Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of In preparation for sit-in’s, activist Jim Lawson teaches students The Civil Rights Era, 1954-1969 immediate practical effect, citizens rejected gradualist, legalistic tactics in passive-aggressive non-violence; specifically, in how to (Page 1 of 3) approaches as the primary tool to bring about desegregation. take the blows while responding with dignity. They were faced with "massive resistance" in the South by Sit-ins’s occur throughout south! Tactics employed by the Civil Rights Movement: proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. Moral suasion – the strategic use of guilt to generate moral In defiance, African Americans adopted a combined 1958, Malcolm X expounds a militant philosophy, advocating for behavior strategy of direct action with nonviolent resistance. blacks to arm themselves and to act in self-defense. His speeches Litigation – the direct use of lawsuits to challenge Jim Crow routinely call the white person “devil” and are divisive. Civil disobedience – use of collective non-violent action to 1952, Cesar Chavez travels California urging Mexican Americans Civil Rights Act of 1960 disrupt state activity to registrar to vote. Signed by Eisenhower, it established federal inspection of local Economic boycott – use of collective non-violent actions to Brown v.Board of Education, 1954 voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who disrupt private activity Supreme Court case ruled that segregation is schools was illegal obstructed someone's attempt to register to vote or actually vote. Grassroots organizing – rural and urban strategies to build The Act survived a 125+ hour filibuster; a calculated act of mass movement Teenager Emmitt Till murdered in Sumner Mississippi, 1955 defiance by 18 Southern Democrats who sought to delay the Solicitation of corporate sponsors – use of private vote on the bill by continuous speeches in the Senate. organizations to fund political activities 1956 Autherine (Audrey) Lucy wins Supreme Court case ordering Use of television – the first movement to coincide with the rise the University of Alabama to enroll her. 1960, Elijah Mohammed, leader of the Nation of Islam, calls for a of mass media In defiance of the ruling, they expelled her in response all-black state. He advocated for complete separation of the races. The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation in the court system that typified the Civil Rights Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956 Voter registration organizing Movement in the first half of the 20th Century broadened after Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith were previously Local black leaders in Mississippi (Amzie Moore, Aaron Brown to a strategy that emphasized "direct action"—primarily arrested for the same thing; Colvin was a pregnant teenager Henry, Medgar Evers) asked SNCC to help register black boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, marches and similar tactics that and Smith’s father was an alcoholic, so the NAACP did not voters and to build community organizations that could win a relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil pursue their cases for fear of encouraging stereotyping share of political power in the state. disobedience. This mass action approach typified the movement from 1960 to 1968. 1956, a policy of “massive resistance” is declared by Senator 1961, “Black Like Me” by John Howard Griffin is published Churches, the centers of their communities, local grassroots Harry Byrd (Virginia) to unite other white politicians and leaders A white southerner deliberately tanned and dyed his skin to organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses, in a cause to prevent desegregation. allow him to directly experience the life of the Negro in the mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This Deep South, displaying the brutality of Jim Crow segregation was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating The Southern Manifesto, opposing integration of schools, is to a national audience. change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges. created and signed by 19 senators and 81 members of the House of Representatives form Southern states. Integration of Mississippi Universities, 1956-1965 The Jewish community supported the Civil Rights Movement. 1956 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover orders the FBI to begin the James Meredith and the University of Mississippi, 1962 Statistically Jews were one of the most actively involved non- COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt "dissident" black groups in the Movement. groups within the United States. The growing militancy of the freedom struggle was in part due to Many Jewish students worked in concert with blacks for COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects the pressure put on the mainstream civil rights organizations by CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full-time organizers and summer conducted by the FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X, who sharply criticized their volunteers during the Civil Rights era. Jews made up roughly discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations. weaknesses and hesitations, and their inability to prevent racist half of the white northern volunteers involved in the 1964 attacks against Black people. Mississippi Freedom Summer project and half of the civil COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s. planting false reports in the media, smearing through forged letters, harassment, wrongful imprisonment & assassination. Albany (Georgia) Movement, 1961-1962 The American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, The SCLC, which had been criticized by some student activists and Anti-Defamation League actively promoted civil rights Desegregation of Central HS (Little Rock, Arkansas), 1957 for its failure to participate more fully in the Freedom Rides, committed much of its prestige and resources to a desegregation Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) In response to the governor using state police to prevent desegregation, President Eisenhower nationalized the National campaign in Albany. Formed by Martin Luther King Jr, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Guard and uses the military to force the school’s desegregation. The campaign was a failure because of the tactics of the local Ella Baker, among others. police chief, and divisions within the black community. It did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the Cooper v.Aaron (1958) The police contained the marchers without violent attacks on NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for The Supreme Court rules that states are bound by the Court’s demonstrators that inflamed national opinion; arrested local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters decisions, and could not choose to ignore them. demonstrators were taken to jails in surrounding communities, organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to allowing plenty of room to remain in the local jail. support such campaigns. NAACP v.Alabama (1958) Prichett also foresaw King's presence as a danger and forced It made non-violence both its central tenet and its primary The Supreme Court rules that the NAACP was not required to his release to avoid King's rallying the black community. King method of confronting racism. release membership lists to continue operating in the state. left in 1962 without having achieved any dramatic victories. 12 June 1963, Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is murdered in Freedom Summer, 1964 (Mississippi) The Civil Rights Era, 1954-1969 Mississippi by a member of the KKK. COFO brought nearly 1,000 activists to Mississippi – most of (Page 2 of 3) them white college students – to join with local black activists to September 1963, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools," and organize the Alabama) is bombed by the KKK, murdering four girls. Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Freedom Rides, 1961 Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the Civil Rights activists on buses travel to the segregated south to Governor Wallace of Alabama tried to block the integration of the outsiders and attempts to change their society. State and local test Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which legally ended segregation University of Alabama. President Kennedy uses soldiers to force governments, police, the White Citizens' Council KKK used for passengers engaged in interstate travel. enrollment of two black students. arrests, beatings, arson, murder, spying, firing, evictions, and Organized by CORE, but support from SNCC intensified in other forms of intimidation and harassment to oppose the response to the ensuing violence. March on Washington 1963 project and prevent blacks from registering to vote or A collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, achieving social equality. 1962, Representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP form the the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other 21 June 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared. Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). liberal organizations. The march had six official goals: The bodies of James Chaney (a young black Mississippian) Meaningful civil rights laws, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (both white 1962, Cesar Chavez, advocating for Chicano migrant worker A massive federal works program, Jewish students) were found weeks