FREE ESSAY ON CIVIL RIGHTS

CIVIL RIGHTS

Civil Rights Movement in the United States, political, legal, and 
social struggle by black Americans to gain full citizenship rights and 
to achieve racial equality. The civil rights movement was first and 
foremost a challenge to segregation, the system of laws and customs 
separating blacks and whites that whites used to control blacks after 
slavery was abolished in the 1860s. During the civil rights movement, 
individuals and civil rights organizations challenged segregation and 
discrimination with a variety of activities, including protest marches, 
boycotts, and refusal to abide by segregation laws. Many believe that 
the movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and ended 
with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, though there is debate about when 
it began and whether it has ended yet. The civil rights movement has 
also been called the Black Freedom Movement, the Negro Revolution, and 
the Second Reconstruction.
Segregation 
Segregation was an attempt by white Southerners to separate the races 
in every sphere of life and to achieve supremacy over blacks. 
Segregation was often called the Jim Crow system, after a minstrel show 
character from the 1830s who was an old, crippled, black slave who 
embodied negative stereotypes of blacks. Segregation became common in 
Southern states following the end of Reconstruction in 1877. During 
Reconstruction, which followed the Civil War (1861-1865), Republican 
governments in the Southern states were run by blacks, Northerners, and 
some sympathetic Southerners. The Reconstruction governments had passed 
laws opening up economic and political opportunities for blacks. By 
1877 the Democratic Party had gained control of government in the 
Southern states, and these Southern Democrats wanted to reverse black 
advances made during Reconstruction. To that end, they began to pass 
local and state laws that specified certain places For Whites Only 
and others for Colored. Blacks had separate schools, transportation, 
restaurants, and parks, many of which were poorly funded and inferior 
to those of whites. Over the next 75 years, Jim Crow signs went up to 
separate the races in every possible place.
The system of segregation also included the denial of voting rights, 
known as disfranchisement. Between 1890 and 1910 all Southern states 
passed laws imposing requirements for voting that were used to prevent 
blacks from voting, in spite of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution 
of the United States, which had been designed to protect black voting 
rights. These requirements included: the ability to read and write, 
which disqualified the many blacks who had not had access to education; 
property ownership, something few blacks were able to acquire; and 
paying a poll tax, which was too great a burden on most Southern blacks,
who were very poor. As a final insult, the few blacks who made it over 
all these hurdles could not vote in the Democratic primaries that chose 
the candidates because they were open only to whites in most Southern 
states.
Because blacks could not vote, they were virtually powerless to prevent 
whites from segregating all aspects of Southern life. They could do 
little to stop discrimination in public accommodations, education, 
economic opportunities, or housing. The ability to struggle for 
equality was even undermined by the prevalent Jim Crow signs, which 
constantly reminded blacks of their inferior status in Southern society.
Segregation was an all encompassing system.
Conditions for blacks in Northern states were somewhat better, though 
up to 1910 only about 10 percent of blacks lived in the North, and 
prior to World War II (1939-1945), very few blacks lived in the West. 
Blacks were usually free to vote in the North, but there were so few 
blacks that their voices were barely heard. Segregated facilities were 
not as common in the North, but blacks were usually denied entrance to 
the best hotels and restaurants. Schools in New England were usually 
integrated, but those in the Midwest generally were not. Perhaps the 
most difficult part of Northern life was the intense economic 
discrimination against blacks. They had to compete with large numbers 
of recent European immigrants for job opportunities and almost always 
lost.
Early Black Resistance to Segregation 
Blacks fought against discrimination whenever possible. In the late 
1800s blacks sued in court to stop separate seating in railroad cars, 
states' disfranchisement of voters, and denial of access to schools and 
restaurants. One of the cases against segregated rail travel was Plessy 
v. Ferguson (1896), in which the Supreme Court of the United States 
ruled that separate but equal accommodations were constitutional. In 
fact, separate was almost never equal, but the Plessy doctrine provided 
constitutional protection for segregation for the next 50 years.
