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence."<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=EAhHl-0ERn8C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=malcolm+x,+george+lincoln+rockwell,+telegram&source=bl&ots=EeocwaU5IF&sig=0qsXCspnsUS9bPOLYN8n0UrkCso&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WNMxUpHGI4Ps8QSxn4HQBg&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAzgU#v=onepage&q=malcolm%20x%2C%20george%20lincoln%20rockwell%2C%20telegram&f=false Christopher Strain, ''Pure Fire:Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era'' (University of Georgia Press, 2005), pp. 92–93]</ref> The following month, the Selma chapter of SNCC invited Malcolm to speak to a mass meeting there. On the day of Malcolm's appearance, President Johnson made his first public statement in support of the Selma campaign.<ref>Juan Williams, et al, ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954–1965'' (Penguin Group, 1988), p. 262</ref> Paul Ryan Haygood, a co-director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, credits Malcolm with a role in stimulating the responsiveness of the federal government. Haygood noted that "shortly after Malcolm's visit to Selma, a federal judge, responding to a suit brought by the Department of Justice, required Dallas County registrars to process at least 100 Black applications each day their offices were open."<ref>Paul Ryan Haygood, [http://www.blackcommentator.com/127/127_guest_malcolm.html "Malcolm's Contribution to Black Voting Rights"], ''The Black Commentator''</ref>
===St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–64===
{{Main|St. Augustine movement}}
[[St. Augustine, Florida|St. Augustine]], on the northeast coast of Florida was famous as the "Nation's Oldest City," founded by the Spanish in 1565. It became the stage for a great drama leading up to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. A local movement, led by Dr. Robert B. Hayling, a black dentist and Air Force veteran, and affiliated with the NAACP, had been picketing segregated local institutions since 1963, as a result of which Dr. Hayling and three companions, James Jackson, Clyde Jenkins, and James Hauser, were brutally beaten at a Ku Klux Klan rally in the fall of that year.
Nightriders shot into black homes, and teenagers Audrey Nell Edwards, JoeAnn Anderson, Samuel White, and Willie Carl Singleton (who came to be known as "The St. Augustine Four") spent six months in jail and reform school after sitting in at the local Woolworth's lunch counter. It took a special action of the governor and cabinet of Florida to release them after national protests by the ''[[Pittsburgh Courier]]'', [[Jackie Robinson]], and others.
In response to the repression, the St. Augustine movement practiced armed self-defense in addition to nonviolent direct action. In June 1963, Dr. Hayling publicly stated that "I and the others have armed. We will shoot first and answer questions later. We are not going to die like Medgar Evers." The comment made national headlines.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug Civil Rights Movement Veterans. "St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1963"] ; [http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_hayling_robert_b_1929/ "Hayling, Robert B. (1929–)", Martin Luther King Jr. Research & Education Institute, Stanford University] ; [http://www.augustine.com/history/black_history/dr_robert_hayling/ "Black History: Dr. Robert B. Hayling"], Augustine.com; David J. Garrow, ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'' (Harper Collins, 1987) p 316–318</ref> When Klan nightriders terrorized black neighborhoods in St. Augustine, Hayling's NAACP members often drove them off with gunfire, and in October, a Klansman was killed.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug Civil Rights Movement Veterans. "St. Augustine FL, Movement — 1963"] ; [http://books.google.com/books?id=HecWJnClV3wC&pg=PA316&dq=garrow,+hayling,+armed&hl=en&sa=X&ei=veN3UouaHKLgsASmq4HIBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=garrow%2C%20hayling%2C%20armed&f=false David J. Garrow, ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'' (Harper Collins, 1987) p 317;]</ref>
In 1964, Dr. Hayling and other activists urged the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] to come to St. Augustine. The first action came during spring break, when Hayling appealed to northern college students to come to the Ancient City, not to go to the beach, but to take part in demonstrations. Four prominent Massachusetts women—Mrs. Mary Parkman Peabody, Mrs. Esther Burgess, Mrs. Hester Campbell (all of whose husbands were Episcopal bishops), and Mrs. Florence Rowe (whose husband was vice president of John Hancock Insurance Company) came to lend their support. The arrest of Mrs. Peabody, the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, for attempting to eat at the segregated Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge in an integrated group, made front page news across the country, and brought the civil rights movement in St. Augustine to the attention of the world.
Widely publicized activities continued in the ensuing months, as Congress saw the longest filibuster against a civil rights bill in its history. Dr. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]] was arrested at the Monson Motel in St. Augustine on June 11, 1964, the only place in Florida he was arrested. He sent a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to a northern supporter, [[Israel S. Dresner|Rabbi Israel Dresner]] of New Jersey, urging him to recruit others to participate in the movement. This resulted, a week later, in the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history—while conducting a pray-in at the Monson.
A famous photograph taken in St. Augustine shows the manager of the Monson Motel pouring acid in the swimming pool while blacks and whites are swimming in it. The horrifying photograph was run on the front page of the Washington newspaper the day the senate went to vote on passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
===Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964===
{{Main|Freedom Summer}}
In the summer of 1964, [[Council of Federated Organizations|COFO]] brought nearly 1,000 activists to Mississippi—most of them white college students—to join with local black activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools," and organize the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (MFDP).<ref name="crmvet.org">[http://www.crmvet.org/disc/mfdp.htm The Mississippi Movement & the MFDP] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the outsiders and attempts to change their society. State and local governments, police, the [[White Citizens' Council]] and the [[Ku Klux Klan]] used arrests, beatings, arson, murder, spying, firing, evictions, and other forms of intimidation and harassment to oppose the project and prevent blacks from registering to vote or achieving social equality.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/docs/msrv64.pdf Mississippi: Subversion of the Right to Vote] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared. [[James Chaney]], a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two [[Jewish]] activists, [[Andrew Goodman]], a [[Queens College, City University of New York|Queens College]] anthropology student; and [[Michael Schwerner]], a [[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]] organizer from [[Manhattan]]'s [[Lower East Side]], were found weeks later, murdered by conspirators who turned out to be local members of the Klan, some of them members of the [[Neshoba County, Mississippi|Neshoba County]] sheriff's department. This outraged the public, leading the U.S. Justice Department along with the FBI (the latter which had previously avoided dealing with the issue of segregation and persecution of blacks) to take action. The outrage over these murders helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. (See [[Mississippi civil rights workers murders]] for details).
From June to August, Freedom Summer activists worked in 38 local projects scattered across the state, with the largest number concentrated in the [[Mississippi Delta]] region. At least 30 Freedom Schools, with close to 3,500 students were established, and 28 community centers set up.<ref>{{Cite book
|last=McAdam
|first=Doug
|title=Freedom Summer
|publisher=Oxford University Press
|year=1988
|isbn=0-19-504367-7}}</ref>
Over the course of the Summer Project, some 17,000 Mississippi blacks attempted to become registered voters in defiance of the red tape and forces of [[white supremacy]] arrayed against them—only 1,600 (less than 10%) succeeded. But more than 80,000 joined the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (MFDP), founded as an alternative political organization, showing their desire to vote and participate in politics.<ref>{{Cite book
|last=Carson
|first=Clayborne
|title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
|publisher=Harvard University Press
|year=1981}}</ref>
Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it had a significant effect on the course of the Civil Rights Movement. It helped break down the decades of people's isolation and repression that were the foundation of the [[Jim Crow laws|Jim Crow]] system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers. The progression of events throughout the South increased media attention to Mississippi.<ref name="crmvet1">[http://www.crmvet.org/vet/vethome.htm Veterans Roll Call] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
The deaths of affluent northern white students and threats to other northerners attracted the full attention of the media spotlight to the state. Many black activists became embittered, believing the media valued lives of whites and blacks differently. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers, almost all of whom—black and white—still consider it to have been one of the defining periods of their lives.<ref name="crmvet1"/>
===Civil Rights Act of 1964===
Although President Kennedy had [[Civil Rights Address|proposed civil rights legislation]] and it had support from Northern Congressmen and Senators of both parties, Southern Senators blocked the bill by threatening [[filibuster]]s. After considerable parliamentary maneuvering and 54 days of filibuster on the floor of the United States Senate, President Johnson got a bill through the Congress.{{sfn|Reeves|1993|pp=521–524}}
On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64"/> that banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations. The bill authorized the Attorney General to file lawsuits to enforce the new law. The law also nullified state and local laws that required such discrimination.
===Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964===
{{Main|Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party}}
[[Image:Lyndon Johnson meeting with civil rights leaders.jpg|thumb|300px|President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] meets with Civil Rights leaders [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], [[Whitney Young]], and [[James L. Farmer, Jr.|James Farmer]], January 1964.]]
Blacks in Mississippi had been disfranchised by statutory and constitutional changes since the late 19th century. In 1963 COFO held a Freedom Vote in Mississippi to demonstrate the desire of black Mississippians to vote. More than 80,000 people registered and voted in the mock election, which pitted an integrated slate of candidates from the "Freedom Party" against the official state Democratic Party candidates.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963msballot Freedom Ballot in MS] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref>
In 1964, organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white official party. When Mississippi voting registrars refused to recognize their candidates, they held their own primary. They selected [[Fannie Lou Hamer]], [[Annie Bell Robinson Devine|Annie Devine]], and [[Victoria Gray Adams|Victoria Gray]] to run for [[United States Congress|Congress]], and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.<ref name="crmvet.org" />
The presence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in [[Atlantic City, New Jersey]], was inconvenient, however, for the convention organizers. They had planned a triumphant celebration of the Johnson administration's achievements in civil rights, rather than a fight over racism within the Democratic Party. All-white delegations from other Southern states threatened to walk out if the official slate from Mississippi was not seated. Johnson was worried about the inroads that Republican [[Barry Goldwater]]'s campaign was making in what previously had been the white Democratic stronghold of the "Solid South", as well as support that [[George Wallace]] had received in the North during the Democratic primaries.
Johnson could not, however, prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee. There [[Fannie Lou Hamer]] testified eloquently about the beatings that she and others endured and the threats they faced for trying to register to vote. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?"
