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Changes &
Challenges
Chapter 28
Section 4
The Civil Rights Movement
Riddlebarger
March Against Fear
James Meredith shot & wounded in Mississippi
Expanding the Movement
• March Against Fear
– turning point Movement
– Is nonviolence the best strategy to bring
genuine & permanent change?
• Change in laws but…
Conditions Outside the South
• Similarities/differences for blacks
inside/outside South
• De facto segregation
– Why more difficult?
1963: Unemployment
whites: 4.8%; blacks: 12.1%
Poverty
whites: 1/5 of population; blacks: ½ of population
• Discrimination in housing & employment
• Voting an answer to poverty?
Urban Unrest
• From 1964 to 1967, unrest exploded in most
major U.S. cities
– Watts
– Detroit
– Ohio
• Kerner Commission
– poverty & discrimination
– racial divide
Watts Riots
The Movement Moves North
• MLK decides to take movement to
northern cities
– Chicago 1966
– 8-month campaign is one of King’s biggest
failures
Fractures in the Movement
– SCLC, SNCC, CORE & NAACP among
others all have goal of ending racial
discrimination
– By mid-1960’s, conflicts develop within
groups.
– As harassment of members grows, some
begin to reject nonviolence as philosophy.
Black Power
• Stokely
Carmichael and
SNCC (1966)
• “We Shall Overcome”
vs.
“We Shall Overrun”
Stokely Carmichael
June 17, 1966
• “ This is the twenty-seventh time I have been
arrested- and I ain’t going to jail no more. The only
way we’re going to stop them white men from
whippin’ us is to take over. We been saying freedom
for six years- and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna
start now is ‘Black Power!’
Black Power Movement
• Black Power slogan
makes headlines
• Many see it as a call
to violence
– Self reliance
• CORE
Black Panthers
• Black Power
appeals to many
young AfricanAmericans.
– Black Panther Party
(1966)
– Bobby Seale & Huey
Newton.
• Reject nonviolence
• Violent Revolution
Black Panther Party
• Controversial
• Confrontation
Black Muslims
•One of largest & most influential
groups expressing black power is the
Nation of Islam
•Based upon Islamic religion
•Black Muslims.
•Honorable Elijah Muhammad
•Had about 65,000 members by 1960’s.
Malcolm X
• Biggest name in Nation
of Islam is Malcolm X.
– Offered message of
hope, defiance & black
pride.
– By Any Means
Necessary
“Revolutions are never based
upon … begging a corrupt
system to accept us into it.
Revolutions overturn
systems.”
Martin vs. Malcolm
“Violence …seeks to
annihilate rather than
convert…Nonviolenc
e is a powerful and
just weapon…which
cuts without
wounding and
ennobles the man
who wields it.”
-Martin Luther King,
1964
“[N]ow you’re facing
a situation where
the young Negro’s
coming up. They
don’t want to hear
that ‘turn-the-othercheek’ stuff,
no…There’s new
thinking coming in.
There’s new
strategy coming
in…It’ll be ballots, or
it’ll be bullets. It’ll be
liberty, or it will be
death.”
-Malcolm X, 1964
Malcolm X
• Critical of King
• White response
• 1964: Leaves Nation of
Islam
• Mecca
• Change in views
• Feb. 1965:
Assassinated by Black
Muslims
Assassination of Martin Luther
King
• Focus more on
economic issues.
• Memphis
• “I Have Seen the
Promised Land”
• April 4th
Robert F. Kennedy,
speaking in an AfricanAmerican neighborhood in
Indianapolis just after
announcing the death of
Martin Luther King
“You can be filled with bitterness and with hatred and desire
for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in
great polarization, black people amongst blacks and white
people amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another.
Or we can make an effort, like Martin Luther King did, to
understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence,
that stain of bloodshed that has spread across the land,
with…compassion and love.”
End of Movement
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The Movement after King
Impact of Vietnam
Backlash- “Get tough with blacks”
Impact upon other movements
Bakke and quotas