ch21 amgov civil rights

Chapter 21: Civil Rights: Equal Justice Under Law

Section 1

Copyright © Pearson Education, Inc. Slide 3Chapter 21, Section 4

Civil Rights: Equal Justice Under Law

•How have various minority groups in American society been discriminated against?

• African Americans were once enslaved and along with Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans, have been denied equal political, social, and economic rights for many years.

• Women have also been denied equal representation in politics and the workforce, and have received unequal pay.


Objectives

1. Understand what it means to live in a heterogeneous society.

2. Summarize the history of race-based discrimination in the United States.

3. Examine discrimination against women in the past and present.


Key Terms• heterogeneous: a mixture made up of different

parts that are unrelated to each other• immigrant: aliens legally admitted as

permanent residents of a country• reservation: public lands set aside by

government for use by Native American tribes• refugee: one who seeks protection from war,

persecution, or some other danger• assimilation: the process by which people of

one culture merge into and become part of another culture

• acculturation: absorbing and adopting the new culture one is placed in


A Heterogeneous Society

• The population of the United States is predominantly white and has been throughout its history.

• Due largely to recent trends in immigration, the United States is more heterogeneous and diverse today. – The minority population exceeds the white population

in California, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Texas.

• There are also more women than men in the U.S. population today.


A Heterogeneous Society, cont.

• Since the 1960s, the African American, Asian American, and Hispanic American populations have grown faster than the white population.

• White Americans have often been reluctant to yield full rights to non-white Americans.


African Americans

• African Americans have faced persistent unjust treatment since colonial days, when many thousands of Africans were brought to America as slaves.

• Today, African Americans are a large minority group of over 40 million, more than 13% of the U.S. population.

• African Americans led the civil rights movement that has expanded equality and rights for Americans of all backgrounds.


Native Americans

• The early Native American population was devastated by disease and warfare brought by European colonists and the westward expansion of the United States.

• Today about 3 million Native Americans live in the United States, most on or near reservations set aside by the government.

• Over the years, Native Americans have faced severe discrimination.


• Poverty, alcoholism, and unemployment are problems on many reservations.

• Life expectancy is far below the national average.

• The Indian Education Act of 1972 has funded Native American educational programs aimed at improving reservation economies.

Native Americans, cont.

Casinos have helped raise their economy!


Hispanic Americans

• Hispanic Americans, or Latinos, have a Spanish-speaking background. They may belong to any race.

• Today, America’s 45 million Hispanic Americans make up the nation’s largest and fastest growing minority group, having passed African Americans in 2000.


Hispanic Americans, cont.

• Hispanic Americans can be divided into four main subgroups.

– More than half the Hispanics in the United States are Mexican Americans who were born in Mexico or trace their ancestry there.

– Puerto Ricans are another large group, most living in the Northeast.


Diversity in the U.S.

• The U.S. Census Bureau divides the American population into groups based on race and Hispanic origin.– Which of these groups were not counted in the 1790

census? What percentage of the population today has Hispanic origins?


Diversity in the U.S., cont.

• Although the population of the United States remains predominantly white, minority populations are growing at a faster rate than the majority population.– What is the rate of growth for Asian Americans? What are

the benefits of diversity in a community?


Asian Americans

• Chinese laborers came to the United States in the mid-1800s to work in mines and to build railroads.– The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and other

laws allowed very few Asians to enter the United States until the 1960s.

• Japanese Americans were unjustly placed in relocation camps during World War II.


Asian Americans, cont.

• Congress changed U.S. immigration policies in 1965. This led to the arrival of many immigrants from China, Korea, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines.

• Today there are more than 15 million Asian Americans. A large population lives in Hawaii, California, and New York City.


Women

• Checkpoint: What was the significance of the Declaration of Sentiments?

– On July 19, 1848, women’s rights activists met in Seneca Falls, New York and issued the Declaration of Sentiments, demanding equal political, economic, and social rights for women.

– In spite of many gains in all of these areas, today women are still under heavily underrepresented in government and corporate management.


Women, cont.

• The Equal Pay Act makes it illegal to pay women less than men for the same work, yet on average women earn 80 cents for every dollar earned by men.

– What does this cartoon

say about equality in the workplace?

The cartoon clearly suggests that the woman is underpaid (the standard phrase is “another day, another dollar”) and that she is aware of this workplace inequality


Women, cont.

• Women often work in lower-paying job fields and are less well-educated than male workers. These differences can often be traced to discrimination.

• Women are also more likely than men to put their careers on hold to raise children.


Review

• Now that you have learned about how various minority groups in American society have been discriminated against, go back and answer the Chapter Essential Question.– Why are there ongoing struggles for civil

rights?


