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American Civil Rights movement

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to primarily African American citizens of United States. There have been many movements on behalf of other groups in the U.S. over time, but the term is often used to refer to the struggles between 1955 and 1968 to end discrimination against African-Americans and to end racial segregation, especially in the U.S. South. See African American for information on how various terms have been used at that time period for African Americans. This article focuses on that particular struggle, rather than the comparable movements to end discrimination against other ethnic groups within the United States or those struggles, such as the women's liberation, gay liberation, and disabled rights movements, that have used similar tactics in pursuit of similar goals. The civil rights movement has had a lasting impact on United States society, both in its tactics and in increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights. This focus on the years between 1955, when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, and 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, is somewhat arbitrary; the civil rights movement continued in different forms after that, and continues today. For a timeline of the events in this movement, see Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement. Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement" speech, given in front of the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom]]

Background

The United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, was a key turning point in United States history: after years of campaigning against Jim Crow laws and racial oppression, the Civil Rights Movement had obtained a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court reversing the "separate but equal" doctrine that had justified official racism for the past half century. While Brown itself was only a first step toward disestablishing school segregation in the South—a process that would require decades of litigation to accomplish, with uncertain results—it was even more important for its immediate political significance, as it gave the civil rights movement the added legitimacy of a Supreme Court decision declaring that state-sponsored segregation was both unjustifiable and terribly wrong.

