CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1954-1968 Tuesday, November 27, 12 NEW MEXICO OFFICE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AFFAIRS Curated by Ben Hazard Tuesday, November 27, 12 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, The initial phase of the black protest activity in the post-Brown period began on December 1, 1955. Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white bus rider, thereby defying a southern custom that required blacks to give seats toward the front of buses to whites. When she was jailed, a black community boycott of the city's buses began. The boycott lasted more than a year, demonstrating the unity and determination of black residents and inspiring blacks elsewhere. Martin Luther King, Jr., who emerged as the boycott movement's most effective leader, possessed unique conciliatory and oratorical skills. He understood the larger significance of the boycott and quickly realized that the nonviolent tactics used by the Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi could be used by southern blacks. "I had come to see early that the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom," he explained. Although Parks and King were members of the NAACP, the Montgomery movement led to the creation in 1957 of a new regional organization, the clergy-led Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with King as its president. King remained the major spokesperson for black aspirations, but, as in Montgomery, little-known individuals initiated most subsequent black movements. On February 1, 1960, four freshmen at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College began a wave of student sit-ins designed to end segregation at southern lunch counters. These protests spread rapidly throughout the South and led to the founding, in April 1960, of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This student-led group, even more aggressive in its use of nonviolent direct action tactics than King's SCLC, stressed the development of autonomous local movements in contrast to SCLCs strategy of using local campaigns to achieve national civil rights reforms. Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-in In 1960 four freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro strolled into the F. W. Woolworth store and quietly sat down at the lunch counter. They were not served, but they stayed until closing time. The next morning they came with twenty-five more students. Two weeks later similar demonstrations had spread to several cities, within a year similar peaceful demonstrations took place in over a hundred cities North and South. At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, the students formed their own organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "Snick"). The students' bravery in the face of verbal and physical abuse led to integration in many stores even before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. "This was the most violently attacked sit-in during the 1960s and is the most publicized. A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I'm covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things. Seated, left to right, are myself, Joan Trumpauer (now Mulholland), and Anne Moody (Coming of Age in Mississippi). Other sit-ins — some in a split-off section and some briefly with our heavily targeted part — were Memphis Norman (himself brutally struck and kicked unconscious), Pearlena Lewis, Lois Chaffee, James Beard, George Raymond, and Walter Williams. ) The response by Jackson's Black community to the sit-in and its violence was tremendously positive. The mass meeting that night was the biggest yet — despite the hordes of hostile city and state police and sheriffs' forces surrounding the church: close to a thousand people attended. Our initial picket demonstration on Capitol Street on December 12, 1962, had launched the Jackson Boycott Movement, — and our Woolworth Sit-In now transposed the Boycott Movement into the massive Jackson Movement." Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Freedom Rides In 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) planned a "Journey of Reconciliation," designed to test the Supreme Court's 1946 decision in the Irene Morgan case, which declared segregated seating of interstate passengers unconstitutional. An interracial group of passengers met with heavy resistance in the upper South. Some members of the group served on a chain gang after their arrest in North Carolina. The Journey of Reconciliation quickly broke down. Clearly the South, even the more moderate upper South, was not ready for integration. Nearly a decade and a half later, John F. Kennedy was elected president, in large part due to widespread support among blacks who believed that Kennedy was more sympathetic to the civil rights movement than his opponent, Richard Nixon. To test the president's commitment to civil rights, CORE proposed a new Journey of Reconciliation, dubbed the "Freedom Ride." On May 4, 1961 a group of seven African Americans and six whites left Washington, D.C., on the first Freedom Ride in two buses bound for New Orleans. They were hoping to provoke the federal government into enforcing the 1960 Supreme Court ruling in Boynton v. Virginia, which forbade “unjust discrimination,” including in bus terminals, restrooms, and other facilities associated with interstate travel. As the Freedom Riders traveled into the Deep South, the white riders would use facilities designated for blacks and vice versa. On May 14, in Alabama, one bus was firebombed and the riders beaten. The second bus, as it arrived in Birmingham, was also attacked. Although law enforcement was late in responding, another set of Freedom Riders were undeterred and set out from Nashville to Birmingham, where, at the behest of Robert F. Kennedy, then the U.S. attorney general, they were able to secure a new bus and protection from the State Highway Patrol to Montgomery, where the riders were again beaten. National Guard support was then provided when 27 Freedom Riders continued on to Jackson, Mississippi, only to be arrested and jailed. On May 29 President John F. Kennedy ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce even stricter guidelines banning segregation in interstate travel. Still, Freedom Riders continued to travel by public transportation in the South until the dictate took effect in September. Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Freedom Summer In the early 1960s, Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation. 86% of all non-white families lived below the national poverty line. In addition, the state had a terrible record of black voting rights violations. In the 1950s, Mississippi was 45% black, but only 5% of voting age blacks were registered to vote. While the SCLC focused its efforts in the urban centers, SNCC's activities were concentrated in the rural Black Belt areas of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, where white resistance was intense. Students who sang movement songs during lunch after the bombing of NAACP field director Medgar Evers' home were beaten. He later said, "We fought during the war for America, Mississippi included. Now, after the Germans and Japanese hadn't killed us, it looked as though the white Mississippians would." At an NAACP rally on June 7, Medgar Evers told the crowd, "Freedom has never been free . I love my children and I love my wife with all my heart. And I would die, and die gladly, if that would make a better life for them." Five days later, he was shot and killed as he returned home around midnight. Although the NAACP and the predominantly white Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) also contributed activists to the Mississippi movement, young SNCC organizers spearheaded civil rights efforts in the state. Black residents in the Black Belt, many of whom had been involved in civil rights efforts since the 1940s and 1950s, emphasized voter registration rather than desegregation as a goal. Mississippi residents Amzie Moore and Fannie Lou Hamer were among the grass-roots leaders who worked closely with SNCC to build new organizations, such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic party (MFDP). Although the MFDP did not succeed in its attempt to claim the seats of the all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 National Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, it attracted national attention and thus prepared the way for a major upsurge in southern black political activity. After the Atlantic City experience, disillusioned SNCC organizers worked with local leaders in Alabama to create the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. The symbol they chose--the black panther--reflected the radicalism and belief in racial separatism that increasingly characterized SNCC during the last half of the 1960s. The black panther symbol was later adopted by the California- based Black Panther party, formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Selma to Montgomery March Despite occasional open conflicts between the two groups, both SCLCs protest strategy and SNCC'S organizing activities were responsible for major Alabama protests in 1965, which prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to introduce new voting rights legislation. On March 7 an SCLC planned march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery ended almost before it began at Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma, when mounted police using tear gas and wielding clubs attacked the protesters. News accounts of "Bloody Sunday" brought hundreds of civil rights sympathizers to Selma.