1. Which of the following groups has suffered the worst discrimination in the United States?(a) Native Americans(b) Women(c) African Americans(d) Hispanic Americans

2. More than one third of which group lives on or near reservations? (a) African Americans(b) Native Americans(c) Asian Americans(d) Hispanic Americans


Section 2


Objectives

1. Explain the importance of the Equal Protection Clause.

2. Describe the history of segregation in America.

3. Examine how classification by gender relates to discrimination.


Key Terms

• rational basis test: a test used to decide if a government classification is discriminatory or not

• strict scrutiny test: a stricter test than a rational basis test in which officials must show that they have a strong governmental interest in classifying people

• segregation: the separation of one group from another on the basis of race


Key Terms, cont.

• Jim Crow: discriminatory laws aimed at African Americans

• separate-but-equal doctrine: the idea that separate but equal facilities are legal

• integration: the process of bringing a segregated group into mainstream society

• de jure: by law

• de facto: by fact


Introduction

• How has the interpretation of the guarantee of equal rights changed over time?

– The Supreme Court once upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation and laws that discriminated against women.

– Thanks to many legal challenges, racial segregation is illegal today and many sex-based distinctions are considered unconstitutional.


Equal Protection Clause

• The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment bans the states from drawing unfair distinctions between classes of people.

• The bronze statue Freedom stands atop the Capitol, symbolizing equal rights for all.


Equal Protection Clause, cont.

• Government has the power to draw distinctions between groups, but cannot make unreasonable distinctions.

• The Supreme Court applies the rational basis test to most equal protection cases. – This test asks if the classification in question

bears a reasonable relationship to the achievement of some proper governmental purpose.


Equal Protection Clause, cont.

• In some cases the Supreme Court applies the strict scrutiny test.

– This test is used when a case deals with either fundamental rights such as the right to vote, or with “suspect classifications” such as race or sex.

– In such cases a state must be able to show that compelling governmental interest justifies the distinctions drawn between people.


• Beginning in the 1800s, nearly half the states passed segregation laws separating one race from another.

• These laws enforced segregation in public and private facilities, such as schools, hotels, restaurants, and railroads.

Segregation


www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs


Southern trees bear strange fruitBlood on the leaves and blood at the rootBlack bodies swinging in the southern breezeStrange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant southThe bulging eyes and the twisted mouthScent of magnolias, sweet and freshThen the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is fruit for the crows to pluckFor the rain to gather, for the wind to suckFor the sun to rot, for the trees to dropHere is a strange and bitter crop

Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit


Katzenbach v. McClung


Separate-But-Equal

• In 1896, the Supreme Court upheld segregation by ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate coaches for African Americans were legal because they were equal in quality to the ones used by whites.

• African American university students won several Court cases by proving that the separate college facilities provided for them were not equal.

• However, the basic separate-but-equal doctrine remained the law.


Brown v. Board of Education

• Checkpoint: What was the result of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling?

– In 1954, the Supreme Court overturned separate-but-equal and declared that racial segregation in public education was unconstitutional.

– The process of desegregating public schools was slow. In 1969 the Court called for faster progress.


De Jure & De Facto Segregation

• Segregation de jure—by law—was abolished by 1970.

• Yet de facto segregation—segregation that exists even without laws—remains. – Housing patterns may create schools with mainly

African American students.– A common desegregation method involves

busing students to different districts. – Some school systems now base their integration

efforts on trying to create an economically diverse student body.


De Jure Segregation

• The Supreme Court held separate-but-equal facilities to be constitutional in 1896.– Jim Crow laws

limited voting rights and required separate facilities for African Americans.

– Similar laws legalized Mexican American segregation in Texas and throughout the Southwest.


Disenfranchisement


Other Forms of Segregation

• The Supreme Court has held that racial segregation is unconstitutional in many areas, including:– Public swimming pools– Public recreational areas – Local transportation– State prisons and local jails

• All laws banning interracial marriages have also been struck down.


Classification by Gender

• The Constitution does not specifically grant rights to either men or women, only to “persons” and “people.”

• Many laws that discriminated against women were intended to protect them due to their supposed weaknesses.

– Early on, the Supreme Court upheld laws that banned women from practicing law and laws that did not require them to serve on juries.


Classification by Gender, cont.

• The Court has now found many sex-based distinctions to be unconstitutional.

– In 1975, the Court ruled that women cannot be excluded from jury service.

– In 1996, the Court ruled that women can attend the Virginia Military Institute.


Classification by Gender, cont.

• Classification by gender is not always unconstitutional. – For example, the Court has ruled that women do not

have to register for the draft.

• But laws that treat men and women differently will be overturned unless:– They are intended to serve an important

governmental objective– They are substantially related to achieving that

objective


Review

• Now that you have learned about how the interpretation of the guarantee of equal rights has changed over time, go back and answer the Chapter Essential Question.– Why are there ongoing struggles for civil

rights?


Section 3


Objectives

1. Outline the history of civil rights legislation from Reconstruction to today.

2. Explore the issues surrounding affirmative action.


Key Terms

• affirmative action: a policy requiring most employers to take positive steps to remedy the effects of past discrimination

• quota: the share of a group needed to satisfy an affirmative action requirement

• reverse discrimination: discrimination against the majority group in society


Introduction

• What is the history of civil rights legislation from Reconstruction to today?– Little civil rights legislation was passed until the late

1950s.