To protest segregation, blacks created new national organizations. The 
National Afro-American League was formed in 1890; the Niagara Movement 
in 1905; and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored 
People (NAACP) in 1909. In 1910 the National Urban League was created 
to help blacks make the transition to urban, industrial life.
The NAACP became one of the most important black protest organizations 
of the 20th century. It relied mainly on a legal strategy that 
challenged segregation and discrimination in courts to obtain equal 
treatment for blacks. An early leader of the NAACP was the historian 
and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, who starting in 1910 made powerful 
arguments in favor of protesting segregation as editor of the NAACP 
magazine, The Crisis. NAACP lawyers won court victories over voter 
disfranchisement in 1915 and residential segregation in 1917, but 
failed to have lynching outlawed by the Congress of the United States 
in the 1920s and 1930s. These cases laid the foundation for a legal and 
social challenge to segregation although they did little to change 
everyday life. In 1935 Charles H. Houston, the NAACP's chief legal 
counsel, won the first Supreme Court case argued by exclusively black 
counsel representing the NAACP. This win invigorated the NAACP's legal 
efforts against segregation, mainly by convincing courts that 
segregated facilities, especially schools, were not equal. In 1939 the 
NAACP created a separate organization called the NAACP Legal Defense 
Fund that had a nonprofit, tax-exempt status that was denied to the 
NAACP because it lobbied the U.S. Congress. Houston's chief aide and 
later his successor, Thurgood Marshall, a brilliant young lawyer who 
would become a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, began to challenge 
segregation as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
World War I 
When World War I (1914-1918) began, blacks enlisted to fight for their 
country. However, black soldiers were segregated, denied the 
opportunity to be leaders, and were subjected to racism within the 
armed forces. During the war, hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks 
migrated northward in 1916 and 1917 to take advantage of job openings 
in Northern cities created by the war. This great migration of Southern 
blacks continued into the 1950s. Along with the great migration, blacks 
in both the North and South became increasingly urbanized during the 
20th century. In 1890, about 85 percent of all Southern blacks lived in 
rural areas; by 1960 that percentage had decreased to about 42 percent. 
In the North, about 95 percent of all blacks lived in urban areas in 
1960. The combination of the great migration and the urbanization of 
blacks resulted in black communities in the North that had a strong 
political presence. The black communities began to exert pressure on 
politicians, voting for those who supported civil rights. These 
Northern black communities, and the politicians that they elected, 
helped Southern blacks struggling against segregation by using 
political influence and money.
The 1930s 
The Great Depression of the 1930s increased black protests against 
discrimination, especially in Northern cities. Blacks protested the 
refusal of white-owned businesses in all-black neighborhoods to hire 
black salespersons. Using the slogan Don't Buy Where You Can't Work, 
these campaigns persuaded blacks to boycott those businesses and 
revealed a new militancy. During the same years, blacks organized 
school boycotts in Northern cities to protest discriminatory treatment 
of black children.
The black protest activities of the 1930s were encouraged by the 
expanding role of government in the economy and society. During the 
administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the federal 
government created federal programs, such as Social Security, to assure 
the welfare of individual citizens. Roosevelt himself was not an 
outspoken supporter of black rights, but his wife Eleanor became an 
open advocate for fairness to blacks, as did other leaders in the 
administration. The Roosevelt Administration opened federal jobs to 
blacks and turned the federal judiciary away from its preoccupation 
with protecting the freedom of business corporations and toward the 
protection of individual rights, especially those of the poor and 
minority groups. Beginning with his appointment of Hugo Black to the U.
S. Supreme Court in 1937, Roosevelt chose judges who favored black 
rights. As early as 1938, the courts displayed a new attitude toward 
black rights; that year the Supreme Court ruled that the state of 
Missouri was obligated to provide access to a public law school for 
blacks just as it provided for whites-a new emphasis on the equal part 
of the Plessy doctrine. Blacks sensed that the national government 
might again be their ally, as it had been during the Civil War.
