Download File

Occupation of Germany
At the end of the war, the division of Germany
and Austria into Soviet, French, British, and U.S.
zones of occupation was meant to be only
temporary. In Germany, however, the eastern
zone under Soviet occupation gradually evolved
into a new Communist state, the German
Democratic Republic. Russia wanted a weak
Germany and war reparations. The U.S. and
Britain refused to allow reparations from their
Western zones because both viewed the economic recovery of
Germany as important to the stability of Central Europe. The
Soviets, fearing a restored Germany, tightened their control over
East Germany. They also tried to force the U.S., Britain, and France
to give up their assigned sectors of Berlin which was located in
Russian zone.
Iron Curtain
In March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill declared: “An iron curtain has descended across
the continent” of Europe. The iron-curtain metaphor was
later used throughout the Cold War to refer to the Soviet
satellite state of
Eastern Europe.
Churchill’s “iron
curtain” speech
called for a
partnership
between Western
democracies to
halt the expansion
of communism.
Truman Doctrine
Truman first implement the containment policy of
containing Russian expansion of communism in response to
two threats: (1) a Communist-led uprising against the
government in Greece and (2) Soviet demands for some
control of Turkey’s Dardanelles.
In what became known as the
Truman Doctrine, the president
asked Congress in March 1947
for $400 million in economic and
military aid to assist the “free
people” of Greece and Turkey
against “totalitarian” regimes.
Marshall Plan
After the war, Europe lay in ruins, short
of food and deep in debt. Discontent
encouraged the growth of the
Communist party, especially in France
and Italy. The Truman Administration
feared that the western democracies
might actually vote the communists
into power. In June 1947 offered a
program of U.S. economic aid to help the nations of Europe revive
their economies and at the same time strengthen democratic
governments. In 1948, Congress approved $12 billion in aid to
countries of Western Europe. The Soviet Union and its Eastern
European satellites were also offered Marshall Plan aid, but they
refused to take part fearing that their countries might become
dependent on the U.S. The mass infusion of cash helped Europe.
Berlin Airlift
In June 1948, the Soviets cut off
all access by land to the German
City. Truman dismissed any plans
to withdraw from Berlin, but he
also rejected any idea of using
force to open up the roads
through the Soviet-controlled
eastern zone. Instead, he ordered
U.S. planes to fly in supplies to the
people of West Berlin. The world
waited for war to break out. By May
1949, the Soviets finally opened up the
highways to Berlin, thus bringing their
11-month blockade to an end.
United Nations
Unlike the rejection of the League of Nations
following World War I, Congress readily
accepted the peacekeeping organization that
was conceived during World War II and put in
place immediately after the war.
Meeting in 1944 at Dumbarton Oaks near Washington, D.C.,
Allied representatives from the United States, the Soviet
Union, Great Britain, and China proposed an international
organization to be called the United Nations. Then in April
1945, delegates from 50 nations assembled in San Francisco,
where they took only eight weeks to draft a charter for the
United Nations. The Senate quickly voted to accept U.S.
involvement in the U.N. On October 24, 1945, the U.N. came
into existence.
NATO – North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Ever since Washington’s farewell address
of 1796, the United States had avoided
permanent alliances with European
nations. Truman broke with this
tradition in 1949 by recommending that
the United States join a military defense
pact to protect Western Europe.
The Senate readily gave its consent. Ten European nations joined
the United States and Canada in creating the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), a military alliance for defending all members
from outside attack. Thus, the containment policy led to a military
buildup and major commitments abroad. The Soviet Union
countered in 1955 by forming the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance
for the defense of the Communist states of Eastern Europe.
Warsaw Pact
The Soviets claimed that the
Warsaw Pact was a direct
response to the inclusion of the
Federal Republic of Germany
(West Germany) in NATO in
1955. The formation of a legally
defined, multilateral alliance
organization also reinforced the
Soviet Union's claim to power
Countries in red are members of the Warsaw Pact
status as the leader of the world socialist system. The Soviet
Union created a structure for dealing with its East European
allies more efficiently when it superimposed the multilateral
Warsaw Pact on their existing bilateral treaty ties.
