Segregation And The Civil Rights Movement

, Research Paper

Segregation and The Civil Rights Motion

Segregation was an effort by white Southerners to divide the races in every

domain of life and to accomplish domination over inkinesss. Segregation was frequently

called the Jim Crow system, after a folk singer show character from the 1830s who

was an old, crippled, black slave who embodied negative stereotypes of inkinesss.

Segregation became common in Southern provinces following the terminal of Reconstruction

in 1877. During Reconstruction, which followed the Civil War ( 1861-1865 ) ,

Republican authoritiess in the Southern provinces were run by inkinesss, Northerners,

and some sympathetic Southerners.

The Reconstruction authoritiess had passed Torahs

opening up economic and political chances for inkinesss. By 1877 the

Democratic Party had gained control of authorities in the Southern provinces, and

these Southern Democrats wanted to change by reversal black progresss made during

Reconstruction. To that terminal, they began to go through local and province Torahs that

specified certain topographic points “For Whites Only” and others for “Colored.” Blacks had

separate schools, transit, eating houses, and Parkss, many of which were

ill funded and inferior to those of Whites.

Over the following 75 old ages, Jim Crow

marks went up to divide the races in every possible topographic point. The system of

segregation besides included the denial of voting rights, known as disfranchisement.

Between 1890 and 1910 all Southern provinces passed Torahs enforcing demands for

vote that were used to forestall inkinesss from vote, in malice of the 15th

Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which had been designed to

protect black vote rights. These demands included: the ability to read

and write, which disqualified the many inkinesss who had non had entree to

instruction; belongings ownership, something few inkinesss were able to get; and

paying a canvass revenue enhancement, which was excessively great a load on most Southern inkinesss, who

were really hapless. As a concluding abuse, the few inkinesss who made it over all these

hurdlings could non vote in the Democratic primaries that chose the campaigners

because they were unfastened merely to Whites in most Southern provinces. Because inkinesss

could non vote, they were virtually powerless to forestall Whites from segregating

all facets of Southern life. They could make little to halt favoritism in

public adjustments, instruction, economic chances, or lodging. The

ability to fight for equality was even undermined by the prevalent Jim Crow

marks, which invariably reminded inkinesss of their inferior position in Southern

society. Segregation was an all encompassing system. Conditionss for inkinesss in

Northern provinces were slightly better, though up to 1910 merely about 10 per centum of

inkinesss lived in the North, and prior to World War II ( 1939-1945 ) , really few

inkinesss lived in the West. Blacks were normally free to vote in the North, but

there were so few inkinesss that their voices were hardly heard. Segregated

installations were non as common in the North, but inkinesss were normally denied

entryway to the best hotels and eating houses. Schools in New England were normally

integrated, but those in the Midwest by and large were non. Possibly the most

hard portion of Northern life was the intense economic favoritism against

inkinesss. They had to vie with big Numberss of recent European immigrants for

occupation chances and about ever lost.

Early Black Resistance to Segregation

Blacks fought against favoritism whenever possible. In the late 1800s inkinesss

sued in tribunal to halt separate seating in railway autos, provinces &#8217 ;

disfranchisement of electors, and denial of entree to schools and eating houses. One

of the instances against segregated rail travel was Plessy v. Ferguson ( 1896 ) , in

which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that “separate but equal &#8221 ;

adjustments were constitutional. In fact, offprint was about ne’er equal,

but the Plessy philosophy provided constitutional protection for segregation for

the following 50 old ages. To protest segregation, inkinesss created new national

organisations. The National Afro-American League was formed in 1890; the Niagara

Motion in 1905; and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored

Peoples ( NAACP ) in 1909. In 1910 the National Urban League was created to assist

inkinesss make the passage to urban, industrial life. The NAACP became one of

the most of import black protest organisations of the twentieth century. It relied

chiefly on a legal scheme that challenged segregation and favoritism in

tribunals to obtain equal intervention for inkinesss. An early leader of the NAACP was

the historian and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, who get downing in 1910 made

powerful statements in favour of protesting segregation as editor of the NAACP

magazine, The Crisis. NAACP attorneies won tribunal triumphs over elector

disfranchisement in 1915 and residential segregation in 1917, but failed to hold

lynching outlawed by the Congress of the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.

