This is a powerful and somber vintage original 6 x 8 inch black and white press photograph from Coretta Scott King, with her daughters, Yolande and Bernice, at the funeral of her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA, April 9, 1968
Moneta Sleet Jr. (American, 1926–1996): Sleet, a photographer for Ebony magazine, was the only black photographer allowed inside the church and won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his photograph of Coretta Scott King and daughter Bernice at the funeral.
____________________
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, civil rights activist and political philosopher who was a leader of the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination.
A Black church leader, King participated in and led marches for the right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other civil rights.[1] He oversaw the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led the unsuccessful Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and helped organize two of the three Selma to Montgomery marches during the 1965 Selma voting rights movement. There were dramatic standoffs with segregationist authorities, who often responded violently.[2] The civil rights movement achieved pivotal legislative gains in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
King was jailed several times. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director J. Edgar Hoover considered King a radical and made him an object of COINTELPRO from 1963. FBI agents investigated him for possible communist ties, spied on his personal life, and secretly recorded him. In 1964, the FBI mailed King a threatening anonymous letter, which he interpreted as an attempt to make him commit suicide.[3] King won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War.
In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray was convicted of the assassination, though it remains the subject of conspiracy theories. King's death led to riots in US cities. King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2003. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in cities and states throughout the United States beginning in 1971; the federal holiday was first observed in 1986. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 2011.
Early life and education
Birth
Michael King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, the second of three children born to Michael King Sr. and Alberta King (née Williams).[4][5][6] Alberta's father, Adam Daniel Williams,[7] was a minister in rural Georgia, moved to Atlanta in 1893,[6] and became pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in the following year.[8] Williams married Jennie Celeste Parks.[6] Michael Sr. was born to sharecroppers James Albert and Delia King of Stockbridge, Georgia;[5][6] he was likely of Mende (Sierra Leone) descent.[9][10][11] He enrolled in Morehouse College to study for entry to the ministry.[12] Michael Sr. and Alberta began dating in 1920, and married on November 25, 1926.[13][14] Until Jennie's death in 1941, their home was on the second floor of Alberta's parents' home, where King was born.[15][13][14][16] Michael Jr. had an older sister, Christine King Farris, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel "A. D." King.[17]
Shortly after marrying Alberta, Michael King Sr. became assistant pastor of the Ebenezer church.[14] Senior pastor Williams died in the spring of 1931[14] and that fall Michael Sr. took the role. With support from his wife, he raised attendance from six hundred to several thousand.[6][14][18] In 1934, the church sent King Sr. on a multinational trip; one of the stops being Berlin for the Fifth Congress of the Baptist World Alliance (BWA).[19] He also visited sites in Germany that are associated with the Reformation leader Martin Luther.[19] In reaction to the rise of Nazism, the Congress of the BWA adopted, in August 1934, a resolution saying, "This Congress deplores and condemns as a violation of the law of God the Heavenly Father, all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews, toward colored people, or toward subject races in any part of the world."[20] After returning home in August 1934, Michael Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King Sr. and his five-year-old son's name to Martin Luther King Jr.[19][21][13][a]
Early childhood
King's childhood home in Atlanta
At his childhood home, Martin King Jr. and his two siblings read aloud the Bible as instructed by their father.[23] After dinners, Martin Jr.'s grandmother Jennie, whom he affectionately referred to as "Mama", told lively stories from the Bible.[23] Martin Jr.'s father regularly used whippings to discipline his children,[24] sometimes having them whip each other.[24] Martin Sr. later remarked, "[Martin Jr.] was the most peculiar child whenever you whipped him. He'd stand there, and the tears would run down, and he'd never cry."[25] Once, when Martin Jr. witnessed his brother A.D. emotionally upset his sister Christine, he took a telephone and knocked A.D. unconscious with it.[24][26] When Martin Jr. and his brother were playing at their home, A.D. slid from a banister and hit Jennie, causing her to fall unresponsive.[27][26] Martin Jr., believing her dead, blamed himself and attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window,[28][26] but rose from the ground after hearing that she was alive.[28]
Martin King Jr. became friends with a white boy whose father owned a business across the street from his home.[29] In September 1935, when the boys were about six years old, they started school.[29][30] King had to attend a school for black children, Yonge Street Elementary School,[29][31] while his playmate went to a separate school for white children only.[29][31] Soon afterwards, the parents of the white boy stopped allowing King to play with their son, stating to him, "we are white, and you are colored".[29][32] When King relayed this to his parents, they talked with him about the history of slavery and racism in America,[29][33] which King would later say made him "determined to hate every white person".[29] His parents instructed him that it was his Christian duty to love everyone.[33]
Martin King Jr. witnessed his father stand up against segregation and discrimination.[34] Once, when stopped by a police officer who referred to Martin Sr. as "boy", Martin Sr. responded sharply that Martin Jr. was a boy but he was a man.[34] When Martin Jr's father took him into a shoe store in downtown Atlanta, the clerk told them they needed to sit in the back.[35] Martin Sr. refused, asserting "We'll either buy shoes sitting here or we won't buy any shoes at all", before leaving the store with Martin Jr.[36] He told Martin Jr. afterward, "I don't care how long I have to live with this system, I will never accept it."[36] In 1936, Martin Sr. led hundreds of African Americans in a civil rights march to the city hall in Atlanta to protest voting rights discrimination.[24] Martin Jr. later remarked that Martin Sr. was "a real father" to him.[37]
Martin King Jr. memorized hymns and Bible verses by the time he was five years old.[28] Beginning at six years old, he attended church events with his mother and sang hymns while she played piano.[28] His favorite hymn was "I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus".[28] King later became a member of the junior choir in his church.[38] He enjoyed opera, and played the piano.[39] King garnered a large vocabulary from reading dictionaries.[26] He got into physical altercations with boys in his neighborhood, but oftentimes used his knowledge of words to stop or avoid fights.[26][39] King showed a lack of interest in grammar and spelling, a trait that persisted throughout his life.[39] In 1939, King sang as a member of his church choir dressed as a slave for the all-white audience at the Atlanta premiere of the film Gone with the Wind.[40][41] In September 1940, at the age of 11, King was enrolled at the Atlanta University Laboratory School for the seventh grade.[42][43] While there, King took violin and piano lessons and showed keen interest in history and English classes.[42]
On May 18, 1941, when King had sneaked away from studying at home to watch a parade, he was informed that something had happened to his maternal grandmother.[37] After returning home, he learned she had a heart attack and died while being transported to a hospital.[16] He took her death very hard and believed that his deception in going to see the parade may have been responsible for God taking her.[16] King again jumped out of a second-story window at his home but again survived.[16][25][26] His father instructed him that Martin Jr. should not blame himself and that she had been called home to God as part of God's plan.[16][44] Martin Jr. struggled with this.[16] Shortly thereafter, Martin Sr. decided to move the family to a two-story brick home on a hill overlooking downtown Atlanta.[16]
Adolescence
The high school that King attended was named after African-American educator Booker T. Washington.
