Oakland Unified School District, Spring Semester, 2010

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Preparing for the OUSD 11th Grade Spring Writing Assessment

Assessment Question:

Agree or Disagree: The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s successfully met the political, economic, and social goals of African Americans that not been achieved during the Era of Reconstruction.

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Part I – A Review of the Era of Reconstruction (1865-1876)

What were the freedmen and freedwomen’s social, political, and economic aspirations in the years

after Emancipation?

What happened?

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“Emancipation”

Thomas Nast's depiction of emancipation (1865) at the end of the Civil War envisions the future of free blacks in the U.S.

Thomas Nast. Emancipation. Philadelphia: S. Bott, 1865. Wood engraving.Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-2573 (5-9)

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Amendments to the United States Constitution Following the Civil War

Thirteenth Amendment (1865) Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Fourteenth Amendment (1868) Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Fifteenth Amendment (1870)The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

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Freedman’s Schools

One of the many Freedmen’s schools set up by the Freedmen’s Bureau in the postwar South. These schools drew African Americans of all ages, who eagerly sought the advantages offered by education. (Library of Congress)

www.latinamericanstudies.org/slavery/freedmen..

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Religion

As slaves many blacks attended white churches and listened to white ministers. After the Civil War and the end of slavery, African Americans joined or founded black churches, such as the Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church of Richmond, Virginia.

From – Virginia Commenwealth University Library, http://www.library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/vbha/6th10.html

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“The First Vote”

"The First Vote"

From - Alfred R. Waud. Harper's Weekly, November 16, 1867.

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“Radical Members of the First Legislature after the War, South Carolina”

Because blacks in South Carolina vastly outnumbered whites, the newly-enfranchised voters were able to send so many African American representatives to the state assembly that they outnumbered the whites.

They worked to rewrite the state constitution and pass laws ensuring aid to public education, universal male franchise, and civil rights for all.

"Sea-island School, No. 1,--St. Helena Island. Established in April 1862."Education among the Freedmen, ca. 1866-70. Broadside.

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“Forty Acres and a Mule”: A Focus on Economic Rights

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/40acres/index.html

Abandoned plantations and the promise of freedom drew former slaves to plant crops and create their own communities.

Emancipation was finally real -- until white planters returned to claim their lands and federal government refused to redistribute the land to former slaves.Freed slaves on a Hilton Head Island plantation, two

wearing U.S. Army uniforms, cultivate sweet potatoes.

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The Sharecropping System Emerges

Family Picking Cotton in the fields near Savannah, Georgia, stereograph, c. 1867.

(Negative #50482, Collection of the New-York Historical Society) http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section3/section3_01.html

During Reconstruction, cotton remained the South's most important crop with the tools and methods of production essentially the same as before the war.

Most former slaves now worked as sharecroppers, who kept one-third to one-half of the crop for themselves with the remainder going to the landowner. Although the system afforded workers some degree of autonomy, it kept most in a state of poverty.

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“Separate but Equal” Becomes The Law of the Land (1896)

In the pivotal case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially separate facilities, if equal, did not violate the Constitution.

Segregation, the Court said, was not discrimination.

from - http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1

-segregated/separate-but-equal.html

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_plessy.html

http://www.landmarkcases.org/plessy/background3.html

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Reconstruction’s Legacy: The Unfinished Revolution

In the generation after the end of Reconstruction, the Southern states deprived blacks of their right to vote, and ordered that public and private facilities of all kinds be segregated by race. Until job opportunities opened in the North in the twentieth century, spurring a mass migration out of the South, most blacks remained locked in a system of political powerlessness and economic inequality…

Not until the mid-twentieth century would the nation again attempt to come to terms with the political and social agenda of Reconstruction. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s is often called the Second Reconstruction.

- historian, Eric Foner

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/epilogue.html

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Part II – The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Responding to Reconstruction’s Legacy:

The Civil Right Movement focuses on social, political, and economic rights and freedoms.