– In the second half of the 1900s, the U.S. government took major steps toward outlawing discrimination and correcting past inequalities.

• The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968

• Title IX of the Education Act of 1972

• The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

• The adoption of affirmative action policies


Early Efforts

• Between the end of Reconstruction and the late 1950s, Congress passed no key civil rights legislation.

– Southern white Democrats who opposed such legislation held many key offices in Congress.

– The majority white population was generally

unaware or unconcerned about discrimination against nonwhite minorities.


• The civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped push through key civil rights legislation.

• An early breakthrough was the 1957 case Brown v. Board of Education, which required public school desegregation.

Civil Rights Movement


Civil Rights Act of 1964

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 protected the voting rights of African Americans.

• This Act also outlawed discrimination in other areas. – It prohibits discrimination based on race, color,

religion, national origin, sex, or physical disability in any program that receives federal funding.

– It bans discrimination based on those same categories on the part of employers and labor unions.


Civil Rights Act of 1964, cont.

• This law also states that no person can be denied access to or refused service in public places such as hotels, motels, theaters, and restaurants due to their race, color, religion, national origin, or physical disability.



• Checkpoint: What is the Civil Rights Act of 1968?

– Also called the Open Housing Act, this law states that no one can refuse to sell or rent a dwelling to any person on the grounds of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability.

– In 1988, Congress strengthened the law to let the Justice Department bring charges against those who violated it.


Affirmative Action

Chapter 21, Section 3Chapter 21, Section 3

Affirmative Action is a policy that requires most employers to take positive steps to remedy the effects of past

discriminations. • This policy applies to all the agencies of the Federal

Government, to all the States and their local governments, and to all those private employers who sell goods or services to any agency of the Federal Government.

• Beginning in 1965, affirmative action programs established guidelines and timetables for overcoming past discriminations.

• Many employers hire certain workers due to their minority backgrounds or gender. Such rules requiring specific numbers of jobs or promotions for members of certain groups are called quotas.


Title IX

• Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 forbids discrimination on the basis of gender in any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

• A major effect has been requiring equal funding for women’s and men’s athletic programs.


The ERA

• The Equal Rights Amendment would have added the words show at right to the Constitution.

• Why do you think the ERA was not ratified?


Affirmative Action

• Affirmative action is an effort to correct the effects of past discrimination by addressing current inequalities.

– Common measures include preferential hiring or admissions policies aimed at making a workforce or student body reflect the general makeup of the local population.

– Affirmative action policies are used by all agencies of the federal, state, and local governments, as well as private employers who contract with the federal government.


Affirmative Action Cases and Measures

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1978

• Allan Bakke sued the University of California for reverse discrimination and won. This case shows that the Constitution does not allow race to be used as the only factor in the making of affirmative action decisions.


Reverse Discrimination

• Critics of affirmative action argue that it leads to reverse discrimination against members of the majority.

• They say that the Constitution requires all public policies to be “color blind.”

• Such arguments helped convince voters in California, Michigan, and Washington to approve measures that eliminate nearly all affirmative action programs in state agencies.


The Bakke Case

• In 1978, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke became the first major affirmative action case.

– The Court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause had been violated when a white student was denied admission to a medical school due only to a racial quota.

– However, the Court also ruled that race could be used as one factor in the admissions process.


Later Cases

• In 1987, the Court ruled that women can also benefit from affirmative action hiring policies.

• In 1995, the Court ruled in Adarand Constructors v. Pena that affirmative action programs are legal only if they serve some “compelling government interest.”

• The current Court has indicated that all future affirmative action cases will be reviewed according to the same strict standards.


University of Michigan Cases

• In 2003, the Court ruled in Grutter v. Bollinger that a state university can take race into account for admissions.

• But the Court said in Gratz v. Bollinger that it may not blindly give extra weight to race in that process.

• The Court also stated that limited affirmative

action was acceptable in pursuit of diversity.


Seattle and Louisville Cases

• In 2007, the Court decided two cases that centered on the question, “To what extent can public schools use race as a factor when trying to integrate schools”?

• In Parents Involved v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, the Court narrowly overturned school integration policies that relied too heavily on race.


Review

• Now that you have learned about the history of civil rights legislation from Reconstruction to today, go back and answer the Chapter Essential Question.– Why are there ongoing struggles for civil

rights?


1. Affirmative action is a program that requires employers to(a) give their employees two weeks of vacation every year.(b) have equal facilities for men and women.(c) give annual bonuses to all employees who have more than one child.(d) take positive steps to remedy the effects of past discriminations.

2. Which of the following Supreme Court cases dealt with reverse discrimination?

(a) Regents of the University of California v. Bakke(b) Baker v. Carr(c) Goss v. Lopez(d) Dred Scott v. Sanford

Section 3 Review


Section 4


Objectives

1. Describe how people become American citizens by birth and by naturalization.

2. Explain how an American can lose his or her citizenship.

3. Illustrate how the United States is a nation of immigrants.

4. Compare and contrast the status of undocumented aliens and legal immigrants.


Key Terms

• citizen: a person who owes allegiance to the United States and is under the protection of its laws

• jus soli: the law of the soil

• jus sanguinis: the law of the blood

• naturalization: the legal process by which a person can become a citizen of another country after birth


Key Terms, cont.