Johnson offered the MFDP a "compromise" under which it would receive two non-voting, at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would retain its seats. The MFDP angrily rejected the "compromise."
The MFDP kept up its agitation at the convention, after it was denied official recognition. When all but three of the "regular" Mississippi delegates left because they refused to pledge allegiance to the party, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic delegates and took the seats vacated by the official Mississippi delegates. National party organizers removed them. When they returned the next day, they found convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there the day before. They stayed and sang "freedom songs".
The 1964 Democratic Party convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the Civil Rights Movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP. The MFDP became more radical after Atlantic City. It invited [[Malcolm X]] to speak at one of its conventions and opposed the [[Vietnam War|war in Vietnam]].
===King awarded Nobel Peace Prize===
On December 10, 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the [[Nobel Peace Prize]], the youngest man to receive the award; he was 35 years of age.<ref>[http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html MLK's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech] on December 10, 1964.</ref>
===Boycott of New Orleans by American Football League players, January 1965===
After the [[1964 American Football League season|1964]] professional [[American Football League]] season, the [[American Football League All-Star game|AFL All-Star Game]] had been scheduled for early 1965 in [[New Orleans]]' [[Tulane Stadium]]. After numerous black players were refused service by a number of [[New Orleans]] hotels and businesses, and white cabdrivers refused to carry black passengers, black and white players alike lobbied for a [[Boycott of the 1965 American Football League All-star game|boycott of New Orleans]]. Under the leadership of [[Buffalo Bills]]' players, including [[Cookie Gilchrist]], the players put up a unified front. The game was moved to [[Robertson Stadium|Jeppesen Stadium]] in [[Houston]].
The discriminatory practices that prompted the boycott were illegal under the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64" /> which had been signed in July 1964. This new law likely encouraged the AFL players in their cause. It was the first [[boycott]] by a professional sports event of an entire city.
===Selma Voting Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Act, 1965===
{{Main|Selma to Montgomery marches|Voting Rights Act}}
{{Listen
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|title="Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act"
|description=Statement before the [[United States Congress]] by Johnson on August 6, 1965 about the [[Voting Rights Act]].
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|image=[[File:Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr. - Voting Rights Act.jpg|thumb|President Johnson, [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]] at the signing of the [[Voting Rights Act]] on August 6, 1965.]]
}}
[[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|SNCC]] had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in [[Selma, Alabama]], in 1963, but by 1965 had made little headway in the face of opposition from Selma's sheriff, Jim Clark. After local residents asked the [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference|SCLC]] for assistance, King came to Selma to lead several marches, at which he was arrested along with 250 other demonstrators. The marchers continued to meet violent resistance from police. [[Jimmie Lee Jackson]], a resident of nearby Marion, was killed by police at a later march in February 17, 1965. Jackson's death prompted [[James Bevel]], director of the Selma Movement, to initiate a plan to march from Selma to [[Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery]], the state capital.
On March 7, 1965, acting on Bevel's plan, [[Hosea Williams]] of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk the 54 miles (87 km) from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Only six blocks into the march, at the [[Edmund Pettus Bridge]], state troopers and local law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, [[tear gas]], rubber tubes wrapped in barbed wire, and bull whips. They drove the marchers back into Selma. John Lewis was knocked unconscious and dragged to safety. At least 16 other marchers were hospitalized. Among those gassed and beaten was [[Amelia Boynton Robinson]], who was at the center of civil rights activity at the time.
The national broadcast of the news footage of lawmen attacking unresisting marchers' seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote provoked a national response, as had scenes from Birmingham two years earlier. The marchers were able to obtain a court order permitting them to make the march without incident two weeks later.
[[Image:Selma to Montgomery Marches.jpg|thumb|right|275px|Participants in the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]]]]
<!-- Commented out: [[Image:SelmaHeschelMarch.jpg|thumb|right|300px|The [[Selmato_Montgomery_marches#Third_March|3rd Selma Civil Rights March]]. From far left: [[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]], an unidentified nun; [[Ralph Abernathy]]; [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]; [[Ralph Bunche]]; [[Abraham Joshua Heschel|Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel]]; [[Fred Shuttlesworth]]. Second row: Between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Bunche is [[Maurice Davis (rabbi)|Rabbi Maurice Davis]]. Heschel later wrote, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."]] -->
After a second march on March 9 to the site of Bloody Sunday, local whites attacked Rev. [[James Reeb]], another voting rights supporter. He died of his injuries in a Birmingham hospital March 11. On March 25, four Klansmen shot and killed Detroit homemaker [[Viola Liuzzo]] as she drove marchers back to Selma at night after the successfully completed march to Montgomery.
Eight days after the first march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. In it he stated:
{{Quote|But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.}}
{{quote|Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.}}
Johnson signed the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]] on August 6. The 1965 act suspended [[Poll tax (United States)|poll tax]]es, literacy tests, and other subjective voter registration tests. It authorized Federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used. African Americans who had been barred from registering to vote finally had an alternative to taking suits to local or state courts, which had seldom prosecuted their cases to success. If discrimination in voter registration occurred, the 1965 act authorized the [[Attorney General of the United States]] to send Federal examiners to replace local registrars. Johnson reportedly told associates of his concern that signing the bill had lost the white South as voters for the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future.
The act had an immediate and positive effect for African Americans. Within months of its passage, 250,000 new black voters had been registered, one third of them by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout at 74% and led the nation in the number of black public officials elected. In 1969, Tennessee had a 92.1% turnout among black voters; Arkansas, 77.9%; and Texas, 73.1%.
Several whites who had opposed the Voting Rights Act paid a quick price. In 1966 [[Jim Clark (sheriff)|Sheriff Jim Clark]] of Alabama, infamous for using [[cattle prod]]s against civil rights marchers, was up for reelection. Although he took off the notorious "Never" pin on his uniform, he was defeated. At the election, Clark lost as blacks voted to get him out of office. Clark later served a prison term for drug dealing.
Blacks' regaining the power to vote changed the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states. By 1989, there were more than 7,200 African Americans in office, including more than 4,800 in the South. Nearly every [[Black Belt (U.S. region)|Black Belt]] county (where populations were majority black) in Alabama had a black sheriff. Southern blacks held top positions in city, county, and state governments.
Atlanta elected a black mayor, [[Andrew Young]], as did [[Jackson, Mississippi]], with [[Harvey Johnson, Jr.]], and [[New Orleans]], with [[Ernest Nathan Morial|Ernest Morial]]. Black politicians on the national level included [[Barbara Jordan]], elected as a Representative from Texas in Congress, and President Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young as [[United States Ambassador to the United Nations]]. [[Julian Bond]] was elected to the [[Georgia General Assembly|Georgia State Legislature]] in 1965, although political reaction to his public [[Opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War]] prevented him from taking his seat until 1967. [[John Lewis (U.S. politician)|John Lewis]] represents [[Georgia's 5th congressional district]] in the [[United States House of Representatives]], where he has served since 1987.
===Fair housing movements, 1966–1968===
The first major blow against housing segregation in the era, the Rumford Fair Housing Act, was passed in California in 1963. It was overturned by white California voters and real estate lobbyists the following year with [[Proposition 14]], a move which helped precipitate the [[Watts Riots]].<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=b8MeAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA271&lpg=PA271&dq=kerner+commission,+proposition+14&source=bl&ots=ign0EIfekd&sig=Y7kIO7SiTdOEcF1dfv0Oj2NikRw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2WiUVKa0OaTdsASnmoHYCA&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=kerner%20commission%2C%20proposition%2014&f=false Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 271-273]</ref><ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/11/local/la-me-watts11aug11 Valerie Reitman and Mitchell Landsberg "Watts Riots, 40 Years Later" The Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2005]</ref> In 1966, the California Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 14 and reinstated the Fair Housing Act.<ref>[http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0b69q1bw/entire_text/ "No on Proposition 14: California Fair Housing Initiative Collection" Online Archive of California]</ref>
Struggles for [[fair housing]] laws became a major project of the movement over the next two years, with Martin Luther King Jr. leading the [[Chicago Freedom Movement]] around the issue in 1966. In the following year, Father [[James Groppi]] and the [[NAACP Youth Council]] also attracted national attention with a fair housing campaign in Milwaukee.<ref>[http://www.blackthursday.uwosh.edu/milwaukee.html "Milwaukee, Wisconsin: The Selma of the North" University of Wisconsin-Osh Kosh]</ref><ref>[http://articles.latimes.com/1985-11-05/news/mn-4337_1_roman-catholic-priest Burt Folkart "James Groppi, Ex-Priest, Civil Rights Activist, Dies" The Los Angeles Times, November 05, 1985|B]</ref> Both movements faced violent mob resistance from white homeowners and legal opposition from conservative politicians.
The fair housing bill was the most contentious civil rights legislation of the era. Senator [[Walter Mondale]], who advocated for the bill, noted that over successive years, it was the most [[filibuster]]ed legislation in US history. It was opposed by most Northern and Southern senators, as well as the National Association of Real Estate Boards. A proposed "Civil Rights Act of 1966" had collapsed completely because of its fair housing provision.<ref>[http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/wihr/pdfs/MilesWIHRSp09.pdf Darren Miles "Everett Dirksen's Role in Civil Rights Legislation" Western Illinois Historical Review, Vol. I Spring 2009]</ref> Mondale commented that:
:A lot of civil rights [legislation] was about making the South behave and taking the teeth from George Wallace, [but] this came right to the neighborhoods across the country. This was civil rights getting personal.<ref name="propublica.org">[http://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law Nikole Hannah-Jones, "Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law" Propublica, Oct. 28, 2012,]</ref>
===Memphis, King assassination and the Poor People's March 1968===
{{Main|Poor People's Campaign|Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.}}
{{listen
|filename=I've Been To The Mountaintop.ogg
|title="I've Been to the Mountaintop"
|description=Final 30 seconds of "[[I've Been to the Mountaintop]]" speech by [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]] These are the final words from his final public speech.
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|image=none}}
[[File:Resurrection City Washington D.C. 1968.jpg|thumb|250px|A 3000-person shantytown called [[Poor People's Campaign#Resurrection City|Resurrection City]] was established on the [[National Mall]].]]
