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Segregation And The Civil Rights Movement Essay (стр. 2 из 2)

a year and dramatized to the American public the determination of blacks in the

South to end segregation. A federal court ordered Montgomery’s buses

desegregated in November 1956, and the boycott ended in triumph. A young Baptist

minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., was president of the Montgomery

Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. The protest

made King a national figure. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and

American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and

outside the South. King became the president of the Southern Christian

Leadership Conference (SCLC) when it was founded in 1957. SCLC wanted to

complement the NAACP legal strategy by encouraging the use of nonviolent, direct

action to protest segregation. These activities included marches, demonstrations,

and boycotts. The violent white response to black direct action eventually

forced the federal government to confront the issues of injustice and racism in

the South. In addition to his large following among blacks, King had a powerful

appeal to liberal Northerners that helped him influence national public opinion.

His advocacy of nonviolence attracted supporters among peace activists. He

forged alliances in the American Jewish community and developed strong ties to

the ministers of wealthy, influential Protestant congregations in Northern

cities. King often preached to those congregations, where he raised funds for

SCLC. The Sit-Ins

On February 1, 1960, four black college students at North Carolina A&T

University began protesting racial segregation in restaurants by sitting at

“white-only” lunch counters and waiting to be served. This was not a new form of

protest, but the response to the sit-ins in North Carolina was unique. Within

days sit-ins had spread throughout North Carolina, and within weeks they were

taking place in cities across the South. Many restaurants were desegregated. The

sit-in movement also demonstrated clearly to blacks and whites alike that young

blacks were determined to reject segregation openly. In April 1960 the Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina,

to help organize and direct the student sit-in movement. King encouraged SNCC’s

creation, but the most important early advisor to the students was Ella Baker,

who had worked for both the NAACP and SCLC. She believed that SNCC should not be

part of SCLC but a separate, independent organization run by the students. She

also believed that civil rights activities should be based in individual black

communities. SNCC adopted Baker’s approach and focused on making changes in

local communities, rather than striving for national change. This goal differed

from that of SCLC which worked to change national laws. During the civil rights

movement, tensions occasionally arose between SCLC and SNCC because of their

different methods. Freedom Riders

After the sit-ins, some SNCC members participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides

organized by CORE. The Freedom Riders, both black and white, traveled around the

South in buses to test the effectiveness of a 1960 Supreme Court decision. This

decision had declared that segregation was illegal in bus stations that were

open to interstate travel. The Freedom Rides began in Washington, D.C. Except

for some violence in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the trip southward was peaceful

until they reached Alabama, where violence erupted. At Anniston one bus was

burned and some riders were beaten. In Birmingham, a mob attacked the riders

when they got off the bus. They suffered even more severe beatings by a mob in

Montgomery, Alabama. The violence brought national attention to the Freedom

Riders and fierce condemnation of Alabama officials for allowing the violence.

The administration of President John Kennedy interceded to protect the Freedom

Riders when it became clear that Alabama state officials would not guarantee

safe travel. The riders continued on to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were

arrested and imprisoned at the state penitentiary, ending the protest. The

Freedom Rides did result in the desegregation of some bus stations, but more

importantly, they demonstrated to the American public how far civil rights

workers would go to achieve their goals.

SCLC Campaigns

SCLC’s greatest contribution to the civil rights movement was a series of highly

publicized protest campaigns in Southern cities during the early 1960s. These

protests were intended to create such public disorder that local white officials

and business leaders would end segregation in order to restore normal business

activity. The demonstrations required the mobilization of hundreds, even

thousands, of protesters who were willing to participate in protest marches as

long as necessary to achieve their goal and who were also willing to be arrested

and sent to jail. The first SCLC direct-action campaign began in 1961 in Albany,

Georgia, where the organization joined local demonstrations against segregated

public accommodations. The presence of SCLC and King escalated the Albany

protests by bringing national attention and additional people to the

demonstrations, but the demonstrations did not force negotiations to end

segregation. During months of protest, Albany’s police chief continued to jail

demonstrators without a show of police violence. The Albany protests ended in

failure. In the spring of 1963, however, the direct-action strategy worked in

Birmingham, Alabama. SCLC joined the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a local civil

rights leader, who believed that the Birmingham police commissioner, Eugene

“Bull” Connor, would meet protesters with violence. In May the SCLC staff

stepped up antisegregation marches by persuading teenagers and school children

to join. The singing and chanting adolescents who filled the streets of

Birmingham caused Connor to abandon restraint. He ordered police to attack

demonstrators with dogs and firefighters to turn high-pressure water hoses on

them. The ensuing scenes of violence were shown throughout the nation and the

world in newspapers, magazines, and most importantly, on television. Much of the

world was shocked by the events in Birmingham, and the reaction to the violence

increased support for black civil rights. In Birmingham white leaders promised

to negotiate an end to some segregation practices. Business leaders agreed to

hire and promote more black employees and to desegregate some public

accommodations. More important, however, the Birmingham demonstrations built

support for national legislation against segregation.