• alien: a citizen of a foreign nation who lives in this country

• expatriation: the legal process by which a loss of citizenship occurs

• denaturalization: the process by which a naturalized citizen loses his or her citizenship involuntarily

• deportation: the process by which aliens are legally required to leave the country


Introduction

• How can American citizenship be attained and how has immigration policy changed over the years?

– Citizenship can be gained by birth or by naturalization.

– Immigration policy has changed from being very lax to the use of strict country quotas then to a less restrictive system focused more on fighting illegal immigration.


Citizenship in the Constitution

• The Constitution does not clearly define citizenship.

• A citizen is a member of a state or nation who owes allegiance to it by birth or naturalization and is entitled to full civil rights.

• The 14th Amendment specifies that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens.

• Nearly 90 percent of all Americans are citizens because they were born in this country.

• Hundreds of thousands of aliens become U.S. citizens each year through the naturalization process.


Citizenship by Birth

• According to jus soli, a person born on U.S. soil is a U.S. citizen.– This applies to people born in all U.S.

territories and embassies, as well as to people born in the United States whose parents are not citizens.

• According to jus sanguinis, a child born to an American citizen on foreign soil can also become an American citizen.


• Congress has the sole power to set the terms by which a person can become a U.S. citizen.

• Most legal immigrants may become naturalized citizens after applying, being investigated, being approved by a judge, and taking the oath of citizenship.

Naturalization


Naturalization, cont.

• Everyone in a newly acquired territory may also be naturalized at once by Congress or by treaty.

• According to the chart on the right, in what year were the most people naturalized? The fewest?


Loss of Citizenship

• Every American citizen has the right to voluntarily abandon his or her citizenship through expatriation.

• Congress cannot take away someone’s citizenship for a crime.– But a person who became a U.S. citizen by

deception can have their citizenship taken away.

– Denaturalization is the process by which citizens can lose their citizenship involuntarily.


Regulation of Immigration

• Only Congress has the power to regulate who may enter or leave the country.

• Congress did little to regulate immigration until the 1880s.

• Once the frontier closed, labor was no longer in short supply, and more immigrants began coming from southern and eastern Europe, Congress passed new laws denying admission to many groups of people.


Quotas

• Checkpoint: What happened to the country-based quota system?

– In 1921, 1924, and 1929, Congress set limits on the number of immigrants who could come from each European country.

– Immigration from Asia, Africa, and elsewhere was also banned or restricted.

– The Immigration Act of 1965 eliminated the country quota system and set a total limit of 270,000 immigrants per year.


Current Immigration Policies

• The Immigration Act of 1990 governs the admission of aliens to the United States.

– It sets a limit of 675,000 immigrants each year.

– Immigrants who are close relatives of American citizens or resident aliens, or who have valued occupational skills, receive special preference.

– Many types of potential immigrants are excluded under the law, such as criminals and drug addicts.


Immigrants in the U.S.


Deportation

• Checkpoint: For what reasons may a person be deported?

– The Supreme Court allows the U.S. government to deport aliens for a wide variety of reasons.

– Most aliens are deported for entering the United States illegally or being convicted of a serious crime.

– Because deportation is a civil matter, it does not require a criminal trial or bail.


Undocumented Aliens

• No one knows how many illegal aliens are in the United States.

– Estimates place the number at 12 million, with more than half coming from Mexico seeking seasonal work.

– At least 5 million undocumented aliens work in the United States.

– These numbers have strained public school and social welfare systems, particularly in major border states.


Current Laws

• In 1986, Congress allowed more than 2 million illegal aliens to become legal residents and made it a crime to hire illegal aliens.

• The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996:– Increased the size of the Border Patrol– Made it easier to deport illegal aliens– Toughened the penalties for smuggling aliens into the

country– Blocked illegal aliens from collecting Social Security

or welfare benefits


Current Laws, cont.

• The immigration debate continues.• Some want stricter measures to stop illegal

immigration, while others want to let more illegal aliens become legal residents.


1. What is the legal process in which citizenship is lost?(a) naturalization(b) expatriation(c) jus sanguinis(d) jus soli

2. What government agency has the exclusive power to regulate immigration? (a) The Immigration and Naturalization Service(b) Congress(c) The Supreme Court(d) The Census Bureau

Section 4 Review


Review

• Now that you have learned about how American citizenship can be attained and how immigration policy has changed over the years, go back and answer the Chapter Essential Question.– Why are there ongoing struggles for civil

rights?

Jackie Robinson• Jackie Robinson (1919-1972), was the first black person to play modern major

league baseball. Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 and played all 10 years of his major league career with the Dodgers.