World War II 
When World War II began in Europe in 1939, blacks demanded better 
treatment than they had experienced in World War I. Black newspaper 
editors insisted during 1939 and 1940 that black support for this war 
effort would depend on fair treatment. They demanded that black 
soldiers be trained in all military roles and that black civilians have 
equal opportunities to work in war industries at home.
In 1941 A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car 
Porters, a union whose members were mainly black railroad workers, 
planned a March on Washington to demand that the federal government 
require defense contractors to hire blacks on an equal basis with 
whites. To forestall the march, President Roosevelt issued an executive 
order to that effect and created the federal Fair Employment Practices 
Committee (FEPC) to enforce it. The FEPC did not prevent discrimination 
in war industries, but it did provide a lesson to blacks about how the 
threat of protest could result in new federal commitments to civil 
rights.
During World War II, blacks composed about one-eighth of the U.S. armed 
forces, which matched their presence in the general population. 
Although a disproportionately high number of blacks were put in 
noncombat, support positions in the military, many did fight. The Army 
Air Corps trained blacks as pilots in a controversial segregated 
arrangement in Tuskegee, Alabama. During the war, all the armed 
services moved toward equal treatment of blacks, though none flatly 
rejected segregation.
In the early war years, hundreds of thousands of blacks left Southern 
farms for war jobs in Northern and Western cities. In fact more blacks 
migrated to the North and the West during World War II than had left 
during the previous war. Although there was racial tension and conflict 
in their new homes, blacks were free of the worst racial oppression, 
and they enjoyed much larger incomes. After the war blacks in the North 
and West used their economic and political influence to support civil 
rights for Southern blacks.
Blacks continued to work against discrimination during the war, 
challenging voting registrars in Southern courthouses and suing school 
boards for equal educational provisions. The membership of the NAACP 
grew from 50,000 to about 500,000. In 1944 the NAACP won a major 
victory in Smith v. Allwright, which outlawed the white primary. A new 
organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was founded in 
1942 to challenge segregation in public accommodations in the North.
During the war, black newspapers campaigned for a Double V, victories 
over both fascism in Europe and racism at home. The war experience gave 
about one million blacks the opportunity to fight racism in Europe and 
Asia, a fact that black veterans would remember during the struggle 
against racism at home after the war. Perhaps just as important, almost 
ten times that many white Americans witnessed the patriotic service of 
black Americans. Many of them would object to the continued denial of 
civil rights to the men and women beside whom they had fought.
After World War II the momentum for racial change continued. Black 
soldiers returned home with determination to have full civil rights. 
President Harry Truman ordered the final desegregation of the armed 
forces in 1948. He also committed to a domestic civil rights policy 
favoring voting rights and equal employment, but the U.S. Congress 
rejected his proposals.
School Desegregation 
In the postwar years, the NAACP's legal strategy for civil rights 
continued to succeed. Led by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP Legal Defense 
Fund challenged and overturned many forms of discrimination, but their 
main thrust was equal educational opportunities. For example, in Sweat 
v. Painter (1950), the Supreme Court decided that the University of 
Texas had to integrate its law school. Marshall and the Defense Fund 
worked with Southern plaintiffs to challenge the Plessy doctrine 
directly, arguing in effect that separate was inherently unequal. The U.
S. Supreme Court heard arguments on five cases that challenged 
elementary- and secondary-school segregation, and in May 1954 issued 
its landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that stated that 
racially segregated education was unconstitutional.
White Southerners received the Brown decision first with shock and, in 
some instances, with expressions of goodwill. By 1955, however, white 
opposition in the South had grown into massive resistance, a strategy 
to persuade all whites to resist compliance with the desegregation 
orders. It was believed that if enough people refused to cooperate with 
the federal court order, it could not be enforced. Tactics included 
firing school employees who showed willingness to seek integration, 
closing public schools rather than desegregating, and boycotting all 
public education that was integrated. The White Citizens Council was 
formed and led opposition to school desegregation all over the South. 
The Citizens Council called for economic coercion of blacks who favored 
integrated schools, such as firing them from jobs, and the creation of 
private, all-white schools.
