Civil+Rights+Notes

Civil Rights Movement--1950's

 * Cold War Awareness = double-standard no longer applied; The U.S. could not challenge the Soviets' human rights record and nurture Jim Crow laws at home.
 * African Americans emerged as a core constituency in the Democratic Party for Roosevelt and Truman, so Truman sought to make civil rights part of the Democratic platform to keep them part of the Democratic coalition
 * Truman's civil rights agenda was largely blocked by the Conservative coalition in Congress (Southern Democrats and Midwestern Republicans)
 * 1948--Truman integrated the armed forces
 * **Brown v. Board of Education (1954)**--unanimous landmark decision by the Supreme Court declaring "separate but equal" unconstitutional in public schools. NAACP argued the case led by **Thurgood Marshall** who would later become the first black Supreme Court justice.
 * First major victory to make the "separate but equal" Jim Crow laws begin to collapse
 * However, the Warren decision did not prescribe a definite timeline for compliance --> only 1% of schools in Deep South desegregated in 10 years
 * The **Little Rock 9 Central High School incident** forced Eisenhower to send troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce integration
 * Otherwise, Ike felt that integration could not be forced on Americans at gunpoint, and many feel his silence on the issue empowered the South to resist. His one lasting contribution was a permanent Civil Rights Commission that oversaw civil rights issues and advised the Administration accordingly.
 * The Brown decision marked the first chapter in the evolution of the Civil Rights Movement. The court decision may not have made immediate changes in the Southern status quo, but it empowered the next phase of the Civil Rights era because organizers knew the law was on their side. Blacks began taking the fight out of the courtroom and onto the streets.


 * Black Protest**
 * 1955--**Rosa Parks** refuses to give up her seat to a white man and sit in the back of the bus --> leads to year-long **Montgomery Bus Boycott**
 * **Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.** distinguishes himself as an instrumental leader of the boycott and establishes the **Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)** to "nationalize" the movement toward equality and integration. The religious ties of this organization show how influential black churches and leaders were in black communities and in the Civil Rights movement overall.
 * Passive resistance = use weakness and lack of power in non-violent ways as a weapon against discrimination
 * 1960--young, black college students start the cafeteria sit-in movement to protest discrimination in restaurants and other white-owned businesses
 * **Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)** is established to coordinate students nationally to fight oppression and Jim Crow across the South.
 * The SCLC, SNCC and other organizations replace the NAACP as the driving force behind the Civil Rights movement as action is taken from the courtroom to the streets. This may be considered the second phase of the movement.