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African Americans and the civil rights movement. - Coggle Diagram
African Americans and the civil rights movement.
Protests & Action
Sit-ins 1960
Grassroot action first organized by 4 university students
Civil disobedience → their activism cause 70,000 more students in other areas to protest
Greensboro, North Carolina, white only lunch counter called Woolworths
impacts
Showed that the focus of civils right activists has turned from legal changes to direct action
150 cities desegregated their lunch counters
The Albany Movement 1961-62
In Georgia Organized by SNCC
Boycotts at bus stops → Albany bus station which ignored the Interstate Commerce Commission’s order to desegregate
impacts
limited success - there was violence at the end which generated bad publicity
Birmingham April-May 1963
first protest that was led entirely by King. he chose Birmingham due to:
de facto segregation
division between white, white businessman thought that racism as inhibited economic development, but there were also white supremacists and incidents of violence
commissioner Connor was a white supremacist
impact
led the municipal government to change the city's discrimination laws, meant to pressure business leaders to open employment to people of all races, and end segregation in public facilities, met with violence
King is arrested, 500 children who were arrested
MEDIA
Little changed in Birmingham itself but it inspired many protests throughout the South
March on Washington August 1963
SCLC - MLK, NAACP, CORE, SNCC, NALC, NAACP, NUL
AIMS
Encourage executive action to increase black employment
encourage the passage of the Civil Rights Act
Advocate for civil and economic rights of African Americans
250,000 people marched - 25% of them were white
imPACTS
Media
pressuring the administration of John F. Kennedy to initiate a strong federal civil rights bill in Congress
Symbolic importance
hope
Freedom Summer 1964-65
Voting registration campaign
only 1% of black americans were registered to vote
Mississippi
KKK (police and government officials were members of the KKK)
Jim Crow Laws
schools not desegregated
Black people live in poverty
Aims
To teach African Americans about their constitutional right to vote
To encourage voter registration
To raise awareness of the discrimination that was still prevalent in Mississippi
Impacts
Positive
900 volunteers --> including white
40 freedom schools
negative
30 schools bombed, 35 churches burned
out of 17,000 voters that were registered only 1600 were accepted bc they didn’t pass the test
Selma Voting Rights Campaign 1965
Situation
Average white family had a 4 times greater income than a black family
23 black people registered to vote
JCL remained
March from Selma to Montgomery
Aimed to publicized the need for a Voting Rights Act
“Bloody Sunday”
3,000 people arrested by the end of February
80 white people
Stephen Oates (1994) described Selma as “the movement’s finest hour”
Sped up the passage of the voting rights act
Voting Rights Act signed 6th of August 1965
Freedom Summer educated black voters on the importance of their voice highlighting the voting problem
Impacts
ended litteracy tests, and poll taxes
Granted equal voting rights
stats
positive
1966 - only 4 of the old Confederate states have less than 50% of eligible black voters registered
1965-1990 number of black legislators and members of the Congress raises from 2 to 160
1980 - the proportion of registered black voters was 7% less than the proportion of whites
Black managers 13.2-32.6%
Overall: great impact
Chicago Freedom Movement 1966
why there?
3 million people - 700,000 black
Many problems persist, unemployment, housing, and educational problems
De facto segregation in housing
Mayor Daley was not racist
process
Their focus was discrimination in housing sales which prevented black Americans from moving out of the ghettos
negative
1966 Chicago rally 30,000 instead of 100,000 which they expected
They didn’t have very clear aims
Local Chicago activists + SCLC = no
MLK had little political influence and no support in the North compared to the South
violence
Riots cost 2$ million
impacts
SCLC obtained a 4$ million federal grant to improve housing
“black hopes were raised then dashed” - Vivienne Sanders
“So far King has been pretty much of a failure at organizing” New Republic
why failed
Chicago’s black population was too large to mobilize
White people were not inclined to support those who rioted and destroyed their neighborhoods
Limited press coverage
Situation in the North
economic inequality and de facto segregation
ghettos
poor housin
hard to break cycle of poverty
Schools don’t provide solid education → 32% of ghetto pupils finished high school comparing to 56% of white children
Unemployment
AA - 10% of US population, 46% of those unemployed
Chicago - 50-70% of black youth unemployment