Virtually no schools in the South were desegregated in the first years 
after the Brown decision. In Virginia one county did indeed close its 
public schools. In Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, Governor Orval 
Faubus defied a federal court order to admit nine black students to 
Central High School, and President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal 
troops to enforce desegregation. The event was covered by the national 
media, and the fate of the Little Rock Nine, the students attempting to 
integrate the school, dramatized the seriousness of the school 
desegregation issue to many Americans. Although not all school 
desegregation was as dramatic as in Little Rock, the desegregation 
process did proceed-gradually. Frequently schools were desegregated 
only in theory, because racially segregated neighborhoods led to 
segregated schools. To overcome this problem, some school districts in 
the 1970s tried busing students to schools outside of their 
neighborhoods.
As desegregation progressed, the membership of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) 
grew. The KKK used violence or threats against anyone who was suspected 
of favoring desegregation or black civil rights. Klan terror, including 
intimidation and murder, was widespread in the South in the 1950s and 
1960s, though Klan activities were not always reported in the media. 
One terrorist act that did receive national attention was the 1955 
murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy slain in Mississippi by 
whites who believed he had flirted with a white woman. The trial and 
acquittal of the men accused of Till's murder were covered in the 
national media, demonstrating the continuing racial bigotry of Southern 
whites.
Political Protest 
Montgomery Bus Boycott 
Despite the threats and violence, the struggle quickly moved beyond 
school desegregation to challenge segregation in other areas. On 
December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a member of the Montgomery, Alabama, 
branch of the NAACP, was told to give up her seat on a city bus to a 
white person. When Parks refused to move, she was arrested. The local 
NAACP, led by Edgar D. Nixon, recognized that the arrest of Parks might 
rally local blacks to protest segregated buses. Montgomery's black 
community had long been angry about their mistreatment on city buses 
where white drivers were often rude and abusive. The community had 
previously considered a boycott of the buses, and almost overnight one 
was organized. The Montgomery bus boycott was an immediate success, 
with virtually unanimous support from the 50,000 blacks in Montgomery. 
It lasted for more than a year and dramatized to the American public 
the determination of blacks in the South to end segregation. A federal 
court ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated in November 1956, and the 
boycott ended in triumph.
A young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., was president 
of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that 
directed the boycott. The protest made King a national figure. His 
eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created 
a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South. King 
became the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 
(SCLC) when it was founded in 1957. SCLC wanted to complement the NAACP 
legal strategy by encouraging the use of nonviolent, direct action to 
protest segregation. These activities included marches, demonstrations, 
and boycotts. The violent white response to black direct action 
eventually forced the federal government to confront the issues of 
injustice and racism in the South.
In addition to his large following among blacks, King had a powerful 
appeal to liberal Northerners that helped him influence national public 
opinion. His advocacy of nonviolence attracted supporters among peace 
activists. He forged alliances in the American Jewish community and 
developed strong ties to the ministers of wealthy, influential 
Protestant congregations in Northern cities. King often preached to 
those congregations, where he raised funds for SCLC.
The Sit-Ins 
On February 1, 1960, four black college students at North Carolina A&T 
University began protesting racial segregation in restaurants by 
sitting at white-only lunch counters and waiting to be served. This 
was not a new form of protest, but the response to the sit-ins in North 
Carolina was unique. Within days sit-ins had spread throughout North 
Carolina, and within weeks they were taking place in cities across the 
South. Many restaurants were desegregated. The sit-in movement also 
demonstrated clearly to blacks and whites alike that young blacks were 
determined to reject segregation openly.
In April 1960 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was 
founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, to help organize and direct the 
student sit-in movement. King encouraged SNCC's creation, but the most 
important early advisor to the students was Ella Baker, who had worked 
for both the NAACP and SCLC. She believed that SNCC should not be part 
of SCLC but a separate, independent organization run by the students. 
She also believed that civil rights activities should be based in 
individual black communities. SNCC adopted Baker's approach and focused 
on making changes in local communities, rather than striving for 
national change. This goal differed from that of SCLC which worked to 
change national laws. During the civil rights movement, tensions 
occasionally arose between SCLC and SNCC because of their different 
methods.