These instances laid the foundation for a legal and societal challenge to segregation

although they did small to alter mundane life. In 1935 Charles H. Houston,

the NAACP’s main legal advocate, won the first Supreme Court instance argued by

entirely black advocate stand foring the NAACP. This win invigorated the

NAACP’s legal attempts against segregation, chiefly by converting tribunals that

segregated installations, particularly schools, were non equal. In 1939 the NAACP

created a separate organisation called the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that had a

non-profit-making, tax-free position that was denied to the NAACP because it lobbied the

U.S. Congress. Houston’s main adjutant and subsequently his replacement, Thurgood Marshall,

a superb immature attorney who would go a justness on the U.S. Supreme Court,

began to dispute segregation as a attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

World War I

When World War I ( 1914-1918 ) began, inkinesss enlisted to contend for their state.

However, black soldiers were segregated, denied the chance to be leaders,

and were subjected to racism within the armed forces. During the war, 100s

of 1000s of Southern inkinesss migrated northerly in 1916 and 1917 to take

advantage of occupation gaps in Northern metropoliss created by the war. This great

migration of Southern inkinesss continued into the 1950s. Along with the great

migration, inkinesss in both the North and South became progressively urbanised

during the twentieth century. In 1890, approximately 85 per centum of all Southern inkinesss lived

in rural countries; by 1960 that per centum had decreased to about 42 per centum. In

the North, approximately 95 per centum of all inkinesss lived in urban countries in 1960. The

combination of the great migration and the urbanisation of inkinesss resulted in

black communities in the North that had a strong political presence. The black

communities began to exercise force per unit area on politicians, voting for those who

supported civil rights. These Northern black communities, and the politicians

that they elected, helped Southern inkinesss fighting against segregation by

utilizing political influence and money.

The 1930s

The Great Depression of the 1930s increased black protests against

favoritism, particularly in Northern metropoliss. Blacks protested the refusal of

white-owned concerns in all-black vicinities to engage black sales representatives.

Using the motto “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work,” these runs persuaded

inkinesss to boycott those concerns and revealed a new combativeness. During the same

old ages, inkinesss organized school boycotts in Northern metropoliss to protest

prejudiced intervention of black kids. The black protest activities of the

1930s were encouraged by the spread outing function of authorities in the economic system and

society. During the disposal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the

federal authorities created federal plans, such as Social Security, to guarantee

the public assistance of single citizens. Roosevelt himself was non an vocal

protagonist of black rights, but his married woman Eleanor became an unfastened advocator for

equity to inkinesss, as did other leaders in the disposal. The Roosevelt

Administration opened federal occupations to inkinesss and turned the federal bench

off from its preoccupation with protecting the freedom of concern corporations

and toward the protection of single rights, particularly those of the hapless and

minority groups. Get downing with his assignment of Hugo Black to the U.S.

Supreme Court in 1937, Roosevelt chose Judgess who favored black rights. As early

as 1938, the tribunals displayed a new attitude toward black rights; that twelvemonth the

Supreme Court ruled that the province of Missouri was obligated to supply entree

to a public jurisprudence school for inkinesss merely as it provided for whites-a new accent

on the equal portion of the Plessy philosophy. Blacks sensed that the national

authorities might once more be their ally, as it had been during the Civil War.

World War II

When World War II began in Europe in 1939, inkinesss demanded better intervention than

they had experienced in World War I. Black newspaper editors insisted during

1939 and 1940 that black support for this war attempt would depend on just

intervention. They demanded that black soldiers be trained in all military functions

and that black civilians have equal chances to work in war industries at

place. In 1941 A. Philip Randolph, caput of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car

Porters, a brotherhood whose members were chiefly black railway workers, planned a

March on Washington to demand that the federal authorities require defence

contractors to engage inkinesss on an equal footing with Whites. To prevent the March,

President Roosevelt issued an executive order to that consequence and created the

federal Fair Employment Practices Committee ( FEPC ) to implement it. The FEPC did

non prevent favoritism in war industries, but it did supply a lesson to

inkinesss about how the menace of protest could ensue in new federal committednesss

to civil rights. During World War II, inkinesss composed about one-eighth of the

U.S. armed forces, which matched their presence in the general population.

