Download Civil Rights

Three Groups
1) Federal level
NOW 1966—correlates to NAACP
—liberal legal reform group
—focused on workplace discrimination, legalization of abortion
2) middle class white women
a. natural constituency for Friedan’s critique
b. bored, depressed, dissatisfied, suburbia
3) younger women, 18-20 something
Focus:
1. consciousness-raising
2. addressed
--politics of housework
--politicizing the everyday
--making the personal political
Rights and Rebellion
Post—WWII Structural Changes
1. TV
2. greater communication between N. and S.
3. proliferation of organizations
4. strong families—75% of households had men and women
5. newspapers and Af. Am. publishing grew
6. benefited from relative post-war economic prosperity
(still experienced disproportionate foreclosures and domestic
discrimination)
Change in Consciousness:
1. imbued with rights talk
--by late ‘60s found “sexism,” “male chauvinism,” “women’s
liberation”
2. participation in SNCC, SCLC, SDS, other civil rights groups
provided skills, language, etc.
School Desegregation
Context:
--Cold War--NAACP and federal government briefs argue the
value of ending constitutionally supported racial segregation b/c of
U.S. competition with communist governments
--self-interest approach
--Brown v. Board of Education should be seen as furthering the
nation's foreign and domestic interests
--debate: focused on whether Af.Am. children would benefit from
busing and attendance at racially balanced schools
--African Americans and other Constitutional rights advocates
using a rhetoric of "rights and justice" and "God is on our side"
--White-run capital is seeing the economic benefits of
desegregation
--access to foreign markets
--acceptance of "free market capitalism" by developing nations
through political credibility
Results:
--Af.Am. faculty victim of desegregation: African American children
bused to previously white schools--AfAm schools close--AfAm
teachers dismissed--AfAm principals demoted
--intellectual authority associated with EurAm teachers
Legal Background:
--decades-long battle
--NAACP Legal Defense Fund—est. 1939
--elite institutions; segregated students
--Charles Hamilton Houston and Howard Law--1930s
--Thurgood Marshall
Sociology and Psychology
1950s Psychology priesthood
--Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s doll experiment
--provides demonstrable evidence that segregation harmful
Warren Court
--Warren politically astute
--CA governor
--wants unanimous, simple ruling
Brown overturned Plessy v. Ferguson
white reaction
--Eisenhower upset—says that appointing Warren was the worst
move he ever made
--South forms white citizens councils
Possible solution:
1--Encourage voluntary desegregation
2--Require immediate equalization of all facilities and resources
3--AfAms must be represented on school boards and other policymaking bodies in proportions equal to those of black students in
each school district
--courts would be given the responsibility to desegregate NOT the
students, but the MONEY and the CONTROL
History and Implications:
--debate over school policy has been going on for over 200 years
Prince Hall:
--Black Revolutionary War veteran and community leader
--urged Massachusetts legislature to provide funds for an "African"
school house
"A mixed school with poor and unsympathetic teachers, with
hostile public opinion, and no teaching of truth concerning black
folk, is bad. A segregated school with ignorant placeholders,
inadequate equipment, poor salaries, and wretched housing, is
equally bad. Other thing being equal, the mixed school is the
broader, more natural basis for the education of all youth. It gives
wider contacts; it inspires greater self-confidence; and suppresses
the inferiority complex. But other things seldom are equal, and in
that case, Sympathy, Knowledge, and Truth, outweigh all that the
mixed school can offer." From DuBois, "Does the Negro Need
Separate Schools?" Journal of Negro Education, 1935.
--on average, white high school dropouts earn more than AfAms
who have finished high school
--EurAm high school grads earn more than AfAms who have
finished college
--…and so on…
--equating integration with the effective education of AfAm children
a mistake
1. Rosa Parks
--Af. Ams. forced to sit in back of busses
--good candidate for a test case
--boycott that ensued lasted for over a year
--Supreme Court overturned Alabama’s bus segregation law, 1956
--combination of a judicial and grassroots victory
SCLC est. shortly after Mont. Bus Boycott
Sit-ins
Civil Disobedience
Deliberate violation of a law for a social purpose (not for individual
gain or private purpose)
--derived from Gandhi's efforts to liberate India from British rule
"Satyagraha is a weapon of the strong; it admits of no violence
under any circumstance whatever; and it ever insists upon truth."
Gandhi
"Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this
ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth."
Albert Einstein
"Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress,
Gandhi is inescapable.
He lived, thought and acted,
inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward
a world of peace and harmony.
We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
--derived too, from Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil
Disobedience"
CORE (Congress on Racial Equality)
Organizes "Freedom Rides", 1961
--Af. Ams. and Eur. Ams. travel on buses going through the South
--considered need for wider change
--mostly SNCC members
Intentions:
--to highlight Federal laws--segregated waiting rooms
--to gain national attention
--shift to political focus rather than moral/religious
Narrative:
--far worse than expected--set upon by white mobs
Birmingham:
--JFK sends in Singenthaler from Attorney General's office; finds
no police, but mobs of whites; Sigen says stop, gets beat; press
publishes pictures all over the world
--question becomes how to get JFK off the fence
Results:
--business leaders visiting Japan upset b/c hurts biz
--JFK on TV addressing Civil Rights
--issue "beyond partisanship"
--race relations gains ascendancy among Eur. Ams.
Follow through:
--pressure needed, activists say, to force implementation of an Act
SNNC and Voter Registration Projects
--Ballot box result in significant social changes
Summer of 1963
--Upsurge in protests
--800 marches, demonstrations, and sit-ins
--Ten civil rights protesters killed
--20,000 arrested
--Medgar Evers murdered in his driveway
SNCC:
Racially mixed, takes part in freedom rides
1952 13% of Af. Am. adults voted
1984 65% of Af. Am. adults voted
Implications:
--fissure in movement
--SNCC grassroots
Results of March:
--AfAms get money
--motivates EurAms
--culmination of Civil Rights Movement
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Usual story:
--young minister recruited to do an impossible-seeming
job
--educated, innocent, hard-working with deep family
commitments
The story less-heard:
--called for “massive programs” that would “change the
structure of American society”
--hoped for “a better distribution of wealth”
--talked about the “triple evils of racism, extreme
materialism and militarism”
--wanted a “radical revolution of values”
--“we must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’
society to a ‘person-oriented’ society.”
Voter registration, 1963-1964
--Activists concentrate efforts in deep South
--Ballot needed to protect legal rights
--Robert Moses
Mississippi
--Northern white students
--Disappearance
--Focused national attention on white terrorism
1964 Democratic convention
--Black Mississippians excluded from process
--MFDP established to challenge party regulars
--80,000 participants elected sixty-four delegates
--Liberals wanted to seat the civil rights delegation
Compromise:
--Two at-large seats created and filled by MFDP members