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Significant Civil Rights Era Court Rulings on: Building Upon the 14th Amendment

1954 – Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education I decision finds that “seperate but equal” education is unconstitutional, prohibiting racial segregation in public schools.

“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”

—Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren

1955 – The Supreme Court, Brown II, calls for school districts to desegregate immediately, or with “all deliberate speed.”

1971 - In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the Court ruled that busing students was an appropriate legal tool for addressing illegal segregation of the schools.

http://public.findlaw.com/civil-rights/civil-rights-basics/key-civil-rights-cases.html

Lawyers for Brown, George Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James Nabrit, celebrate the Supreme Court’s ruling.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/afam/afam-brown-photos.html

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The Montgomery (Alabama) Bus BoycottDecember, 1955

Be it Resolved as Follows:

1. That the citizens of Montgomery are requesting that every citizen in Montgomery, regardless of race, color, or creed, to refrain from riding buses owned and operated in the city of Montgomery by the Montgomery City Lines, Incorporated until some arrangement had been worked out between said citizens and the Montogmery City Lines, Incorporated.

-from Resolution of the Citizens Mass Meeting, December 5, 1955

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School IntegrationLittle Rock, Arkansas - 1957

I wanted to go to Central High School because they had more privileges. They had more equipment, they had five floors of opportunities. I understood education before I understood anything else. From the time I was two, my mother said, “you will go to college. Education is your key to survival.”

-Melba Patillo Beals, one of the “Little Rock Nine”

- From African-American Odyssey, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/odyssey/archive/09/0918002r.jpg

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The Sit-In Movement - 1960

We went into the five and tens - Woollworth, Kresge’s, McClellan’s -because these stores were known across the country. We took our seats in a very orderly, peaceful fashion. The students dressed like they were going to church or going to a big affair. They had their books,and we stayed there at the lunch counter, studying and preparing ourhomework, because we were denied service. The managers ordered the lunch counter be closed, that the restaurants be closed, and we’d sit there, all day long. - John Lewis,

President of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

- From African-American Odyssey, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/odyssey/archive/09/0918002r.jpg

Greensboro, North Carolina

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The Freedom Rides, 1961

Federal law said that there should be no segregation in interstate travel. The Supreme Court had decided that. But still laws in the southern states and local ordinances ordered segregation of the races on those buses? Why didn’t the federal government enforce its laws?

- James Farmer, President of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

- From Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, http://www.crmvet.org/images/imgcoll.htm

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March on Washington, 1963

It wasn’t the Harry Belafontes and the greats of Hollywood that made the march. What made the march was that black people voted that day with their feet. They came from every state, they came in jalopies, on trains, buses, anything they could get - some walked. - Bayard Rustin

- From Life Magazine, 9/6/63 - http://www.life.com/image/52259555/in-gallery/23101

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Freedom Summer - Mississippi, 1964

Voter registration worker George Ball explains how to vote to a mother of three in the family’s living room. -

From, Charles Moore, Powerful Days in Black and White, http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/features/moore/voteFrame.shtml

Two freedom Riders came to Sunday school that morning and they were pointing the finger at me, saying, “Just like that lady talking back there in the Sunday school class says that God help those that help themselves, you can help yourself by trying to register to vote.” That’s the first time in my life that I ever come in contact with anybody that tells me that I had the right to register to vote.

-Unita Blackwell

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Voting Rights The March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, 1965

We had witnessed at the March on Washington the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) call for one man, one vote. We went to Selma to test that idea.

-John Lewis

- From Spider Martin Civil Rights Collection , http://www.spidermartin.com/gallery25.html

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Malcolm X in Selma, 1965

"I want Dr. King to know that I didn't come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King."

-- in a conversation with Mrs. Coretta Scott King.

- From Malcolm X Official Website - http://www.malcolmx.com/index.html

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“From Protest to Politics”

…What began as a protest movement is being challenged to translate itself into a political movement…It is now concerned with not merely removing the barriers to full opportunity but with achieving the fact of equality.