Rev. James Lawson invited King to [[Memphis, Tennessee]], in March 1968 to support a [[Memphis Sanitation Strike|sanitation workers' strike]]. These workers launched a campaign for [[trade union|union]] representation after two workers were accidentally killed on the job, and King considered their struggle to be a vital part of the [[Poor People's Campaign]] he was planning.
A day after delivering his stirring "[[I've Been to the Mountaintop]]" sermon, which has become famous for his vision of American society, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. [[King assassination riots|Riots]] broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 110 cities across the United States in the days that followed, notably in [[1968 Chicago riots|Chicago]], [[Baltimore riot of 1968|Baltimore]], and [[1968 Washington, D.C. riots|in Washington, D.C.]] The damage done in many cities destroyed black businesses and homes, and slowed economic development for a generation.
The day before [[Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.|King's funeral]], April 8, [[Coretta Scott King]] and three of the King children led 20,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis, holding signs that read, "Honor King: End Racism" and "Union Justice Now". Armed National Guardsmen lined the streets, sitting on [[M-48 tanks]], to protect the marchers, and helicopters circled overhead. On April 9 Mrs. King led another 150,000 people in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcoretta.htm |title=Coretta Scott King |publisher=Spartacus Educational Publishers|date= |accessdate=2010-10-30}}</ref> Her dignity revived courage and hope in many of the Movement's members, cementing her place as the new leader in the struggle for racial equality.
Coretta Scott King said,{{citation needed|date=June 2013}}
{{quote|[Martin Luther King, Jr.] gave his life for the poor of the world, the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. The day that Negro people and others in bondage are truly free, on the day want is abolished, on the day wars are no more, on that day I know my husband will rest in a long-deserved peace.}}
Rev. Ralph Abernathy succeeded King as the head of the SCLC and attempted to carry forth King's plan for a Poor People's March. It was to unite blacks and whites to campaign for fundamental changes in American society and economic structure. The march went forward under Abernathy's plainspoken leadership but did not achieve its goals.
{{See also|Orangeburg massacre}}
===Civil Rights Act of 1968===
As 1968 began, the fair housing bill was being [[filibustered]] once again, but two developments revived it.<ref name="propublica.org"/> The [[Kerner Commission]] report on the [[Long hot summer of 1967|1967 ghetto riots]] was delivered to Congress on March 1, and it strongly recommended "a comprehensive and enforceable federal open housing law" as a remedy to the civil disturbances. The Senate was moved to end their filibuster that week.<ref name="huduser.org">[http://www.huduser.org/portal/Periodicals/CITYSCPE/VOL4NUM3/mathias.pdf Honorable Charles Mathias, Jr. "Fair Housing Legislation: Not an Easy Row To Hoe" US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research]</ref>
As the [[United States House of Representatives|House of Representatives]] deliberated the bill in April, Dr. King was assassinated, and the largest [[King assassination riots|wave of unrest]] since the Civil War swept the country.<ref>[http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1800/2148_ch1.pdf Peter B. Levy, "The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968" in ''Baltimore '68 : Riots and Rebirth in an American city''(Temple University Press, 2011), p. 6]</ref> Senator [[Charles M. Mathias|Charles Mathias]] wrote that
:some Senators and Representatives publicly stated they would not be intimidated or rushed into legislating because of the disturbances. Nevertheless, the news coverage of the riots and the underlying disparities in income, jobs, housing, and education, between White and Black Americans helped educate citizens and Congress about the stark reality of an enormous social problem. Members of Congress knew they had to act to redress these imbalances in American life to fulfill the dream that King had so eloquently preached.<ref name="huduser.org"/>
The House passed the legislation on April 10, and President Johnson signed it the next day. The [[Civil Rights Act of 1968]] prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin. It also made it a federal crime to "by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin."<ref>[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg73.pdf Public Law 90-284, Government Printing Office]</ref>
==Other issues==
===Competing ideas===
Despite the common notion that the ideas of [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], [[Malcolm X]] and [[Black Power]] only conflicted with each other and were the only ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement, there were other sentiments felt by many blacks. Fearing the events during the movement were occurring too quickly, there were some blacks who felt that leaders should take their activism at a slower pace. Others had reservations on how focused blacks were on the movement and felt that such attention was better spent on reforming issues within the black community.
Those who blatantly rejected integration usually had a legitimate rationale for doing so, such as fearing a change in the status quo they had been used to for so long, or fearing for their safety if they found themselves in environments where whites were much more present. However, there were also those who defended segregation for the sake of keeping ties with the white power structure from which many relied on for social and economic mobility above other blacks. Based on her interpretation of a 1966 study made by Donald Matthews and James Prothro detailing the relative percentage of blacks for integration, against it or feeling something else, Lauren Winner asserts that:
<blockquote>Black defenders of segregation look, at first blush, very much like black nationalists, especially in their preference for all-black institutions; but black defenders of segregation differ from nationalists in two key ways. First, while both groups criticize [[NAACP]]-style integration, nationalists articulate a third alternative to integration and [[Jim Crow]], while segregationists preferred to stick with the status quo. Second, absent from black defenders of segregation's political vocabulary was the demand for [[self-determination]]. They called for all-black institutions, but not autonomous all-black institutions; indeed, some defenders of segregation asserted that black people needed white paternalism and oversight in order to thrive.<ref>Winner, Lauren F. "Doubtless Sincere: New Characters in the Civil Rights Cast." In The Role of Ideas in the Civil Rights South, edited by Ted Ownby. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002, p. 158-159.</ref></blockquote>
Oftentimes, African-American community leaders would be staunch defenders of segregation. Church ministers, businessmen and educators were among those who wished to keep segregation and segregationist ideals in order to retain the privileges they gained from patronage from whites, such as monetary gains. In addition, they relied on segregation to keep their jobs and economies in their communities thriving. It was feared that if integration became widespread in the South, black-owned businesses and other establishments would lose a large chunk of their customer base to white-owned businesses, and many blacks would lose opportunities for jobs that were presently exclusive to their interests.<ref>Winner, Doubtless Sincere, 164–165.</ref> On the other hand, there were the everyday, average black people who criticized integration as well. For them, they took issue with different parts of the Civil Rights Movement and the potential for blacks to exercise consumerism and economic liberty without hindrance from whites.<ref>Winner, Doubtless Sincere, 166–167.</ref>
For Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and other leading activists and groups during the movement, these opposing viewpoints acted as an obstacle against their ideas. These different views made such leaders' work much harder to accomplish, but they were nonetheless important in the overall scope of the movement. For the most part, the black individuals who had reservations on various aspects of the movement and ideologies of the activists were not able to make a game-changing dent in their efforts, but the existence of these alternate ideas gave some blacks an outlet to express their concerns about the changing social structure.
===Avoiding the "Communist" label===
{{See also|The Communist Party and African-Americans}}
On December 17, 1951, the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party]]–affiliated [[Civil Rights Congress]] delivered the petition ''[[We Charge Genocide]]: "The Crime of Government Against the Negro People"'', often shortened to ''We Charge Genocide'', to the United Nations in 1951, arguing that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against [[lynching in the United States]], was guilty of [[genocide]] under Article II of the [[Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide|UN Genocide Convention]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis51.htm#1951genocide ''We Charge Genocide''] – Civil Rights Movement Veterans</ref> The petition was presented to the United Nations at two separate venues: [[Paul Robeson]], concert singer and activist, to a UN official in New York City, while [[William L. Patterson]], executive director of the CRC, delivered copies of the drafted petition to a UN delegation in Paris.<ref name="autogenerated1981">{{cite book
| last = Carson
| first = Clayborne
| title = In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s
| publisher = Harvard University Press
| year = 1981}}</ref>
Patterson, the editor of the petition, was a leader in the Communist Party USA and head of the [[International Labor Defense]], a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African-Americans in cases involving issues of political or racial persecution. The ILD was known for leading the defense of the Scottsboro boys in Alabama in 1931, where the Communist Party had considerable influence among African Americans in the 1930s. This had largely declined by the late 1950s, although they could command international attention. As earlier Civil Rights figures such as Robeson, Du Bois and Patterson became more politically radical (and therefore targets of Cold War anti-Communism by the US. Government), they lost favor with both mainstream Black America and the NAACP.<ref name="autogenerated1981"/>
In order to secure a place in the mainstream and gain the broadest base, the new generation of civil rights activists believed they had to openly distance themselves from anything and anyone associated with the Communist party. According to Ella Baker, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference adopted "Christian" into its name to deter charges of Communism.<ref>[http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/html_use/G-0007.html Ella Baker Oral History [02:05:57 – 02:13:07<nowiki>]</nowiki>]</ref> The FBI under J Edgar Hoover had been concerned about communism since the early 20th century, and continued to label as "Communist" or "subversive" some of the civil rights activists, whom it kept under close surveillance. In the early 1960s, the practice of distancing the Civil Rights Movement from "Reds" was challenged by the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] who adopted a policy of accepting assistance and participation by anyone, regardless of political affiliation, who supported the SNCC program and was willing to "put their body on the line." At times this political openness put SNCC at odds with the NAACP.<ref name="autogenerated1981"/>
===Kennedy administration, 1961–63===
[[File:Robert Kennedy CORE rally speech2.jpg|thumb|right|275px|[[Robert F. Kennedy]] speaking to a Civil Rights crowd in front of the [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] building, June 1963.]]
During the years preceding his election to the presidency, [[John F. Kennedy]]'s record of voting on issues of racial discrimination had been minimal. Kennedy openly confessed to his closest advisors that during the first months of his presidency, his knowledge of the civil rights movement was "lacking".
For the first two years of the Kennedy administration, civil rights activists had mixed opinions of both the president and [[attorney general]], [[Robert F. Kennedy]]. Many viewed the administration with suspicion. A well of historical cynicism toward white liberal politics had left African Americans with a sense of uneasy disdain for any white politician who claimed to share their concerns for freedom. Still, many had a strong sense that the Kennedys represented a new age of political dialogue.