As an adolescent, he initially felt resentment against whites due to the "racial humiliation" that he, his family, and his neighbors often had to endure.[45] In 1942, when King was 13, he became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal.[46] In the same year, King skipped the ninth grade and enrolled in Booker T. Washington High School, where he maintained a B-plus average.[44][47] The high school was the only one in the city for African-American students.[14]
Martin Jr. was brought up in a Baptist home; as he entered adolescence he began to question the literalist teachings preached at his father's church.[44][48] At the age of 13, he denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus during Sunday school.[49][48] Martin Jr. said that he found himself unable to identify with the emotional displays from congregants who were frequent at his church; he doubted if he would ever attain personal satisfaction from religion.[50][48] He later said of this point in his life, "doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly."[51][49][48]
In high school, Martin King Jr. became known for his public-speaking ability, with a voice that had grown into an orotund baritone.[52][47] He joined the school's debate team.[52][47] King continued to be most drawn to history and English,[47] and chose English and sociology as his main subjects.[53] King maintained an abundant vocabulary.[47] However, he relied on his sister Christine to help him with spelling, while King assisted her with math.[47] King also developed an interest in fashion, commonly wearing polished patent leather shoes and tweed suits, which gained him the nickname "Tweed" or "Tweedie" among his friends.[54][55][56][57] He liked flirting with girls and dancing.[56][55][58] His brother A.D. later remarked, "He kept flitting from chick to chick, and I decided I couldn't keep up with him. Especially since he was crazy about dances, and just about the best jitterbug in town."[55]
On April 13, 1944, in his junior year, King gave his first public speech during an oratorical contest.[59][55][60][61] In his speech he stated, "black America still wears chains. The finest negro is at the mercy of the meanest white man."[62][59] King was selected as the winner of the contest.[59][55] On the ride home to Atlanta by bus, he and his teacher were ordered by the driver to stand so that white passengers could sit.[55][63] The driver of the bus called King a "black son-of-a-bitch".[55] King initially refused but complied after his teacher told him that he would be breaking the law if he did not.[63] As all the seats were occupied, he and his teacher were forced to stand the rest of the way to Atlanta.[55] Later King wrote of the incident: "That night will never leave my memory. It was the angriest I have ever been in my life."[63]
Morehouse College
During King's junior year in high school, Morehouse College—an all-male historically black college that King's father and maternal grandfather had attended[64][65]—began accepting high school juniors who passed the entrance examination.[55][66][63] As World War II was underway, many black college students had been enlisted,[55][66] so the university aimed to increase their enrollment by allowing juniors to apply.[55][66][63] In 1944, aged 15, King passed the examination and was enrolled at the university that autumn.[citation needed]
In the summer before King started at Morehouse, he boarded a train with his friend—Emmett "Weasel" Proctor—and a group of other Morehouse College students to work in Simsbury, Connecticut, at the tobacco farm of Cullman Brothers Tobacco.[67][68] This was King's first trip into the integrated north.[69][70] In a June 1944 letter to his father, King wrote about the differences that struck him: "On our way here we saw some things I had never anticipated to see. After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all. The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to."[69] The farm had partnered with Morehouse College to allot their wages towards the university's tuition, housing, and fees.[67][68] On weekdays King and the other students worked in the fields, picking tobacco from 7:00 am to at least 5:00 pm, enduring temperatures above 100 °F, to earn roughly USD$4 per day.[68][69] On Friday evenings, the students visited downtown Simsbury to get milkshakes and watch movies, and on Saturdays they would travel to Hartford, Connecticut, to see theatre performances, shop, and eat in restaurants.[68][70] On Sundays, they attended church services in Hartford at a church filled with white congregants.[68] King wrote to his parents about the lack of segregation, relaying how he was amazed they could go to "one of the finest restaurants in Hartford" and that "Negroes and whites go to the same church".[68][71][69]
He played freshman football there. The summer before his last year at Morehouse, in 1947, the 18-year-old King chose to enter the ministry. He would later credit the college's president, Baptist minister Benjamin Mays, with being his "spiritual mentor".[72] King had concluded that the church offered the most assuring way to answer "an inner urge to serve humanity", and he made peace with the Baptist Church, as he believed he would be a "rational" minister with sermons that were "a respectful force for ideas, even social protest."[73] King graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology in 1948, aged nineteen.[74]
Religious education
A large facade of a building
King received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951 (pictured in 2009).
See also: Martin Luther King Jr. authorship issues
King enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Pennsylvania,[75][76] and took several courses at the University of Pennsylvania.[77][78] At Crozer, King was elected president of the student body.[79] At Penn, King took courses with William Fontaine, Penn's first African-American professor, and Elizabeth F. Flower, a professor of philosophy.[80] King's father supported his decision to continue his education and made arrangements for King to work with J. Pius Barbour, a family friend and Crozer alumnus who pastored at Calvary Baptist Church in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania.[81] King became known as one of the "Sons of Calvary", an honor he shared with William Augustus Jones Jr. and Samuel D. Proctor, who both went on to become well-known preachers.[82]
King reproved another student for keeping beer in his room once, saying they shared responsibility as African Americans to bear "the burdens of the Negro race". For a time, he was interested in Walter Rauschenbusch's "social gospel".[79] In his third year at Crozer, King became romantically involved with[83] the white daughter of an immigrant German woman who worked in the cafeteria. King planned to marry her, but friends, as well as King's father,[83] advised against it, saying that an interracial marriage would provoke animosity from both blacks and whites, potentially damaging his chances of ever pastoring a church in the South. King tearfully told a friend that he could not endure his mother's pain over the marriage and broke the relationship off six months later. One friend was quoted as saying, "He never recovered."[79] Other friends, including Harry Belafonte, said Betty had been "the love of King's life."[83] King graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity in 1951.[75] He applied to the University of Edinburgh for a doctorate in the School of Divinity but ultimately chose Boston instead.[84]
In 1951, King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University,[85] and worked as an assistant minister at Boston's historic Twelfth Baptist Church with William Hunter Hester. Hester was an old friend of King's father and was an important influence on King.[86] In Boston, King befriended a small cadre of local ministers his age, and sometimes guest pastored at their churches, including Michael E. Haynes, associate pastor at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury. The young men often held bull sessions in their apartments, discussing theology, sermon style, and social issues.[citation needed]
At the age of 25 in 1954, King was called as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.[87] King received his PhD on June 5, 1955, with a dissertation (initially supervised by Edgar S. Brightman and, upon the latter's death, by Lotan Harold DeWolf) titled A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.[88][85]
An academic inquiry in October 1991 concluded that portions of his doctoral dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly. However, "[d]espite its finding, the committee said that 'no thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King's doctoral degree,' an action that the panel said would serve no purpose."[89][85][90] The committee found that the dissertation still "makes an intelligent contribution to scholarship." A letter is now attached to the copy of King's dissertation in the university library, noting that numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations and citations of sources.[91] Significant debate exists on how to interpret King's plagiarism.[92]
Marriage and family
Martin Luther King Jr. is welcomed with a kiss from his wife, Coretta Scott King, after leaving court in Montgomery, AL, on March 22, 1956
King with his wife, Coretta Scott King, and daughter, Yolanda Denise King, in 1956
While studying at Boston University, he asked a friend from Atlanta named Mary Powell, a student at the New England Conservatory of Music, if she knew any nice Southern girls. Powell spoke to fellow student Coretta Scott; Scott was not interested in dating preachers but eventually agreed to allow King to telephone her based on Powell's description and vouching. On their first call, King told Scott, "I am like Napoleon at Waterloo before your charms," to which she replied, "You haven't even met me." King married Scott on June 18, 1953, on the lawn of her parents' house, in Heiberger, Alabama.[93] They had four children: Yolanda King (1955–2007), Martin Luther King III (b. 1957), Dexter Scott King (1961–2024), and Bernice King (b. 1963).[94] King limited Coretta's role in the civil rights movement, expecting her to be a housewife and mother.[95]
Activism and organizational leadership
Mary's Cafe Sit-In, 1950
On Sunday, June 11, 1950, King, classmate at Crozer Seminary and housemate Walter McCall, and their dates Doris Wilson and Pearl Smith attended church services in Merchantville. Afterwards they stopped at tavern Mary's Cafe in Maple Shade for beers. The foursome were left waiting without anyone approaching them for service, not unexpectedly. A friend's father and King and McCall's landlord Jesthroe Hunt had warned them Black people were not welcome at Mary's. King replied to the effect of maybe they needed to go, so they could start to go anywhere they wanted.[96] The seminarians had opted for Mary's Cafe with full knowledge of its reputation.[97] After waiting without service, McCall approached the bar.