Key Events

- (1954) On May 17th, the Supreme Court rules on the Brown v. Board of Education case.
- (1954) On July 11th, the first White Citizen's Council meeting takes place in Mississippi.
- (1954) On October 30th, the Department of Defense announces that the armed forces have been completely esegregated.
- (1954) In September, public schools in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, MD are declared desegragated.
- (1954) Bobby Bland becomes the first black man to graduate from University of Virginia engineering school.
- (1954) The White Citizen's Council is organized in Selma, AL.
- (1954) In November, Charles Diggs of Detroit, MI is elected to Congress.
- (1955) The President's Committee on Government Policy is established to elminate discrimination in federal hiring.
- (1955) In April, Roy Wilkins becomes the NAACP general secretary.
- (1955) In May, Richard Daley becomes the mayor of Chicago.
- (1955) On May 7th, NAACP activist Reverand George Wesley is killed in Belzoni, MS.
- (1955) On May 31st, the Supreme Court rules that desegragation must occur with "all deliberate speed".
- (1955) In July, a pupil placement law is enacted in Alabama.
- (1955) On August 13th, activist Lamar Smith is murdered in Brookhaven, MS.
- (1955) On August 28th, Emmitt Till is murdered in Money, Tallahatchie Co. MS.
- (1955) In September, Emmitt Till's murderers are acquitted.
- (1955) On October 10th, the Supreme Court requires University of Alabama to admit Autherine Lucy.
- (1955) In November, the Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation in interstate travel.
- (1955) On December 1st, Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat.
- (1955) On December 2nd, the Montgomery Improvement Association is created at a mass meeting. Martin Luther King is elected president.
- (1955) On December 5th, the Montgomery Bus Boycott begins. It lasts until the December of 1956.
- (1955) On December 12th, the movement organizes carpools to replace the boycotted bus system.
- (1956) The FBI begins the COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt dissident groups within the United States. While initially focused on communist consipiracies, the organization eventually targets Martin Luther King and the SCLC, the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panther Party, and SDS (or Student's for a Democratic Society).
- (1956) On Janury 26th, Martin Luther King experiences an epiphany about sacrifice after receiving a threatening phone call.
- (1956) On January 30th, Martin Luther King's home is bombed.
- (1956) On February 1st, the Montgomery Improvement Association files a suit.
- (1956) On February 3rd, Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama. White students and locals riot in protest, and Lucy is suspended "for her own safety". She is later expelled for criticizing the university.
- (1956) On February 21st, Bayard Rustin arrives in Montgomery to advise the MIA.
- (1956) On March 12th, the Southern Manifesto is released.
- (1956) On March 22nd, Martin Luther King is convicted of leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- (1956) In April, the Supreme Court strikes down bus segregation in Columbia, SC. The mayor of Montgomery refuses to apply the ruling to his city.
- (1956) From May 27th to the March of 1958, the Tallahassee Bus Boycott transpires.
- (1956) On June 1st, Alabama outlaws the NAACP.
- (1956) In June, Reverand Fred Shuttlesworth organizes the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights in Birmingham, which will become an important SCLC advocate.
- (1956) In August, the Virginia legislature adopts a policy of "massive resistance" to the desegregation of schools.
- (1956) In September, the National Guard is forced to restore order after white mobs attempt to stop the integration of schools in Clinton, TN.
- (1956) In November, Dwight Eisenhower is elected president of the United States, with Richard Nixon as his vice president.
- (1956) In November, Alabama courts rule that the Montgomery Improvement Association carpool is a violation of the city bussing franchise.
- (1956) On November 13th, the Supreme Court upholds lower court rulings that banned segregation of intrastate buses in Browder v. Gayle.
- (1956) On December 17th, Montgomery city's last appeal was exhausted on segregation of buses.
- (1956) On December 21st, the Montgomery Bus Boycott ends. It had started in the December of 1955.
- (1956) On December 25th, Reverand Fred Shuttlesworth's home in Birmingham is bombed.
- (1956) On December 26th, Fred Shuttlesworth is arrested for breaking Birmingham's bus segregation ordinances.
- (1956) On December 27th, Tallahassee bus segregation is declared illegal.
- (1957) From January 10th to January 11th, the SCLC (or Southern Christian Leadership Conference) is founded. Martin Luther King is named chairman of the organization.
- (1957) On January 23rd, Willie James Edwards is forced off a bridge by members of the Ku Klux Klan in Montgomery, AL.
- (1957) On March 6th, Ghana becomes independent, beginning a wave of decolonization efforts throughout Africa. Martin Luther King attends the independence ceremonies.
- (1957) On April 14th, Malcolm X leads a protest against police brutality outside of a bus station in Harlem.
- (1957) On May 17th, Martin Luther King addresses a crowd of 15,000 in a rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
- (1957) In August, the first SCLC takes place.
- (1957) On August 29th, the Voting Rights Bill of 1957, the first civil rights bill since 1875, is passed. It declares that conpsiring to deny a person from his or her voting right is a federal crime.
- (1957) On September 4th, governor Orval Faubus uses the National Guard to prevent admittance of the Little Rock nine into Central High School.
- (1957) On September 20th, the National Guard is removed from Little Rock High in compliance with a court order.
- (1957) On September 23rd, White mobs drive the Little Rock nine out of Central High.
- (1957) On September 24th, Troops from the Army's 101st Airborne are sent into Little Rock and the National Guard in Arkansas is placed under federal control.
- (1957) On September 25th, the Little Rock nine enter Central High School escorted by armed soldiers.
- (1958) In February, the SCLC's "Crusade for Citizenship" program is launched.
- (1958) In March, the Tallahassee bus boycotts end.
- (1958) On June 23rd, Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, and A. Philip Randolph meet Dwight Eisenhower.
- (1958) In August, schools in Norfolk and Charlottesville are closed under Virginia's "Massive Resistance" laws to prevent desegregation.
- (1958) The NAACP Youth Council hosts sit-ins at Oklahoma lunch counters.
- (1958) On September 12th, an Atlanta synagogue is bombed.
- (1958) In November, seven-year-old James Hanover Thompson and nine-year-old David "Fuzzy" Simpson are sentenced in North Carolina to indefinite periods in reform school after a nine-year-old white girl tells her parents that a black boy tried to kiss her. After protests around the world, the boys are released without explanation.