• Robinson started as a first baseman for the Dodgers but gained his greatest fame playing second base. Robinson was an outstanding hitter and finished with a .311 lifetime batting average. He was also a superior runner and base stealer. In 1947, Robinson was named Rookie of the Year. In 1949, he won the National League's Most Valuable Player award, as well as the league's batting championship with a .342 average.

• Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on Jan. 31, 1919, in Cairo, Georgia. He starred in four sports at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). In 1945, Robinson played with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. In 1946, he played minor league baseball for the Montreal Royals. In 1956, Robinson received the Spingarn Medal. He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. He died on Oct. 24, 1972.

Jackie Robinson, shown here sliding into home plate, became the first African American player in modern major league baseball. He joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Robinson gained fame for his hitting and his daring base running.

Congress of Racial Equality

"Making Equality a Reality for All"

• Born in Marshall, Texas, Farmer was an educator, administrator, and one of the founders of the Congress of Racial Equality-CORE.

• Raised in an environment that valued education and religious faith, James Farmer was an outstanding student. After skipping several grades in elementary school, he entered Wiley College in Marshall, Texas (where his father, one of the few African American Ph.D.s in the South, had taught), at the age of 14. Graduating in 1938, Farmer went on to Howard University's School of Religion. He graduated from Howard in 1941. Farmer opposed war in general, and more specifically objected to serving in the segregated armed forces. When the U.S. entered World War II later that year, he applied for conscientious objector status but found he was deferred from the draft because he had a divinity degree.

• Rather than become an ordained Methodist minister, Farmer, who told his father he would rather fight that church's policy of segregated congregations, chose instead to go to work for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Farmer was FOR's secretary for race relations, helping the Quaker, pacifist organization craft its responses to such social ills as war, violence, bigotry, and poverty. It was a job that left Farmer, who was then living in Chicago, Illinois, enough time to begin forming his own approach to these issues — one based less on FOR's religious pacifism than on the principle of nonviolent resistance.

• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942 as the Committee of Racial Equality by an interracial group of students in Chicago. Many of these students were members of the Chicago branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a pacifist organization seeking to change racist attitudes. The founders of CORE were deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's teachings of nonviolent resistance.

• CORE started as a nonhierarchical, decentralized organization funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of its members. The organization

was initially co-led by white University of Chicago student George Houser and black student James Farmer. In 1942, CORE began protests against segregation in public accommodations by organizing sit-ins. It was also in 1942 that CORE expanded nationally. James Farmer traveled the country with Bayard Rustin, a field secretary with FOR, and recruited activists at FOR meetings. CORE's early growth consisted almost entirely of white middle-class college students from the Midwest. CORE pioneered the strategy of nonviolent direct action, especially the tactics of sit-ins, jail-ins, and freedom rides.

• By the late 1960s, Farmer, seeing CORE drift away from its Gandhian roots, left the organization he had helped found and had led for more than 20 years. Always an active writer and speaker, he continued to lecture publicly on civil rights and eventually took a teaching position at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. In 1968 Farmer ran for U.S. Congress on the Republican Party ticket and was defeated by Shirley Chisholm, an African American running as a Democrat. Shortly thereafter, he went to work for Republican President Richard M. Nixon's administration as Assistant Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

• In the years since retiring from politics (1971), Farmer has served on many organizational boards, including the Coalition of American Public Employees. He has also continued to teach and lecture widely. In 1985 he published his autobiography, titled Lay Bare the Heart, and in 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded him the Congressional Medal of Freedom.

JAMES FARMER(January 12, 1920 - July 9, 1999)

First National Director of CORE

Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

• The Brown case was initiated and organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leadership who recruited African American parents in Topeka for a class action suit against the local school board. Although school buses were provided for African American children, they were only allowed to attend designated public schools based on race.

• On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court announced its decision that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The decision effectively denied the legal basis for segregation in Kansas and 20 other states with segregated classrooms, overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, and would forever change race relations in the United States.

• Ultimately, the NAACP sought to end the practice of "separate but equal" throughout every segment of society, including public transportation, dining facilities, public schools and all forms of public accommodation. Thurgood Marshall

Rosa Parks

• On December 1, 1955, a tired seamstress stood up for her rights by remaining seated. Rosa Parks refused to move from her seat in the Montgomery County bus to allow a white person to take her seat. She had had enough! The bus pulled over and the cops arrested her on the spot. She was taken in and fingerprinted—that’s when the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, a young man named Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. stepped in. Together they masterminded the Montgomery Bus Boycott—in which the black community refused to use the buses until their segregationist policy was changed. They car-pooled, roller-skated, rode bikes, and walked—and the buses ran empty for 381 days--over a year. But they won!!!!

Rosa Lee McCauley Parks

Birth: February 4, 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States Died: 24 October 2005Nationality: American Ethnicity: African American Occupation: civil rights advocate

• On December 1, 1955, Rosa Lee Parks (née McCauley; born 1913) refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger on a racially segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus. She was arrested and fined but her action led to a successful boycott of the Montgomery buses by African American riders.

• She worked with the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and serving as a deaconess at the Saint Matthew African Methodist Episcopal Church.