McCall asked bartender and Mary's Cafe owner Ernest Nichols for packaged goods (beer for takeaway). Nichols refused, explaining he couldn't sell packaged goods on Sundays or any day after 10pm, by law. McCall then requested 4 glasses of beer to which Nichols answered "no beer, Mr! Today is Sunday”.[98] Nichols would claim they sought him to violate New Jersey's blue law (a restriction common in South Jersey and Pennsylvania as a remnant of the influence of their Quakers roots).[98] McCall requested ginger ales as non-alcoholic beverages were not subject to the blue law. Nichols refused the group even ginger ales and reportedly stated "the best thing would be for you to leave".[99] King and company met refusal with refusal, and remained in their seats as was their right per New Jersey's 1945 anti-discrimination law, which guaranteed non-discrimination by race in public accommodations. Nichols stomped out and returned with a gun standing outside firing into the air reportedly shouting "I'd kill for less".[99] Fearing for their lives, the four activists ran from the tavern. The group went to the Maple Shade Police Department where officers refused to file their complaint. King and McCall contacted Ulysses Simpson Wiggins then President of the Camden County Branch NAACP, who helped them successfully file a police report. The New York Times confirms "The complaint was against Ernest Nichols, a white tavern owner in Maple Shade, N.J., and said that he had refused to serve the black students and their dates in June 1950, and had threatened them by firing a gun in the air. The complaint was signed by the two students. One of the signatures, in a loopy, slanted cursive, reads 'M. L. King Jr.'" [100]
Nichols was charged with disorderly conduct and violation of the anti-discrimination law. He was found guilty and fined $50, however the racial discrimination count was dismissed. In a statement submitted "in the spirit of assisting the Prosecutor"[98] Nichol's attorney noted:
Mr. Nichols claims that this act was not intended as a threat to his colored patrons. The colored patrons, on the other hand, while they admit that the gun was not pointed at them or any of them, seemed to think that it was a threat. Mr. Nichols on the other hand states that he has been held up before and he wanted to alert his watchdog who was somewhere outside on the tavern grounds.
— Statement on Behalf of Ernest Nichols, State of New Jersey vs. Ernest Nichols, by W. Thomas McGann[98]
King cited the incident saying it was “a formative step” in his “commitment to a more just society.”[99] The Mary's Cafe sit-in demonstrated the power of non-violent civil disobedience. Nichols' reaction in retrieving a weapon and discharging it to scare the group, or summon his guard dog, to young people's refusal to leave unserved, showed King the potency of such tactics. This sit-in is believed to be the first deployment of the non-violence and civil disobedience tactics which would distinguish King's activism and legacy.
The Mary's Cafe sit-in occurred six months prior to Mordecai Johnson's Lecture on Gandi at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia on November 19, 1950 where King would be formally exposed to these tactics. At that lecture and in discussions with Dr. Johnson at the Fellowship House, Dr. King would be inspired and galvanized by how Mahatma Gandhi integrated Henry David Thoreau's theory of Nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience tactics.[101] Patrick Duff, a South Jersey resident, discovered the police report detailing the events at Mary's after searching the archive at The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.[100]
Montgomery bus boycott, 1955
Main articles: Montgomery bus boycott and Jim Crow laws § Public arena
The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church was influential in the Montgomery African-American community. As the church's pastor, King became known for his oratorical preaching in Montgomery and surrounding region.[102]
In March 1955, Claudette Colvin—a black schoolgirl in Montgomery—refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in violation of Jim Crow laws, local laws in the Southern US that enforced racial segregation.[103] On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus.[104] These incidents led to the Montgomery bus boycott, which was urged and planned by Edgar Nixon and led by King.[105] The other ministers asked him to take a leadership role because his relative newness to community leadership made it easier for him to speak out. King was hesitant but decided to do so if no one else wanted it.[106]
The boycott lasted for 385 days,[107] and the situation became so tense that King's house was bombed.[108] King was arrested for traveling 30 mph in a 25 mph zone[109] and jailed, which drew the attention of national media, and increased King's public stature. The controversy ended when the US District Court issued a ruling in Browder v. Gayle that prohibited racial segregation on Montgomery public buses.[110][1][106]
King first rose to prominence in the civil rights movement while minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
King's role in the bus boycott transformed him into a national figure and the best-known spokesman of the civil rights movement.[111]
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct nonviolent protests in the service of civil rights reform. The group was inspired by the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham, who befriended King,[112] as well as the national organizing of the group In Friendship, founded by King allies Stanley Levison and Ella Baker.[113] King led the SCLC until his death.[114] The SCLC's 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom was the first time King addressed a national audience.[115]
Harry Wachtel joined King's legal advisor Clarence B. Jones in defending four ministers of the SCLC in the libel case Abernathy et al. v. Sullivan; the case was litigated about the newspaper advertisement "Heed Their Rising Voices". Wachtel founded a tax-exempt fund to cover the suit's expenses and assist the civil rights movement through more effective fundraising. King served as honorary president of this organization, named the "Gandhi Society for Human Rights". In 1962, King and the Gandhi Society produced a document that called on President Kennedy to issue an executive order to deliver a blow for civil rights as a kind of Second Emancipation Proclamation. Kennedy did not execute the order.[116] The FBI, under written directive from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, began tapping King's telephone line in the fall of 1963.[117] Kennedy was concerned that public allegations of communists in the SCLC would derail the administration's civil rights initiatives. He warned King to discontinue these associations and felt compelled to issue the directive that authorized the FBI to wiretap King and other SCLC leaders.[118] FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover feared the civil rights movement and investigated the allegations of communist infiltration. When no evidence emerged to support this, the FBI used the incidental details caught on tape over the next five years, as part of its COINTELPRO program, in attempts to force King out of his leadership position.[3]
King believed that organized, nonviolent protest against the system of southern segregation known as Jim Crow laws would lead to extensive media coverage of the struggle for black equality. Journalistic accounts and televised footage of the daily indignities suffered by southern blacks, and of segregationist violence and harassment, produced a wave of sympathetic public opinion that convinced most Americans that the civil rights movement was the most important political issue in the early 1960s.[119][120]
King organized and led marches for blacks' right to vote, desegregation, labor rights, and other basic civil rights.[1] Most of these rights were successfully enacted into law with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.[121][122] The SCLC used tactics of nonviolent protest with success, by strategically choosing the methods and places in which protests were carried out. There were often dramatic stand-offs with segregationist authorities, who sometimes turned violent.[2]
Survived knife attack, 1958
On September 20, 1958, King was signing copies of his book Stride Toward Freedom in Blumstein's department store in Harlem[123] when Izola Curry—a mentally ill black woman who thought King was conspiring against her with communists—stabbed him in the chest with a letter opener, which nearly impinged on the aorta. King received first aid by police officers Al Howard and Philip Romano.[124] King underwent surgery by Aubre de Lambert Maynard, Emil Naclerio and John W. V. Cordice; he remained hospitalized for weeks. Curry was later found mentally incompetent to stand trial.[125][126]
Atlanta sit-ins, prison sentence, and the 1960 elections
King led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and later became co-pastor with his father at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta (pulpit and sanctuary pictured).
In December 1959, after being based in Montgomery for five years, King announced his return to Atlanta at the request of the SCLC.[127] In Atlanta, King served until his death as co-pastor with his father at the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Georgia governor Ernest Vandiver expressed open hostility towards King's return. He claimed that "wherever M. L. King Jr., has been there has followed in his wake a wave of crimes", and vowed to keep King under surveillance.[128] On May 4, 1960, King drove writer Lillian Smith to Emory University when police stopped them. King was cited for "driving without a license" because he had not yet been issued a Georgia license. King's Alabama license was still valid, and Georgia law did not mandate any time limit for issuing a local license.[129] King paid a fine but was unaware his lawyer agreed to a plea deal that included probation.
