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• Wealthy New York lawyer, speechwriter and fundraiser
• MLK was warned by J. Edgar and JFK that Levison had communist ties
• FBI alleged that Levison was a top communist agent who smuggled gold from Moscow to finance SCLC’s operations and stir up racial waters in the United States
• This would cause JFK and Burke Marshall to demand that King drop Levison
• Marshall explained that the civil rights bill would make President Kennedy put his political life on the line and there could be no communists in King’s inner circle
• This would lead to MLK reluctantly firing Jack O’ Dell, another alleged communist
• However, King would continue to communicate with Levison through intermediaries
• Helped organize “In Friendship” in New York to assist southern activists |
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• Helped organize “In Friendship”
• Did not believe in King’s cautious strategies
• Promoted nonviolent, direct mass action
• Brought sit-in leaders together in Raleigh, North Carolina
• Urged them to form their own grassroots, democractic organization independent of the established civil rights groups, which she felt were too centralized and dependent on a single leader
• Result was the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• Challenged the students to find larger targets, something bigger than a hamburger
• Especially voting, housing, jobs and health care |
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• Governor of Arkansas
• Appointed more blacks to state positions than any predecessor, integrated the state’s colleges, and opposed lynching and the poll tax
• However, he needed to win reelection with a white population that was against desegregation
o He was also violated tradition by seeking a third term
• He employed the armed might of the state to nullify a federal court decision, the most flagrant states’ rights claim since South Carolina seceded before the Civil War
• Defied a court ordered and blocked integration of Central High School in 1957
• His lawlessness encouraged mob violence against the nine black school children seeking admittance
• This finally caused Eisenhower to send in federal troops and the schools were desegregated
• Eisenhower had been very reluctant to send federal troops in previous, similar instances |
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• Term coined by Virginia senator Harry Byrd
• Called for fierce opposition to school desegregation
• Resurrected the antebellum doctrines of states’ rights and interposition against federal interference
• This would lead to the signing of the Southern Manifesto which condemned the Brown decision and pledged to reverse it
• Declared Brown null and void
• Cut off state aid to desegregated schools, revoked the licenses of teachers in mixed classrooms, repealed compulsory attendance laws, empowered governors to close the schools, and provided tuition grants to white children who attended all-white private schools
• Most extreme case of massive resistance, Prince Edward county, VA shut down its schools for four years
• Blood shed at Ole Miss helped turn the tide against massive resistance, because violence repelled many white southern clergy, educators, businessman, labor leaders and editors |
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• President of Monroe, NC NAACP in the 1950s and 1960s
• Fled to Cuba to escape a bogus kidnapping charge, formed the Revolutionary Action Movement to wage guerilla warfare in American cities and thereby spark a black insurrection
• Defended two young black boys in the “Kissing Case”
• Local NAACP chapter served as a base for some freedom rides |
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• Prominent civil rights leader during the 1960s
• Best known for organizing freedom rides in the South
• Used Gandhian methods in the cause of racial equality
• Helped established the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942
• Quit CORE after internal squabble and became a union organizer
• Participated in and helped stage the earliest sit-ins
• Farmer’s freedom rides helped encourage Robert Kennedy to promote the Voter Education Program |
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• Voter-registration drive promoted by Bob Moses called the Mississippi Summer Project, of Freedom Summer of 1964
• Key feature was the important of hundreds of northern volunteers, ¾ of whom were white college students, to register local blacks and teach their children
• Some activists opposed white involvement for implying black incompetence, undercutting the grassroots movement and probably antagonizing local sheriffs
• Violence was prevalent throughout the summer, most notably was “Mississippi Burning” case
• Real gains were accomplished, three thousand black children attended freedom schools
• The Freedom Summer marked the end of SNCC’s efforts to appeal to the nation’s consience and the opening of a more confrontational chapter in the movement |
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• Founded in 1964 by black activists
• Organized during the freedom summer
• Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, served as an alternative to the state’s Jim Crow party
• Formed to challenge white racists for control of the regular Mississippi Democratic organization
• Challenged the state’s white racist delegates to the Democratic National Convention
• LBJ only afforded them two seats at the DNC, because he did not want to offend southern whites in an election year
• This led many black activists to question the sincerity of their white allies in the civil rights coalition
• This would lead to growing sentiment and support toward the development of the black power movement |
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• Universal Negro Improvement Association
• Centered around Garvey’s black nationalism
• Blacks should control their own businesses and institutions
