The civil rights movement of the 1960s achieved many accomplishments, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision declaring segregation unconstitutional, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 which prohibited racial discrimination and guaranteed equal voting rights. Key events included the Montgomery bus boycott launched by Rosa Parks, sit-ins led by student groups like SNCC, the March on Washington and MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, and the violent Selma marches which helped pass the Voting Rights Act. However, the decade was also marked by ongoing violence and assassinations of leaders like MLK and Malcolm X.

1. Professor Chee
Lecture on the American
Rights-Conscious Sixties
Part One: Civil Rights

3. The Civil Rights Movement Highlights
o 1954 Brown v. Board of Education
o 1955-6 Rosa Parks & bus boycotts
o 1957 Little Rock, Arkansas: Federal Troops Help Integrate Central
High School
o 1960 Greensboro Sit-in & SNCC creation
o 1961 CORE Freedom Rides meets violence in Alabama
o 1962 University of Mississippi Integrates with Federal Troops
o 1963 March on Washington & MLK, “I have a Dream”
o 1964 SNCC & Freedom Summer Voter Registration Drives
o 1965 Selma to Montgomery Protests after “Bloody Sunday”

4. On the basis that segregation had a
lifelong, detrimental impact, as it
marginalized one group as unfit to
associate with the dominant group
Sociologists Kenneth Clark & Mamie
Phipps Clark, Northside Center for
Child Development in Harlem’s
research on segregation on African
American children
*NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People) founded by W.E.B. Dubois in 1909
Thurgood Marshall & the NAACP* Attacked
the “Separate but Equal” Doctrine

5. “Separate educational facilities
are inherently unequal”
And racial segregation in public
schools is unconstitutional
A “Second Emancipation Proclamation”?
Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954
1950: 28 million or 40% of the
nation’s school children
attended segregated schools

6. December 1955 Montgomery, Alabama
Rosa Parks, A “Seamstress with Tired Feet,”
Sits Against Jim Crow Laws
Rosa Park’s arrest, for not
moving from a white seat,
launched the 1955
Montgomery bus boycott!
For over a year, African
Americans in Alabama
refused to ride buses until
segregated seating ended.

7. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott triumph!
1956 Supreme Court ruling that segregation in public
transportation is unconstitutional
Launches Martin Luther King, a Baptist pastor, as an
emerging leader in the civil rights movement

8. Mandela, Gandhi & Martin Luther King
What do they have in common?

9. Passive Resistance & Civil Disobedience
Gandhi in India & South Africa’s Influence on America
India gains
Independence from
Britain in 1947 with the
success of the passive
resistance and civil
disobedience campaign
Gandhi’s Influence
Satyagraha or
Soul Force
Gandhi (1868-1948)Martin Luther King Jr.
(1929-1968)

10. Check out a video of students creating the sit-in here:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/restaging-the-greensboro-counter-sit-in/?jwsource=cl
February 1960: College Students Become a Leading Force for
Civil Rights, sitting at a Woolworths Lunch Counter!
Four college students start a sit-in at Woolworths in Greensboro, North
Carolina, for 5 months.

11. Led by Students, Greensboro Launched the 60s,
the Decade of Political Activism
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) organized for racial justice

12. Woolworth Department store café, in Raleigh, North Carolina, February – July 1960
After 5 months, Woolworth Department Store Opened
their Café to African Americans

13. 1961 CORE (& SNCC) Freedom Rides
meets firebomb violence in Alabama
The Congress for Racial Equality
(CORE) formed by an interracial
group of University of Chicago
students in 1942, as an interfaith,
pacifist organization inspired by
Gandhi’s nonviolent civil
disobedience
Success! The Interstate Commerce
Commission ordered the
desegregation of buses and
terminals

14. April 1963. MLK’s Most Eloquent Demand for Racial
Justice,
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Serving a 9-day Prison Sentence. Martin
Luther King, Jr., Birmingham jail
“Injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere.”
“Freedom is never voluntarily
given by the oppressor; it
must be demanded by the
oppressed.”
Martin Luther King Jr.

15. A fireman assaulting young African Americans with high pressure hoses
Television Broadcasts Police Brutality against
African American Students Changing Public Opinion
Police Chief Eugene
“Bull” Connor’s
brutality & assault
against children with
oNightsticks
oHigh-pressure fire
hoses
oAttack Dogs
oBombings on churches
with children

16. Malcolm X, on Education

17. Malcolm X, Civil Rights, Black
Power, Union Rights & Black
Nationalism
Malcolm X (1925–1965)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_uYWDyYNUg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zLQLUpNGsc
Malcolm X, a Muslim
minister and Civil
Rights Leader argued
for political ad economic
self-help and
independence, and
criticized police
corruption, however was
highly criticized for his
extremism.