Meanwhile, the Atlanta Student Movement had been acting to desegregate businesses and public spaces, organizing the Atlanta sit-ins from March 1960 onwards. In August the movement asked King to participate in a mass October sit-in, timed to highlight how 1960's Presidential election campaigns had ignored civil rights. The coordinated day of action took place on October 19. King participated in a sit-in at the restaurant inside Rich's, Atlanta's largest department store, and was among the many arrested. The authorities released everyone over the next few days, except King. Invoking his probationary plea deal, judge J. Oscar Mitchell sentenced King on October 25 to four months of hard labor. Before dawn the next day, King was transported to Georgia State Prison.[130]
The arrest and harsh sentence drew nationwide attention. Many feared for King's safety, as he started a sentence with people convicted of violent crimes, many white and hostile to his activism.[131] Presidential candidates were asked to weigh in, at a time when parties were courting the support of Southern Whites and their political leadership including Governor Vandiver. Nixon, with whom King had a closer relationship before, declined to make a statement despite a visit from Jackie Robinson requesting his intervention. Nixon's opponent John F. Kennedy called the governor, enlisted his brother Robert to exert more pressure on state authorities, and, at the request of Sargent Shriver, called King's wife to offer his help. The pressure from Kennedy and others proved effective, and King was released two days later. King's father decided to openly endorse Kennedy's candidacy for the November 8 election which he narrowly won.[132]
After the October 19 sit-ins and following unrest, a 30-day truce was declared in Atlanta for desegregation negotiations. However, negotiations failed and sit-ins and boycotts resumed for several months. On March 7, 1961, a group of Black elders including King notified student leaders that a deal had been reached: the city's lunch counters would desegregate in fall 1961, in conjunction with the court-mandated desegregation of schools.[133][134] Many students were disappointed at the compromise. In a meeting on March 10 at Warren Memorial Methodist Church, the audience was hostile and frustrated. King gave an impassioned speech calling participants to resist the "cancerous disease of disunity", helping to calm tensions.[135]
Albany Movement, 1961
Main article: Albany Movement
The Albany Movement was a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. In December, King and the SCLC became involved. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a nonviolent attack on segregation in the city and attracted nationwide attention. When King first visited on December 15, 1961, he "had planned to stay a day or so and return home after giving counsel."[136] The following day he was swept up in a mass arrest of peaceful demonstrators, and he declined bail until the city made concessions. According to King, "that agreement was dishonored and violated by the city" after he left.[136]
King returned in July 1962 and was given the option of 45 days in jail or a $178 fine (equivalent to $1,900 in 2024); he chose jail. Three days into his sentence, Police Chief Laurie Pritchett discreetly arranged for King's fine to be paid and ordered his release. "We had witnessed persons being kicked off lunch counter stools ... ejected from churches ... and thrown into jail ... But for the first time, we witnessed being kicked out of jail."[137] It was later acknowledged by the King Center that Billy Graham was the one who bailed King out.[138]
After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a "Day of Penance" to promote nonviolence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts.[139] Though the Albany effort proved a key lesson in tactics for King and the civil rights movement,[140] the national media was highly critical of King's role in the defeat, and the SCLC's lack of results contributed to a growing gulf between the organization and the more radical SNCC. After Albany, King sought to choose engagements for the SCLC in which he could control the circumstances, rather than entering into pre-existing situations.[141]
Birmingham campaign, 1963
Main article: Birmingham campaign
King was arrested in 1963 for protesting the treatment of black people in Birmingham.[142]
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy with King, Benjamin Mays, and other civil rights leaders, June 22, 1963
In April 1963, the SCLC began a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign used nonviolent but intentionally confrontational tactics, developed in part by Wyatt Tee Walker. Black people in Birmingham, organizing with the SCLC, occupied public spaces with marches and sit-ins, openly violating laws that they considered unjust.
King's intent was to provoke mass arrests and "create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation."[143] The campaign's early volunteers did not succeed in shutting down the city, or in drawing media attention to the police's actions. Over the concerns of an uncertain King, SCLC strategist James Bevel changed the course of the campaign by recruiting children and young adults to join the demonstrations.[144] Newsweek called this strategy a Children's Crusade.[145][146]
The Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene "Bull" Connor, used high-pressure water jets and police dogs against protesters, including children. Footage of the police response was broadcast on national television, shocking many white Americans and consolidating black Americans behind the movement.[147] Not all demonstrators were peaceful, despite the avowed intentions of the SCLC. In some cases, bystanders attacked the police, who responded with force. King and the SCLC were criticized for putting children in harm's way. But the campaign was a success: Connor lost his job, the "Jim Crow" signs came down, and public places became more open to blacks. King's reputation improved immensely.[145]
King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest[148] out of 29.[149] From his cell, he composed the now-famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that responds to calls to pursue legal channels for social change. The letter has been described as "one of the most important historical documents penned by a modern political prisoner".[150] King argues that the crisis of racism is too urgent, and the current system too entrenched: "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."[151] He points out that the Boston Tea Party, a celebrated act of rebellion in the American colonies, was illegal civil disobedience, and that, conversely, "everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal'."[151] Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, arranged for $160,000 to bail out King and his fellow protestors.[152]
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season."
—Martin Luther King Jr.[151]
March on Washington, 1963
Main article: March on Washington
Leaders of the March on Washington posing in front of the Lincoln Memorial
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963)
King, representing the SCLC, was among the leaders of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations who were instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. The other leaders and organizations comprising the Big Six were Roy Wilkins from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Whitney Young, National Urban League; A. Philip Randolph, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; John Lewis, SNCC; and James L. Farmer Jr., Congress of Racial Equality.[153]
Bayard Rustin's open homosexuality, support of socialism, and former ties to the Communist Party USA caused many white and African-American leaders to demand King distance himself,[154] which King agreed to do.[155] However, he did collaborate in the 1963 March on Washington, for which Rustin was the primary organizer.[156][157] For King, this role was another which courted controversy, since he was a key figure who acceded to the wishes of President Kennedy in changing the focus of the march.[158][159] Kennedy initially opposed the march outright, because he was concerned it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, the organizers were firm the march would proceed.[160] With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to ensure its success. President Kennedy was concerned the turnout would be less than 100,000 and enlisted the aid of additional church leaders and Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, to help mobilize demonstrators.[161]
The March, a 1964 documentary film produced by the United States Information Agency. King's speech has been redacted from this video because of the copyright held by King's estate.
The march originally was planned to dramatize the desperate condition of blacks in the southern US and place organizers' concerns and grievances squarely before the seat of power in the capital. Organizers intended to denounce the federal government for its failure to safeguard the civil rights and physical safety of civil rights workers and blacks. The group acquiesced to presidential pressure, and the event ultimately took on a less strident tone.[162] As a result, some civil rights activists felt it presented an inaccurate, sanitized pageant of racial harmony; Malcolm X called it the "Farce on Washington", and the Nation of Islam forbade its members from attending.[162][163]
King gave his most famous speech, "I Have a Dream", before the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
I Have a Dream
Duration: 30 seconds.0:30
30-second sample from "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963
Problems playing this file? See media help.