• Largest, most influential Afro-American mass movement in history by the 1920s
• Formed by Marcus Garvey
• 1921: had 10x as many members as NAACP |
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• attorney for the NAACP
• pioneered the legal battle against racial discrimination in publicly supported schools
• tried to force southern schools to meet their obligation under Plessy v. Ferguson
• legally trained Thurgood Marshall
• helped turn Howard Law into a civil rights laboratory
• taught his protégés to become social engineers to abolish segregation |
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• civil rights leader in the 1960s and later a member of US House of Representatives
• helped found SNCC in April 1960
• sit-ins helped spawn new leaders such as Lewis, Bob Moses, Julian Bond
• participated in freedom rides and was seriously injured when he tried to enter a white-only terminal bathroom in Rock Hill, SC
• beaten and arrested again in Montgomery, Alabama
• chairman of SNCC from 1963-1966
• speech in Washington had to be toned down |
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• one of the “halfway houses”
• civil rights training ground founded by Myles and Zilphia Houston
• workshop was led by Septima Clark, a born teacher who turned many illiterate blacks into potential voters
• introduced the students to freedom songs adapted form slavery and the labor movement
• “We Shall Overcome” became the movement’s anthem
• training was so effective that Highlander was forced to close, the victim of constant police harassment, FBI surveillance, IRS audits, and state investigations
• union organizing, racial discrimination
• citizenship school
• taught people how to become community leaders |
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| Women’s Political Council |
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Definition
• formed in 1946
• group of educated black women that got out the black vote and pressured the police department to hire blacks
• concerned with the mistreatment of black women on buses
• 1955: began discussing bus boycott
• first to propose bus boycotts
• Jo Ann Robinson, after Park’s arrests, produced and organized the distribution 35,000 handbills to help spread word about the boycotts (Montgomery) |
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• helped organize “In Friendship”
• possibly the most important strategist of the nonviolent struggle for racial justice in the 1950s and 1960s
• originally joined the Young Commuist League, but eventually became disillusioned and began a long association with black labor leader A. Phillip Randolph
• helped Randolph organize a threatened march on Washington, D.C. in 1941
• key behind-the-scenes organized of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Montgomery Bus Boycotts
• helped King understand the principles of nonviolent social protest
• would become a frequent advisor to King
• helped organized SCLC in 1957
• chief organizer for Randolph’s 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• after this time, Rustin would believe that the major problems for blacks would be employment, not racial discrimination
• opposed the black power movement |
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• Air Force veteran who wanted to transfer from Jackson State College to Ole Miss
• Believed it was his “divine responsibility” to break the color line at Ole Miss
• in 1962, Meredith won a court order permitting him to become the first black student at the University of Mississippi at Oxford
• however, on Sept 20, 1962, Governor Ross Barnett personally blocked Meredith from entering the school
• 10 days later, hundreds of federal marshals protected Meredith when he moved into a campus dormitory
• this move would spark rioted by white students and outsiders, forcing President Kennedy to federalize the Mississippi National Guard and send in thousands of army troops for what became a two-day battle with the mob
• Kennedy also went on television to urge Mississippians to obey the law
• Battle of Ole Miss was the most serious federal-state confrontation since the Civil War
• Battle of Ole Miss helped turn the tide against massive resistance
• Demonstrated the federal government had the power to enforce the law, if the president had the will |
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• program led by SNCC, CORE, SCLC, the NAACP and the Urban League
• these organizations formed an umbrella group called the Council of Federated Organizations
• no gains were made in Mississippi for the first two years
• focused on increasing black registration, particularly in the Deep South
• rural Mississippi was the most difficult challenge because of intimidation and violence
• promoted by Robert Kennedy to steer the movement toward less confrontational activities
o gave VEP tax-exempt status and lined up liberal philanthropies
• some activists accused the administration of a “trade off” bordering on bribery
• renewed efforts after the Voting Rights Act, 2 million more blacks voted within ten years and produced many black officials |
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• helped found SNCC
• jail, no bail
• at the forefront of the Nashville sit-in movement
• articulate beauty queen from Chicago
• Nashville sit-ins were largest of all
• Nash and other young leaders practiced and perfected sit-in techniques
• This would lead to a boycott of downtown merchants
• Nash asked mayor Ben West his opinion of racial discrimination, he said it was morally wrong
• This marked a turning point in Nashville and made it the first major southern city to begin desegregating its lunch-counters
• One of the heroines of the movement |
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• barred segregation in public facilities, prohibited employment discrimination and created an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, provided for a cutoff of federal funds to institutions and activities practicing racial discrimination, and promoted voting rights