• Parks received numerous awards, including an honorary degree from Shaw College in Detroit, the 1979 NAACP Spingarn Medal, and an annual Freedom Award presented in her honor by the SCLC. In 1980 she was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize and in 1984 the Eleanor Roosevelt Women of Courage Award. In 1988 she founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development, to train African American youth for leadership roles, and began serving as the institute's president. In 1989 her accomplishments were honored at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Parks was in demand as a public speaker and traveled extensively to discuss her role in the civil rights movement.

• In September 1994 Parks was beaten and robbed in her Detroit home. She fully recovered from this incident and remained active in African American issues. In October 1995 she participated in the Million Man March in Washington D.C., giving an inspirational speech.

• In 1998 Parks was recognized with the first International Freedom Conductor Award given by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. President Bill Clinton awarded Parks the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor, in July 1999. In December 2000, the 50,000-square-foot Rosa Parks Library and Museum, featuring a life-size bronze sculpture of Parks, opened in Montgomery.

•UPDATES

• December 8, 2003: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Parks could proceed with her suit against hip-hop duo Outkast, who used her name without permission on a 1998 track. Originally filed in 1999, the suit had been dismissed by a federal judge who cited free speech and ruled in favor of Outkast. An appeals court reinstated part of her lawsuit, requiring an artistic reason to justify calling the song "Rosa Parks."

• October 28, 2004: A federal judge in Detroit upheld the appointment of former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer as Parks' guardian.

• January 13, 2005: Parks has had dementia since at least 2002, according to medical records released as part of a legal battle over a hip-hop song titled with her name.

She stood up for her rights by sitting down!

Emmett Till

• August, 1955• Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in

Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

• Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview.

• The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.

SCLC

• January-February,1957• Reverends Martin Luther King, Jr., Charles K. Steele, and

Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience.

• According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hate-mongers who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.

• As Gandhi, Thoreau, and Farmer had advocated, peaceful, passive resistance played well, especially on TV.

Trouble at Central High

• September, 1957• Governor Orval Faubus refused to allow the Little Rock Nine into his

all-white high school. He called out the National Guard to surround the school and prohibit their entrance, in defiance of federal law. Ike told Faubus that the law would be upheld and sent in the 101st Airborne paratroopers to ensure the students’ safety and admission. As Commander-in-Chief, Ike was going to make certain that the federal law was upheld. The nine attended Central High.

The Little Rock Nine pictured with Daisy Bates, the president of the Arkansas NAACP

SNCC & later The

Black Panthers

• April, 1960• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is

founded at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., providing young blacks with a place in the civil rights movement. The SNCC later grows into a more radical organization, especially under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael (1966–1967). As SNCC chair in 1966, he ejected more moderate leaders and set off a storm of controversy by calling for “black power,” a concept he elaborated in a 1967 book (with C. Hamilton). He will help form the Black Panther Party.

• His increasingly separatist politics isolated him from most of the civil-rights movement. He will leave America and change his name to Kwame Ture.

James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.

Medgar Evers - A civil rights activist and member of the NAACP, Evers was murdered on June 12, 1963 outside his home in Mississippi. The killing brought tremendous national attention, though Evers attackers went unconvicted until 1994.

• April 16, 1963– Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-

segregation protests in Birmingham, AL; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.

Civil disobedience• May, 1963• During civil rights protests in Birmingham, AL,

Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators.

These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.

The Battle of Birmingham—fire hoses and

attack dogs

• The Sept. 15, 1963, bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was one of the most abhorrent crimes of the civil rights movement. Four young girls attending Sunday school—Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins, aged 11 to 14—were killed when a bomb exploded at the church. Twenty others were injured. The church was a center for civil rights meetings, and just a few days earlier, courts had ordered the desegregation of Birmingham's schools.

• Bobby Frank Cherry, a demolitions expert, and three other white supremacists—Robert Chambliss, Thomas Blanton, and Herman Cash—were under investigation within days of the bombing. But two years later, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover declined to pursue the case, saying the chances for conviction were "remote." In 1968, federal authorities shut down the investigation.

• In the 1970s, after a U.S. Justice Department investigation revealed that former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had blocked evidence, Jefferson County, Ala., prosecutors reopened the case. More than a decade-and-a-half after the crime, the ringleader, Robert Chambliss, was convicted of one count of murder in the death of Carol McNair in 1977. He died in prison in 1985 without ever publicly admitting a role in the bombing. By this time, it was too late to try suspect Herman Cash, who had died in 1994.

• The remaining two suspects in the case, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, were finally indicted in 2000—more than two decades after Chambliss's conviction—when an FBI agent in Birmingham obtained more than 9,000 FBI documents and surveillance tapes that had been kept from the original prosecutors. Blanton was convicted of murder in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison. In Cherry's trial, several of his relatives came forward to testify against him. Cherry had bragged to a number of them over the years about the bombing. In 2002, he was convicted of four counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2004. One of the prosecutors in the case, Robert Posey, said Cherry "has worn this crime like a badge of honor."