Although a disproportionately high figure of inkinesss were put in noncombat,

support places in the military, many did fight. The Army Air Corps trained

inkinesss as pilots in a controversial unintegrated agreement in Tuskegee, Alabama.

During the war, all the armed services moved toward equal intervention of inkinesss,

though none categorically rejected segregation. In the early war old ages, 100s of

1000s of inkinesss left Southern farms for war occupations in Northern and Western

metropoliss. In fact more inkinesss migrated to the North and the West during World War

II than had left during the old war. Although there was racial tenseness and

struggle in their new places, inkinesss were free of the worst racial subjugation,

and they enjoyed much larger incomes. After the war inkinesss in the North and West

used their economic and political influence to back up civil rights for Southern

inkinesss. Blacks continued to work against favoritism during the war,

disputing voting registrars in Southern courthouses and actioning school boards

for equal educational commissariats. The rank of the NAACP grew from 50,000

to about 500,000. In 1944 the NAACP won a major triumph in Smith v. Allwright,

which outlawed the white primary. A new organisation, the Congress of Racial

Equality ( CORE ) , was founded in 1942 to dispute segregation in public

adjustments in the North. During the war, black newspapers campaigned for a

Double V, victories over both fascism in Europe and racism at place. The war

experience gave about one million blacks the chance to contend racism in

Europe and Asia, a fact that black veterans would retrieve during the battle

against racism at place after the war. Possibly merely as of import, about ten

times that many white Americans witnessed the loyal service of black

Americans. Many of them would object to the continued denial of civil rights to

the work forces and adult females beside whom they had fought. After World War II the impulse

for racial alteration continued. Black soldiers returned place with finding to

hold full civil rights. President Harry Truman ordered the concluding integration

of the armed forces in 1948. He besides committed to a domestic civil rights policy

prefering vote rights and equal employment, but the U.S. Congress rejected his

proposals. School Desegregation

In the postwar old ages, the NAACP’s legal scheme for civil rights continued to

win. Led by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund challenged and

overturned many signifiers of favoritism, but their chief push was equal

educational chances. For illustration, in Sweat v. Painter ( 1950 ) , the Supreme

Court decided that the University of Texas had to incorporate its jurisprudence school.

Marshall and the Defense Fund worked with Southern complainants to dispute the

Plessy philosophy straight, reasoning in consequence that offprint was inherently unequal.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard statements on five instances that challenged elementary-

and secondary-school segregation, and in May 1954 issued its landmark opinion in

Brown v. Board of Education that stated that racially segregated instruction was

unconstitutional. White Southerners received the Brown determination foremost with daze

and, in some cases, with looks of good will. By 1955, nevertheless, white

resistance in the South had grown into monolithic opposition, a scheme to

carry all Whites to defy conformity with the integration orders. It was

believed that if adequate people refused to collaborate with the federal tribunal order,

it could non be enforced. Tacticss included firing school employees who showed

willingness to seek integrating, shuting public schools instead than

desegregating, and boycotting all public instruction that was integrated. The

White Citizens Council was formed and led resistance to school integration all

over the South. The Citizens Council called for economic coercion of inkinesss who

favored incorporate schools, such as firing them from occupations, and the creative activity of

private, all-white schools. Virtually no schools in the South were desegregated

in the first old ages after the Brown determination. In Virginia one county did so

shut its public schools. In Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, Governor Orval

Faubus defied a federal tribunal order to acknowledge nine black pupils to Central High