Although observers frequently assert the phrases "The Kennedy administration" or "President Kennedy" when discussing the executive and legislative support of the Civil Rights movement between 1960 and 1963, many of the initiatives resulted from Robert Kennedy's passion. Through his rapid education in the realities of racism{{Citation needed|date=March 2008}}, Robert Kennedy underwent a thorough conversion of purpose as Attorney-General. The President came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matters; the Attorney-General succeeded in urging the president to address the issue in a [[Civil Rights Address|speech to the nation]].<ref>Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, '''Robert Kennedy And His Times''' (2002)</ref>
Robert Kennedy first became seriously concerned with civil rights in mid-May 1961 during the [[Freedom Rides]], when photographs of the burning bus and savage beatings in [[Aniston]] and Birmingham were broadcast around the world. They came at an especially embarrassing time, as President Kennedy was about to have a [[Vienna summit|summit with the Soviet premier]] in Vienna. The White House was concerned with its image among the populations of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, and Robert Kennedy responded with an address for [[Voice of America]] stating that great progress had been made on the issue of race relations. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the administration worked to resolve the crisis with a minimum of violence and prevent the Freedom Riders from generating a fresh crop of headlines that might divert attention from the President's international agenda. The [[Freedom Riders (film)|''Freedom Riders'']] documentary notes that, "The back burner issue of civil rights had collided with the urgent demands of Cold War [[realpolitik]]."<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/issues/the-cold-war "Freedom Riders-The Cold War" ''Freedom Riders'', American Experience, PBS website]</ref>
On May 21, when a white mob attacked and burned the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where King was holding out with protesters, Robert Kennedy telephoned King to ask him to stay in the building until the U.S. Marshals and National Guard could secure the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked Robert Kennedy's commanding the force to break up an attack, which might otherwise have ended King's life.
With a very small majority in Congress, the president's ability to press ahead with legislation relied considerably on a balancing game with the Senators and Congressmen of the South. Without the support of Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, a former Senator who had years of experience in Congress and longstanding relations there, many of the Attorney-General's programs would not have progressed.
By late 1962, frustration at the slow pace of political change was balanced by the movement's strong support for legislative initiatives: housing rights, administrative representation across all US Government departments, safe conditions at the ballot box, pressure on the courts to prosecute racist criminals. King remarked by the end of the year,
<blockquote>This administration has reached out more creatively than its predecessors to blaze new trails, [notably in voting rights and government appointments]. Its vigorous young men [had launched] imaginative and bold forays [and displayed] a certain ''élan'' in the attention they give to civil-rights issues.<ref>Martin Luther King, Jr. '''Nation''' March 3, 1962</ref></blockquote>
From squaring off against Governor [[George Wallace]], to "tearing into" Vice-President Johnson (for failing to desegregate areas of the administration), to threatening corrupt white Southern judges with disbarment, to desegregating interstate transport, Robert Kennedy came to be consumed by the Civil Rights movement. He continued to work on these social justice issues in his bid for the presidency in 1968.
On the night of Governor Wallace's capitulation to African-American enrollment at the [[University of Alabama]], President Kennedy gave an [[Civil Rights Address|address]] to the nation, which marked the changing tide, an address that was to become a landmark for the ensuing change in political policy as to civil rights. In it President Kennedy spoke of the need to act decisively and to act now:
{{quote|"We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes? Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them."|President Kennedy|<ref>{{cite web|author=Michael E. Eidenmuller |url=http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcivilrights.htm |title=John F. Kennedy – Civil Rights Address |publisher=American Rhetoric |date=June 11, 1963 |accessdate=2010-10-30}}</ref>}}.
Assassination cut short the life and careers of both the Kennedy brothers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The essential groundwork of the Civil Rights Act 1964 had been initiated before John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The dire need for political and administrative reform was driven home on [[Capitol Hill]] by the combined efforts of the Kennedy brothers, Dr. King (and other leaders) and President Lyndon Johnson.
In 1966, Robert Kennedy undertook a tour of South Africa in which he championed the cause of the anti-[[South Africa under apartheid|apartheid]] movement. His tour gained international praise at a time when few politicians dared to entangle themselves in the politics of South Africa. Kennedy spoke out against the oppression of the black population. He was welcomed by the black population as though a visiting head of state. In an interview with ''[[Look (American magazine)|LOOK]]'' Magazine he said:
{{quote|At the [[University of Natal]] in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence.|Robert Kennedy |''LOOK'' Magazine<ref>[http://www.rfksa.org/magazines/magazine.php?id=6 Ripple of Hope in the Land of Apartheid: Robert Kennedy in South Africa, June 1966]</ref>}}
===American Jewish community and the Civil Rights movement===
[[Image:March on washington Aug 28 1963.jpg|thumb|250px|Jewish civil rights activist [[Joseph L. Rauh, Jr.]] marching with [[Martin Luther King]] in 1963.]]
Many in the [[American Jews|Jewish]] community supported the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, statistically Jews were one of the most actively involved non-black groups in the Movement. Many Jewish students worked in concert with African Americans for CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full-time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era. Jews made up roughly half of the white northern volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi [[Freedom Summer]] project and approximately half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s.<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/relations.html ''From Swastika to Jim Crow'']—PBS Documentary</ref>
Jewish leaders were arrested while heeding a call from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in [[St. Augustine, Florida]], in June 1964, where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge—a nationally important civil rights landmark that was demolished in 2003 so that a Hilton Hotel could be built on the site. [[Abraham Joshua Heschel]], a writer, rabbi and professor of theology at the [[Jewish Theological Seminary of America]] in New York was outspoken on the subject of civil rights. He marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in the 1965 March on Selma. In the [[Mississippi Burning]] murders of 1964, the two white activists killed, [[Andrew Goodman]] and [[Michael Schwerner]], were both Jewish.
[[Brandeis University]], the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college university in the world, created the Transitional Year Program (TYP) in 1968, in part response to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination. The faculty created it to renew the University's commitment to social justice. Recognizing Brandeis as a university with a commitment to academic excellence, these faculty members created a chance to disadvantaged students to participate in an empowering educational experience.
The program began by admitting 20 black males. As it developed, two groups have been given chances. The first group consists of students whose secondary schooling experiences and/or home communities may have lacked the resources to foster adequate preparation for success at elite colleges like Brandeis. For example, their high schools do not offer AP or honors courses nor high quality laboratory experiences.
Students selected had to have excelled in the curricula offered by their schools. The second group of students includes those whose life circumstances have created formidable challenges that required focus, energy, and skills that otherwise would have been devoted to academic pursuits. Some have served as heads of their households, others have worked full-time while attending high school full-time, and others have shown leadership in other ways.
The [[American Jewish Committee]], [[American Jewish Congress]], and [[Anti-Defamation League]] (ADL) actively promoted civil rights.
While Jews were very active in the civil rights movement in the South, in the North, many had experienced a more strained relationship with African Americans. In communities experiencing white flight, racial rioting, and urban decay, Jewish Americans were more often the last remaining whites in the communities most affected. With Black militancy and the [[Black Power]] movements on the rise, Black Anti-Semitism increased leading to strained relations between Blacks and Jews in Northern communities. In New York City, most notably, there was a major socio-economic class difference in the perception of African Americans by Jews.<ref>Cannato, Vincent "The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his struggle to save New York" Better Books, 2001. ISBN 0-465-00843-7</ref> Jews from better educated Upper Middle Class backgrounds were often very supportive of African American civil rights activities while the Jews in poorer urban communities that became increasingly minority were often less supportive largely in part due to more negative and violent interactions between the two groups.
{{See also|African-American – Jewish relations|New York City teacher's strike of 1968|Brownsville, Brooklyn}}
====Profile====
Despite large Jewish organisations such as the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress and the ADL being actively involved in the Movement, many Jewish individuals in the Southern states who supported civil rights for African-Americans tended to keep a low profile on "the race issue", in order to avoid attracting the attention of the anti-Black and antisemitic [[Ku Klux Klan]].<ref name="My Jewish Learning"/> However, Klan groups exploited the issue of African-American integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle to launch acts of violent antisemitism. As an example of this hatred, in one year alone, from November 1957 to October 1958, temples and other Jewish communal gatherings were bombed and desecrated in Atlanta, Nashville, Jacksonville, and Miami, and dynamite was found under synagogues in Birmingham, Charlotte, and Gastonia, North Carolina. Some rabbis received death threats, but there were no injuries following these outbursts of violence.<ref name="My Jewish Learning">{{cite book|last1=Sachar|first1=Howard|title=A History of Jews in America|url=http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1948-1980/America/Liberal_Politics/Black-Jewish_Relations/Civil_Rights_Movement.shtml?p=2|website=myjewishlearning.com|publisher=Vintage Books|accessdate=1 March 2015|date=2 November 1993}}</ref>
===Fraying of alliances===
King reached the height of popular acclaim during his life in 1964, when he was awarded the [[Nobel Peace Prize]]. His career after that point was filled with frustrating challenges. The liberal coalition that had gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964<ref name="cra64" /> and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began to fray.
King was becoming more estranged from the Johnson administration. In 1965 he broke with it by calling for peace negotiations and a halt to the bombing of Vietnam. He moved further left in the following years, speaking of the need for economic justice and thoroughgoing changes in American society. He believed change was needed beyond the civil rights gained by the movement.
King's attempts to broaden the scope of the Civil Rights Movement were halting and largely unsuccessful, however. King made several efforts in 1965 to take the Movement north to address issues of employment and housing discrimination. SCLC's campaign in Chicago publicly failed, as Chicago Mayor [[Richard J. Daley]] marginalized SCLC's campaign by promising to "study" the city's problems. In 1966, white demonstrators holding "white power" signs in notoriously racist [[Cicero, Illinois|Cicero]], a suburb of Chicago, threw stones at marchers demonstrating against [[housing segregation]].
===Race riots, 1963–70===
By the end of [[World War II]], more than half of the country's black population lived in Northern and Western industrial cities rather than Southern rural areas.{{Citation needed|date=June 2007}} Migrating to those cities for better job opportunities, education and to escape legal segregation, African Americans often found segregation that existed in fact rather than in law.
