African American History

A

Freedom Rides

In May 1961 SNCC and CORE set out to test compliance with a Supreme Court ruling that prohibited segregation in facilities for interstate travel. To do so, they revived a protest strategy CORE had used in 1947. They organized what became known as the Freedom Rides—bus trips throughout the South that attempted to desegregate buses and bus stations. After informing federal authorities of their plans, the Freedom Riders—seven blacks and six whites—set out from Washington, D.C., aboard two buses. Along the way, the freedom riders encountered violent resistance from whites. In South Carolina, whites beat and kicked two riders. In Alabama, whites attacked and burned one bus and severely beat riders in both buses, leaving one man permanently paralyzed. The riders ended their protest in Birmingham, Alabama; they were unprotected by the police and were unable to find a bus driver willing to continue the trip.

Then Diane Nash, a SNCC member, recruited other freedom riders, eight blacks and two whites, to try to complete the ride. Again they met with violence. This time the riders attracted more attention from the media, and White House officials ordered their protection by federal marshals and national guardsmen. Riders were nevertheless arrested and imprisoned in Mississippi for entering a “whites-only” waiting room.

B

Nonviolent Protests

Throughout the South, various types of nonviolent protests took place. Activists boycotted stores that refused to hire blacks, marched in protests against discrimination, and worked to change laws that enforced segregation. In 1963 more than a million demonstrators were involved in massive protests, and many demonstrators were attacked by whites determined to maintain racial dominance.

In the spring of 1963 SCLC began a campaign in Birmingham, Alabama to try to end segregation. The local police force responded with violence, turning fire hoses on demonstrators and attacking them with dogs. Federal troops were sent to quell the violence. In reaction to the attacks on the demonstrators, President John F. Kennedy introduced civil rights legislation designed to end segregation in public facilities.

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The growing power of the civil rights movement was demonstrated on August 28, 1963 when more than 200,000 peaceful demonstrators marched on Washington, D.C. Protest leaders called for congressional action in civil rights and employment legislation, and Martin Luther King, Jr., electrified listeners with his 'I Have A Dream' speech. In November, President Kennedy was assassinated, and in the aftermath of this tragedy, the civil rights bill that had languished in Congress was passed in June 1964. Six months later, Martin Luther King, Jr., became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

C

Voter Registration

Beginning in 1961 SNCC and CORE organizers undertook a dangerous campaign in Mississippi, attempting to register black voters despite intense white resistance. By 1962 Robert Moses, a black Harvard-educated schoolteacher, had assembled a staff of organizers to work with local residents. To bring attention, and perhaps some protection, to their efforts, the workers organized the Mississippi Summer Project, also known as the Freedom Summer project. They recruited and trained over 1000 Northern volunteers—including African American and white students. These volunteers helped people to register to vote and ran freedom schools providing basic education and African American history. Within the first two weeks, two whites, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, and one black, James Chaney, were murdered. Fear and danger followed the remaining volunteers that summer.

The Summer Project increased the number of black voters in Mississippi. It also led to the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a political party open to all races. The MFDP unsuccessfully challenged the seating of an all-white Mississippi delegation at the Democratic national convention. However, voting registration efforts were helped by a series of marches to demand black voting rights in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. The protests and the violence that accompanied them prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to introduce new voting-rights legislation. Passed that summer, its impact was dramatic: in Mississippi, the percentage of blacks registered to vote increased from 7 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1968.

D

Black Power and Black Pride

Years of Southern civil rights activism had increased black pride and militancy throughout the nation. The achievement of legislation for integration and voting rights focused attention on the remaining barriers to black freedom and opportunity—economic deprivation and continuing white resistance. Under the strain of constant attacks, black leaders such as SNCC chairperson Stokely Carmichael began to question the commitment to nonviolence and to argue for all-black leadership.

They were impressed by Malcolm X, the Northern leader of the Black Muslim organization who advocated black pride and armed self-defense. In 1966, the year after Malcolm's assassination, Carmichael raised the cry for black power. Many traditional civil rights leaders were appalled by the slogan. Martin Luther King, Jr., understood the slogan's appeal but feared its explosive potential and tried to emphasize black power's connotations for black pride and self-esteem. The slogan, however, resonated in the Northern inner cities. There housing discrimination restricted blacks’ choices, and judging from poverty and unemployment rates, African Americans had never recovered from the Great Depression.

In August 1965 racial violence erupted in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in response to the lack of economic progress and conflicts with white police. In the summer and fall of 1966, 43 cities experienced racial violence. That October, two black college students, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, organized the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California to promote community service and armed self-defense for inner-city residents. One of its first actions was to establish patrols in black communities to monitor police activities and protect residents from police brutality.

The Black Panthers enjoyed wide appeal among young men in the Northern cities. The party quickly became a target for repression that included undercover informants and surveillance by the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As Martin Luther King, Jr., began to speak out against American involvement in the Vietnam War (1959-1975) and to emphasize the need for economic changes, he too became a target for government surveillance and harassment. In the summer of 1967, major race riots erupted in Newark, Detroit, and other American cities. Often this violence was attributed to tensions between black residents and white police accused of brutality. In February 1968 the presidentially appointed Kerner Commission reported that America was becoming 'two societies, one white, one black—separate and unequal.' In April, King was assassinated in Memphis, and the wave of racial violence that followed seemed to confirm those conclusions.

While black leaders were debating the effectiveness of nonviolent strategies, the nation was becoming more involved in the Vietnam War. The war led to divisive national debates. In 1965, when President Johnson ordered air raids over North Vietnam, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party denounced the war and declared that black men should not submit to a war for freedom abroad when they did not have freedom at home. Many older civil rights leaders warned against alienating the Johnson administration by opposing the war, since Johnson had supported civil rights. Younger, more militant blacks were more likely to oppose the war; they joined the public demonstrations that became more frequent as troop levels in Vietnam escalated and as the number of black soldiers and casualties became proportionately higher than for whites.

XXIV

The Struggle for Economic Equality

During the late 1960s and 1970s, civil rights activists began to concentrate on eliminating the remaining barriers to black freedom and opportunity. Although segregation by law (de jure segregation) in the South had been defeated, segregation by custom (de facto segregation) still remained. In the South, legal segregation had been supplemented by customary racial segregation, but even in the North where there generally were no segregation laws, custom enforced racial segregation.

African Americans had been barred from many restaurants, movie theaters, nightclubs, and other public accommodations by customary practice. Generally, landlords in white neighborhoods would not rent to black tenants, forcing them to pay higher rents in the only housing available to them in black neighborhoods. Banks denied financing, and real estate agents refused to show houses in traditionally white areas to blacks even if they could afford them.

Discriminatory hiring practices confined most black workers to the least secure, lowest paying jobs regardless of their qualifications. Those few opportunities open to black professionals like doctors, lawyers, and teachers were in positions and institutions serving the black community. As a result of limited opportunities, by the beginning of the 1960s, more than half of African Americans had incomes below the poverty line.