4 Little Girls Killed in Church Bombing

Sept. 15, 1963, a racist bombing killed Carol Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Addie Mae

Collins and Carole Robertson.

Other Desegregation Issues

At the University of Alabama in 1963, bigoted Gov. George C. Wallace “stood in the schoolhouse door” to defy integration, but RFK assured him that Alabama was going to be attended by both races from that point on.

Forrest hands Autherine Lucy her book when she drops it on the way into my alma mater.

“I Have a

Dream!”

• Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters on Aug. 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed Nov. 3, 1967, in the Jefferson County (AL) Courthouse to serve a five-day sentence imposed in 1963 for organizing a mass protest in Birmingham, AL, in defiance of a temporary restraining order.

Malcolm X (right) shakes hands with Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in New York's Audubon Ballroom Jan. 1, 1964.

•On Aug. 28, 1963, over 200,000 Americans, including many whites, gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in the capital. To hear King's stirring "I Have a Dream" speech, which eloquently defined the moral basis of the civil rights movement.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968), an African American Baptist minister, was the main leader of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1950's and 1960's. He had a magnificent speaking ability, which enabled him to effectively express the demands of African Americans for social justice. King's eloquent pleas won the support of millions of people—blacks and whites—and made him internationally famous.

• He won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for leading nonviolent civil rights demonstrations. • With other black ministers, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

(SCLC) in 1957 to expand the nonviolent struggle against racism and discrimination. At the time, widespread segregation existed throughout the South in public schools, and in transportation, recreation, and such public facilities as hotels and restaurants. Many states also used various methods to deprive blacks of their voting rights. In 1960, King moved from Montgomery to Atlanta to devote more effort to SCLC's work. He became co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father.

• King and other civil rights leaders then organized a massive march in Washington, D.C. The event, called the March on Washington, was intended to highlight African-American unemployment and to urge Congress to pass Kennedy's bill. The movement won a major victory in 1964, when Congress passed the civil rights bill that Kennedy and his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, had recommended. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited racial discrimination in public places and called for equal opportunity in employment and education. In spite of King's stress on nonviolence, he often became the target of violence. White racists threw rocks at him in Chicago and bombed his home in Montgomery, Alabama. Finally, violence ended King's life at the age of 39, when James Earl Ray, an assassin, shot and killed him. King was fatally shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, April 4, 1968.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., graduated from Morehouse College (B.A., 1948), Crozer Theological Seminary (B.D., 1951), and Boston University (Ph.D., 1955). The son of the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, King was ordained in 1947 and became (1954) minister of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Ala. He led the black boycott (1955-56) of segregated city bus lines and in 1956 gained a major victory and prestige as a civil-rights leader when Montgomery buses began to operate on a desegregated basis.King organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which gave him a base to pursue further civil-rights activities, first in the South and later nationwide. His philosophy of nonviolent resistance led to his arrest on numerous occasions in the 1950s and 60s. His campaigns had mixed success, but the protest he led in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 brought him worldwide attention. He spearheaded the Aug., 1963, March on Washington, which brought together more than 200,000 people. In 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.King's leadership in the civil-rights movement was challenged in the mid-1960s as others grew more militant. His interests, however, widened from civil rights to include criticism of the Vietnam War and a deeper concern over poverty. His plans for a Poor People's March to Washington were interrupted (1968) for a trip to Memphis, Tenn., in support of striking sanitation workers. On Apr. 4, 1968, he was shot and killed as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel (since 1991 a civil-rights museum).

James Earl Ray, a career criminal, pleaded guilty to the murder and was convicted, but he soon recanted, claiming he was duped into his plea. Ray's conviction was subsequently upheld, but he eventually received support from members of King's family, who believed King to have been the victim of a conspiracy. Ray died in prison in 1998. King wrote Stride toward Freedom (1958), Why We Can't Wait (1964), and Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967). His birthday is a national holiday, celebrated on the third Monday in January. King's wife, Coretta Scott King, has carried on various aspects of his work. She also wrote My Life with Martin Luther King (1989).

Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929—1968, American clergyman and civil rights leader

Malcolm XAlso known as: Malcolm Little,

El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz

• Birth: May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska, United States Death: February 21, 1965 in New York, New York, United States Nationality: American Ethnicity: African American

• Malcolm X (1925-1965), African American civil rights leader, was a major 20th-century spokesman for black nationalism.

• Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebr. His father, a Baptist minister, was an outspoken follower of Marcus Garvey, the black nationalist leader in the 1920s who advocated a "back-to-Africa" movement for African Americans. During Malcolm's early years his family moved several times because they were threatened by Ku Klux Klansmen in Omaha; their home was burned in Michigan; and when Malcolm was 6 years old, his father was murdered. For a time his mother and her eight children lived on public welfare. When his mother became mentally ill, Malcolm was sent to a foster home. His mother remained in a mental institution for about 26 years. The children were divided among several families, and Malcolm lived in various state institutions and boarding-houses. He dropped out of school at the age of 15.