- (1959) On January 19th, the Virginia supreme court rules that massive resistance school-closing laws violate the state's constitution.
- (1959) In February, schools in Norfolk and Charlottesville re-open.
- (1959) On April 25th, Mack Charles Parker, accused of raping a white woman, is taken from jail and lynched by a white mob in Poplarville, MS.
- (1959) On June 26th, classes in Prince Edward county, VA are halted in order to prevent desegregation. The schools remain closed until the June of 1964.
- (1960) On February 1st, a sit-in movement begins at a Woolworths lunch counter Greensboro, NC.
- (1960) Starting in February, sit-ins spread through the south (and a few northern cities), lasting until the May of 1961.
- (1960) On February 17th, Martin Luther King is indicted with tax evasion charges in Alabama. He is acquitted in May by an all-white jury.
- (1960) On March 3rd, Vanderbilt University expels James Lawson for participating in sit-ins.
- (1960) On April 17th, SNCC (or the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) is founded at a Shaw University conference.
- (1960) On April 21st, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 passes after being severely weakened by Senate filibusters. It allows federal officials to register voters in cases where a "pattern" of voting discrimination is shown at trial and set criminal penalties for obstruction of related court rulings.
- (1960) In June, Bayard Rustin resigns from the SCLC under pressure from Representative Adam Clayton Powell.
- (1960) In July, membership in the the Nation of Islam reaches the 100,000 point.
- (1960) On October 19th, Martin Luther King and 50 others are arrested at Rich's Department Store during a sit-in in Atlanta.
- (1960) On October 26th, Martin Luther King is sent to Reidsville State Prison.
- (1960) On October 28th, Martin Luther King is freed through an intervention by Robert Kennedy.
- (1960) In November, John F. Kennedy wins the presidential race. The support of African American voters is a key factor in his victory.
- (1960) On December 5th, the Supreme Court rules that segregation of facilities in interstate bus terminals violates the Interstate Commerce Act in Boynton v. Virginia.
- (1961) In January, Federal district courts require that the University of Georgia admit two African-American men. The two are suspended from the university following white-student riots on January 11th, but reinstated by court order on January 13th.
- (1961) In January, nine students from the SNCC and CORE employ a "stay in jail" strategy during the Rockhill Sit-in, staying up to a month in jail.
- (1961) In March, Kennedy issues Executive Order 10925, which establishes the Equal Opportunity Commission and requires equal opportunity in placement and promotion in the military.
- (1961) On May 13th, CORE announces its plans for a "Freedom Ride".
- (1961) On April 17th, the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba fails, disgracing the United States.
- (1961) On May 4th, the first Freedom Ride (organized by CORE) leaves Washington, D.C. in two buses to test the Boyton decision.
- (1961) On May 9th, two freedom riders are beaten in Rockhill, SC.
- (1961) On May 14th, one Freedom Ride bus is attacked and burned by a firebomb outside of Aniston, AL. Injured riders are refused treatment at local hospitals. The second bus is hijacked by white supremacists and then attacked by a mob in Birmingham, AL.
- (1961) On May 15th, Greyhound and Trailways bus drivers in Birmingham refuse to take Freedom Riders further. Riders are forced to finish the trip to New Orleans by plane (after sneaking past a mob at the airport).
- (1961) On May 17th, students from Nashville arrive in Birmingham to finish the Freedom Ride.
- (1961) On May 18th, Eugene Bull Connor arrests new Freedom Riders and drives several out of town, but they immediately return.
- (1961) On May 20th, Freedom Riders depart Birmingham under protection of state officials in accordance with a deal worked out by the Kennedy administration. Outside of Montgomery, the escort falls away. Riders are attacked when they arrive in Montgomery, and the police do not respond for 15 minutes.
- (1961) On May 21st, Martin Luther King organizes a mass meeting at Montgomery Church, and he is surrounded by a mob. Kennedy sends in fire marshalls to protect him and the other protestors.
- (1961) On May 24th, Freedom Riders in Jackson MS are arrested with federal collusion.
- (1961) Starting in May, the Freedom Rides continue throughout the summer, with more than 300 people ultimately being arrested in Jackson, MS.
- (1961) In June, representatives of various civil rights groups meet with President Kennedy to discuss a voter registration project.
- (1961) In July, Robert Moses is arrested in McComb, MS. Moses' letter from prison solidifies the national image of the SNCC.
- (1961) In July, Baker County sheriff Warren "Gator" Johnson kills Charlie Ware. Ware is handcuffed in the back of the police car, and then shot. He had made a pass at a plantation overseer's black mistress the previous day.
- (1961) In August, SNCC worker Marion Barry arrives in McComb, MS and begins training high school students for sit-ins and protests.
- (1961) In September, Robert F. Williams, an advocate of armed self-defense for blacks, flees to Cuba (and later China) to escape charges of kidnapping a white couple (who had actually been seeking refuge in Williams' home). He returns in 1969 when the charges are eventually dropped.
- (1961) In September, James Forman becomes the executive director of the SNCC.
- (1961) On September 25th, Herbert Lee, a farmer and NAACP member who had registered to vote, is shot by white politician E.H. Hurst. Hurst later claimed that he had acted in self defense. A witness to the event (another black man) is also murdered before he can testify, so Hurst is acquitted.
- (1961) In October, SNCC workers Charles Sherrod and Cordel Regon set up a voter registration effort in Albany, GA.
- (1961) On November 1st, the Interstate Commerce Commission rulings ban all interstate carriers from using segregated facilities.
- (1961) On November 16th, the Albany Movement begins in Albany, GA.
- (1961) From December 10th until December 16th, the Albany Movement desmonstrations lead to more than 500 arrests. Albany police chief Laure Pritchett uses a variety of tactics to blunt SNCC tactics.
- (1961) On December 12th, the president of the Albany Movement invited Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy to join the movement.
- (1961) On December 15th, Martin Luther King and 250 othe protestors are arrested Albany, GA.
- (1961) On December 18th, demonstrations are suspended as part of a truce with the city of Albany. Martin Luther King leaves the city.
- (1962) In February, the COFO (or the Council of Federated Organizations) is formed.
- (1962) On February 26th, the Supreme Court bans segregation in all transporation facilities.
- (1962) In March, the Voter Registration Project is founded, and managed by COFO.
- (1962) In June, SNCC voter registration projects begin in southwest Georgia.
- (1962) In July, demonstrations resume in Albany.