The march made specific demands: an end to racial segregation in public schools; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers (equivalent to $21 in 2024); and self-government for Washington, D.C., then governed by congressional committee.[164][165][166] Despite tensions, the march was a resounding success.[167] More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.'s history.[167]
King delivered a 17-minute speech, later known as "I Have a Dream". In the speech's most famous passage – in which he departed from his prepared text, possibly at the prompting of Mahalia Jackson, who shouted behind him, "Tell them about the dream!"[168][169] – King said:[170]
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
"I Have a Dream" came to be regarded as one of the finest speeches in the history of oratory.[171] The March, and especially King's speech, helped put civil rights at the top of the agenda of reformers and facilitated passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[172][173]
St. Augustine, Florida, 1964
Main article: St. Augustine movement
In March 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with Robert Hayling's then-controversial movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Hayling's group had been affiliated with the NAACP but was forced out of the organization for advocating armed self-defense alongside nonviolent tactics. However, the pacifist SCLC accepted them.[174][175] King and the SCLC worked to bring white Northern activists to St. Augustine, including a delegation of rabbis and the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, all of whom were arrested.[176][177] During June, the movement marched nightly through the city, "often facing counter demonstrations by the Klan, and provoking violence that garnered national media attention." Hundreds of the marchers were arrested and jailed. During this movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed.[178]
Biddeford, Maine, 1964
On May 7, 1964, King spoke at Saint Francis College's "The Negro and the Quest for Identity", in Biddeford, Maine. This was a symposium that brought together many civil rights leaders.[179][180] King spoke about how "We must get rid of the idea of superior and inferior races," through nonviolent tactics.[181]
New York City, 1964
King at a press conference in March 1964
On February 6, 1964, King delivered the inaugural speech[182] of a lecture series initiated at the New School called "The American Race Crisis". In his remarks, King referred to a conversation he had recently had with Jawaharlal Nehru in which he compared the sad condition of many African Americans to that of India's untouchables.[183] In his March 18, 1964, interview with Robert Penn Warren, King compared his activism to his father's, citing his training in non-violence as a key difference. He also discusses the next phase of the civil rights movement and integration.[184]
Scripto strike in Atlanta, 1964
Main article: 1964–1965 Scripto strike
Starting in November 1964, King supported a labor strike by several hundred workers at the Scripto factory in Atlanta, just a few blocks from Ebenezer Baptist.[185] Many of the strikers were congregants of his church, and the strike was supported by other civil rights leaders.[185] King helped elevate the labor dispute from a local to nationally known event and led the SCLC to organize a nationwide boycott of Scripto products.[185] However, as the strike stretched into December, King, who was wanting to focus more on a civil rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, began to negotiate in secret with Scripto's president Carl Singer and eventually brokered a deal where the SCLC would call off their boycott in exchange for the company giving the striking employees their Christmas bonuses.[185] King's involvement in the strike ended on December 24 and a contract between the company and union was signed on January 9.[185]
Selma voting rights movement and "Bloody Sunday", 1965
Main article: Selma to Montgomery marches
The civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965
In December 1964, King and the SCLC joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama, where the SNCC had been working on voter registration for several months.[186] A local judge issued an injunction that barred any gathering of three or more people affiliated with the SNCC, SCLC, DCVL, or any of 41 named civil rights leaders. This injunction temporarily halted civil rights activity until King defied it by speaking at Brown Chapel on January 2, 1965.[187] During the 1965 march to Montgomery, Alabama, violence by state police and others against the peaceful marchers resulted in much publicity, which made racism in Alabama visible nationwide.
Acting on James Bevel's call for a march from Selma to Montgomery, Bevel and other SCLC members, in partial collaboration with SNCC, attempted to organize a march to the state's capital. The first attempt to march on March 7, 1965, at which King was not present, was aborted because of mob and police violence against the demonstrators. This day has become known as Bloody Sunday and was a turning point in the effort to gain public support for the civil rights movement. It was the clearest demonstration up to that time of the dramatic potential of King and Bevel's nonviolence strategy.[51]
On March 5, King met with officials in the Johnson Administration to request an injunction against any prosecution of the demonstrators. He did not attend the march due to church duties, but later wrote, "If I had any idea that the state troopers would use the kind of brutality they did, I would have felt compelled to give up my church duties altogether to lead the line."[188] Footage of police brutality against the protesters was broadcast extensively and aroused public outrage.[189]
King next attempted to organize a march for March 9. The SCLC petitioned for an injunction in federal court against Alabama; this was denied and the judge issued an order blocking the march until after a hearing. Nonetheless, King led marchers on March 9 to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, then held a prayer session before turning the marchers around and asking them to disperse so as not to violate the court order. The unexpected ending of this second march aroused the surprise and anger of many within the local movement.[190] The march finally went ahead fully on March 25, 1965.[191][192] At the conclusion of the march on the steps of the state capitol, King delivered a speech that became known as "How Long, Not Long". King stated that equal rights for African Americans could not be far away, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice" and "you shall reap what you sow".[b][193][194][195]
Chicago open housing movement, 1966
Main article: Chicago Freedom Movement
King standing behind President Johnson as he signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964
In 1966, after several successes in the south, King, Bevel, and others in the civil rights organizations took the movement to the North. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue, in the slums of North Lawndale[196] on Chicago's West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor.[197]
The SCLC formed a coalition with Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement.[198] During that spring, several white couple/black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering, discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income and background.[199] Larger marches were planned and executed: in Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park, Gage Park, Marquette Park, and others.[198][200][201]
President Lyndon B. Johnson meeting with King in the White House Cabinet Room in 1966
King later stated and Abernathy wrote that the movement received a worse reception in Chicago than in the South. Marches, especially the one through Marquette Park on August 5, 1966, were met by thrown bottles and screaming throngs. Rioting seemed very possible.[202][203] King's beliefs militated against his staging a violent event, and he negotiated an agreement with Mayor Richard J. Daley to cancel a march to avoid the violence he feared would result.[204] King was hit by a brick during one march, but continued to lead marches in the face of personal danger.[205]
When King and his allies returned to the South, they left Jesse Jackson, a seminary student who had previously joined the movement in the South, in charge of their organization.[206] Jackson continued their struggle for civil rights by organizing the Operation Breadbasket movement that targeted chain stores that did not deal fairly with blacks.[207] A 1967 CIA document declassified in 2017 downplayed King's role in the "black militant situation" in Chicago, with a source stating that King "sought at least constructive, positive projects."[208]
Opposition to the Vietnam War
See also: Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War
The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws—racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced
–Martin Luther King Jr.[209]
We must recognize that we can't solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power... this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism are all tied together… you can't really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order.