• Living with his sister in Boston, Malcolm worked as a shoeshine boy, soda jerk, busboy, waiter, and railroad dining car waiter. At this point he began a criminal life that included gambling, selling drugs, burglary, and hustling.

• In 1946 Malcolm was sentenced to 10 years for burglary. In prison he began to transform his life. His family visited and wrote to him about the Black Muslim religious movement. (The Black Muslims' official name was the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, and the spiritual leader was Elijah Muhammad, with national headquarters in Chicago.) Malcolm began to study Muhammad's teachings and to practice the religion faithfully. In addition, he enlarged his vocabulary by copying words from the dictionary, beginning with "A" and going through to "Z." He began to assimilate the racial teachings of his new religion; that the white man is evil, doomed by Allah to destruction, and that the best course for black people is to separate themselves from Western, white civilization--culturally, politically, physically, psychologically.

• In 1952 Malcolm was released from prison and went to Chicago to meet Elijah Muhammad. Accepted into the movement and given the name of Malcolm X, he became assistant minister of the Detroit Mosque. The following year he returned to Chicago to study personally under Muhammad and shortly thereafter was sent to organize a mosque in Philadelphia. In 1954 he went to lead the mosque in Harlem.

• Malcolm X became the most prominent national spokesman for the Black Muslims. He was widely sought as a speaker, and his debating talents against white and black opponents helped spread the movement's message. At this time in the United States there was a major thrust for racial integration; however, Malcolm X and the Black Muslims were calling for racial separation. He believed that the civil rights gains made in America were only tokenism. He castigated those African Americans who used the tactic of nonviolence in order to achieve integration and advocated self-defense in the face of white violence. He urged black people to give up the Christian religion, reject integration, and understand that the high crime rate in black communities was essentially a result of African Americans following the decadent mores of Western, white society. During this period Malcolm X, following Elijah Muhammad, urged black people not to participate in elections because to do so meant to sanction the immoral political system of the United States.

• In 1957 Malcolm X met a young student nurse in New York; she shortly became a member of the Black Muslims, and they were married in 1958; they had six daughters.

• For at least two years before 1963, some observers felt that there were elements within the Black Muslim movement that wanted to oust Malcolm X. There were rumors that he was building a personal power base to succeed Elijah Muhammad and that he wanted to make the organization political. Others felt that the personal jealousy of some Black Muslim leaders was a factor.

• On Dec. 1, 1963, Malcolm X stated that he saw President John F. Kennedy's assassination as a case of "The chickens coming home to roost." Soon afterward Elijah Muhammad suspended him and ordered him not to speak for the movement for 90 days. On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X publicly announced that he was leaving the Nation of Islam and starting two new organizations: the Muslim Mosque, Inc., and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He remained a believer in the Islamic religion.

• During the next months Malcolm X made several trips to Africa and Europe and one to Mecca. Based on these, he wrote that he no longer believed that all white people were evil and that he had found the true meaning of the Islamic religion. He changed his name to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He announced that he planned to internationalize the black struggle by taking black people's complaints against the United States before the United Nations. For this purpose he sought aid from several African countries through the Organization of Afro-American Unity. At the same time he stated that his organizations were willing to work with other black organizations and with progressive white groups in the United States on voter registration, on black control of community public institutions such as schools and the police, and on other civil and political rights for black people. He began holding meetings in Harlem at which he enunciated the policies and programs of his new organizations. On a Sunday afternoon, Feb. 21, 1965, as he began to address one such meeting, Malcolm X was assassinated.


• Mississippi burning!• During a press conference in 1964, Dr.

King holds a picture of three missing civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman (left to right), who were murdered in Mississippi.

LBJ signs the CRA’64

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the United States was landmark legislation. The original purpose of the Bill was to protect black men from job (and other) discrimination, but at the last minute in an attempt to kill the bill, it was expanded to include protection for women. As a result it formed a political impetus for feminism.

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 transformed American society. It prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment.

• This simple statement understates the large shift in American society that occurred as a result. The Jim Crow laws in the South were abolished, and it was illegal to compel segregation of the races in schools, housing, or hiring.

• Although initially enforcement powers were weak, they grew over the years, and such later programs as Affirmative Action were made possible by the Civil Rights Act.

The March on Selma, AL• March 7,1965• Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in

support of voting rights but are stopped at the Edmund Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

• By 1965 concerted efforts to break the grip of state disfranchisement had been under way for some time, but had achieved only modest success overall and in some areas had proved almost entirely ineffectual. The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism.

• Finally, the unprovoked attack on March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance to effective voting rights legislation. President Johnson issued a call for a strong voting rights law and hearings began soon thereafter on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act.

• Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient to overcome the resistance by state officials to enforcement of the 15th Amendment. The legislative hearings showed that the Department of Justice's efforts to eliminate discriminatory election practices by litigation on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful in opening up the registration process; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional and enjoined, a new one would be substituted in its place and litigation would have to commence anew. Poll taxes and literacy tests were removed. Felony to interfere with voter registration.

• President Johnson signed the resulting legislation into law on August 6, 1965.

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