The murder of Emmett Till

Murders of African-Americans at the hands of whites were still common in the 1950s and still unpunished in large areas of the South. The murder of Emmett Till, a teenaged boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi in the summer of 1955 was different, however: the age of the boy, the nature of his crime—allegedly whistling at a white woman in a store—and his mother's decision to have the casket open at his funeral, showing the beating that had been inflicted on her son by his two white abductors before he was shot and his body dumped in the Tallahatchie River on August 28 all made what might otherwise have been a routine statistic into a cause celebre. As many as 50,000 people may have viewed his body at the funeral home in Chicago and many thousands more were exposed to the evidence of his murder when a photograph of his corpse was published in Jet Magazine. The two murderers were arrested the day after Till's disappearance. They were acquitted a month later after the jury deliberated for sixty-seven minutes. The murder and subsequent acquittal galvanized opinion in the North in the same way that the long campaign to free the "Scottsboro Boys" had in the 1930s.

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1930s On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks (the "mother of the Civil Rights Movement") refused to get up out of her seat on a public bus to make room for white passengers. Rosa was arrested, tried, and convicted for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. After word of this incident reached the black community, 50 African-American leaders gathered and organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott to protest the segregation of blacks and whites on public buses. The boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African-Americans and whites on public buses was lifted. This instance is often credited as the start of the Civil Rights Movement.

Mass action replaces litigation

Up through 1955 the civil rights movement in the South had largely been fought in courtrooms: while the NAACP had chapters throughout the South that attempted to register voters and protested discrimination, those efforts were often uncoordinated, while local authorities regularly harassed those organizations and the activists in them. That strategy shifted after Brown, however, to "direct action"—primarily bus boycotts, sit-ins, freedom rides, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience—from 1955 to 1965. In part this was the unintended result of the local authorities' attempt to outlaw and harass the mainstream civil rights organizations throughout the Deep South. The State of Alabama had effectively barred the NAACP from operating in Alabama in 1956 by requiring it to give the state a list of its members, then enjoining it from operating within the state when it failed to do so. While the United States Supreme Court ultimately reversed the order, for a few years in the mid-1950s the NAACP was unable to operate. Churches and local grassroots organizations stepped in to fill the gap, and brought with them a much more energetic and broad-based style than the more legalistic approach of groups such as the NAACP. The most important step forward was in Montgomery, Alabama, where longtime NAACP activists Rosa Parks and Edgar Nixon prevailed on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956. Activists and church leaders in other communities, such as Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had used the boycott in recent years, although those efforts often withered away after a few days. In Montgomery, on the other hand, the Montgomery Improvement Association created to lead the boycott managed to keep the boycott going for a year until a federal court order required Montgomery to desegregate its buses. The success in Montgomery made King a nationally known figure and triggered other bus boycotts, such as the highly successful Tallahassee, Florida boycott of 1956-1957. The leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, Dr. King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, and other activists, such as Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. The SCLC, with its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, did not attempt to create a network of chapters, the way the NAACP did, but offered training and other assistance for local efforts to fight segregation, while raising funds, mostly from northern sources, to support these campaigns. It made non-violence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism. In 1957, Septima Clarke, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins, with the help of the Highlander Folk School began the first Citizenship Schools in South Carolina's Sea Islands, to teach literacy to allow blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success, tripling the number of black voters on St. John Island. The program was taken over by the SCLC and copied in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama.