—Martin Luther King Jr.[210]
King was long opposed to American involvement in the Vietnam War,[211] but at first avoided the topic in speeches to avoid interference with civil rights goals that criticism of President Johnson's policies might have created.[211] At the urging of SCLC's former Director of Direct Action and now the head of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, James Bevel, and inspired by the outspokenness of Muhammad Ali,[212] King eventually agreed to publicly oppose the war, as opposition was growing among the public.[211]
During an April 1967 appearance at the New York City Riverside Church, King delivered a speech titled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence".[213] He spoke against America's role in the war, arguing the US was in Vietnam "to occupy it as an American colony"[214] and calling the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today".[215] He connected the war with economic injustice, arguing that the country needed serious moral change:
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."[216]
King opposed the war because it took resources away from social welfare at home: "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."[216] He stated that North Vietnam "did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had arrived in the tens of thousands",[217] and accused the U.S. of having killed a million Vietnamese, "mostly children".[218] King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms.[219]
King's opposition cost him significant support among white allies including Johnson, Billy Graham, union leaders, and powerful publishers.[220][221][222] "The press is being stacked against me", King said,[223] complaining of what he described as a double standard that applauded his nonviolence at home, but deplored it when applied "toward little brown Vietnamese children".[224] Life magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi",[216] and The Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."[224][225]
King speaking to an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul on April 27, 1967
The "Beyond Vietnam" speech reflected King's evolving political advocacy in his later years, which paralleled the teachings of the progressive Highlander Research and Education Center, with which he was affiliated.[226][227] King began to speak of the need for fundamental changes in the American political and economic situation, and more frequently expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see a redistribution of resources to correct injustice.[228][229] He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism, but in private sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism.[230][231]
King stated in "Beyond Vietnam" that "true compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar ... it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."[232] King quoted a US official who said that from Vietnam to Latin America, the country was "on the wrong side of a world revolution."[232] King condemned America's "alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America", and said the US should support "the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World rather than suppressing their attempts at revolution.[232]
King's stance on Vietnam encouraged Allard K. Lowenstein, William Sloane Coffin and Norman Thomas, with the support of anti-war Democrats, to attempt to persuade King to run against President Johnson in the 1968 presidential election. King contemplated but decided against this as he felt uneasy with politics and considered himself better suited to activism.[233]
On April 15, 1967, King spoke at an anti-war march from Manhattan's Central Park to the UN. The march was organized by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam under chairman James Bevel. At the UN King brought up issues of civil rights and the draft:
I have not urged a mechanical fusion of the civil rights and peace movements. There are people who have come to see the moral imperative of equality, but who cannot yet see the moral imperative of world brotherhood. I would like to see the fervor of the civil-rights movement imbued into the peace movement to instill it with greater strength. And I believe everyone has a duty to be in both the civil-rights and peace movements. But for those who presently choose but one, I would hope they will finally come to see the moral roots common to both.[234]
Seeing an opportunity to unite civil rights and anti-war activists,[212] Bevel convinced King to become even more active in the anti-war effort.[212] Despite his growing public opposition to the war, King was not fond of the hippie culture developed from the anti-war movement.[235] In his 1967 Massey Lecture, King stated:
The importance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior, but in the fact that hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are expressing a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge from.[235]
On January 13, 1968, King called for a large march on Washington against "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars":[236][237]
We need to make clear in this political year, to congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the president of the United States, that we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killings of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self-determination in Southeast Asia.[236][237]
Correspondence with Thích Nhất Hạnh
Thích Nhất Hạnh was an influential Vietnamese Buddhist who wrote a letter to King in 1965 entitled: "In Search of the Enemy of Man". It was during his 1966 stay in the US that Nhất Hạnh met with King and urged him to publicly denounce the war.[238] In 1967, King gave a speech in New York City, his first to publicly question U.S. involvement in Vietnam.[239] Later that year, King nominated Nhất Hạnh for the Nobel Peace Prize. In his nomination, King said, "I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of [this prize] than this gentle monk from Vietnam. His ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity".[240]
Poor People's Campaign, 1968
Main article: Poor People's Campaign
Rows of tents
A shantytown established in Washington, D.C. to protest economic conditions as a part of the Poor People's Campaign
An FBI file on King's then-upcoming campaign titled: "Martin Luther King Jr., A Current Analysis"
In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the "Poor People's Campaign" to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights".[241][242]
The campaign was preceded by King's final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? which laid out his view of how to address social issues and poverty. King quoted from Henry George's book Progress and Poverty, particularly in support of a guaranteed basic income.[243][244][245] The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the U.S.
King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. He felt that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity". He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided "poverty funds with miserliness".[242] His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism", and argued that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."[246]
The Poor People's Campaign was controversial even within the civil rights movement. Rustin resigned from the march, stating that the goals of the campaign were too broad, that its demands were unrealizable, and that he thought that these campaigns would accelerate repression on the poor and the black.[247]
Global policy
King was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution.[248][249] As a result, in 1968 a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.[250]
Assassination and aftermath
Main article: Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.
I've Been to the Mountaintop
Duration: 30 seconds.0:30
Final 30 seconds of "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech by Martin Luther King Jr.
Problems playing this file? See media help.
On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of the black sanitation workers, who were represented by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1733. The workers had been on strike since March 12 for higher wages and better treatment. In one incident, black street repairmen received pay for two hours when they were sent home because of bad weather, but white employees were paid for the full day.[251][252][253]
On April 3, King addressed a rally and delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address at Mason Temple. King's flight to Memphis had been delayed by a bomb threat against his plane.[254] In reference to the bomb threat, King said:
And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.[255]
King was booked in Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Ralph Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, testified to the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed at Room 306 so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy suite".[256] According to Jesse Jackson, who was present, King's last words were spoken to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."[257]
King was fatally shot by James Earl Ray at 6:01 p.m., Thursday, April 4, 1968, as he stood on the motel's second-floor balcony. The bullet entered through his right cheek, smashing his jaw, then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.[258][259] Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel room and ran to the balcony to find King on the floor.[260]
After emergency surgery, King died at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m.[261] According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's autopsy revealed that though only 39 years old, he "had the heart of a 60 year old", which Branch attributed to stress.[262] King was initially interred in South View Cemetery in South Atlanta, but in 1977, his remains were transferred to a tomb on the site of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park.[263]
Aftermath
Further information: King assassination riots
The assassination led to race riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City, and dozens of other cities.[264][265][266] Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was on his way to Indianapolis for a campaign rally when he was informed of King's death. He gave a short, improvised speech to the gathering of supporters informing them of the tragedy and urging them to continue King's ideal of nonviolence.[267] The following day, he delivered a prepared response in Cleveland.[268] James Farmer Jr. and other civil rights leaders also called for non-violent action, while the more militant Stokely Carmichael called for a more forceful response.[269] The city of Memphis quickly settled the strike on terms favorable to the sanitation workers.[270]
The plan to set up a shantytown in Washington, D.C., was carried out soon after the April 4 assassination. Criticism of King's plan was subdued in the wake of his death, and the SCLC received an unprecedented wave of donations to carry it out. The campaign officially began in Memphis, on May 2, at the hotel where King was murdered.[271] Thousands of demonstrators arrived on the National Mall and stayed for six weeks, establishing a camp they called "Resurrection City".[272]
President Johnson tried to quell the riots by making telephone calls to civil rights leaders, mayors and governors and told politicians that they should warn the police against the unwarranted use of force.[266] "I'm not getting through," Johnson told his aides. "They're all holing up like generals in a dugout getting ready to watch a war."[266] Johnson declared April 7 a national day of mourning for King.[273] Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended King's funeral on behalf of the President, as there were fears that Johnson's presence might incite protests and perhaps violence.[274] At his widow's request, King's last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, given on February 4, 1968, was played at the funeral,
I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.[275][269][276]
His good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", at the funeral.[277] The assassination helped to spur the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.[266] Two months after King's death, James Earl Ray—on the loose from a previous prison escape—was captured at London Heathrow Airport while trying to reach white-ruled Rhodesia on a false Canadian passport. He was using the alias Ramon George Sneyd.[278] Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder. He confessed on March 10, 1969, though he recanted this confession three days later.[279] On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray pleaded guilty to avoid the possibility of the death penalty. He was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.[279][280] Ray later claimed a man he met in Montreal, Quebec, with the alias "Raoul" was involved and that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy.[281][282] He spent the remainder of his life attempting, unsuccessfully, to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had.[280] Ray died in 1998 at age 70.[283]
Allegations of conspiracy
Main article: Martin Luther King Jr. assassination conspiracy theories
The sarcophagus for Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King is within the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta, Georgia.