Korean War
After the defeat of Japan, its former
colony Korea was divided at the 38th
parallel by the victors. Soviet armies
occupied Korean territory north of the
line, while U.S. forces occupied territory
to the south. By 1949 both armies were
withdrawn, leaving the North in the
hands of the Communist leader Kim Il
Sung and the South under the
conservative nationalist Syngman Rhee.
On June 25, 1950, the North Korean
army surprised the world, even possibly
Moscow, by invading South Korea.
Korean War
Truman took immediate action, applying his containment
policy. He called for a special session of the U.N. Security
Council. Taking advantage of a temporary boycott by the
Soviet delegation, the Security council under U.S. leadership
authorized a U.N. force to defend South Korea against the
invaders. U.S. troops made up most of the U.N. forces sent to
help the South Korean army. Commanding the expedition
was General Douglas MacArthur.
Congress supported the use of U.S.
troops in the Korean crisis but failed
to declare war, accepting Truman’s
characterization as merely a “police
action.”
Truman and MacArthur
MacArthur wanted to expand the war which included
bombing and an invasion of mainland China. As commander
in chief, Truman cautioned MacArthur about making public
statements that suggested criticism of official U.S. policy. The
general spoke out anyway. In April 1951, Truman with the
support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recalled MacArthur for
insubordination.
Korean War
The war stalemated just north of the 38th
parallel. Peace talks began in July 1951,
however the police action went on until an
armistice was signed in 1953 during the first
year of Eisenhower’s presidency. More than
54,000 Americans died in Korea. Truman’s
policy in Korea worked. It stopped
Communist aggression without allowing the
conflict to develop into a world war.
Second Red Scare
Following World War II there was a 2nd Red Scare. Fear
of Communists behind civil wars in Europe and Asia
contributed to the belief that there were also
Communist conspirators and spies in the U.S. State
Department, the U.S. military, and all institutions in
American society.
In 1947, the Truman administration
set up a Loyalty Review Board to
investigate the background of more
than 3 million federal employees.
Thousands of officials and civil
service employees either resigned
or lost their jobs in a probe that
went on for four years (1947-1951).
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
In the House of Representatives, this committee was formed in
1939 and reactivated in the post war years to find Communists.
The committee not only investigated government officials but also
looked for Communist influence in such organizations as the Boy
Scouts and the Hollywood film industry. Actors, directors, and
writers were called before the committee to testify. Those who
refused to testify were tried for contempt of Congress. Others
were blacklisted from the industry.
Joseph McCarthy Hearings
Senator McCarthy used a steady stream
of unsupported accusations about
Communists in government to keep the
media focus on himself and to discredit
the Truman administration. Workingclass Americans at first loved his
“take the gloves off,” hard-hitting remarks, which were often
aimed at the wealthy and privileged in society. He became so
popular, however, that even President Eisenhower would not dare
to defend his old friend, George Marshall, against McCarthy’s
untruths.
Finally in 1954, McCarthy’s “reckless cruelty” was exposed on
television. His televised hearings on Communists in the Army
showed millions of viewers that he was a bully. The “witch hunt”
for Communists had played itself out.
Rosenberg Case
An FBI investigation traced a spy ring to Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg in New York. After a controversial trial in 1951,
the Rosenbergs were found guilty of treason and executed
for the crime in 1953. They were convicted of giving U.S.
secret information to the Soviets.
President Dwight Eisenhower
The most permanent legacy of the Eisenhower year was
the passage in 1956 of the Highway Act, which authorized
the construction of 42,000 miles of interstate highways
linking all the nation’s major cities. The use of federal
money to build highways was justified by Eisenhower as a
means of improving the national defense. The immense
public works project
created jobs, promoted
the trucking industry,
accelerated the growth of
the suburbs, and
contributed to a more
homogeneous national
culture.
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
In 1953, the United States
developed the hydrogen bomb,
which could destroy the largest
cities. Within a year, however,
the Soviets caught up with a
hydrogen bomb of their own.