Desegregating Southern Universities

In 1962 a black man from Mississippi, James Meredith, applied for admission to

University of Mississippi. His action was an example of how the struggle for

civil rights belonged to individuals acting alone as well as to organizations.

The university attempted to block Meredith’s admission, and he filed suit. After

working through the state courts, Meredith was successful when a federal court

ordered the university to desegregate and accept Meredith as a student. The

governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, defied the court order and tried to

prevent Meredith from enrolling. In response, the administration of President

Kennedy intervened to uphold the court order. Kennedy sent federal marshals with

Meredith when he attempted to enroll. During his first night on campus, a riot

broke out when whites began to harass the federal marshals. In the end, 2 people

were killed, and about 375 people were wounded. When the governor of Alabama,

George C. Wallace, threatened a similar stand, trying to block the desegregation

of the University of Alabama in 1963, the Kennedy Administration responded with

the full power of the federal government, including the U.S. Army, to prevent

violence and enforce desegregation. The showdowns with Barnett and Wallace

pushed Kennedy, whose support for civil rights up to that time had been

tentative, into a full commitment to end segregation.

The March on Washington

The national civil rights leadership decided to keep pressure on both the

Kennedy administration and the Congress to pass civil rights legislation by

planning a March on Washington for August 1963. It was a conscious revival of A.

Philip Randolph’s planned 1941 march, which had yielded a commitment to fair

employment during World War II. Randolph was there in 1963, along with the

leaders of the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, the Urban League, and SNCC. Martin Luther King,

Jr., delivered the keynote address to an audience of more than 200,000 civil

rights supporters. His “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the giant sculpture

of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, became famous for how it expressed

the ideals of the civil rights movement. Partly as a result of the March on

Washington, President Kennedy proposed a new civil rights law. After Kennedy was

assassinated in November 1963, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, strongly urged

its passage as a tribute to Kennedy’s memory. Over fierce opposition from

Southern legislators, Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through

Congress. It prohibited segregation in public accommodations and discrimination

in education and employment. It also gave the executive branch of government the

power to enforce the act’s provisions.

Voter Registration

The year 1964 was the culmination of SNCC’s commitment to civil rights activism

at the community level. Starting in 1961 SNCC and CORE organized voter

registration campaigns in heavily black, rural counties of Mississippi, Alabama,

and Georgia. SNCC concentrated on voter registration, believing that voting was

a way to empower blacks so that they could change racist policies in the South.

SNCC worked to register blacks to vote by teaching them the necessary skills-

such as reading and writing-and the correct answers to the voter registration

application. SNCC worker Robert Moses led a voter registration effort in McComb,

Mississippi, in 1961, and in 1962 and 1963 SNCC worked to register voters in the

Mississippi Delta, where it found local supporters like the farm-worker and

activist Fannie Lou Hamer. These civil rights activities caused violent

reactions from Mississippi’s white supremacists. Moses faced constant terrorism

that included threats, arrests, and beatings. In June 1963 Medgar Evers, NAACP

field secretary in Mississippi, was shot and killed in front of his home.

In 1964 SNCC workers organized the Mississippi Summer Project to register blacks

to vote in that state. SNCC leaders also hoped to focus national attention on

Mississippi’s racism. They recruited Northern college students, teachers,

artists, and clergy-both black and white-to work on the project, because they

believed that the participation of these people would make the country more

concerned about discrimination and violence in Mississippi. The project did

receive national attention, especially after three participants, two of whom

were white, disappeared in June and were later found murdered and buried near

Philadelphia, Mississippi. By the end of the summer, the project had helped

thousands of blacks attempt to register, and about 1000 had actually become

registered voters.

The Summer Project increased the number of blacks who were politically active

and led to the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). When

white Democrats in Mississippi refused to accept black members in their

delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1964, Hamer and others went

to the convention to challenge the white Democrats’ right to represent

Mississippi. In a televised interview, Hamer detailed the harassment and abuse

experienced by black Mississippians when they tried to register to vote. Her

testimony attracted much media attention, and President Johnson was upset by the

disturbance at the convention where he expected to be nominated for president.

National Democratic Party officials offered the black Mississippians two

convention seats, but the MFDP rejected the compromise offer and went home.

Later, however, the MFDP challenge did result in more support for blacks and

other minorities in the Democratic Party.

In early 1965 SCLC employed its direct-action techniques in a voting-rights

protest initiated by SNCC in Selma, Alabama. When protests at the local

courthouse were unsuccessful, protesters began a march to Montgomery, the state

capital. As the marchers were leaving Selma, mounted police beat and tear-gassed

them. Televised scenes of that violence, called Bloody Sunday, s