Civil Rights

1. Civil Rights Women Lead Civil Disobedience Gaining Equality by Any Means

2. AIM I: Were women responsible for the success of the Civil Rights Movement? Vocab Jim Crow Emmett Till (1955) Civil Disobedience Rosa Parks Montgomery Bus Boycott WPC – Women’s Political Council SCLC – Southern Christian Leadership Conference Fannie Lou Hamer – “Is this America?” Ella Baker SNCC – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

3. Operation Wetback Federal Highway Act of 1956 Policy of boldness Little Rock Nine – and Daisy Bates Southern Renaissance Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King Earl Warren JFK LBJ

5. Letter from the Women’s Political Council to the Mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, May 21, 1954 Dear Sir: The Women’s Political Council is very grateful to you and the City Commissioners for the hearing you allowed our representative during the month of March, 1954, when the “city-bus-fare-increase case” was being reviewed. There were several things the Council asked for: • A city law that would make it possible for Negroes to sit from back toward front, and whites from front toward back until all the seats are taken. • That Negroes not be asked or forced to pay fare at front and go to the rear of the bus to enter. • That busses stop at every corner in residential sections occupied by Negroes as they do in communities where whites reside. We are happy to report that busses have begun stopping at more corners now in some sections where Negroes live than previously. However, the same practices in seating and boarding the bus continue.

6. Mayor Gayle, three-fourths of the riders of these public conveyances are Negroes. If Negroes did not patronize them, they could not possibly operate. More and more of our people are already arranging with neighbors and friends to ride to keep from being insulted and humiliated by bus drivers. There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of busses. We, sir, do not feel that forceful measures are necessary in bargaining for a convenience which is right for all bus passengers. . . . Please consider this plea, and if possible, act favorably upon it, for even now plans are being made to ride less, or not at all, on our busses. We do not want this. Respectfully yours, The Women’s Political Council Jo Ann Robinson, President

7. Watch Clip – Eyes on the Prize 5 min/8 min/10 minutes (disc 2) • In what ways was non-violent protest effective? • What challenges could a non-violent movement face? Reminder while reading documents; think about essential questions in this form: Claim Proof – evidence from the documents outlines/essay

9. Aim II: Was Non-Violence the Best Way for African Americans to Realize Their Dream of Equality? Vocab Methods of Protest – sit-ins, freedom rides, marches, boycotts Civil Disobedience Essential Questions: • What were the goals of civil disobedience? • In what ways was non-violent protest effective? • What challenges could a non-violent movement face? • Should the government legislate social change? Why/why not? ex. Brown vs. Board of Education (1955), Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title VII, Voting Rights Act of 1965. How did the African American Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s address the failures of the Reconstruction?

10. Sit-Ins: “New Protests Are Followed By Arrests” – Greensboro Daily News 2/24/1960 “Negro students, apparently welcoming the probability of arrest, resumed nonviolent demonstrations against segregated lunch counters in North Carolina today. Police In two cities arrested demonstrators. The resumption of the passive resistance movement after the sit-ins of several days followed a statewide strategy meeting in Durham of Negro student leaders. The students voted to continue the protest by sitdown demonstrations, boycott and picket line until they reach their goal of desegregated lunch counters…”

13. Birmingham and the Klan In Birmingham, an FBI informant in the Klan learned of a detailed plan in which Police Chief Bull Connor had agreed to give the Klan 15 minutes after the bus arrived to beat the riders before local police would arrive. The plan was reported to the FBI headquarters, but no action was taken. The Trailways station was filled with Klansmen and reporters. When the Freedom Riders exited the bus, they were beaten by the mob with baseball bats, iron pipes and bicycle chains, and then, battered and bleeding, they were arrested. White Freedom Riders were particularly singled out for frenzied beatings. Two riders were hospitalized, including white Freedom Rider Jim Peck with 52 stitches in his head. That night, the hospitalized Freedom Riders were ejected from the hospital because personnel were threatened by the mob. Eight cars of churchmen, brimming with shotguns and rifles, headed off to rescue the riders. (This is ironic, considering that the Freedom Riders were pacifists and dedicated to non-violence). Chief Bull Connor threatened to arrest Rev. Shuttlesworth for having interracial meetings at his house. Nonetheless, he rescued Peck from the hospital at 2am.

