Lecture 11

The Civil Rights Movement

1. Making a Dream Come True: The Civil Rights Movement

 debate between black leaders Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois: “friendly relations with
the Southern white man” versus civil rights, right to equal participation in higher education and
liberal learning.

 DuBois was one of the founding members of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), founded February 12, 1909.

 When the U.S. entered World War II, President Roosevelt issued the Fair Employment Act, which
prohibited racial discrimination in the national defense industry (1941)  first federal law to promote
equal opportunity and prohibit employment discrimination in the U.S.

After the war  minorities still excluded from nation’s growing economic prosperity + struggle to win
their full freedoms and civil rights.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.’s activism engendered a genuine black cultural revolution a new phase in the
long history of inter-racial tension in America.

1946: President Harry S. Truman creates the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, which declared
racial discrimination a national problem.
US Supreme Court bans segregation in interstate bus travel (Freedom Riders put it to the test).

1948: President Truman orders the integration of all the U.S. armed forces.
US Supreme Court rules that federal and state courts cannot enforce laws which bar persons from owning
property based on race.

Desegregating Schools

1952: Thurgood Marshall1 presented six cases to the Supreme Court challenging “the separate but equal”
doctrine in the field of public education  Brown v. The Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954)

US SC’s unanimous opinion: “in the field of education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place”
as “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

 court order for desegregation to proceed with “all deliberate speed”.

1957: President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops to enforce the right of nine black children to
attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

1962: James Meredith, a black student, enrolls at the University of Mississippi under protection of federal
troops.

1963: President Kennedy sends federal troops to enforce right of black students to enroll at the University
of Alabama.

1
One of the most famous lawyers for NAACP, to become a Supreme Court Justice in 1967.
1
2. Towards Greater Equality

- the principle of Brown – equal opportunities and protection of the laws – went far beyond school
segregation  the legal foundations for a multiracial society in which civil rights are guaranteed under
the Fourteenth Amendment  “plural equality”

1955: bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her
seat to a white person.

1957: Congress passes a Civil Rights Act creating the US. Commission on Civil Rights and a CR
Division in the Department of Justice.

1961: President Kennedy establishes the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.

1963: 250,000 people attended the march on Washington, D.C. urging support for civil rights
legislation. Highlight of the day: Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech (brotherhood and
sisterhood of all humankind; main strategy = nonviolence (civil disobedience). 2

The Civil Rights Act (1964): most important piece of civil rights legislation in the nation’s history. Its 11
Titles (sections) outlawed voter discrimination; banned the use of federal funds for schools or programs
which discriminated; barred federal courts from sending civil rights cases back to state or local courts
with segregationist judges and all-white juries; expanded the CR Commission with additional powers and
procedures aimed to protect citizens, regardless of race or gender, against discrimination. 3

The Voting Rights Act of 1965: eliminated devices meant to prevent African-Americans from voting.

1967: Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court Justice.
Same year: Loving v. Virginia: SC voids all existing miscegenation4 laws.

1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN. Urban riots erupt across the country.

1971: Supreme Court finally declares gender discrimination unconstitutional: men and women had to
be equally treated under law.

1972: Equal Opportunity and Employment Act (EOEA) is passed, encouraging preferential hiring and
promotion of minorities and women. It also forbids employers from forcing employees “to speak only
English at all times in the workplace.”

1992: Riots break out in Los Angeles, following a jury’s acquittal of white L.A. police officers who had
been videotaped in the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King.

3. Civil Rights Activism Today

Black Lives Matter (BLM) = activist movement which campaigns against violence and systemic racism
toward black people (police killings of black people, racial profiling, racial inequality).

2
Dissatisfaction with King’s peaceful campaigns to end racial segregation gave rise to radical splinter parties among
the black community like the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims), the Organization of Afro-American Unity led by the
charismatic Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.
3
For instance, airlines were told they had to hire men as well as women for jobs as flight attendants. A nursing
school was told it could not turn down an applicant simply because he was male.
4
Marriage or cohabitation by persons of different race.
2