The Civil Rights Movement in the United
States
(adapted
by Wright Frank from History of the United States by, Daniel Boorstin
and Kelly Brooksmather, 1999.)
Go to quiz
Before the Civil
War, the US had the distinction of being one of the only countries in the
world where slavery was explicitly legal. Slavery was not declared illegal
by the government until January 1st, 1863 in the middle of the
Civil War by President Abraham Lincoln in a document known as the Emancipation
Proclamation. Of course, an Amendment to the Constitution was passed which
made slavery officially illegal, but not until 1865. This ended
legalized slavery, but it did not mean equality or even freedom for most
blacks in America. Even if black Americans were technically free, they still
could not vote, and they did not have the opportunities or rights given to
whites. The best jobs and schools were closed to them and would stay closed
to them for almost 100 years.
After the Civil War, more
progress toward equality was made. In 1870, the 15th amendment to
the Constitution was passed. This gave blacks the right to vote. However, in
1896, the Supreme Court said (Plessy v. Ferguson) that separate
bathrooms, schools and train seating were legal as long as the “blacks only”
and the “whites only” sections were equal. In the South, bus seats, train
seats, bathrooms, schools, movie theaters, and even drinking fountains were
often designated for blacks or whites. This is called segregation. In
spite of the court decision, however, there was no legal way to make sure the
services were always equal. There were strong forces of intimidation and
organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (also known as the KKK) which threatened
blacks with violence, especially when they demanded equality.
This changed in the 1940’s
and 50’s, not because attitudes in the South were changing, but because the
national government effectively forced them to. The Supreme Court ruled that
blacks could vote in primary elections, and that “separate but equal”
facilities had to actually be equal. In cases where there was inequality in
the services, the Supreme Court said that the services had to be made equal or
integrated. In 1954, the court declared that all public schools must be
integrated (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas). A lawyer
named Thurgood Marshall argued for the integration, and would later be
recognized for his work by being appointed to the Supreme Court.
The South did not accept
the integration of schools peacefully. Politicians from southern states
decided to resist the Court’s decision by any means possible. In Little Rock,
Arkansas, Governor Orval Faubus sent the National Guard on the first day of
classes to try to prevent violence between blacks going to school and white
protesters. The National Guard did prevent violence- but unfortunately, they
did this by preventing the blacks from going to school. A federal judge
ordered the National Guard out. The black children tried to go to school
again, but this time a white mob forced them to go home.
Until this point, the
president had been happy to let the judicial branch take care of these
problems, but with the mob violence, he was moved to act. He removed the
national guard, and sent the army to open the schools. The response of
Governor Faubus was to close the schools for everyone for the entire year.
Integration would not come easily.
Civil rights were not won
only in the courts though. Another technique that blacks throughout the south
used was called “civil disobedience”. This means breaking laws that you think
are not right, and accepting the penalties non-violently. The idea is that if
enough people protest by acts of civil disobedience, the public may start to
question the laws. On December 1, 1955, a woman named Rosa Parks refused to
give her seat to a white man who asked for it. This was against the law, and
so she was arrested. This little old woman inspired many people and she
quickly became a symbol for the civil rights movement.
It was around this time
that Martin Luther King Jr. became a leader in the civil rights
movement. He said that like Ghandi in India, black people needed to practice
civil disobedience. He told people to stop using the buses until they treated
blacks and whites equally. The boycott lasted more than a year, and it was a
major inconvenience for people who participated. Even so, it was effective;
the bus company almost went bankrupt and eventually the Supreme Court said
that the bus company’s segregation laws were unconstitutional.
Martin Luther King became a
strong voice for the rights of black people. He organized marches and gave
eloquent speeches to thousands of people. He became a martyr figure for the
movement on April 4th, 1968, when he was assassinated by a sniper.
A man named James Earl Ray was convicted of the crime.
Soon, many blacks were
using similar non-violent techniques. They started going to whites’ churches,
swimming pools, and restaurants. They did not act violently. They simply
took the rights that they were confident that they deserved.
After seeing the actions
taken by the Supreme Court and the president, Congress started passing laws
too. In 1957 and 1960, two federal laws called “the Civil Rights Act” were
passed. These laws reaffirmed equality of the races, and made many racist
state laws—known as Jim Crow Laws—invalid.
Racism would continue to
exist in the United States for many years, but during this period of time,
much institutional racism ended. People’s values and ideas about race have
been changing for the past fifty years, and will surely continue to change in
the years to come.
Go to quiz