… the Negro today finds himself stymied by obstacles of far greater magnitude than the legal barriers he was attacking before: automation [loss of jobs], urban decay [poor housing and government services], de facto school segregation.

These are problems which, well conditioned by Jim Crow, do not vanish upon its demise. They are more deeply rooted in our socioeconomic order; they are the result of the total society’s failure to meet not only the Negro’s needs, but human needs in general.

- Bayard Rustin, excerpt from “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement,” February, 1965.

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The Call for “Black Power”

Black Power was the guiding philosophy of SNCC in its later years. It began to develop and take hold sometime after 1964, and came to prominence in 1966 when Stokely Charmicael became head of the organization. The goal of Black Power was to empower and create a strong racial identity for African-Americans.

Black Power also encouraged a separation from white society, saying black people should write their own histories and form their own institutions, like credit unions and political parties. This empowered African-Americans by promoting feelings of beauty and self-worth and showing that they were strong enough to thrive without the support of white institutions.

- From SNCC 1960 – 1966, Six Years of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/black_power.html

Stokely Charmicael

(Kwame Ture)

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The Movement Moves North

Chicago is a city of more than million Negroes. It has been the Promised Land for thousands who sought to escape the cruelties of Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee…

Educational opportunities in Chicago, while an improvement over Mississippi, were hardly adequate to prepare Negroes for metropolitan life. A labor force of some 300,000 have found little beyond low paying service occupations open to them, and those who possessed skills and crafts found their ranks rapidly being depleted by automation and few opportunities for advancement and promotion.

Those few Negroes who were fortunate enough to achieve professional and managerial status found themselves victimized in their search for adequate housing.

Chicago is not alone in this plight, but it is clearly the prototype of the northern race problem.

- from “A Proposal by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the Development of Nonviolent Action Movement for the Greater Chicago Area,” 1966.

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From the Black Panther Party Platform and 10 Point Program – October, 1966

What We Want.

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

2. We want full employment for our people.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society..

7. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

Source: "Black Panther Party Ten Point Program." The Sixties Project. http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/

Manifestos/Panther_platform.html.

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A Failure to Attack Poverty – MLK Makes a Connection to the War in Vietnam

... I knew America could never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonical destructive suction tube. So I am increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and attack it as such…

- from Dr. Martin Luther King, Riverside Church, New York,

April 4, 1967

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“The Civil Rights Movement: What Good was it?” – Alice Walker

If the Civil Rights Movement is “dead” and if it gave us nothing else, it gave us each other forever, it gave some of us bread, some of us shelter, some of us knowledge and pride, all of us comfort. It gave us our children, our husbands, our brothers, our fathers, as men reborn and with a purpose for living. It broke the pattern of black servitude in this country. It shattered the phone “promise” of white soap opera that sucked away so many pitiful lives. It gave us history and men far greater than Presidents. It gave us heroes, selfless men of courage and strength, for our little boys and girls to follow. It gave us hope for tomorrow. It called us to life.

Because we live, it can never die.

-Alice Walker “The Civil Rights Movement: What Good was it?” 1966

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Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan - Summer of 1967

The summer of 1967 marked by 'urban unrest' that began during the mid-1960s in Harlem and Watts and tapered off by the early 1970s.

During the summer of 1967 one hundred and sixty four "civil disorders" were reported in one hundred and twenty eight American cities. Of these "disturbances" that took place in the summer of '67, Newark and Detroit were arguably the most severe.

…the underlying causes were quite complex, including police brutality, persistent poverty, and a lack of political representation for African American residents, as well as local opposition to the Vietnam War.

from http://www.67riots.rutgers.edu/introduction.html

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Memphis, Tennessee - 1968

“Fine, now we have the right to vote. Fine. We can now go to any restaurant , any hotel, anyplace we want to in America, but we don’t have the means. So what good does it do for people to go to any restaurant in the world if you don’t have the money to pay for a meal?”