To some, the policy of massive retaliation looked more like a
policy for mutual assured destruction (MAD). Nuclear
weapons indeed proved a powerful deterrent against the
superpowers fighting an all-out war between themselves,
but such weapons could not prevent small “brushfire” wars
from breaking out in the developing nations of Southeast
Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Both countries practiced
proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Sputnik
In 1957, the Soviet Union shocked the
United States and surprised the world
by launching the first satellites,
Sputnik I and Sputnik II, into orbit
around the earth. The technology
leadership of the United States was in
question. U.S. rockets designed to
duplicate the Soviet achievement
failed. Congress passed the National
Defense and Education ACT (NDEA), which authorized giving
hundred of millions in federal money to the schools for science
and foreign language education. In 1958 Congress created NASA
to direct the U.S. efforts to build missiles and explore outer
space. Fears of nuclear war were intensified by Sputnik.
Eisenhower – Military Industrial Complex
In his farewell address as president, Eisenhower spoke out
against the negative impact of the Cold War on U.S. society.
He warned the nation to “guard against the acquisition of
unwarranted influence . . . By the military-industrial complex.”
If the outgoing president was right, the arms race was taking
on a momentum and logic of its own. It seemed to some
Americans in the 1960s that the United States was in danger
of going down the path of ancient republics, and, like Rome,
turning to military, or imperial, state.
After leaving the White House,
Eisenhower claimed credit for
checking Communist aggression and
keeping the peace without the loss of
American lives in combat.
Brinkmanship
The practice, especially in international politics, of
seeking advantage by creating the impression that one is
willing and able to push a highly dangerous situation to
the limit rather than concede.
John F. Kennedy Inaugural Speech
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay
any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of
liberty.
Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose
aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other
power know that this Hemisphere intends to remain the master of its
own house.
Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary,
we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the
quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by
science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for
you—ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you,
but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961)
Kennedy made the worst mistake of his
presidency shortly after entering office. He
gave his approval to a CIA scheme planned
under the Eisenhower administration to use
Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro’s
regime in Cuba. In April 1961 the CIA-trained
force of Cubans landed at the Bay of Pigs in
Cuba but failed to set off a general uprising
as planned. Trapped on the beach, the
anti-Castro Cubans had little choice but to surrender after
Kennedy rejected the idea of using U.S. forces to save them.
Castro used the failed invasion to get even more aid from the
Soviet Union and to strengthen his grip on power.
Berlin Wall
After the Bay of Pigs, Soviet leader Khrushchev and President Kennedy
meet in Vienna the summer of 1961. Khrushchev demanded that U.S.
troops be pulled out of Berlin. Kennedy refused. In August, the East
Germans, with Soviet backing, built a wall around West Berlin. Its
purpose was to stop East Germans from fleeing to West Germany. As
the wall was being built, Soviet and U.S. tanks faced off in Berlin.
Kennedy made no move to stop the building of the wall. In 1963, he
traveled to West Berlin to assure
residents of continuing U.S. support.
To cheering crowds, he proclaimed:
“Freedom has many difficulties and
democracy is not perfect, but we
have never had to put up a wall to
keep our people in . . . As a free man,
I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein
Berliner’ [I am a Berliner].” The wall
was there until 1989.
Cuban Missile Crisis
The most dangerous challenge
from the Soviets came in October
1962. U.S. reconnaissance planes
discovered that the Russians were
building underground sites in
Cuba for the launching of
Offensive missiles that could reach the United States in minutes.
Kennedy responded by announcing to the world that he was setting up
a naval blockade of Cuba until the weapons were removed. A full-scale
nuclear war between the superpowers seemed likely if Soviet ships
challenged the U.S. naval blockade. After days of tension, Khrushchev
finally agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba in exchange for
Kennedy’s pledge not to invade the island nation. The Cuban missile
crisis had a sobering effect on both sides. Soon afterward, a
telecommunications hot line was established between Washington and
Moscow. In 1963, the Soviet Union and the United States signed the
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to end the testing of nuclear arms.
Peace Corps
From the outset Kennedy inspired high expectations,
especially among the young. His challenge of a New Frontier
quickened patriotic pulses. He brought a warm hear to the
Cold War when he proposed the Peace Corps, an army of
idealistic and mostly youthful volunteers to bring American
skills to underdeveloped countries. He summoned citizens to
service with his clarion call to “ask not what your country can
do for you: ask for you can do for your country.”
Vietnam – Domino Theory
According to the
“domino theory,” if the
United States declined
to fight in Vietnam,
other countries would
lose their faith in
America’s will and
would tumble one
after the other like
“dominoes” into the
Soviet camp.