While after the 1920s, the [[Ku Klux Klan]] was not prevalent, by the 1960s other problems prevailed in northern cities. Beginning in the 1950s, deindustrialization and restructuring of major industries: railroads and meatpacking, steel industry and car industry, markedly reduced working-class jobs, which had earlier provided middle-class incomes. As the last population to enter the industrial job market, blacks were disadvantaged by its collapse. At the same time, investment in highways and private development of suburbs in the postwar years had drawn many ethnic whites out of the cities to newer housing in expanding suburbs. Urban blacks who did not follow the middle class out of the cities became concentrated in the older housing of [[inner city]] neighborhoods, among the poorest in most major cities.
Because jobs in new service areas and parts of the economy were being created in suburbs, unemployment was much higher in many black than in white neighborhoods, and crime was frequent. African Americans rarely owned the stores or businesses where they lived. Many were limited to menial or blue-collar jobs, although union organizing in the 1930s and 1940s had opened up good working environments for some. African Americans often made only enough money to live in dilapidated tenements that were privately owned, or poorly maintained public housing. They also attended schools that were often the worst academically in the city and that had fewer white students than in the decades before WWII.
The racial makeup of most major city police departments, largely ethnic white (especially Irish), was a major factor in adding to racial tensions. Even a black neighborhood such as Harlem had a ratio of one black officer for every six white officers.<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,873963-6,00.html "No Place Like Home"] Time Magazine.</ref> The majority-black city of [[Newark, New Jersey]] had only 145 blacks among its 1322 police officers.<ref name="Herman">[http://www.cornwall.rutgers.edu/pdf/Herman-July%202002-Report.pdf Dr. Max Herman, "Ethnic Succession and Urban Unrest in Newark and Detroit During the Summer of 1967"], Rutgers University, July 2002</ref> Police forces in Northern cities were largely composed of white ethnics, descendants of 19th-century immigrants: mainly Irish, Italian, and Eastern European officers. They had established their own power bases in the police departments and in territories in cities. Some would routinely harass blacks with or without provocation.<ref>[http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/index.htm Max A. Herman, ed. "The Detroit and Newark Riots of 1967"], Rutgers-Newark University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology</ref>
====Harlem riot of 1964====
{{Further|Harlem riot of 1964}}
One of the first major race riots took place in [[Harlem]], New York, in the summer of 1964. A white Irish-American police officer, Thomas Gilligan, shot 15-year-old James Powell, who was black, for allegedly charging him armed with a knife. It was found that Powell was unarmed. A group of black citizens demanded Gilligan's suspension. Hundreds of young demonstrators marched peacefully to the 67th Street police station on July 17, 1964, the day after Powell's death.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.aliciapatterson.org/APF1503/Jacoby/Jacoby.html |title=How a Campaign for Racial Trust Turned Sour |publisher=Aliciapatterson.org |date=July 17, 1964 |accessdate=2010-10-30}}</ref>
The police department did not suspend Gilligan. Although the precinct had promoted the [[New York Police Department|NYPD]]'s first black station commander, neighborhood residents were frustrated with racial inequalities. They looted and burned anything that was not black-owned in the neighborhood.{{citation needed|date=August 2011}} [[Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn|Bedford-Stuyvesant]], a major black neighborhood in [[Brooklyn]] erupted next. That summer, [[1964 Philadelphia race riot|rioting also broke out in Philadelphia]], for similar reasons.
In the aftermath of the riots of July 1964, the federal government funded a pilot program called [[Project Uplift]]. Thousands of young people in Harlem were given jobs during the summer of 1965. The project was inspired by a report generated by [[Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited|HARYOU]] called ''[[Youth in the Ghetto]].''<ref>''Youth in the Ghetto: A Study of the Consequences of Powerlessness,'' Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc., 1964</ref> HARYOU was given a major role in organizing the project, together with the [[National Urban League]] and nearly 100 smaller community organizations.<ref>''Poverty and Politics in Harlem,'' Alphnso Pinkney and Roger Woock, College & University Press Services, Inc., 1970</ref> Permanent jobs at living wages were still out of reach of many young black men.
[[Image:Wattsriots-policearrest-loc.jpg|thumb|Police arrest a man during the [[Watts Riots]], August 1965.]]
====Watts riot (1965)====
{{Further|Watts Riots}}
In 1965, President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] signed the Voting Rights Act, but the new law had no immediate effect on living conditions for blacks. A few days after the act became law, a riot broke out in the [[South Los Angeles|South Central]] Los Angeles neighborhood of [[Watts, Los Angeles|Watts]]. Like Harlem, Watts was an impoverished neighborhood with very high unemployment. Its residents were supervised by a largely white police department that had a history of abuse against blacks.
While arresting a young man for drunk driving, police officers argued with the suspect's mother before onlookers. The conflict triggered a massive destruction of property through six days of rioting. Thirty-four people were killed and property valued at about $30 million was destroyed, making the [[Watts Riots]] among the most expensive in American history.
With black militancy on the rise, ghetto residents directed acts of anger at the police. Black residents growing tired of police brutality continued to riot. Some young people joined groups such as the [[Black Panther Party|Black Panthers]], whose popularity was based in part on their reputation for confronting police officers. Riots among blacks occurred in 1966 and 1967 in cities such as [[Atlanta]], San Francisco, [[Oakland, California|Oakland]], [[Baltimore]], [[Seattle]], [[Tacoma]], [[Hough Riots|Cleveland]], [[Cincinnati]], [[Columbus, Ohio|Columbus]], [[1967 Newark riots|Newark]], Chicago, New York City (specifically in [[Brooklyn]], Harlem and the [[Bronx]]), and worst of all in Detroit.
====Detroit riot of 1967====
{{Further|Detroit riot of 1967}}
In Detroit, a small [[black middle class]] had begun to develop among those African-Americans who worked at unionized jobs in the [[automotive industry]]; these workers still contended with unsafe working conditions and racist practices, concerns which the [[United Auto Workers]] channeled into bureaucratic and ineffective grievance procedures.<ref>[http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3527 Karen Miller (University of Michigan) "Review of 'Detroit:I Do Mind Dying" H-Net Online]</ref> White mobs enforced the segregation of housing up through the 1960s; upon learning that a new homebuyer was black, whites would congregate outside the home picketing, often breaking windows, committing arson, and attacking their new neighbors.<ref name="pbs.org">[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/profiles/57_mi.html "Michigan: Riots and Police Brutality" American Experience-Eyes on the Prize website]</ref> Blacks who were not upwardly mobile were living in substandard conditions, subject to the same problems as African-Americans in Watts and Harlem.
When white police officers shut down an illegal bar and arrested a large group of patrons during the hot summer, furious residents rioted. Blacks looted and destroyed property for five days, and National Guardsmen and federal troops patrolled in tanks through the streets. Residents reported that police officers shot at black people before even determining if the suspects were armed or dangerous. After five days, 41 people had been killed, hundreds injured and thousands left homeless. $40 to $45 million worth of damage was caused.<ref name="pbs.org"/>
State and local governments responded to the riot with a dramatic increase in minority hiring. Mayor Cavanaugh in May 1968 appointed a Special Task Force on Police Recruitment and Hiring, and by July 1972, blacks made up 14 percent of the Detroit police, more than double their percentage in 1967.<ref>Sidney Fine, ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000) p. 325</ref> The Michigan government used its reviews of contracts issued by the state to secure a 21 percent increase in nonwhite employment.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=dTfA5R1m0XoC&pg=PA335&lpg=PA335&dq=sidney+fine,+expanding&source=bl&ots=weUYLlIJ36&sig=NJJb0SO2jPGIOVGklzX_sVnSOvg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Wo5OVN9GjN-wBI6cgdgN&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=riot%2C%20employment&f=false Sidney Fine, ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000), p. 327]</ref> In the aftermath of the turmoil, the Greater Detroit Board of Commerce launched a campaign to find jobs for ten thousand "previously unemployable" persons, a preponderant number of whom were black.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=dTfA5R1m0XoC&pg=PA335&lpg=PA335&dq=sidney+fine,+expanding&source=bl&ots=weUYLlIJ36&sig=NJJb0SO2jPGIOVGklzX_sVnSOvg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Wo5OVN9GjN-wBI6cgdgN&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=riot%2C%20employment&f=false Sidney Fine, ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000), p. 326]</ref>
Prior to the disorder, Detroit enacted no ordinances to end [[housing segregation]], and few had been enacted in the state of Michigan at all.<ref name="law.msu.edu">[https://www.law.msu.edu/clinics/rhc/MI_Housing_Disc.pdf Sidney Fine, "Michigan and Housing Discrimination 1949–1969" Michigan Historical Review, Fall 1997]</ref> Governor [[George Romney (politician)|George Romney]] immediately responded to the riot of 1967 with a special session of the Michigan legislature where he forwarded sweeping housing proposals that included not only [[fair housing]], but "important relocation, [[tenant rights|tenants' rights]] and code enforcement legislation." Romney had supported such proposals in 1965, but abandoned them in the face of organized opposition. White conservative resistance was powerful in 1967 as well, but this time Romney did not relent and once again proposed the housing laws at the regular 1968 session of the legislature.