Freedom Riders 
After the sit-ins, some SNCC members participated in the 1961 Freedom 
Rides organized by CORE. The Freedom Riders, both black and white, 
traveled around the South in buses to test the effectiveness of a 1960 
Supreme Court decision. This decision had declared that segregation was 
illegal in bus stations that were open to interstate travel. The 
Freedom Rides began in Washington, D.C. Except for some violence in 
Rock Hill, South Carolina, the trip southward was peaceful until they 
reached Alabama, where violence erupted. At Anniston one bus was burned 
and some riders were beaten. In Birmingham, a mob attacked the riders 
when they got off the bus. They suffered even more severe beatings by a 
mob in Montgomery, Alabama.
The violence brought national attention to the Freedom Riders and 
fierce condemnation of Alabama officials for allowing the violence. The 
administration of President John Kennedy interceded to protect the 
Freedom Riders when it became clear that Alabama state officials would 
not guarantee safe travel. The riders continued on to Jackson, 
Mississippi, where they were arrested and imprisoned at the state 
penitentiary, ending the protest. The Freedom Rides did result in the 
desegregation of some bus stations, but more importantly, they 
demonstrated to the American public how far civil rights workers would 
go to achieve their goals.
SCLC Campaigns 
SCLC's greatest contribution to the civil rights movement was a series 
of highly publicized protest campaigns in Southern cities during the 
early 1960s. These protests were intended to create such public 
disorder that local white officials and business leaders would end 
segregation in order to restore normal business activity. The 
demonstrations required the mobilization of hundreds, even thousands, 
of protesters who were willing to participate in protest marches as 
long as necessary to achieve their goal and who were also willing to be 
arrested and sent to jail.
The first SCLC direct-action campaign began in 1961 in Albany, Georgia, 
where the organization joined local demonstrations against segregated 
public accommodations. The presence of SCLC and King escalated the 
Albany protests by bringing national attention and additional people to 
the demonstrations, but the demonstrations did not force negotiations 
to end segregation. During months of protest, Albany's police chief 
continued to jail demonstrators without a show of police violence. The 
Albany protests ended in failure.
In the spring of 1963, however, the direct-action strategy worked in 
Birmingham, Alabama. SCLC joined the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a 
local civil rights leader, who believed that the Birmingham police 
commissioner, Eugene Bull Connor, would meet protesters with violence.
In May the SCLC staff stepped up antisegregation marches by persuading 
teenagers and school children to join. The singing and chanting 
adolescents who filled the streets of Birmingham caused Connor to 
abandon restraint. He ordered police to attack demonstrators with dogs 
and firefighters to turn high-pressure water hoses on them. The ensuing 
scenes of violence were shown throughout the nation and the world in 
newspapers, magazines, and most importantly, on television. Much of the 
world was shocked by the events in Birmingham, and the reaction to the 
violence increased support for black civil rights. In Birmingham white 
leaders promised to negotiate an end to some segregation practices. 
Business leaders agreed to hire and promote more black employees and to 
desegregate some public accommodations. More important, however, the 
Birmingham demonstrations built support for national legislation 
against segregation.
Desegregating Southern Universities 
In 1962 a black man from Mississippi, James Meredith, applied for 
admission to University of Mississippi. His action was an example of 
how the struggle for civil rights belonged to individuals acting alone 
as well as to organizations. The university attempted to block 
Meredith's admission, and he filed suit. After working through the 
state courts, Meredith was successful when a federal court ordered the 
university to desegregate and accept Meredith as a student. The 
governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, defied the court order and tried 
to prevent Meredith from enrolling. In response, the administration of 
President Kennedy intervened to uphold the court order. Kennedy sent 
federal marshals with Meredith when he attempted to enroll. During his 
first night on campus, a riot broke out when whites began to harass the 
federal marshals. In the end, 2 people were killed, and about 375 
people were wounded.