School, and President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal military personnels to implement

integration. The event was covered by the national media, and the destiny of the

Small Rock Nine, the pupils trying to incorporate the school, dramatized

the earnestness of the school integration issue to many Americans. Although

non all school integration was

every bit dramatic as in Little Rock, the

integration procedure did proceed-gradually. Frequently schools were

desegregated merely in theory, because racially segregated vicinities led to

segregated schools. To get the better of this job, some school territories in the seventiess

tried busing pupils to schools outside of their vicinities. As

integration progressed, the rank of the Ku Klux Klan ( KKK ) grew. The KKK

used force or menaces against anyone who was suspected of prefering

integration or black civil rights. Klan panic, including bullying and

slaying, was widespread in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, though Klan

activities were non ever reported in the media. One terrorist act that did

receive national attending was the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old

black male child slain in Mississippi by Whites who believed he had flirted with a

white adult female. The test and acquittal of the work forces accused of Till’s slaying were

covered in the national media, showing the go oning racial dogmatism of

Southern Whites.

Political Protest

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Despite the menaces and force, the battle rapidly moved beyond school

integration to dispute segregation in other countries. On December 1, 1955, Rosa

Parks, a member of the Montgomery, Alabama, subdivision of the NAACP, was told to

give up her place on a metropolis coach to a white individual. When Parks refused to travel,

she was arrested. The local NAACP, led by Edgar D. Nixon, recognized that the

apprehension of Parks might beat up local inkinesss to protest unintegrated coachs.

Montgomery’s black community had long been angry about their mistreatment on

metropolis coachs where white drivers were frequently ill-mannered and opprobrious. The community had

antecedently considered a boycott of the coachs, and about nightlong one was

organized. The Montgomery coach boycott was an immediate success, with virtually

consentaneous support from the 50,000 inkinesss in Montgomery. It lasted for more than

a twelvemonth and dramatized to the American public the finding of inkinesss in the

South to stop segregation. A federal tribunal ordered Montgomery’s coachs

desegregated in November 1956, and the boycott ended in victory. A immature Baptist

curate named Martin Luther King, Jr. , was president of the Montgomery

Improvement Association, the organisation that directed the boycott. The protest

made King a national figure. His facile entreaties to Christian brotherhood and

American idealism created a positive feeling on people both inside and

outside the South. King became the president of the Southern Christian

Leadership Conference ( SCLC ) when it was founded in 1957. SCLC wanted to

complement the NAACP legal scheme by promoting the usage of nonviolent, direct

action to protest segregation. These activities included Marches, presentations,

and boycotts. The violent white response to black direct action finally

forced the federal authorities to face the issues of unfairness and racism in

the South. In add-on to his big following among inkinesss, King had a powerful

entreaty to broad Northerners that helped him act upon national public sentiment.

His protagonism of passive resistance attracted protagonists among peace militants. He

forged confederations in the American Jewish community and developed strong ties to

the curates of wealthy, influential Protestant folds in Northern

metropoliss. King frequently preached to those folds, where he raised financess for

SCLC. The Sit-Ins

On February 1, 1960, four black college pupils at North Carolina A & A; T

University began protesting racial segregation in eating houses by sitting at

“white-only” tiffin counters and waiting to be served. This was non a new signifier of

protest, but the response to the sit-ins in North Carolina was alone. Within

yearss sit-ins had spread throughout North Carolina, and within hebdomads they were

taking topographic point in metropoliss across the South. Many eating houses were desegregated. The

sit-in motion besides demonstrated clearly to inkinesss and Whites alike that immature

inkinesss were determined to reject segregation openly. In April 1960 the Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC ) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina,

to assist form and direct the pupil sit-in motion. King encouraged SNCC’s

creative activity, but the most of import early adviser to the pupils was Ella Baker,

who had worked for both the NAACP and SCLC. She believed that SNCC should non be

portion of SCLC but a separate, independent organisation run by the pupils. She

besides believed that civil rights activities should be based in single black

communities. SNCC adopted Baker’s attack and focused on doing alterations in

local communities, instead than endeavoring for national alteration. This end differed

from that of SCLC which worked to alter national Torahs. During the civil rights

motion, tensenesss on occasion arose between SCLC and SNCC because of their

different methods. Freedom Riders

After the sit-ins, some SNCC members participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides

organized by CORE. The Freedom Riders, both black and white, traveled around the

South in coachs to prove the effectivity of a 1960 Supreme Court determination. This

determination had declared that segregation was illegal in coach Stationss that were

unfastened to interstate travel. The Freedom Rides began in Washington, D.C. Except

for some force in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the trip due south was peaceable

until they reached Alabama, where force erupted. At Anniston one coach was

burned and some riders were beaten. In Birmingham, a rabble attacked the riders

when they got off the coach. They suffered even more terrible whippings by a rabble in