Desegregating Little Rock

Following the Supreme Court's decision in Brown, the Little Rock, Arkansas school board voted in 1957 to integrate the school system. The NAACP had chosen to press for integration in Little Rock, rather than in the Deep South, because Arkansas was considered a relatively progressive southern state. A crisis erupted, however, when Governor of Arkansas Orval Faubus called out the National Guard on September 4 to prevent the nine African-American students who had sued for the right to attend an integrated school from attending Little Rock's Central High School. Faubus himself was not a dyed-in-the-wool segregationist, but he had received significant pressure from the more conservative wing of the Arkansas Democratic Party, which controlled politics in that state at the time, after he had indicated the previous year that he would investigate bringing Arkansas into compliance with the Brown decision. Faubus took his stand against integration and against the federal court order that required it. Faubus's order set him on a collision course with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was determined to enforce the orders of the Federal courts, even though he was lukewarm, at best, on the goal of desegregation of public schools. Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and ordered them to return to their barracks. Eisenhower then deployed elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to protect the students. The students were able to attend high school, although they had to pass through a gauntlet of spitting, jeering whites to arrive at school on their first day and to put up with harassment from fellow students for the rest of the year. Faubus was reelected Governor the following year and for three terms after that.

Sit-ins and freedom rides

The Civil Rights Movement received an infusion of energy when students in Greensboro, North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia began to "sit-in" at lunch counters in local stores to protest those establishments' refusal to desegregate. Protesters were encouraged to dress up, sit quietly, and occupy every other stool so potential white sympathizers could join in. Many of these sit-ins resulted in authority figures physically and brutally escorting them from the lunch facility. The technique was not new—the Congress of Racial Equality had used it to protest segregation in the Midwest in the 1940s—but it brought national attention to the movement in 1960. The success of the Greensboro sit-in led to a rash of student campaigns all across the South. Probably the best organized and disciplined of these, and the most immediately effective, was in Nashville, Tennessee. By the end of 1960 the sit-ins had spread to every southern and border state and even to Nevada, Illinois, and Ohio. Demonstrators focused not only on lunch counters but also on parks, beaches, libraries, theaters, museums, and other public places. When they were arrested, student demonstrators made "jail-no-bail" pledges to call attention to their cause and to reverse the cost of protest, putting the financial burden of jail space and food on the jailers. The activists who had led these sit-ins formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 to take these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further. Their first campaign, in 1961, was conducting freedom rides, in which activists traveled by bus through the deep South to desegregate these companies' bus terminals, as required by federal law. CORE's leader, James Farmer, supported the freedom rides, but backed out at the last minute. That proved to be an enormously dangerous mission. In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives. In Birmingham, where an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor had encouraged the Ku Klux Klan to attack an incoming group of freedom riders "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them," the riders were severely beaten. In eerily quiet Montgomery, a mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking John Lewis unconscious with a crate and smashing Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded Jim Zwerg, a white student from Fisk University, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth. The freedom riders did not fare much better in jail, where they were crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, Mississippi, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100-degree heat. Others were transferred to Parchman Penitentiary, where their food was deliberately oversalted and their mattresses were removed. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe. The student movement involved such celebrated figures as John Lewis, the single-minded activist who "kept on" despite many beatings and harassments; James Lawson, the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; Diane Nash, an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; Bob Moses, pioneer of voting registration in the most rural—and most dangerous—part of the South; and James Bevel, a fiery preacher and charismatic organizer and facilitator. Other prominent student activists included Charles McDew; Bernard Lafayette; Charles Jones; Lonnie King; Julian Bond (associated with Atlanta University); Hosea Williams (associated with Brown Chapel); and Stokely Carmichael, who later changed his name to Kwame Toure.