14. Jail Songs We Shall Overcome Michael Row Your Boat Ashore Let My People Go I’m Travelin’ Keep Your Eyes on the Prize This Little Light of Mine Get Your Rights, Jack (tune of Hit the Road Jack) We Shall Not Be Moved

15. Norman Thomas, Committee of Inquiry Report (May 1962) “They (Freedom Riders) have fought entrenched discrimination and wrong without themselves indulging in violence and done this in one of the most violent periods of human history.”

16. Malcolm X, Black Power, Black Panthers

17. Motivation: The Doll Test. In the “doll test,” psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark used four plastic, diaper-clad dolls, identical except for color. They showed the dolls to black children between the ages of three and seven and asked them questions to determine racial perception and preference. Almost all of the children readily identified the race of the dolls. However, when asked which they preferred, the majority selected the white doll and attributed positive characteristics to it. The Clarks also gave the children outline drawings of a boy and girl and asked them to color the figures the same color as themselves. Many of the children with dark complexions colored the figures with a white or yellow crayon. The Clarks concluded that “prejudice, discrimination, and segregation” caused black children to develop a sense of inferiority and self-hatred.

18. This photograph was taken by Gordon Parks for a 1947 issue of Ebony magazine – the doll test being conducted

19. The modern day doll test…(clip) • How is racism institutionalized? (Other ways besides the doll test?) • What inequalities existed outside of legal ones during the 1950s and 60s?

20. Aim: How did civil rights movement address more than equality under the law? Vocab Doll Test Black Panthers Malcolm X Black Power Essential Questions: • How is racism institutionalized? (Other ways besides the doll test?) *Toni Morrison “Bluest Eyes” • What inequalities existed outside of legal ones during the 1950s and 60s? • How will the ideas of Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, and Black Power movements close the gaps of inequality? Are these ideas more practical than the civil disobedience movement?

21. Photograph of a sign posted opposite the Sojourner Truth homes, a new U.S. federal housing project, during a riot caused by white neighbors’ attempts to prevent African-American tenants from moving in.(*S. Truth = abolitionist from 1820s)Detroit, Michigan, February 1942

22. Photograph of demonstrations to end housing discrimination in New York City, at the site of the St. Nicholas Houses in Harlem.New York City, July 28, 1950

23. Ralph Matthew, “Alabama Bus Strike Recalls Hectic Days of Cleveland Boycott Fight,” Illustration, c. 1956

24. Economic Movement • African-American migrants to Cleveland, predominantly from Alabama, founded the Future Outlook League in 1935. The League engaged in consumer boycotts and other forms of labor and political protest throughout the 1930s and 1940s. • Montgomery Bus Boycott 

25. Songs “Change is Gonna Come” – Same Cooke “The Promised Land” – Chuck Berry “What’s Going On?” – Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On? Mother, mother There’s far too many of you dying You know we’ve got to find a way To bring some lovin’ here today – Ya Father, father We don’t need to escalate You see, war is not the answer For only love can conquer hate…”

26. Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympics

27. Can government action change people’s attitudes and bring about social change? “I do not believe you can change the hearts of men with laws and decisions.”—President Eisenhower (1957) “We must continue to struggle through the courts, through legislation. I’m aware of the fact that there are those who sincerely believe that this isn’t the way. They would argue that you cannot legislate morals. Their argument is that integration must come into being through education. I’m sympathetic toward that view. I will agree that you can’t legislate morals. I will agree that through the law you can’t change one’s internal feeling. But that isn’t what we seek to do through the law. We are not seeking so much to change attitudes through law, but to control behavior. We are not so much seeking to change one’s internal feelings, but to control the external effects of those internal feelings. I realize that the law cannot make an employer love me or have compassion for me. Education and religion will have to do that. But it can at least keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin. This is what we seek to do through the law. We seek to control the external effects of internal feelings that are prejudiced.” --Martin Luther King, Jr.

28. So now what? AIM III: Should equality be won by any means necessary? VOCAB Black Power Black Panthers Kerner Commission Ghetto Housing Projects

29. Congress of Racial Equality Black Power is not hatred. It is a means to bring the Black Americans into the covenant of Brotherhood. Black Power is not a supremacy; it is a unified Black Voice reflecting racial price in the tradition of our heterogeneous nation.