Montgomery, Alabama. The force brought national attending to the Freedom

Riders and ferocious disapprobation of Alabama functionaries for leting the force.

The disposal of President John Kennedy interceded to protect the Freedom

Riders when it became clear that Alabama province functionaries would non vouch

safe travel. The riders continued on to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were

arrested and imprisoned at the province penitentiary, stoping the protest. The

Freedom Rides did ensue in the integration of some coach Stationss, but more

significantly, they demonstrated to the American populace how far civil rights

workers would travel to accomplish their ends.

SCLC Campaigns

SCLC’s greatest part to the civil rights motion was a series of extremely

publicized protest runs in Southern metropoliss during the early sixtiess. These

protests were intended to make such public upset that local white functionaries

and concern leaders would stop segregation in order to reconstruct normal concern

activity. The presentations required the mobilisation of 100s, even

1000s, of dissenters who were willing to take part in protest Marches as

long every bit necessary to accomplish their end and who were besides willing to be arrested

and sent to gaol. The first SCLC direct-action run began in 1961 in Albany,

Georgia, where the organisation joined local presentations against segregated

public adjustments. The presence of SCLC and King escalated the Albany

protests by conveying national attending and extra people to the

presentations, but the presentations did non coerce dialogues to stop

segregation. During months of protest, Albany’s constabulary head continued to imprison

demonstrators without a show of constabulary force. The Albany protests ended in

failure. In the spring of 1963, nevertheless, the direct-action scheme worked in

Birmingham, Alabama. SCLC joined the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a local civil

rights leader, who believed that the Birmingham constabulary commissioner, Eugene

“Bull” Connor, would run into dissenters with force. In May the SCLC staff

stepped up antisegregation Marches by carrying adolescents and school kids

to fall in. The vocalizing and intoning striplings who filled the streets of

Birmingham caused Connor to abandon restraint. He ordered constabularies to assail

demonstrators with Canis familiariss and firemans to turn hard-hitting H2O hosieries on

them. The resulting scenes of force were shown throughout the state and the

universe in newspapers, magazines, and most significantly, on telecasting. Much of the

universe was shocked by the events in Birmingham, and the reaction to the force

increased support for black civil rights. In Birmingham white leaders promised

to negociate an terminal to some segregation patterns. Business leaders agreed to

hire and advance more black employees and to integrate some populace

adjustments. More of import, nevertheless, the Birmingham presentations built

support for national statute law against segregation.

Desegregating Southern Universities

In 1962 a black adult male from Mississippi, James Meredith, applied for admittance to

University of Mississippi. His action was an illustration of how the battle for

civil rights belonged to persons moving entirely every bit good as to organisations.

The university attempted to barricade Meredith’s admittance, and he filed suit. After

working through the province tribunals, Meredith was successful when a federal tribunal

ordered the university to integrate and accept Meredith as a pupil. The

governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, defied the tribunal order and tried to

prevent Meredith from inscribing. In response, the disposal of President

Kennedy intervened to continue the tribunal order. Kennedy sent federal United States Marshals Services with

Meredith when he attempted to inscribe. During his first dark on campus, a public violence

broke out when Whites began to hassle the federal United States Marshals Services. In the terminal, 2 people

were killed, and about 375 people were wounded. When the governor of Alabama,

George C. Wallace, threatened a similar base, seeking to barricade the integration

of the University of Alabama in 1963, the Kennedy Administration responded with

the full power of the federal authorities, including the U.S. Army, to forestall

force and enforce integration. The confrontations with Barnett and Wallace

pushed Kennedy, whose support for civil rights up to that clip had been

tentative, into a full committedness to stop segregation.

