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. Many demonstrators were determined to mobilize another march, and SNCC activists challenged King to defy a court order forbidding such marches. But reluctant to do anything that would lessen public support for the voting rights cause, King on March 9 turned back a second march to the Pettus Bridge when it was blocked by the police. That evening a group of Selma whites killed a northern white minister who had joined the demonstrations. In contrast to the killing of a black man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, a few weeks before, the Reverend James Reeb's death led to a national outcry. After several postponements of the march, civil rights advocates finally gained court permission to proceed. This Selma to Montgomery march was the culmination of a stage of the African-American freedom struggle. Soon afterward, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which greatly increased the number of southern blacks able to register to vote. But it was also the last major racial protest of the 1960s to receive substantial white support.

Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Birmingham and the March on Washington

The SCLC protest strategy achieved its first major success in 1963 when the group launched a major campaign in Birmingham, Alabama. Highly publicized confrontations between nonviolent protesters, including schoolchildren, on the one hand, and police with clubs, fire hoses, and police dogs, on the other, gained northern sympathy. The Birmingham clashes and other simultaneous civil rights efforts prompted President John F. Kennedy to push for passage of new civil rights legislation. By the summer of 1963, the Birmingham protests had become only one of many local protest insurgencies that culminated in the August 28 March on Washington, which attracted at least 200,000 participants. King's address on that occasion captured the idealistic spirit of the expanding protests. "I have a dream," he said, "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."

Although some whites reacted negatively to the spreading protests of 1963, King's linkage of black militancy and idealism helped bring about passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This legislation outlawed segregation in public facilities and racial discrimination in employment and education. In addition to blacks, women and other victims of discrimination benefited from the act.

Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Post 1960's Civil Rights Movement

Severe government repression, the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and the intense infighting within the black militant community caused a decline in protest activity after the 1960s. The African-American freedom struggle nevertheless left a permanent mark on American society. Overt forms of racial discrimination and government- supported segregation of public facilities came to an end, although de facto, as opposed to de jure, segregation persisted in northern as well as southern public school systems and in other areas of American society. In the South, antiblack violence declined. Black candidates were elected to political offices in communities where blacks had once been barred from voting, and many of the leaders or organizations that came into existence during the 1950s and 1960s remained active in southern politics. Southern colleges and universities that once excluded blacks began to recruit them.

Despite the civil rights gains of the 1960s, however, racial discrimination and repression remained a significant factor in American life. Even after President Johnson declared a war on poverty and King initiated a Poor People's Campaign in 1968, the distribution of the nation's wealth and income moved toward greater inequality during the 1970s and 1980s. Civil rights advocates acknowledged that desegregation had not brought significant improvements in the lives of poor blacks, but they were divided over the future direction of black advancement efforts. To a large degree, moreover, many of the civil rights efforts of the 1970s and 1980s were devoted to defending previous gains or strengthening enforcement mechanisms.

The modern African-American civil rights movement, like similar movements earlier, had transformed American democracy. It also served as a model for other group advancement and group pride efforts involving women, students, Chicanos, gays and lesbians, the elderly, and many others. Continuing controversies regarding affirmative action programs and compensatory remedies for historically rooted patterns of discrimination were aspects of more fundamental, ongoing debates about the boundaries of individual freedom, the role of government, and alternative concepts of social justice.

Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12 Civil Rights Era in New Mexico

In 1910, when Albuquerque’s Black population was 244, the city’s Black residents worked as barbers, cooks, porters, and beauticians. There was segregation and discrimination in public accommodations. Theaters, restaurants, drugstores refused to serve Blacks or forced them to wait until Whites and Hispanics were served. Five men and one woman founded the Albuquerque National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in 1915. One of its first activities that year was the chapter paying the tuition of Birdie Hardin in her unsuccessful attempt to enroll in the University of New Mexico (UNM) to challenge its racial exclusion policy. In 1921 UNM finally allowed open admission to all qualified students.

The NAACP also helped maintain integrated schools in Albuquerque, though other communities including Alamogordo, Tucumcari, Clovis, Roswell, Artesia, Hobbs, Las Cruces, and Carlsbad took advantage of a 1925 state law to establish segregated schools.

In September 1947 the University newspaper, the New Mexico Lobo, published an article describing how George Long, a university student, was denied service at a nearby café. University students boycotted the restaurant, forcing the management to change its policy. Three months later university students successfully boycotted a downtown Walgreen’s. This student support for militancy generated the first University NAACP chapter.

Herbert Wright, the first Black UNM student body president, and George Long, then a UNM law student, worked for two years to write the Albuquerque Civil Rights Ordinance that prohibited discrimination in places of public accommodations, enacted in 1952. The students had formed a coalition with off-campus organizations including the NAACP, the Ministerial Alliance, and the G. I. Forum, labor unions, and the Catholic Archdiocese to enact the first civil rights ordinance in the intermountain west.

The Ordinance is believed to be one of the earlier municipal ordinances passed in the U.S. since the beginning of WWII. It prohibited discrimination in places of public accommodation, predating both federal and state civil rights public accommodation laws. The Ordinance prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, and national origin or ancestry. Three years after the Ordinance was passed, the state legislature enacted a similar statute, nine years before the Congress passed Title VII of the national Civil Rights Act.

By 1960 the Black population of New Mexico reached 17,063.

Tuesday, November 27, 12 Tuesday, November 27, 12