Chapter 27 Section 3

1. Chapter 27 Section 3 New Successes and Challenges

2. The Push for Voting Rights • None of the Federal Court decisions or civil rights measures passed through 1964 fundamentally affected the right to vote. • In 1964, many African Americans were still denied the right to vote. • Southern states used literacy tests, poll taxes, and intimidation to prevent African Americans from voting. • The major civil rights groups decided to end this injustice.

3. SNCC Stages Freedom Summer • In the summer of 1964, the SNCC enlisted 1,000 volunteers to help • African Americans in the South register to vote. • The campaign was known as Freedom Summer. • Three campaign volunteers were murdered, but other volunteers were not deterred. • From this effort, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party (MFDC) was formed as an alternative to the all-white state Democratic party.

4. A MFDP delegation traveled to the Democratic Convention in 1964 hoping to be recognized as Mississippi’s only Democratic party. • MFDP member Fannie Lou Hamer testified on how she lost her home for daring to register to vote. • Party officials refused to seat the MFDP, but offered a compromise: two MFDP members could be at-large delegates. • Neither the MFDP nor Mississippi’s regular Democratic delegation would accept the compromise.

5. Marching on Selma • In March 1965, Rev. King organized a march on Selma, Alabama, to pressure Congress to pass voting rights laws. • Once again, the nonviolent marchers were met with a violent response. • And once again, Americans were outraged by what they saw on national television. • President Johnson himself went on television and called for a strong voting rights law.

6. New Legislation Guarantees Voting Rights • The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed. • Banned literacy tests • Empowered the federal government to oversee voter registration and elections in states that discriminated against minorities • Extended to include Hispanic voters in 1975. • President Johnson also called for a federal voting rights law. • The Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which banned the poll tax, was ratified. • At the same time, Supreme Court decisions were handed down that limited racial gerrymandering (practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries) and established the legal principle of “one man, one vote.”

7. Frustration Explodes Into Violence: Racial Violence Plagues Cities • The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion, took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. • On August 11, 1965, an African-American motorist was arrested for suspicion of drunk driving. A minor roadside argument broke out, and then escalated into a fight. • The community reacted in outrage to allegations of police brutality that soon spread, and six days of looting and arson followed. Los Angeles police needed the support of nearly 4,000 members of the California Army National Guard to quell the riots, which resulted in 34 deathsand over $40 million in property damage. The riots were blamed principally on police racism.

8. The Kerner Commission Seeks the Cause • The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member commission established by President Lyndon B. Johnson in Executive Order 11365 to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States and to provide recommendations for the future. • Its finding was that the riots resulted from black frustration at lack of economic opportunity. Martin Luther King Jr. pronounced the report a "physician's warning of approaching death, with a prescription for life.“ • The report's most famous passage warned, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.“ • President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had already pushed through the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, ignored the report and rejected the Kerner Commission's recommendations. • In April 1968, one month after the release of the Kerner report, rioting broke out in more than 100 cities following the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr

9. New Voices for African Americans: Malcom X Offers a Different Vision • Malcom was born in Malcom Little Omaha Nebraska. • Adopted the X to represent his lost African name. • Nation of Islam- a religious sect headed by Elijah Muhammad. • While in prison, he became a member of the Nation of Islam (NOI), changing his birth name Malcolm Little to Malcolm X because, he later wrote, Little was the name that "the white slavemaster ... had imposed upon my paternal forebears." • After his parole in 1952 he quickly rose to become one of the organization's most influential leader, serving as the public face of the controversial group for a dozen years.

10. By March 1964, Malcolm X had grown disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and its leader Elijah Muhammad. • Expressing many regrets about his time with them, which he had come to regard as largely wasted, he embraced Sunni Islam. • After a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, which included completing the Hajj, he also became known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. • He rejected the Nation of Islam, rejected racism and founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity.

11. Young Leaders Call for Black Power • Black power: first used by SNCC leader Carmichael in 1966. • African Americans should collectively use their economic and political muscle to gain equality.

12. Militants form the Black Panthers • Huey Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party in Oakland Ca. • Became the symbol of young militant African Americans. • Organized armed patrols of urban neighborhoods to protect people from police abuse. • National attention when they entered the state capital in Sacramento carring shotguns and wearing black leather jackets and berets to protest attempts to restrict their right to bear arms.

13. Martin Luther King’s Final Days • Sought a nonviolent alternative to combat economic injustice. • Poor People Campaign-goal was to pressure the nation to do more to address the needs to the poor. • King was shot on his balcony outside his motel room by James Earl Ray.

14. Significant Gaines and Controversial Issues • Kings assassination marked an important turning point. • White racism and the social and economic gap between many blacks and whites remained.

15. Civil Rights are Advanced • Civil Rights movement of 1950s and 1960s succeeded in eliminating legal or de jure segregation and knocking down barriers to African Americans voting and political participation. • Symbol of progress was appointment of Thurgood Marshall as first African American Supreme Court Justice in 1967. • Congress passed one final civil rights measure the Fair Housing Act, which banned discrimination in housing.

16. Controversial Issues Remain • Until the nation addressed the legacy of this unequal treatment Thurgood Marshall asserted it would not fulfill its promise providing equal rights and opportunities to all.