Organizing in Mississippi

In 1962 Robert Moses, SNCC's representative in Mississippi, brought together the civil rights organizations in the state—SNCC, the NAACP, and CORE—to form COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations. Mississippi was the most dangerous of all the southern states, yet Moses, Medgar Evers of the NAACP, and local activists embarked on door-to-door voter education projects in rural Mississippi, while trying to recruit students to their cause. Evers was murdered the following year. While COFO was working at the grassroots level in Mississippi, James Meredith was successfully suing for admission to the University of Mississippi. He won that lawsuit in September, 1962, and attempted to enter the campus on September 20, on September 25, and again September 26, 1962, only to be blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross R. Barnett, who proclaimed that "no school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor". After the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held both Barnett and Lieutenant Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr. in contempt, with fines of more than $10,000 for each day they refused to allow Meredith to enroll, Meredith, escorted by a force of U.S. Marshals, entered the campus on September 30, 1962. White students and other whites began rioting that evening, throwing rocks at the U.S. Marshals guarding Meredith at Lyceum Hall, then firing on the marshals. Two persons, including a French journalist, were killed, 28 marshals suffered gunshot wounds and 160 others were injured. After the Mississippi Highway Patrol withdrew from the campus, President Kennedy sent the regular Army to the campus to quell the uprising. Meredith was able to begin classes the following day, after the troops arrived.

The Albany movement

The SCLC, which had been criticized along with other mainstream civil rights organizations by some student activists for its failure to participate more fully in the freedom rides, committed much of its prestige and resources to a desegregation campaign in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. King, who had been criticized personally by some SNCC activists for his distance from the dangers that local organizers faced—and given the derisive nickname "De Lawd" as a result—intervened personally to assist the campaign led by both SNCC organizers and local leaders. The campaign was a failure in the short run, largely due to the canny tactics of Laurie Pritchett, the local police chief, who successfully contained the movement without the sort of violent attacks on demonstrators that inflamed national opinion, and divisions within the black community. Prichett also contacted every prison and jail within 60 miles of Albany and arranged for arrested demonstrators to be taken to one of these jails, allowing plenty of room to remain in his jail. In addition to these arrangements, Prichett also foresaw King's presence as a danger, and allowed his release to avoid King's rallying the black community. King left in 1962 without achieving any dramatic victories. The local movement, however, continued the struggle and obtained significant gains in the next few years.

The Birmingham campaign

The Albany movement proved to be an important education for the SCLC, however, when it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. The campaign focused on one concrete goal—the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants—rather than total desegregation, as in Albany. It was also helped by the brutal response of local authorities, in particular Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety who had lost a recent election for mayor to a less rabidly segregationist candidate, but refused to accept the new mayor's authority. The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of confrontation, including sit-ins, kneel-ins at local churches, and a march to the county building to mark the beginning of a drive to register voters. The City, however, obtained an injunction barring all such protests. Convinced that the order was unconstitutional, the campaign defied it and prepared for mass arrests of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963. While in jail, King wrote his famous (April 16) Letter from Birmingham Jail on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement by jail authorities. Supporters pressured the Kennedy administration to intervene to obtain his release or better conditions. King eventually was allowed to call his wife, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child, and was released on April 19. The campaign, however, was faltering at this time, as the movement was running out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. SCLC organizers came up with a bold and controversial alternative, calling on high school students to take part in the demonstrators. When more than a thousand students left school on May 2 to join the demonstrations, more than six hundred ended up in jail, this was newsworthy but with this first encounter the police acted with restraint. On the next day however another thousand students gathered at the church and Bull Connor unleashed police dogs on them, then turned the city's fire hoses, set at a level that would peel bark off a tree or separate bricks from mortar, on the children. Television cameras broadcast the scenes of fire hoses knocking down schoolchildren and dogs attacking individual demonstrators, with no means of protecting themselves, to the nation. Widespread public outrage forced the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully in the negotiations between the white business community and the SCLC. On May 10, the parties announced an agreement to desegregate the lunch counters and other public accommodations downtown, to create a committee to eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, to arrange for the release of jailed protesters, and to establish regular means of communication between black and white leaders. Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement—Fred Shuttlesworth was particularly critical, since he had accumulated a great deal of skepticism about the good faith of Birmingham's power structure from his experience in dealing with them. The reaction from parts of the white community was even more violent. The Gaston Motel, which housed the SCLC's unofficial headquarters, was bombed, as was the home of King's brother, the Reverend A. D. King. Kennedy prepared to federalize the Alabama National Guard, but did not follow through. Four months later, on September 15, Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church (see 16th Street Baptist Church bombing) in Birmingham, killing four young girls. Other events of the summer of 1963:
On June 11,1963, George Wallace, Governor of Alabama, attempted to block the integration of the University of Alabama. President John F. Kennedy sent enough force to make Governor Wallace step aside, allowing the enrollment of two black students. That evening, JFK addressed the nation on TV and radio with a historic civil rights speech. The next day Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi. The next week as promised, on June 19 1963, JFK submitted his Civil Rights bill to Congress.