18. Martin Luther King Jr, August 28, 1963
Washington D.C., Lincoln Memorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4iY1TtS3s
August 1963 March on Washington for
Jobs & Freedom
“I have a Dream”
“Let freedom ring”
250K people attended

19. June 1964 Freedom Summer
SNCC, CORE & the NAACP
(or the Mississippi Summer Project)
A campaign in Mississippi to register
as many African-American voters as
possible, those who had historically
been excluded from voting

20. From 1961-1965, confrontations
included more than
o35 bombings
o25 Civil Rights Activists killed,
including 2 white students
oNumerous beatings
1964, this FBI notice for missing civil
rights workers included two of the three
were white students: Andrew Goodman,
James Chaney, & Michael Schwerner.
Their bodies were found buried in a dam in
Mississippi.
In 2005, 41 years later, a KKK organizer
Edgar Ray Killen was convicted with
manslaughter
1964 Murders of Civil Rights Workers Received Public
Attention Because Two of them Were White

21. Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-77)
vice-chair of Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party, helped organize Mississippi's Freedom
Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC)
o failed to gain seats at the
Democratic National Convention,
o “it was ultimately successful as its
story in Atlantic City reminded the
country of the ongoing battle
Southern blacks faced in gaining
full citizenship rights.”
Blackpast.org
Freedom Summer 64 led to Mississippi Freedom Democratic
Party’s Attempt to gain some Black seats at the all-white
Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey

22. The 1964 Election &
the Resurgence of Conservatism
Barry Goldwater lost a presidential election
to Johnson, but built a conservative
movement.
The Conscience of a Conservative. 1960.
Criticized the
oNew Deal Welfare state
oThe substitution of private charity instead
of government institutions and social
security
Sold 3 million copies.
Creation of Young Americans for Freedom
(YAF) in 1960

23. January 1965 Selma to Montgomery March,
Voting Rights Campaign
o Only 355 African
Americans out of
15K were allowed
to register to vote
o Violent police
responses shown
on television
“We Shall Overcome,”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=130J-FdZDtY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kOjKPe6-9o

24. Civil rights demonstrators
What did the 60s civil rights
movement accomplish?
According to Foner, the civil
rights movement changed the
legal basis for second-class
citizenship and reinforced the
notion that racism is no longer
acceptable as public policy

25. Congress Passed the Civil Rights Act
(July 2, 1964)
the Voting Rights Act (1965)
1. Guaranteed equal voting
rights
2. Prohibited racial and gender
discrimination in
employment, hospitals,
schools and public
restaurants, hotels and
theaters

26. The Re-Enfranchisement of African Americans:
Black Voter Registration, in the South, 1940–1968

27. o Chief Counsel for the
NAACP &
o first African American to
serve on the Supreme Court
(1967-1991)
Justice Thurgood Marshall

28. What did the movement accomplish?

29. A Decade of Major
Assassinations
1. JFK: November 1963
2. Malcolm X: February 1965
3. MLK: April 1968
4. Bobby Kennedy: June 1968

30. Immigration Reform & Explosive Immigrant
Growth
According to Foner, reinforced the pluralist concept of
Americans
1965 Hart-Celler Act
odropped the Asian exclusion act and the national-
origins quota system
oestablished its first limit on Mexican immigration,
120K on “from the Western hemisphere”
oalso expanded immigration explosively by increasing
to 170K from elsewhere and overall numbers to 290K+

31. 1965 Watts Uprising (California) &
Other Ghettos in the Country
o Watts riots started by African
Americans angry about
economic and racial injustice
o 50K people attacked police,
firemen,
o 35 people dead, 900 injured,
o $30 million property damage
white businesses & buildings
o 15K police & National Guards
restored order

32. Black Panther Propaganda Posters, 1967
In response to police brutality & government violence
“Black Power means Black
Freedom”? or
Revolutionary struggle for self-
determination?

33. Black Panther Party March,
Oakland, CA 1967
Black Panther Party
Founded in Oakland, 1966
oAdvocated for armed self-
defense in response to
police brutality
oCampaign by police & the
FBI
oLeaders killed in
shootouts
oMilitary garb frightened
whites

34. President Johnson’s Great Society,
a response to Prosperity
Medicare: Healthcare in America for Seniors
Medicaid: Healthcare for the poor

35. Johnson’s War on Poverty:
Food Stamps, Head Start, and Job training
Poverty’s Decline and Persistence:1959–2004

36. Civil Rights, Part I
Grace Chee
2019
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