The governor publicly warned that if the housing measures were not passed, "it will accelerate the recruitment of revolutionary insurrectionists." The laws passed both houses of the legislature. The ''[[Michigan Historical Review]]'' wrote that: ''"The Michigan Fair Housing Act, which took effect on November 15, 1968, was stronger than the federal fair housing law…and than just about all the existing state fair housing acts. It is probably more than a coincidence that the state that had experienced the most severe racial disorder of the 1960s also adopted one of the strongest state fair housing acts."''<ref name="law.msu.edu"/>
Detroit's decline had begun in the 1950s, during which the city lost almost a tenth of its population.<ref>[http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/07/23/detroit-bad-policies-bear-bitter-fruit/PHY6nyuDHfvpr3qreIPahK/story.html Edward L. Glaeser "In Detroit, bad policies bear bitter fruit" The Boston Globe, July 23, 2013]</ref> It has been argued – including by [[Coleman Young|Mayor Coleman Young]] – that the [[1967 Detroit riot|riot]] was the primary accelerator of "[[white flight]]", an ethnic succession by which white residents moved out of inner-city neighborhoods into the suburbs.<ref>Coleman Young, ''Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young'' (1994) p.179.</ref> In contrast, urban affairs experts largely blame a Supreme Court decision against NAACP lawsuits on school desegregation – 1974's ''[[Milliken v. Bradley]]'' case – which maintained the suburban schools as a lily-white refuge.<ref name=Meinke2011>{{cite journal|last=Meinke|first=Samantha|title=Milliken v Bradley: The Northern Battle for Desegregation|journal=Michigan Bar Journal|date=September 2011|volume=90|issue=9|pages=20–22|url=http://www.michbar.org/journal/pdf/pdf4article1911.pdf|accessdate=July 27, 2012}}</ref><ref>[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2095718?uid=3739832&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21104726323541 James, David R. (December 1989). "City Limits on Racial Equality: The Effects of City-Suburb Boundaries on Public-School Desegregation, 1968–1976". American Sociological Review 54 (6). Retrieved 29 July 2012.]</ref><ref>[http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/squandered-opportunities-leave-detroit-isolated/page/0/2 Mike Alberti, "Squandered opportunities leave Detroit isolated" RemappingDebate.org]</ref> In his [[dissenting opinion]], Supreme Court Justice [[William O. Douglas]] wrote that the ''Milliken'' decision perpetuated "[[Covenant (law)#Exclusionary covenants|restrictive covenants]]" that "maintained...black [[ghettos]]."<ref>[[s:Milliken v. Bradley/Dissent Douglas|Milliken v. Bradley/Dissent Douglas – Wikisource, the free online library]]. En.wikisource.org. Retrieved on 2013-07-16. See also: [[s:Milliken v. Bradley/Dissent Marshall|"Milliken v. Bradley" by Thurgood Marshall, Dissenting Opinion]]</ref> (Detroit lost 12.8% of its white population in the 1950s, 15.2% of its white population in the 1960s, and 21.2% of its white population in the 1970s.)<ref>[http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/MItab.pdf Gibson, Campbell; Kay Jung (February 2005). "Table 23. Michigan – Race and Hispanic Origin for Selected Large Cities and Other Places: Earliest Census to 1990". United States Census Bureau.]</ref>
====Nationwide riots of 1967====
{{Further|Long Hot Summer of 1967}}
In additon to Detroit, over 100 US cities experienced riots in 1967, including Newark, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Washington D.C.<ref>[http://www.thirteen.org/newark/history3.html "A Walk Through Newark: History of Newark-The Riots" WNET-Thirteen]</ref> President Johnson created the [[Kerner Commission|National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders]] in 1967. The commission's final report called for major reforms in employment and public assistance for black communities. It warned that the United States was moving toward separate white and black societies.
====King riots (1968)====
{{Further|King assassination riots}}
In April 1968 after the assassination of Dr. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]] in [[Memphis, Tennessee]], rioting broke out in cities across the country from frustration and despair. These included Cleveland, [[Baltimore riot of 1968|Baltimore]], [[1968 Washington, D.C. riots|Washington, D.C.]], [[1968 Chicago riots|Chicago]], New York City and [[Louisville riots of 1968|Louisville, Kentucky]]. As in previous riots, most of the damage was done in black neighborhoods. In some cities, it has taken more than a quarter of a century for these areas to recover from the damage of the riots; in others, little recovery has been achieved.
Programs in [[affirmative action]] resulted in the hiring of more black police officers in every major city. Today blacks make up a proportional majority of the police departments in cities such as Baltimore, Washington, New Orleans, Atlanta, Newark, and Detroit. Civil rights laws have reduced employment discrimination.
The conditions that led to frequent rioting in the late 1960s have receded, but not all the problems have been solved. With industrial and economic restructuring, hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs disappeared since the later 1950s from the old industrial cities. Some moved South, as has much population following new jobs, and others out of the U.S. altogether. Civil unrest broke out in [[Arthur McDuffie|Miami in 1980]], in [[1992 Los Angeles riots|Los Angeles in 1992]], and in [[2001 Cincinnati riots|Cincinnati in 2001]].
{{See also|Mass racial violence in the United States}}
===Black power, 1966===
{{Main|Black Power}}
During the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964, numerous tensions within the civil rights movement came to the forefront. Many blacks in [[SNCC]] developed concerns that white activists from the North were taking over the movement. The massive presence of white students was also not reducing the amount of violence that SNCC suffered, but seemed to be increasing it. Additionally, there was profound disillusionment at Lyndon Johnson's denial of voting status for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.<ref>[http://www.academia.edu/384127/SNCC_the_Federal_Government_and_the_Road_to_Black_Power Tom Adam Davies "SNCC, the Federal Government and the Road to Black Power" Paper given at the Historians of the Twentieth Century United States Conference in July 2010]</ref><ref>[http://www.studythepast.com/4333_spring12/acrm/ACRM%205.1.pdf Allen J. Matusow "From Civil Rights to Black Power: The Case of SNCC" in Twentieth Century America: Recent Interpretations (Harcourt Press, 1972), p. 367-378]</ref> Meanwhile, during [[Congress of Racial Equality|CORE]]'s work in Louisiana that summer, that group found the federal government would not respond to requests to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or to protect the lives of activists who challenged segregation. For the Louisiana campaign to survive it had to rely on a local African-American militia called the [[Deacons for Defense and Justice]], who used arms to repel white supremacist violence and police repression. CORE's collaboration with the Deacons was effective against breaking Jim Crow in numerous Louisiana areas.<ref>[http://www.thenation.com/article/any-means-necessary?page=0,0 Mike Marqussee "By Any Means Necessary" The Nation, June 17, 2004]</ref><ref>[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/25hicks.html Douglas Martin, "Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81" The New York Times, April 24, 2010]</ref>
In 1965, SNCC helped organize an independent political party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), in the heart of Alabama Klan territory, and permitted its black leaders to openly promote the use of armed self-defense. Meanwhile, the Deacons for Defense and Justice expanded into Mississippi and assisted [[Charles Evers]]' NAACP chapter with a successful campaign in [[Natchez, Mississippi|Natchez]].<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=8H9Me8LZ488C&pg=PA206&lpg=PA206&dq=charles+evers,+deacons&source=bl&ots=oyfEEGJ0yw&sig=qjfZvFuPiytuz1nIe8hU--vrND4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_huHVLv9FILqggTx14LABA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=charles%20evers%2C%20deacons&f=false Lance Hill, ''The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement'' (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) p. 200-204]</ref> The same year, the [[Watts Rebellion]] took place in Los Angeles, and seemed to show that most black youth were now committed to the use of violence to protest inequality and oppression.
During the [[March Against Fear]] in 1966, SNCC and CORE fully embraced the slogan of "black power" to describe these trends towards militancy and self-reliance. In Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael declared, ''"I'm not going to beg the white man for anything that I deserve, I'm going to take it. We need power."''<ref>[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html "The Time Has Come, 1964–1966" Eyes on the Prize, Blackside Productions, PBS American Experience]</ref>
Several people engaging in the Black Power movement started to gain more of a sense in black pride and identity as well. In gaining more of a sense of a cultural identity, several blacks demanded that whites no longer refer to them as "Negroes" but as "Afro-Americans." Up until the mid-1960s, blacks had dressed similarly to whites and [[Hair straightening|straightened their hair]]. As a part of gaining a unique identity, blacks started to wear loosely fit [[dashiki]]s and had started to grow their hair out as a natural [[afro]]. The afro, sometimes nicknamed the "'fro," remained a popular black hairstyle until the late 1970s.
Black Power was made most public, however, by the [[Black Panther Party]], which was founded by [[Huey Newton]] and [[Bobby Seale]] in [[Oakland, California]], in 1966. This group followed the ideology of [[Malcolm X]], a former member of the [[Nation of Islam (1955–68)|Nation of Islam]], using a "by-any-means necessary" approach to stopping inequality. They sought to rid African American neighborhoods of [[police brutality]] and created a ten-point plan amongst other things.
Their dress code consisted of black leather jackets, berets, slacks, and light blue shirts. They wore an afro hairstyle. They are best remembered for setting up free breakfast programs, referring to police officers as "pigs", displaying shotguns and a [[raised fist]], and often using the statement of "[[Power to the people (slogan)|Power to the people]]".
Black Power was taken to another level inside prison walls. In 1966, [[George Jackson (Black Panther)|George Jackson]] formed the [[Black Guerrilla Family]] in the California [[San Quentin State Prison]]. The goal of this group was to overthrow the white-run government in America and the prison system. In 1970, this group displayed their dedication after a white prison guard was found not guilty of shooting and killing three black prisoners from the prison tower. They retaliated by killing a white prison guard.
{{listen
|filename=Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) sample.ogg
|title="Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud"
|description=[[James Brown]]'s "[[Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud]]" from ''[[Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud (album)|Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud]]''
|filetype=[[Ogg]]}}
Numerous popular cultural expressions associated with black power appeared at this time. Released in August 1968, the number one [[Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs|Rhythm & Blues single]] for the [[Billboard Year-End]] list was [[James Brown]]'s "[[Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud]]".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/yearend_chart_display.jsp?f=Hot+R%26B/Hip-Hop+Songs&g=Year-end+Singles&year=1968 |title=Year End Charts – Year-end Singles – Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs |publisher=Billboard.com |date= |accessdate=2009-09-08 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20071211040751/www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/yearend_chart_display.jsp?f=Hot+R%26B/Hip-Hop+Songs&g=Year-end+Singles&year=1968 |archivedate=December 11, 2007}}</ref> In October 1968, [[Tommie Smith]] and [[John Carlos]], while being awarded the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the [[1968 Summer Olympics]], donned human rights badges and each raised a black-gloved Black Power salute during their podium ceremony.
King was not comfortable with the "Black Power" slogan, which sounded too much like [[black nationalism]] to him. When King was murdered in 1968, Stokely Carmichael stated that whites murdered the one person who would prevent rampant rioting and that blacks would burn every major city to the ground.