Vietnam –Tonkin Gulf Resolution
President Johnson was criticized for not supporting South
Vietnam’s fight against the Vietcong (Communist guerrillas).
Johnson made use of a naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin
off Vietnam’s coast to secure congressional authorization for
U.S. forces going into combat. Allegedly, North Vietnamese
gunboats had fired on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
The President persuaded Congress that this aggressive act
was sufficient reason for a military response by the United
States. Congress voted its approval of the Tonkin Gulf
Resolution, which basically gave
the president, as commander in
chief, a blank check to take “all
necessary measures” to protect
U.S. interests in Vietnam.
Vietnam
In 1965, Johnson authorized Operation
Rolling Thunder, a prolonged air attack
using B-52 bombers against targets in
North Vietnam. In April the president
decided to use U.S. combat troops for
the first time to fight the Vietcong. By
the end of 1965, there were over 184,000 U.S. troops in
South Vietnam and most of them were engaged in a combat
role. American generals used search-and-destroy tactics,
which further alienated the peasants. By the end of 1967, the
United States had over 485,000 troops in Vietnam (the peak
was 540,000 in March 1969). General William Westmoreland,
commander of the U.S. forces in Vietnam, assured the
American public that he could see “light at the end of the
tunnel.”
Credibility Gap
The Vietnam War was the first “living room war.” Americans
watched the progress—or lack of it—in their living rooms on
nightly newscasts. The intimacy of television made news of
the war unavoidable. But unlike World War II, there was no
march to victory Americans could not put maps of Vietnam
on their walls and trace the routes the troops were taking to
Hanoi. Americans watched government officials issue
optimistic statement after optimistic statement. Soon, a
“credibility gap” emerged between
what the Johnson administration
said and what many journalists
reported. This gap referred to the
American public’s growing distrust
of statements made by the
government.
Tet Offensive
The Tet Offensive was a coordinated
assault on 36 provincial capitals and 5
major cities, as well as the U.S.
embassy in Saigon. The communists
planned to take and hold the cities until
the urban population took up
arms in their support. They thought the Tet Offensive had a
good chance of ending the war. The fighting was fierce, but in
the end American and South Vietnamese forces repelled the
offensive. Although U.S. forces
defeated this push, it was strategic
blow to the Americans. It
demonstrated that that North Vietnam
had the will and ability to fight on.
War Powers Act
In order to prevent Nixon from ordering another bombing
without the consent of the Senate, the Senate passed the
War Powers Act. "The War Powers Act that passed stipulated
that a president must notify Congress within forty-eight hours
after troop deployment and must withdraw troops within
sixty days unless they are authorized by Congress to stay
longer.” "The law did not prohibit the
nation from re-intervening in
Indochina, but it could only be done
so with Congressional concurrence.”
Defining and restricting the war
powers of the President as a step to
help redress the balance of warmaking power between Congress and
the White House.”
Presidential Election 1968
Robert Kennedy became a Senator
from New York in 1964. He decided to
run for President in 1968. While
campaigning in California in June, he
was shot and killed by a young Arab
nationalist who opposed Kennedy’s
support for Israel.
In April of 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr.
was gunned down by a white man while
standing on a motel balcony in
Memphis. Massive riots erupted in 168
cities across the country.
Election of 1968
After Kennedy’s death, the election turned into a three way
race between two conservatives—George Wallace and
Richard Nixon—and one liberal, Vice President Hubert
Humphrey.
At the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the antiwar
demonstrators were determined to control the streets.
Chicago’s mayor Richard Daley had the police out in mass,
and the resulting violence went out on television across the
country as a “police riot.”
Election of 1968
Nixon defeated Humphrey by a very close popular vote but
took a substantial majority of the electoral vote (301-191).
Supporters of Nixon and Wallace had had enough of protest,
violence, permissiveness, the counterculture, drugs, and
federal intervention in social institutions.
Kent State 1970
On April 30, 1970, President Nixon announced during a
televised speech to the nation that American forces had
invaded Cambodia. On May 4, 1970, Ohio National
Guardsmen were on the Kent State college campus to
maintain order during a student protest against the Vietnam
War and the invasion of Cambodia. For a still unknown
reason, the National Guard suddenly fired upon the already
dispersing crowd of student protesters, killing four and
wounding nine others.
