Civil rights

CIVIL RIGHTS

LIFE FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE SOUTH

• De jure segregation – legal segregation through written laws• Jim Crow laws – designed to separate blacks and

whites• Plessy v. Ferguson, 1896 – “separate but equal”• Segregation of beaches, cemeteries, hospitals,

restaurants, schools, transportation, and more

LIFE FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NORTH

• De facto segregation – unwritten segregation through customs, housing patterns, and traditions

• Segregation and discrimination in housing, jobs, and more

SEGREGATION IN AMERICA

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

• 1905 – Niagara Movement begun by W.E.B. Du Bois, William Monroe Trotter, and others

• 1909 – National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

• 1911 – Urban League formed to help poor black workers in cities

• 1941 – FDR ended discrimination in defense industries

• 1947 – Major League Baseball desegregated when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers

• 1948 – Harry Truman desegregated the United States military

IMPORTANT PEOPLE

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

• Brown v. Board of Education, 1954• Rosa Parks• Greensboro Sit-in, 1960 (Four African-American

college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, ordered coffee and doughnuts at a Woolworth’s lunch counter)• MLK joined demonstration and arrested• Public Safety Commissioner T. Eugene “Bull”

Connor turned fire hoses and police dogs on protestors, including kids

IMPORTANT PEOPLE

POLICE BRUTALITY

MARCH ON WASHINGTON, 1963

• August 28, 1963

• Over 200,000 peaceful demonstrators

• MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial

• Broadcasted live on national television

I HAVE A DREAM

BIRMINGHAM CHURCH BOMBING, 1963

• September 15, 1963

• Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama

• Four young girls killed when bomb exploded

ASSASSINATION OF JFK, 1963

• November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas

• Lyndon B. Johnson became president

CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

• Outlawed segregation in public accommodations• Required schools to desegregate

KKK (KU KLUX KLAN)

SELMA MARCH, 1965

• SCLC march in Selma, Alabama, for voting rights legislation• Edmund Pettus Bridge, between Montgomery and

Selma • “Bloody Sunday” – March 7, 1965• Alabama state troopers and others violently

stopped marchers• Voting Rights Act of 1965

ASSASSINATION OF MLK, 1968

• April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee

• Shot on balcony of Lorraine Motel (now the Civil Rights Museum)

• Killed by James Earl Ray, an ex-convict

• Riots erupted nationwide