==Prison reform==
===''Gates v. Collier''===
[[File:MississippiStatePen.jpg|thumb|250px|[[Mississippi State Penitentiary]].]]
Conditions at the [[Mississippi State Penitentiary]] at Parchman, then known as Parchman Farm, became part of the public discussion of civil rights after activists were imprisoned there. In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders came to the South to test the [[desegregation]] of public facilities. By the end of June 1963, Freedom Riders had been convicted in [[Jackson, Mississippi]].<ref>{{Cite news
|title=Riding On
|work=Time
|publisher=Time Inc.
|date=July 7, 2007
|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872521,00.html?promoid=googlep
|accessdate=2007-10-23 }}</ref> Many were jailed in Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Mississippi employed the [[trusty system (prison)|trusty system]], a hierarchical order of inmates that used some inmates to control and enforce punishment of other inmates.<ref>{{cite web
| url=http://www.dsl.psu.edu/civilrights/chapter1.html
| title=ACLU Parchman Prison
| publisher=
| accessdate=2007-11-29
}}</ref>
In 1970 the civil rights lawyer [[Roy Haber]] began taking statements from inmates. He collected 50 pages of details of murders, rapes, beatings and other abuses suffered by the inmates from 1969 to 1971 at Mississippi State Penitentiary. In a [[landmark case]] known as ''[[Gates v. Collier]]'' (1972), four inmates represented by Haber sued the superintendent of Parchman Farm for violating their rights under the [[United States Constitution]].
Federal Judge William C. Keady found in favor of the inmates, writing that Parchman Farm violated the civil rights of the inmates by inflicting [[cruel and unusual punishment]]. He ordered an immediate end to all unconstitutional conditions and practices. Racial segregation of inmates was abolished. And the trustee system, which allow certain inmates to have power and control over others, was also abolished.<ref name="hnet">{{cite web
| url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459
| title=Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice
| publisher=
| accessdate=2006-08-28
| archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20060826214105/http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459| archivedate= August 26, 2006 | deadurl= no}}</ref>
The prison was renovated in 1972 after the scathing ruling by Judge Keady; he wrote that the prison was an affront to "modern standards of decency." Among other reforms, the accommodations were made fit for human habitation. The system of "trusties" was abolished. (The prison had armed [[Life imprisonment|lifers]] with rifles and given them authority to oversee and guard other inmates, which led to many abuses and murders.)<ref>{{cite web
| last=Goldman
| first=Robert M. Goldman
|date=April 1997
| url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459
| title="Worse Than Slavery": Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice – book review
| format=
| publisher=Hnet-online
| language=
| accessdate=2006-08-29
| archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20060829200032/http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459| archivedate= August 29, 2006 | deadurl= no}}</ref>
In integrated correctional facilities in northern and western states, blacks represented a disproportionate number of the prisoners, in excess of their proportion of the general population. They were often treated as second-class citizens by white correctional officers. Blacks also represented a disproportionately high number of [[death row]] inmates. [[Eldridge Cleaver]]'s book ''[[Soul on Ice (book)|Soul on Ice]]'' was written from his experiences in the California correctional system; it contributed to black militancy.<ref>{{Cite book
|last=Cleaver
|first=Eldridge
|title=Soul on Ice
|publisher=McGraw-Hill
|year=1967
|location=New York, NY}}</ref>
==Cold War==
There was an international context for the actions of the U.S. Federal government during these years. It had stature to maintain in Europe and a need to appeal to the people in the [[Third World]].<ref>[http://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-Civil-Rights-Twentieth-Century/dp/0691152438 Dudziak, M.L.: ''Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy'']</ref>
In ''Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy'', the historian Mary L. Dudziak wrote that Communists critical of the United States accused the nation for its hypocrisy in portraying itself as the "leader of the free world," when so many of its citizens were subjected to severe racial discrimination and violence. She argued that this was a major factor in the government moving to support civil rights legislation.
==Documentary films==
* ''[[Freedom on My Mind]]'', 110 minutes, 1994, Producer/Directors: Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford, 1994 Academy Award Nominee, Best Documentary Feature
* ''[[Eyes on the Prize]]'' (1987 and 1990), PBS television series; released again in 2006 and 2009.
* ''[[Dare Not Walk Alone]]'', about the civil rights movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Nominated in 2009 for an [[NAACP]] Image Award.
* ''Crossing in St. Augustine'' (2010), produced by [[Andrew Young]], who participated in the civil rights movement in St. Augustine in 1964. Information available from AndrewYoung.Org.
* ''[[Freedom Riders (TV documentary)|Freedom Riders]]'' (2010), 120 min. PBS, [[American Experience]].
==Activist organizations==
;National/regional civil rights organizations
* [[Congress of Racial Equality]] (CORE)
* [[Deacons for Defense and Justice]]
* [[Leadership Conference on Civil Rights]] (LCCR)
* Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR)
* [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP)
* [[National Council of Negro Women]] (NCNW)
* [[Organization of Afro-American Unity]]
* [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] (SCLC)
* [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] (SNCC)
* Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF)
* Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC)
;National economic empowerment organizations
* [[Operation Breadbasket]]
* [[Urban League]]
;Local civil rights organizations
* [[Albany Movement]] (Albany, GA)
* [[Council of Federated Organizations]] (Mississippi)
* [[Montgomery Improvement Association]] (Montgomery, AL)
* [[Regional Council of Negro Leadership]] (Mississippi)
* [[Women's Political Council]] (Montgomery, AL)
==Individual activists==
<!-- Note if adding: List is in alphabetical order by last name. After addition, adjust the --col-4-- tags as necessary.-->
{{div col|3}}
* [[Ralph Abernathy]]
* [[Victoria Gray Adams]]
* [[Maya Angelou]]
* [[Ella Baker]]
* [[James Baldwin (writer)|James Baldwin]]
* [[Marion Barry]]
* [[Daisy Bates (civil rights activist)|Daisy Bates]]
* [[Fay Bellamy Powell]]
* [[James Bevel]]
* [[Claude Black]]
* [[Unita Blackwell]]
* [[Julian Bond]]
* [[Amelia Boynton]]
* [[Anne Braden]]
* [[Carl Braden]]
* [[Mary Fair Burks]]
* [[Stokely Carmichael]]
* [[Septima Clark]]
* [[Albert Cleage]]
* [[Charles E. Cobb, Jr.]]
* [[Annie Lee Cooper]]
* [[Dorothy Cotton]]
* [[Claudette Colvin]]
* [[Jonathan Daniels]]
* [[Annie Devine]]
* [[Doris Derby]]
* [[Marian Wright Edelman]]
* [[Medgar Evers]]
* [[Myrlie Evers-Williams]]
* [[James L. Farmer, Jr.]]
* [[Karl Fleming]]
* [[Sarah Mae Flemming]]
* [[James Forman]]
* [[Frankie Muse Freeman]]
* [[Dick Gregory]]
* [[Prathia Hall]]
* [[Fannie Lou Hamer]]
* [[Lorraine Hansberry]]
* [[Lola Hendricks]]
* [[Aaron Henry]]
* [[Myles Horton]]
* [[T. R. M. Howard]]
* [[Winson Hudson]]
* [[Jesse Jackson]]
* [[Jimmie Lee Jackson]]
* [[Esau Jenkins]]
* [[Gloria Johnson-Powell]]
* [[Clyde Kennard]]
* [[Coretta Scott King]]
* [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]]
* [[Bernard Lafayette]]
* [[W. W. Law]]
* [[James Lawson (American activist)|James Lawson]]
* [[John Lewis (American politician)|John Lewis]]
* [[Viola Liuzzo]]
* [[Joseph Lowery]]
* [[Autherine Lucy]]
* [[Clara Luper]]
* [[Thurgood Marshall]]
* [[James Meredith]]
* [[Loren Miller (judge)|Loren Miller]]
* [[Jack Minnis]]
* [[Anne Moody]]
* [[Harry T. Moore]]
*[[E. Frederic Morrow]]
* [[Robert Parris Moses]]
* [[William Moyer|Bill Moyer]]
* [[Diane Nash]]
* [[Denise Nicholas]]
* [[E. D. Nixon]]
* [[David Nolan (American author)|David Nolan]]
* [[James Orange]]
* [[Nan Grogan Orrock]]
* [[Rosa Parks]]
* [[Rutledge Pearson]]
* [[George Raymond Jr.]]
* [[James Reeb]]
* [[Gloria Richardson]]
* [[Amelia Boynton Robinson]]
* [[Jo Ann Robinson]]
* [[Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson]]
* [[Bayard Rustin]]
* [[Cleveland Sellers]]
* [[Charles Sherrod]]
* [[Fred Shuttlesworth]]
* [[Modjeska Monteith Simkins]]
* Rev. [[Charles Kenzie Steele]]
* [[Dempsey Travis]]
* [[C. T. Vivian]]
* [[Wyatt Tee Walker]]
* [[Hosea Williams]]
* [[Robert F. Williams]]
* [[Malcolm X]]
* [[Andrew Young]]
{{div col end}}
===Related activists and artists===
{{div col|3}}
* [[Joan Baez]]
* [[Harry Belafonte]]
* [[Ralph Bunche]]
* [[Guy Carawan]]
* [[Robert L. Carter|Robert Carter]]
* [[William Sloane Coffin]]
* [[Ossie Davis]]
* [[Ruby Dee]]
* [[James Dombrowski]]
* [[W. E. B. Du Bois]]
* [[Virginia Durr]]
* [[Bob Dylan]]
* [[John Hope Franklin]]
* [[Jack Greenberg (lawyer)|Jack Greenberg]]
* [[Anna Arnold Hedgeman]]
* [[Dorothy Height]]
* [[Charlton Heston]]
* [[Mahalia Jackson]]
* [[Clarence Jordan]]
* [[Stetson Kennedy]]
* [[Arthur Kinoy]]
* [[William Kunstler]]
* [[Staughton Lynd]]
* [[Constance Baker Motley]]
* [[Nichelle Nichols]]
* [[Phil Ochs]]
* [[Odetta]]
* [[Sidney Poitier]]
* [[A. Philip Randolph]]
* [[Paul Robeson]]
* [[Jackie Robinson]]
* [[Pete Seeger]]
* [[Nina Simone]]
* [[Norman Thomas]]
* [[Roy Wilkins]]
* [[Whitney Young]]
* [[Howard Zinn]]
{{div col end}}
==See also==
{{Portal|African American|Social movements|1950s|1960s}}
{{Commons category|History of civil rights in the United States}}
* [[African-American Civil Rights Movement (1865–95)]]
* [[African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)]]
* [[Timeline of the African American Civil Rights Movement]]
* [[List of civil rights leaders]]
* [[Executive Order 9981]], ending segregated units in the United States military
* [[Photographers of the American Civil Rights Movement]]
* "[[We Shall Overcome]]", unofficial movement anthem
* [[List of Kentucky women in the civil rights era]]
* [[African-American Civil Rights Movement in popular culture]]
'''History preservation:'''
* [[Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project]]
* [[Read's Drug Store]] (Baltimore), site of a 1955 desegregation sit-in
'''Post-Civil Rights Movement:'''
* [[Post–Civil Rights Era African-American history]]
==References==
{{reflist|colwidth=30em}}
==Further reading==
{{div col|2}}
* Abel, Elizabeth. ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520261839 Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow]''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
* Arsenault, Raymond. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=RZAA-hS178UC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice].'' New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-19-513674-8
* Barnes, Catherine A. ''Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit,'' Columbia University Press, 1983.
