Civil Rights Movement

The SCLC organized a strategic movement to bring attention the the unequal treatment of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. Birmingham was selected because it was considered one of the most racial segregated cities in the United States. The protesters used nonviolent tactics such as boycotts. Eugene Bull Connor ordered the usage of fire hoses and police dogs on the protesters who were not breaking the law in any way. In the end Connor lost his job, Jim Crow laws were eliminated, and public places were now more open to blacks.

Medgar Wiley Evers was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. Evers was shot in his own driveway by Byron De La Beckwith and died 50 minutes later at a local hospital.

More than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C. on August 28 of 1963 and the rally became known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Civil rights groups rallied to shed light on political and social challenges that African Americans faced in 1963 America.

The 24th Amendment prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections. It gave people the unconditional right to vote regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Freedom Summer was a campaign launched in June of 1964. The main goal of this campaign was to register as many black voters as possible throughout the state of Mississippi. It also set up many freedom schools, freedom houses, and community centers to help the local black population.

The murders of black Mississippian James Chaney, white New Yorker Andrew Goodman, and white New Yorker Michael Schwerner were committed in Nashoba County, Mississippi. The three men had been working on give the right to blacks to register to vote and they were in Nashoba County to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested and then released into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan who beat and murdered the three men.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women. It ended the unequal application of voter registration. It also ended racial segregation in schools and workplaces that served the general public.

Fannie Lou Hamer worked with organizations such as the SNCC and the MFDP. She was a notable civil rights activist. In August of 1964 Hamer gave her speech at the 1964 Democratic National Convention that she attended with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Her speech was broadcast on most major networks which drew in tons of support for the MFDP from across the nation.

Malcolm X was preparing to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity in Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom. His bodyguards responded to a disturbance in the crowd. Then a man stood up in the front row and show Malcolm X at point blank range with a sawed off shotgun which was followed by two others who proceeded to shoot him several other times with semi-automatic handguns.

About 600 marchers headed east out of Selma on US Route 80. Six blocks later at the Edmund Pettus Bridge local lawmen attacked the march with billy clubs and tear gas. The marchers were driven back into Selma. Two days later Martin Luther King Jr led a symbolic march to the bridge. The Federal District Court told the lawmen that they were not allowed to intervene by law. On March 21 3200 marchers set out from Selma to Montgomery, by March 25 the march was 25,000 strong.

James H. Meredith was the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi. In an attempt to encourage voter registration, Meredith organized his “March Against Fear” and one day into the march a sniper shot Meredith putting him into the hospital. Other civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr and Stokely Carmichael came to replace him in the march.

President Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act in August of 1965. This act outlawed discriminatory voting practices adopted by many southern states following the Civil War. An example of a practice outlawed are the literacy tests that the southern states required for a person to vote.

The Watts Riots took place in Los Angeles, California. It was caused by racial segregation and police discrimination. After six days of rioting their were 34 people dead, 1,032 people injured, 3,438 people arrested, and over $40 million in property damage.

The Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary socialist organization that was created in 1966 and ended in 1982. It achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movements and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Their initial goal set forth a doctrine that called for the protection of black neighborhoods from police brutality.

Stokely Carmichael gave a speech at the campus of the UC Berkeley. His speech was part of an all day conference on black power organized by the Students for a Democratic Society. Carmichael was the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later became the Prime Minister of the Black Panther Party. Stokely is considered one of the great activist leaders for blacks during the 1960s along with others such as Martin Luther King Jr.

The Race Riots of Newark, NJ and Detroit , MI were very violent riots caused by social unrest mostly. the riots in Newark were triggered by the arrest of John Smith who was a black taxi driver who allegedly drove around a double-parked police car. Riots broke out and six days later at least 23 people died, 725 people were injured, and another 1500 had been arrested in Newark alone. After the Detroit riots around 40 people were dead, 1189 people injured, and another 7000 arrested.

The Kerner Commission was created to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots to provide options of avoiding them in the future. The commission was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 28, 1967 while rioting was still underway in some cities such as Detroit, Michigan.

Thurgood Marshall was the first African American to serve as a Supreme Court Justice. Marshall was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in October of 1967. He was nominated due to his great success in arguing before the Supreme Court in important cases such as Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, KS.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was the arguably most important civil rights activist for the black during the 1950s and 1960s. He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis by James Earl Ray who pleaded guilty and was sentenced 99 years in Tennessee state prison.

The Fair Housing Act came along in the Civil Rights Act of 1968 passed by President Lyndon Johnson. It has been attempted numerous times before 1968. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr is what compelled Johnson to pass it in somewhat of a fitting memorial to King’s life work. This act outlawed segregated towns and allowed for colored people and whites to live in the same developments.