• broadest and strongest civil rights legislation since Reconstruction
• progress in desegration was much faster after the act than before |
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• Plessy was arrested for refusing to ride in the Jim Crow railway coach on a 60 mile intrastate trip from New Orleans to Covington, L
• Legally, his refusal was a violation of the state law that required for “equal, but separate” accommodations in public facilities |
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• crusader for equal salary
• teacher at the Highlander School
• turned many illiterate blacks into potential voters
• helped establish citizenship schools that helped increase literacy and increase the number of black leaders
• this helped with black empowerment and the development of leaders necessary for the movement |
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| March on Washington, 1941 |
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• idea of a huge rally in Washington advanced by A. Phillip Randolph in 1941
• the march was threatened and caused FDR to establish the Fair Employment Practice Committee to prevent job discrimination in war mobilization
• it was the most beneficial presidential directive for blacks since the Emancipation Proclamation
• showed that pressuring the president with a dramatic event could pay big dividends |
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• one of the more extreme responses to Brown
• a White Citzens Council was formed in Mississippi during the summer of 1954
• over the next five years, branches sprang up in nearly every southern city
• sometimes referred to as “Klansmen in suits”
• members were mostly middle-class or well-to-do business and professional people
• often saw to it that civil rights supporters, black and white, lost their jobs and were denied credit
• led the charge against school desegregation with terror and threats of violence |
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• Police Commissioner in Birmingham, Alabama
• Agreed in advance to give the Klan 15 minutes to do its dirty work without police interference
• Klan-organized crowd assaulted riders with sticks, metal pipes and fists when they got off the bus from the freedom rides
• Birmingham was a symbol of white racism at its most extreme
• King realized this as an opportunity to display the cruelty of racism
• On May 3, 1963 crisis came when Connor ordered the police to use high-pressure fire hoses, nightsticks and dogs against demonstrators – adults and youngsters alike
• Television coverage of the police brutality shocked most white Americans outside of the South and some white southerners as well, just as King had hoped
• As a result, public support for major civil rights legislation soared |
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• Launched by CORE in 1961
• New form of direct action instead of sit-ins
• Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia (1960) extended earlier rulings against segregation in interstate transportation
• First headed south from D.C. on May 4, 1961 with seven blacks and six whites aboard two buses
• The group was met with violence several times along the way, especially in Birmingham (see Connor) and became front page news around the world after Birmingham
• After another attack in Montgomery, Alabama, it prompted response from Robert Kennedy who ordered about 600 federal marshals to the city
• Other groups, such as SNCC and SCLC, began conducting freedom rides and they received better federal protection than the first riders
• Finally, in 1961, Robert Kennedy asked the Interstate Commerce Commission to begin carrying out the Court’s 1960 ruling against segregated facilities in interstate transportation
• By the end of 1962, segregation in interstate transportation had just about disappeared |
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| Voting Rights Act of 1965 |
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Definition
• In areas where voting discrimination was most severe, authorized federal examiners to determine the eligibility of voters, authorized federal observers to go to polling places to see if discrimination was occurring, suspended the use of literacy tests, and the required approval by the U.S. attorney general for changes in election laws
• Progress still could not have been made without the local black and civil rights workers who mobilized blacks to register and vote
• Results of the Voting Rights Act have been apparent in the growing numbers of blacks elected to office in the South
• This act helped blacks make great advances very quickly |
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• Hoped to end all public and private disparities between blacks and whites in the city by using mass arrests and demonstrations as its primary tools of influence
• Goals included: fair employment for all, an end to any police brutality, the desegregation of all transportation and city facilities, and the creation of a biracial committee to negotiate with the city over civil rights issues -- a sticking point throughout the Albany movement
• Broadfront nonviolent attack
• King’s resistance to continued demonstrations did increase the internal strife of the Albany movement and decreased the motivation of the masses to participate in a stalled nonviolent direct action campaign |
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• April 3, 1944
• Supreme Court rules the white-only primary to be unconstitutional (violated the Fifteenth Amendment)
• This was the final victory toward the barring of all-white primaries and the exclusion of blacks from voting in Democratic primaries
• This would aid the ability of blacks to vote in ever increasing numbers |
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