22nd Amendment – Presidential term is limited. No person
shall be elected to the office of President more than twice.
(Term limits – two terms)
24th Amendment– Payment of poll tax or other taxes not to
be prerequisite for voting in federal elections. (No poll taxes
to vote.)
25th Amendment– Presidential succession and disability. Vice
President to become President on death or resignation of
President. If vacancy of Vice President , the President shall
nominate a Vice President and must be confirmed by majority
vote of both House of Congress.
26th Amendment– Voting age now 18 years old.
Truman -- Desegregation
The President used his executive powers to establish
the Committee on Civil Rights in 1946. Most important,
in 1948 he ordered the end of racial discrimination in
the departments of the federal government and all
three branches of the armed forces. The end of
segregation within the military also changed life on
military bases, many of which were in the South
Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher
In 1946, she applied at the University of Oklahoma and
was denied because of race, and in 1948, the Supreme
Court ruled that the state of Oklahoma must provide
instruction for Blacks equal to that of whites.
In order to comply, the state of Oklahoma created the
Langston University School of Law, located at the state
capital. Further litigation was necessary to prove that this
law school was inferior to the University of Oklahoma law
school. Finally, in 1949, Sipuel was admitted to the
University of Oklahoma law school becoming the first
African American woman to attend an all white law school
in the South. The law school gave her a chair marked
"colored," and roped it off from the rest of the class. In
1992, Oklahoma's governor David Walters appointed her
to the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma,
George W. McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents
George W. McLaurin was an Oklahoma citizen and an
African‐American. Hoping to earn a doctorate in education, he applied
for admission to graduate study at Oklahoma's all‐white University of
Oklahoma. Initially denied admission on the basis of race, McLaurin
was ordered admitted by a federal district court. But because
Oklahoma law required that graduate instruction must be “upon a
segregated basis,” McLaurin found himself enshrouded in the
segregationist equivalent of a plastic bubble: in class, he sat in a
separate row “reserved for Negroes”; in the library he studied at a
separate desk; in the cafeteria he ate at a separate table. McLaurin
sought relief from these measures by returning to the district court,
and eventually appealing to the Supreme Court.
McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents --On June 5, 1950, the United
States Supreme Court ruled that a public institution of higher learning
could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of
his/her race as doing so deprived the student of his/her Fourteenth
Amendment rights of Equal Protection.
Clara Luper
In August 1958, 18 months before a group of
black students won national attention for
demanding service at segregated restaurants
in Greensboro, N.C., Mrs. Luper led a handful
of children into the Katz drugstore in
downtown Oklahoma City. They sat down and
ordered Cokes.
The waitress refused to serve them. White
customers spit on them and cursed. But Mrs.
Luper and her young compatriots — members
of the NAACP youth council, ages 6 to 17 —
stayed for hours. She and the other sit-inners
returned for several days before the drugstore
agreed to serve them sodas and hamburgers.
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was the first AfricanAmerican member of the U.S. Supreme
Court. He served on the court from 1967
until he retired in 1991. Earlier in his
career, Marshall worked as a lawyer for the
National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) and helped win
the 1954 landmark desegregation case,
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,
Kansas. Throughout his life, Marshall used
the law to promote civil rights and social
justice.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
One of the great landmark cases in Supreme Court history was
argued in the early 1950s by a team of NAACP lawyers led by
Thurgood Marshall. In the case of Brown v. Board of Education of
Topeka, they argued that segregation of black children in the
public schools was unconstitutional because it violated the
Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the
laws.” In May 1954, the Supreme Court agreed with Marshall and
overturned Plessy case. Writing for a unanimous Court, Chief
Justice Earl Warren ruled that (1) “separate facilities are inherently
unequal” and unconstitutional and (2) segregation in the schools
should end with “all deliberate speed.”
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
In Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, Rosa Parks was too tired
after a long day at work to move to the back of the bus to the
section reserved for African Americans. Her arrest for
violating the segregation law sparked a massive African
American protest in Montgomery in the form of a boycott
against riding the city buses. The Reverend Martin Luther
King, Jr., son emerged as the inspiring leader of a nonviolent
Movement to achieve integration.