* Berger, Martin A. ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520268647 Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography]''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
* Beito, David T. and Beito, Linda Royster, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=dS4eA77qau0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power],'' University of Illinois Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-252-03420-6
* [[Taylor Branch|Branch, Taylor]]. ''[[At Canaan's Edge: America In the King Years, 1965–1968]].'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. ISBN 0-684-85712-X
* Branch, Taylor. ''Parting the waters : America in the King years, 1954–1963.'' New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988; ''Pillar of fire : America in the King years, 1963–1965.'' (1998); ''Branch, Taylor. At Canaan's edge: America in the King years, 1965-68''(2007).
* Breitman, George. ''The Assassination of Malcolm X.'' New York: Pathfinder Press. 1976.
* [[Clayborne Carson|Carson, Clayborne]]. ''In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1980. ISBN 0-374-52356-8.
* Carson, Clayborne; Garrow, David J.; Kovach, Bill; Polsgrove, Carol, eds. ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941–1963'' and ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963–1973.'' New York: [[Library of America]], 2003. ISBN 1-931082-28-6 and ISBN 1-931082-29-4.
* Chandra, Siddharth and Angela Williams-Foster. "The 'Revolution of Rising Expectations,' Relative Deprivation, and the Urban Social Disorders of the 1960s: Evidence from State-Level Data." ''Social Science History,'' 29(2):299–332, 2005.
* Dann, Jim. ''Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers, Memories of Mississippi 1964–65''. Baraka Books 2013. ISBN 978-1-926824-87-1
* Fairclough, Adam. ''To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference & Martin Luther King''. The University of Georgia Press, 1987.
* [[Eric Foner|Foner, Eric]] and Joshua Brown, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=10NdBej1_JEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction].'' Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 2005. p. 225–238. ISBN 978-0-375-70274-7
* [[David Garrow|Garrow, David J]]. ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference''. 800 pages. New York: William Morrow, 1986. ISBN 0-688-04794-7.
* Garrow, David J. ''The FBI and Martin Luther King''. New York: W.W. Norton. 1981. Viking Press Reprint edition. 1983. ISBN 0-14-006486-9. Yale University Press; Revised and Expanded edition. 2006. ISBN 0-300-08731-4.
* Greene, Christina. ''Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham''. North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
* Horne, Gerald. ''The Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s''. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1995. Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press ed edition. October 1, 1997. ISBN 0-306-80792-0
* Kirk, John A. ''Martin Luther King, Jr.''. London: Longman, 2005. ISBN 0-582-41431-8
* Kirk, John A. ''Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970''. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8130-2496-X
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3651/is_200004/ai_n8888452 Kousser, J. Morgan, "The Supreme Court And The Undoing of the Second Reconstruction," ''National Forum,'' (Spring 2000).]
* Kryn, Randy. "James L. Bevel, The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement", 1984 paper with 1988 addendum, printed in "We Shall Overcome, Volume II" edited by David Garrow, New York: Carlson Publishing Co., 1989.
* Malcolm X (with the assistance of [[Alex Haley]]). ''[[The Autobiography of Malcolm X]].'' New York: Random House, 1965. Paperback ISBN 0-345-35068-5. Hardcover ISBN 0-345-37975-6.
* [[Manning Marable|Marable, Manning]]. ''Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1982''. 249 pages. University Press of Mississippi, 1984. ISBN 0-87805-225-9.
* [[Doug McAdam|McAdam, Doug]]. ''Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1982.
* [[Doug McAdam|McAdam, Doug]], 'The US Civil Rights Movement: Power from Below and Above, 1945–70', in [[Adam Roberts (scholar)|Adam Roberts]] and [[Timothy Garton Ash]] (eds.), ''Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present.'' Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-955201-6.
* Minchin, Timothy J. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=hb3ETCCaWV4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960–1980]''. University of North Carolina Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8078-2470-4.
* Morris, Aldon D. ''The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change''. New York: The Free Press, 1984. ISBN 0-02-922130-7
* [[Jason Sokol|Sokol, Jason.]] ''[[There Goes My Everything (book)|There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945–1975]]''. New York: Knopf, 2006.
* Payne, Charles M. ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520251762 I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle]''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
* Patterson, James T. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=OPvoFu_l3oYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Brown v. Board of Education, a Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy].'' Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-515632-3
* Raiford, Leigh. ''[http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1771 Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle]''. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011.
* Ransby, Barbara. ''Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, a Radical Democratic Vision''. The University of North Carolina Press, 2003.
* {{cite book | last = Reeves | first = Richard |authorlink=Richard Reeves (American writer) | year = 1993 | title = President Kennedy: Profile of Power | publisher = Simon & Schuster | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-671-64879-4 | ref = harv }}
* Shawki, Ahmed ''Black Liberation and Socialism'' ([[Haymarket Books]], 2006), ISBN 1-931859-26-4.
* Sitkoff, Howard. ''The Struggle for Black Equality'' (2nd ed. 2008)
* Tsesis, Alexander. ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=A94zj6PYV7gC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law]''. (Yale University Press, 2008). ISBN 978-0-300-11837-7
* [[Juan Williams|Williams, Juan]]. ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965''. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. ISBN 0-14-009653-1
{{div col end}}
===Historiography and memory===
* Fairclough, Adam. "Historians and the Civil Rights Movement." ''Journal of American Studies'' (1990) 24#3 pp: 387-398.
* Frost, Jennifer. "Using "Master Narratives" to Teach History: The Case of the Civil Rights Movement." ''History Teacher'' (2012) 45#3 pp: 437-446. [http://www.africanafrican.com/folder11/world%20history4/harlem%20renaissance/M12_Frost.pdf Online]
* Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. "The long civil rights movement and the political uses of the past." ''Journal of American History'' (2005) 91#4 pp: 1233-1263.
* Lawson, Steven F. "Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement," ''American Historical Review'' (1991) 96#2 , pp. 456–471 [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2163219 in JSTOR]
* Sandage, Scott A. "A marble house divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the civil rights movement, and the politics of memory, 1939-1963." ''Journal of American History'' (1993): 135-167. [http://www.journalofamericanhistory.orgwww.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/lincoln/bibliography/articles/pdf/LIJ-Article-1990s.pdf Online]
===Primary sources===
* Holsaert, Faith et al. [http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/54yed3wd9780252035579.html ''Hands on the Freedom Plow Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC'']. University of Illinois Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-252-03557-9.
==External links==
{{div col|2}}
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* [http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/ Civil Rights Greensboro] provides access to archival resources documenting the modern civil rights era in Greensboro, North Carolina, from the 1940s to the early 1980s
* [http://www.accordfreedomtrail.org St. Augustine Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Trail marking its sites.]
* [http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/civilrights/home.html Civil Rights Resource Guide, from the Library of Congress]
* [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart9.html The Civil Rights Era] Library of Congress
* [http://crdl.usg.edu/voci/go/crdl/home Civil Rights Digital Library] Digital Library of Georgia
* [http://www.crmvet.org Civil Rights Movement Veterans] ~ Movement history, personal stories, documents, and photos.
* [http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65 Civil Rights Movement 1955–1965]
* [http://www.american.edu/bgriff/H207web/civrights/CivilRightsOutline.htm Civil Rights as a People's Movement] American University Course Syllabus
* [http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1998/1/98.01.06.x.html Let Justice Roll Down: The Civil Rights Movement Through Film] Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
* [http://www.usm.edu/crdp/ University of Southern Mississippi's Civil Rights Documentation Project], includes an extensive Timeline
* [http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkcivilrights.htm President Kennedy's Address to the nation on Civil Rights]
* [http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/what.htm What Was Jim Crow?] ''(The racial caste system that precipitated the Civil Rights Movement)''
* [http://www.sitins.com/index.shtml History and images of the sit-in movement]
* [http://www.wdashistory.org WDAS Radio's Enduring Impact on the Civil Rights Movement]
* [http://www.atlantastudentmovement.org The Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights and the Atlanta Student Movement]
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2716 The Georgia Movement]
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Feature.jsp?id=s-51&sug=y Black Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement]
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1057&sug=y The Albany Movement] (entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia)
* [http://microsites.jfklibrary.org/olemiss/home/ Materials relating to the desegregation of Ole Miss in 1962]
* [http://www.floridamemory.com/OnlineClassroom/PhotoAlbum/civil_rights.cfm Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Florida] from the State Archives of Florida
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| PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS IN ADDING MORE LINKS TO THIS ARTICLE. Wikipedia |
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| |
| Excessive or inappropriate links WILL BE DELETED. |
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| |
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{{div col end}}
{{African-American Civil Rights Movement|state=uncollapsed}}
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[[Category:African-American Civil Rights Movement (1954–68)|1955]]
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