When the governor of Alabama, George C. Wallace, threatened a similar 
stand, trying to block the desegregation of the University of Alabama 
in 1963, the Kennedy Administration responded with the full power of 
the federal government, including the U.S. Army, to prevent violence 
and enforce desegregation. The showdowns with Barnett and Wallace 
pushed Kennedy, whose support for civil rights up to that time had been 
tentative, into a full commitment to end segregation.
The March on Washington 
The national civil rights leadership decided to keep pressure on both 
the Kennedy administration and the Congress to pass civil rights 
legislation by planning a March on Washington for August 1963. It was a 
conscious revival of A. Philip Randolph's planned 1941 march, which had 
yielded a commitment to fair employment during World War II. Randolph 
was there in 1963, along with the leaders of the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, the 
Urban League, and SNCC. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered the keynote 
address to an audience of more than 200,000 civil rights supporters. 
His I Have a Dream speech in front of the giant sculpture of the 
Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, became famous for how it expressed 
the ideals of the civil rights movement.
Partly as a result of the March on Washington, President Kennedy 
proposed a new civil rights law. After Kennedy was assassinated in 
November 1963, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, strongly urged its 
passage as a tribute to Kennedy's memory. Over fierce opposition from 
Southern legislators, Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 
through Congress. It prohibited segregation in public accommodations 
and discrimination in education and employment. It also gave the 
executive branch of government the power to enforce the act's 
provisions.
Voter Registration 
The year 1964 was the culmination of SNCC's commitment to civil rights 
activism at the community level. Starting in 1961 SNCC and CORE 
organized voter registration campaigns in heavily black, rural counties 
of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. SNCC concentrated on voter 
registration, believing that voting was a way to empower blacks so that 
they could change racist policies in the South. SNCC worked to register 
blacks to vote by teaching them the necessary skills-such as reading 
and writing-and the correct answers to the voter registration 
application. SNCC worker Robert Moses led a voter registration effort 
in McComb, Mississippi, in 1961, and in 1962 and 1963 SNCC worked to 
register voters in the Mississippi Delta, where it found local 
supporters like the farm-worker and activist Fannie Lou Hamer. These 
civil rights activities caused violent reactions from Mississippi's 
white supremacists. Moses faced constant terrorism that included 
threats, arrests, and beatings. In June 1963 Medgar Evers, NAACP field 
secretary in Mississippi, was shot and killed in front of his home.
In 1964 SNCC workers organized the Mississippi Summer Project to 
register blacks to vote in that state. SNCC leaders also hoped to focus 
national attention on Mississippi's racism. They recruited Northern 
college students, teachers, artists, and clergy-both black and white-to 
work on the project, because they believed that the participation of 
these people would make the country more concerned about discrimination 
and violence in Mississippi. The project did receive national attention,
especially after three participants, two of whom were white, 
disappeared in June and were later found murdered and buried near 
Philadelphia, Mississippi. By the end of the summer, the project had 
helped thousands of blacks attempt to register, and about 1000 had 
actually become registered voters.
The Summer Project increased the number of blacks who were politically 
active and led to the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic 
Party (MFDP). When white Democrats in Mississippi refused to accept 
black members in their delegation to the Democratic National Convention 
of 1964, Hamer and others went to the convention to challenge the white 
Democrats' right to represent Mississippi. In a televised interview, 
Hamer detailed the harassment and abuse experienced by black 
Mississippians when they tried to register to vote. Her testimony 
attracted much media attention, and President Johnson was upset by the 
disturbance at the convention where he expected to be nominated for 
president. National Democratic Party officials offered the black 
Mississippians two convention seats, but the MFDP rejected the 
compromise offer and went home. Later, however, the MFDP challenge did 
result in more support for blacks and other minorities in the 
Democratic Party.
In early 1965 SCLC employed its direct-action techniques in a voting-
rights protest initiated by SNCC in Selma, Alabama. When protests at 
the local courthouse were unsuccessful, protesters began a march to 
Montgomery, the state capital. As the marchers were leaving Selma, 
mounted police beat and tear-gassed them. Televised scenes of that 
violence, called Bloody Sunday, s