The protest touched off by Rosa
Parks and the Montgomery
boycott eventually triumphed
when the Supreme Court in 1956
ruled that segregation laws were
unconstitutional.
Little Rock Central High
States in the Deep South fought the Brown ruling. In Arkansas in 1956,
Governor Orval Faubus used the state’s National Guard to prevent nine
African American students from entering Little Rock Central High School,
as ordered by a federal court. President Eisenhower intervened. While
the president did not actively support desegregation and had
reservations about the Brown decision, he understood his constitutional
responsibility to uphold federal authority. Eisenhower ordered federal
troops to stand guard in Little Rock and protect black students as they
walked to school. He was the first president since reconstruction to use
federal troops to protect the rights of African Americans.
Freedom Riders
Groups of Freedom Riders fanned out to end segregation in
facilities serving interstate bus passengers. A white mob
torched a Freedom Ride bus near Anniston, Alabama, in May
1961, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s personal
representative was beaten unconscious in another antiFreedom Ride riot in Montgomery. When southern officials
proved unwilling or unable to stem the violence, Washington
dispatched federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders.
March on Washington
In August 1963, King led one of the largest and most successful
demonstrations in U.S. history. About 200,000 blacks and whites took
part in the peaceful March on Washington in support of the civil rights
bill. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this famous speech:
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all
men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of
former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit
down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four children will
one day live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin
but by the content of their character.
Birmingham Church Bombing
On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded before Sunday
morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham, Alabama--a church with a predominantly black
congregation that served as a meeting place for civil rights
leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people
injured; outrage over the incident and the violent clash
between protesters and police that followed helped draw
national attention to the hard-fought, often dangerous
struggle for civil rights for African Americans.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
A southern president succeeded in persuading Congress to
enact the most important civil rights law since
Reconstruction. Johnson managed to persuade both a
majority of Democrats and Republicans in congress to pass
the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made segregation illegal in
all public facilities, including hotels and restaurants, and
gave the federal government additional powers to enforce
school desegregation. This act also set up the Equal
Employment Opportunity
Commission to end racial
discrimination in employment.
Voting Rights Acts of 1965
In 1965, the brutality in Selma, Alabama
against the voting rights marches led by
Martin Luther King moved the Congress
to pass the Voting rights Act of 1965.
This act ended literacy tests and
provided federal registrars in areas in
which blacks were kept from voting. The
impact was most dramatic in the
Deep South, where African
Americans could vote for the first
time since the Reconstruction era.
Selma to Montgomery Marches
Police in Birmingham, Alabama , used
police dogs to break up civil rights
marches in 1963.
Selma, Alabama in 1965 a major
campaign to enact voting rights
legislation. Protests climaxed in a
series of confrontations on the Edmund
Pettus Bridge, on the main route from
Selma to Montgomery. Heavily armed
state troopers and other authorities
attacked the marches as they tried to
cross the bridge.
Malcolm X
Seeking a new cultural identity based on Africa
and Islam, the Black Muslim leader Elijah
Muhammad preached black nationalism,
separatism, and self-improvement. The
movement had already attracted thousands of
followers by the time a young man serving a
prison sentence became a convert and
adopted the name Malcolm X.
Malcolm X acquired a reputation as the movement’s most
controversial voice. He criticized King as “an Uncle Tom”
(subservient to whites) and advocated self-defense—using black
violence to counter white violence. He eventually left the Black
Muslims to found a more conciliatory Organization of AfroAmerican Unity, but before he could pursue his ideas, he was
assassinated by black opponents in 1965.
Organizations Fighting for Civil Rights.
SCLC – Southern Christian Leadership Conference—advocated nonviolent resistance to fight injustice. Organized a series of protests,
the March on Washington, and protests in Birmingham.
SNCC – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee – Its goal was
to create a grass-roots movement that involved all classes of African
Americans in the struggle to attain equality. Best known for
organizing sit-ins. Later Stokely Carmichael changed name to
Student National Coordinating Committee.
NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People - Organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
CORE – Congress Of Racial Equality – Fought against segregation by
using non-violence. CORE organized the Freedom Rides.