- Dr. King , paraphrased by William RutherfordMemphis sanitation workers on strike in 1968

- From The Walter P. Reuther Library, http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/3631

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A Focus on Poverty – 1968

Washington, D.C.: The mule train that was a symbol of the Poor People's Campaign heads toward the Capitol after finally crossing the river into Washington June 25th. June 27, 1968.

-From “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement, “

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/story/15_poor.html#gallery

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Significant Civil Rights Era Court Rulings (cont.): Building Upon the 14th Amendment

1956 The Supreme Court, without comment, affirmed a lower court ruling declaring segregation of the Montgomery bus system illegal, giving a major victory to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the thousands of anonymous African Americans who had sustained the bus boycott in the face of violence and intimidation.

1962 Bailey v. Patterson The Court in this case prohibited racial segregation of interstate and intrastate transportation facilities.

1967 Loving v. Virginia This decision holds that state laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage are unconstitutional.

1968 Jones v. Mayer Co.The Court held in this case that federal law bars all racial discrimination (private or public), in sale or rental of property.

1971 In Griggs v. Duke Power Co., the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits not only intentional job discrimination, but also employer practices that have a discriminatory effect on minorities and women.

The Leadership Conference - http://www.civilrights.org/judiciary/supreme-court/key-cases.html

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Civil Rights Legislation – The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Support for a federal Civil Rights Act was one of the goals of the 1963 March on Washington. President John F. Kennedy had introduced the bill before his assassination. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed it into law on July 2, 1964.

It achieved many of the aims of a Reconstruction-era law, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was passed but soon overturned by the Supreme Court.

The 1964 Act barred discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in public facilities -- such as restaurants, theaters, or hotels.

Discrimination in hiring practices was also outlawed, and the act established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to help enforce the law.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/milestones/m06_act.html

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Civil Rights LegislationVoting Rights Act of 1965

"Signing the Voting Rights Act," August 6, 1965.U.S. News and World Report, August 16, 1965.

An act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States and for other purposes, August 6, 1965

The legislation outlawed literacy tests and provided for the appointment of Federal examiners, with the power to register qualified citizens to vote, in those states where past discrimination had existed. (The use of poll taxes in national elections had been abolished in 1964 by the 24th amendment to the Constitution.)

Section 2, which closely followed the language of the 15th amendment, applied a nationwide prohibition on the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color.

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The Civil Rights Act of 1968 – A Focus on Fair Housing

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 is also known as Title VIII of the Civil Rights act of 1968.

Congress passed the act in an effort to stop unlawful discrimination in housing based on race, color, sex, national origin, or religion.

The Fair Housing Act has become a central feature of modern Civil Rights enforcement, allowing people who suffered previous discrimination persons the right to rent or own residential property in areas that were previously segregated.

The department of housing and urban development (HUD) is charged with enforcement of the act. It issues regulations and institutes investigations into discriminatory housing practices.

Warren K. Leffler.Signing of the Civil Rights Act, April 11, 1968.Copyprint.U.S. News and World Report Photograph Collection,

Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-95480 (9-12)

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College Entrance Rate (number of high school graduates who enrolled in college) by Race 1960 and 2002

45.8%

66.7%

36.0%

58.7%

20.0%

25.0%

30.0%

35.0%

40.0%

45.0%

50.0%

55.0%

60.0%

65.0%

70.0%

1960 2002

White African American

Education: College Entrance RateEducation: College Entrance Rate

Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity

The Ohio State University, April 2004

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Personal Median Income 1954 to 2001

$3,900

$16,282

$30,240

$18,771

$21,466

$9,341

$7,193

$16,652

$0

$5,000

$10,000

$15,000

$20,000

$25,000

$30,000

$35,000

1954 2001

White Male African American Male White Female African American Female

Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity

The Ohio State University, April 2004

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