The March on Washington

1963 to the Lincoln Memorial, August 28, 1963.]] 1963, 1963.]] A. Philip Randolph had planned a March on Washington in 1941 in support of demands for elimination of employment discrimination in defense industries; he called off the march when the Roosevelt administration met the demand by issuing Executive Order 8802 barring racial discrimination and creating an agency to oversee compliance with the Order. Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the chief planners of the second March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which they proposed in 1962. The Kennedy administration applied great pressure on Randolph and King to call it off, but without success. The march was held on August 28, 1963. Unlike the planned 1941 march, for which Randolph included only black-led organizations in the planning, the 1963 march was a collaborative effort of all of the major civil rights organizations, the more progressive wing of the labor movement, and other liberal organizations. The march had six official goals: "meaningful civil rights laws, a massive federal works program, full and fair employment, decent housing, the right to vote, and adequate integrated education." Of these, the March's real focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham. The march was a success, although not without controversy. More than 200,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. While many speakers applauded the Kennedy Administration for the (largely ineffective) efforts it had made toward obtaining new, more effective civil rights legislation protecting the right to vote and outlawing segregation, John Lewis of SNCC took the Administration to task for how little it had done to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South. While he toned down his comments under pressure from others in the movement, his words still stung:

We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here—for they have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages…or no wages at all. In good conscience, we cannot support the administration's civil rights bill.

This bill will not protect young children and old women from police dogs and fire hoses when engaging in peaceful demonstrations. This bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear in a police state. This bill will not protect the hundreds of people who have been arrested on trumped-up charges like those in Americus, Georgia, where four young men are in jail, facing a death penalty, for engaging in peaceful protest.

I want to know, which side is the federal government on? The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it in the courts. Listen Mr. Kennedy, the black masses are on the march for jobs and for freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won't be a 'cooling-off period'.

After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the White House. While the Kennedy administration appeared to be sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had the votes to do it. But when President Kennedy was assassinated November 22 1963, the new President Lyndon Johnson decided to and did use his power in Congress to bring about much of JFK's legislative agenda in 1964 and 1965.

Mississippi Freedom Summer

COFO brought more than a hundred college students, many from outside the state, to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 ("Freedom Summer") to join with local activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools" and organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The work was as dangerous as ever: three civil rights workers, James Chaney, a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two white volunteers, Andrew Goodman, a Queens College anthropology student; and Michael Schwerner, a social worker from Manhattan's Lower East Side, were murdered by members of the Klan, some of them members of the Neshoba County sheriff's department, on June 21, 1964. The national uproar caused by their disappearance forced the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate, even though President Johnson had to use indirect threats of political reprisals against Академик д-р Венцеслав Харалампиев Андрейчев (23 февруари 1941, Плевен — 12 април Юруклери, дн. Кърпачево, Ловешко 24 юли 1911 г. - край село Read More...