The March on Washington

The national civil rights leading decided to maintain force per unit area on both the

Kennedy disposal and the Congress to go through civil rights statute law by

be aftering a March on Washington for August 1963. It was a witting resurgence of A.

Philip Randolph’s planned 1941 March, which had yielded a committedness to fair

employment during World War II. Randolph was at that place in 1963, along with the

leaders of the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, the Urban League, and SNCC. Martin Luther King,

Jr. , delivered the keynote reference to an audience of more than 200,000 civil

rights protagonists. His “I Have a Dream” address in forepart of the elephantine sculpture

of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, became celebrated for how it expressed

the ideals of the civil rights motion. Partially as a consequence of the March on

Washington, President Kennedy proposed a new civil rights jurisprudence. After Kennedy was

assassinated in November 1963, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, strongly urged

its transition as a testimonial to Kennedy’s memory. Over ferocious resistance from

Southern legislators, Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through

Congress. It prohibited segregation in public adjustments and favoritism

in instruction and employment. It besides gave the executive subdivision of authorities the

power to implement the act’s commissariats.

Voter Registration

The twelvemonth 1964 was the apogee of SNCC’s committedness to civil rights activism

at the community degree. Get downing in 1961 SNCC and CORE organized elector

enrollment runs in to a great extent black, rural counties of Mississippi, Alabama,

and Georgia. SNCC concentrated on elector enrollment, believing that vote was

a manner to authorise inkinesss so that they could alter racist policies in the South.

SNCC worked to register inkinesss to vote by learning them the necessary skills-

such as reading and writing-and the right replies to the elector enrollment

application. SNCC worker Robert Moses led a elector enrollment attempt in McComb,

Mississippi, in 1961, and in 1962 and 1963 SNCC worked to register electors in the

Mississippi Delta, where it found local protagonists like the farm-worker and

militant Fannie Lou Hamer. These civil rights activities caused violent

reactions from Mississippi’s white supremacists. Moses faced changeless terrorist act

that included menaces, apprehensions, and whippings. In June 1963 Medgar Evers, NAACP

field secretary in Mississippi, was shot and killed in forepart of his place.

In 1964 SNCC workers organized the Mississippi Summer Project to register inkinesss

to vote in that province. SNCC leaders besides hoped to concentrate national attending on

Mississippi’s racism. They recruited Northern college pupils, instructors,

creative persons, and clergy-both black and white-to work on the undertaking, because they

believed that the engagement of these people would do the state more

concerned about favoritism and force in Mississippi. The undertaking did

receive national attending, particularly after three participants, two of whom

were white, disappeared in June and were subsequently found murdered and buried near

Philadelphia, Mississippi. By the terminal of the summer, the undertaking had helped

1000s of inkinesss attempt to register, and about 1000 had really become

registered electors.

The Summer Project increased the figure of inkinesss who were politically active

and led to the creative activity of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party ( MFDP ) . When

white Democrats in Mississippi refused to accept black members in their

deputation to the Democratic National Convention of 1964, Hamer and others went

to the convention to dispute the white Democrats’right to stand for

Mississippi. In a televised interview, Hamer detailed the torment and maltreatment

experienced by black Mississippians when they tried to register to vote. Her

testimony attracted much media attending, and President Johnson was upset by the

perturbation at the convention where he expected to be nominated for president.

National Democratic Party functionaries offered the black Mississippians two

convention seats, but the MFDP rejected the via media offer and went place.

Subsequently, nevertheless, the MFDP challenge did consequence in more support for inkinesss and

other minorities in the Democratic Party.

In early 1965 SCLC employed its direct-action techniques in a voting-rights

protest initiated by SNCC in Selma, Alabama. When protests at the local

courthouse were unsuccessful, dissenters began a March to Montgomery, the province

capital. As the marchers were go forthing Selma, mounted constabulary round and tear-gassed

them. Televised scenes of that force, called Bloody Sunday, s