Ray's lawyers maintained he was a scapegoat similar to the way that John F. Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is seen by conspiracy theorists.[284] Supporters of this assertion said that Ray's confession was given under pressure and that he had been threatened with the death penalty.[280][285] They admitted that Ray was a thief and burglar, but claimed that he had no record of committing violent crimes with a weapon.[282] However, prison records in different U.S. cities have shown that he was incarcerated on numerous occasions for armed robbery.[286] In a 2008 interview with CNN, Jerry Ray, the younger brother of James Earl Ray, claimed that James was smart and was sometimes able to get away with armed robbery. "I never been with nobody as bold as he is," Jerry said. "He just walked in and put that gun on somebody, it was just like it's an everyday thing."[286]
Those suspecting a conspiracy point to the two successive ballistics tests which proved that a rifle similar to Ray's Remington Gamemaster had been the murder weapon. Those tests did not implicate Ray's specific rifle.[280][287] Witnesses near King said that the shot came from another location, from behind thick shrubbery near the boarding house—which had been cut away in the days following the assassination—and not from the boarding house window.[288] However, Ray's fingerprints were found on various objects in the bathroom where it was determined the gunfire came from.[286] An examination of the rifle containing Ray's fingerprints determined that at least one shot was fired from the firearm at the time of the assassination.[286]
In 1997, King's son Dexter Scott King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a new trial.[289] Two years later, King's widow Coretta Scott King and the couple's children, represented by William F. Pepper,[290] won a wrongful death claim against Loyd Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators". Jowers claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King's assassination. The jury found Jowers to be complicit in a conspiracy and that government agencies were party to the assassination.[291][292]
In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice completed the investigation into Jowers' claims but did not find evidence of conspiracy. The investigation report recommended no further investigation unless new reliable facts are presented.[293] A sister of Jowers admitted that he had fabricated the story so he could make $300,000 from selling the story, and she corroborated his story to get money to pay her income tax.[294][295]
In 2002, The New York Times reported that a church minister, Ronald Denton Wilson, claimed his father, Henry Clay Wilson, assassinated King. He stated, "It wasn't a racist thing; he thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way." Wilson provided no evidence to back up his claims.[296]
King researchers David Garrow and Gerald Posner disagreed with Pepper's claims that the government killed King.[297] In 2003, Pepper published a book about the investigation and trial, as well as his representation of James Earl Ray in his bid for a trial.[298][299] James Bevel also disputed the argument that Ray acted alone, stating, "There is no way a ten-cent white boy could develop a plan to kill a million-dollar black man."[300] In 2004, Jesse Jackson stated:
The fact is there were saboteurs to disrupt the march. And within our own organization, we found a very key person who was on the government payroll. So infiltration within, saboteurs from without and the press attacks. ... I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray.[301]
On January 23, 2025 President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order declassifying the records concerning the assassination.[302]
Legacy
See also: Memorials to Martin Luther King Jr. and List of streets named after Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. statue over the west entrance of Westminster Abbey, installed in 1998
South Africa
See also: Black Consciousness Movement
King's legacy includes influences on the Black Consciousness Movement and civil rights movement in South Africa.[303][304] King's work was cited by, and served as, an inspiration for South African leader Albert Luthuli, who fought for racial justice in his country during apartheid and was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[305]
United Kingdom
See also: Northern Ireland civil rights movement
John Hume, the former leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, cited King's legacy as quintessential to the Northern Ireland civil rights movement and the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, calling him "one of my great heroes of the century".[306][307][308]
The Martin Luther King Fund and Foundation in the UK was set up as a charity[309] on December 30, 1969, after King's assassination and following a visit to the UK in 1969 by his widow, Coretta King. The Foundation's first chairman, Canon John Collins, stated that the Foundation was to be an active UK national campaign for racial equality, its work also to include community projects in areas of social need, and education.[310] International Personnel (IP), an employment agency, was formed in 1970 out of the foundation's base in Balham, to find employment for professionally qualified black people. In its first year, the agency placed ten percent of its applicants in jobs equal to their ability.[311] The Balham Training Scheme operated an evening school with lecturers in Typing, Shorthand, English and Math.[310] The foundation was removed from the Charity Commission list on November 18, 1996, as it had ceased to exist.[309] The Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace Committee[312] still exists to honor King's legacy, as represented by his final visit to the UK to receive an honorary degree from Newcastle University in 1967.[313][314] Northumbria and Newcastle remain centers for the study of Martin Luther King and the US civil rights movement. Inspired by King's vision, the committee undertakes a range of activities across the UK to "build cultures of peace".
In 2017, Newcastle University unveiled a bronze statue of King to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his honorary doctorate ceremony.[315] The Students Union also voted to rename their bar "Luther's".[316]
United States
Banner at the 2012 Republican National Convention
King has become a national icon in the history of American liberalism and American progressivism.[317] His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the U.S. Just days after King's assassination, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968.[318] Title VIII of the Act, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibited discrimination in housing and housing-related transactions on the basis of race, religion, or national origin (later expanded to include sex, familial status, and disability). This legislation was seen as a tribute to King's struggle in his final years to combat residential discrimination.[318] The day following King's assassination, teacher Jane Elliott conducted her first "Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes" exercise with her class of elementary school students to help them understand King's death as it related to racism.[319]
King's wife Coretta Scott King was active in matters of social justice and civil rights until her death in 2006. The same year that King was assassinated, she established the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to preserving his legacy and the work of championing nonviolent conflict resolution and tolerance worldwide.[320] Their son, Dexter King, who died in 2024, served as the center's chairman until 2010.[321][322] In 2010, Martin Luther King III became president. In 2012, King's youngest child, Bernice King, became the CEO. Daughter Yolanda King, who died in 2007, was a motivational speaker, author and founder of Higher Ground Productions, an organization specializing in diversity training.[323]
King family members disagree about his views about LGBTQ people. King's widow Coretta said that she believed her husband would have supported them.[324] However, King's youngest child, Bernice, said that he would have been opposed to gay marriage.[325] King himself, in a 1958 advice column written for Ebony, called homosexuality a "problem" and suggested that it could be resolved through psychiatric treatment.[326]
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Main article: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Beginning in 1971, cities and states established annual holidays to honor King.[327] On November 2, 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill creating a federal holiday to honor King. Observed for the first time on January 20, 1986, it is called Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Following President George H. W. Bush's 1992 proclamation, the holiday is observed on the third Monday of January each year, near the time of King's birthday.[328][329] On January 17, 2000, for the first time, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was officially observed in all fifty U.S. states.[330] Arizona (1992), New Hampshire (1999) and Utah (2000) were the last states to recognize the holiday. Utah previously celebrated the holiday under the name Human Rights Day.[331]
Veneration
Martin Luther King of Georgia
Pastor and Martyr
Honored in Holy Christian Orthodox Church
Episcopal Church (United States)
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Canonized September 9, 2016, The Christian Cathedral by Timothy Paul Baymon
Feast April 4
January 15 (Episcopalian and Lutheran)
King was canonized by Archbishop Timothy Paul of the Holy Christian Orthodox Church on September 9, 2016.[332][333][334][335][336] His feast day was set as April 4, the date of his assassination. King is also honored with a Lesser Feast on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church[337] on April 4 or January 15, the anniversary of his birth. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commemorates King liturgically on January 15.[338]
Ideas, influences, and political stances
Christianity
King at the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C.
As a Christian minister, King's main influence was Jesus Christ and the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his speeches.[citation needed] King's faith was strongly based in the Golden Rule, loving God above all, and loving your enemies. His nonviolent thought was also based in the injunction to turn the other cheek in the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus' teaching of putting the sword back into its place (Matthew 26:52).[339] In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, King urged action consistent with what he describes as Jesus' "extremist" love, and also quoted numerous other Christian pacifist authors. In another sermon, he stated:
Before I was a civil rights leader, I was a preacher of the Gospel. This was my first calling and it still remains my greatest commitment. You know, actually all that I do in civil rights I do because I consider it a part of my ministry. I have no other ambitions in life but to achieve excellence in the Christian ministry. I don't plan to run for any political office. I don't plan to do anything but remain a preacher. And what I'm doing in this struggle, along with many others, grows out of my feeling that the preacher must be concerned about the whole man.[340][341]
King's private writings show that he rejected biblical literalism; he described the Bible as "mythological", doubted that Jesus was born of a virgin and did not believe that the story of Jonah and the whale was true.[342]
Among the thinkers who influenced King's theological outlook were L. Harold DeWolf, Edgar Brightman, Peter Bertocci, Walter George Muelder, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Reinhold Niebuhr.[343]
The Measure of a Man
In 1959, King published a short book called The Measure of a Man, which contained his sermons "What is Man?" and "The Dimensions of a Complete Life". The sermons argued for man's need for God's love and criticized the racial injustices of Western civilization.[344]
Nonviolence
A close-up of Rustin
King worked alongside Quakers such as Bayard Rustin to develop nonviolent tactics.
World peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.
—Martin Luther King Jr.[345]
African-American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was King's first regular advisor on nonviolence.[346] King was also advised by the white activists Harris Wofford and Glenn Smiley.[347] Rustin and Smiley came from the Christian pacifist tradition, and Wofford and Rustin both studied Mahatma Gandhi's teachings. Rustin had applied nonviolence with the Journey of Reconciliation campaign in the 1940s,[348] and Wofford had been promoting Gandhism to Southern blacks since the early 1950s.[347]
King initially knew little about Gandhi and rarely used the term "nonviolence" during his early activism. King initially believed in and practiced self-defense, even obtaining guns to defend against possible attackers. The pacifists showed him the alternative of nonviolent resistance, arguing that this would be a better means to accomplish his goals. King then vowed to no longer personally use arms.[349][350]
In a chapter of Stride Toward Freedom, King outlined his understanding of nonviolence, which seeks to win an opponent to friendship, rather than to humiliate or defeat him. The chapter draws from an address by Wofford, with Rustin and Stanley Levison also providing guidance and ghostwriting.[351]
King was inspired by Gandhi and his success with nonviolent activism, and as a theology student, King described Gandhi as being one of the "individuals who greatly reveal the working of the Spirit of God".[352] King had "for a long time ... wanted to take a trip to India."[353] With assistance from Harris Wofford, the American Friends Service Committee, and other supporters, he was able to fund the journey in April 1959.[354][355] The trip deepened his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his commitment to America's struggle for civil rights. In a radio address made during his final evening in India, King reflected, "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity."
When receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King hailed the "successful precedent" of using nonviolence "in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire ... He struggled only with the weapons of truth, soul force, non-injury and courage."[356]
Another influence for King's nonviolent method was Henry David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience and its theme of refusing to cooperate with an evil system.[357] He also was greatly influenced by the works of Protestant theologians Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich,[358] and said that Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis left an "indelible imprint" on his thinking by giving him a theological grounding for his social concerns.[359][360] King was moved by Rauschenbusch's vision of Christians spreading social unrest in "perpetual but friendly conflict" with the state, simultaneously critiquing it and calling it to act as an instrument of justice.[361] However, he was apparently unaware of the American tradition of Christian pacifism exemplified by Adin Ballou and William Lloyd Garrison.[362] King frequently referred to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount as central for his work.[360][363][364][365] Before 1960, King also sometimes used the concept of "agape" (brotherly Christian love).[366][367]
Even after renouncing personal use of guns, King had a complex relationship with self-defense in the movement. He publicly discouraged it as a widespread practice but acknowledged that it was sometimes necessary.[368] Throughout his career King was frequently protected by other civil rights activists who carried arms, such as Colonel Stone Johnson,[369] Robert Hayling, and the Deacons for Defense and Justice.[370][371]
Criticism within the movement
King was criticized by other black leaders in the civil rights movement. This included more militant thinkers such as Nation of Islam member Malcolm X.[372] Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee founder Ella Baker regarded King as a charismatic media figure who lost touch with the grassroots of the movement[373] as he became close to elite figures like Nelson Rockefeller.[374] Stokely Carmichael, a protege of Baker's, became a black separatist and disagreed with King's plea for racial integration because he considered it an insult to a uniquely African-American culture.[375][376] He also took issue that King's non-violence approach depended on appealing to America's conscience, feeling America had none to appeal to.[377]
Activism and involvement with Native Americans
King was an avid supporter of Native American rights and Native Americans were active supporters of King's civil rights movement.[378] The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) was patterned after the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund.[379] The National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) was especially supportive in King's campaigns especially the Poor People's Campaign in 1968.[380] In King's book Why We Can't Wait he writes:
Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.[381]
In the late 1950's, the remaining Creek in Alabama were trying to completely desegregate schools. Light-complexioned Native children were allowed to ride buses to previously all-white schools, while dark-skinned Native children from the same band were barred from the same buses.[379] Tribal leaders, hearing of King's desegregation campaign in Birmingham, contacted him for assistance. Through his intervention the problem was quickly resolved.[379]
In September 1959, after giving a speech at the University of Arizona on the ideals of using nonviolent methods in creating social change, King stated his belief that one must not use force in this struggle "but match the violence of his opponents with his suffering."[382] King then went to Southside Presbyterian, a predominantly Native American church, and was fascinated by their photos; he wanted to go to an Indian Reservation to meet the people so Casper Glenn took King to the Papago Indian Reservation.[382] He met with all the tribal leaders, visited another Presbyterian church near the reservation, and preached there, attracting a Native American crowd.[382] He later returned to Old Pueblo in March 1962 where he preached again to a Native American congregation.[382] King would continue to attract the attention of Native Americans throughout the civil rights movement. During the 1963 March on Washington there was a sizable Native American contingent, including many from South Dakota and from the Navajo nation.[379][383]
King was a major inspiration, along with the civil rights movement, of the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its leaders.[379] John Echohawk, a member of the Pawnee tribe who was the executive director and a founder of the Native American Rights Fund, stated:
Inspired by Dr. King, who was advancing the civil rights agenda of equality under the laws of this country, we thought that we could also use the laws to advance our Indianship, to live as tribes in our territories governed by our own laws under the principles of tribal sovereignty that had been with us ever since 1831. We believed that we could fight for a policy of self-determination that was consistent with U.S. law and that we could govern our own affairs, define our own ways and continue to survive in this society.[384]
Politics
As the leader of the SCLC, King maintained a policy of not publicly endorsing a U.S. political party or candidate: "I feel someone must remain in the position of non-alignment, so that he can look objectively at both parties and be the conscience of both—not the servant or master of either."[385] In a 1958 interview, he expressed his view that neither party was perfect, saying, "I don't think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses ... And I'm not inextricably bound to either party."[386] King did praise Democratic Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois as being the "greatest of all senators" because of his fierce advocacy for civil rights causes.[387]
King critiqued both parties' performance on promoting racial equality:
Actually, the Negro has been betrayed by both the Republican and the Democratic party. The Democrats have betrayed him by capitulating to the whims and caprices of the Southern Dixiecrats. The Republicans have betrayed him by capitulating to the blatant hypocrisy of reactionary right-wing northern Republicans. And this coalition of southern Dixiecrats and right-wing reactionary northern Republicans defeats every bill and every move towards liberal legislation in the area of civil rights.[388]
Although King never publicly supported a political party or candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October 1956 he said that he had not decided whether he would vote for Democrat Adlai Stevenson II or Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower at the 1956 presidential election, but that "In the past, I always voted the Democratic ticket."[389] In his autobiography, King says that in 1960 he privately voted for Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy: "I felt that Kennedy would make the best president. I never came out with an endorsement. My father did, but I never made one." King adds that he likely would have made an exception to his non-endorsement policy for a second Kennedy term, saying "Had President Kennedy lived, I would probably have endorsed him in 1964."[390]
In 1964, King urged his supporters "and all people of goodwill" to vote against Republican Senator Barry Goldwater for president, saying that his election "would be a tragedy, and certainly suicidal almost, for the nation and the world."[391] King believed Robert F. Kennedy would make for a good president, but also believed that he wouldn't beat Johnson in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries. He also expressed support for the possible presidential candidacies of Republicans Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney and Charles Percy.[392]
King rejected both laissez-faire capitalism and communism; King had read Marx while at Morehouse but rejected communism because of its "materialistic interpretation of history" that denied religion, its "ethical relativism", and its "political totalitarianism". He stated that one focused too much on the individual while the other focused too much on the collective.[393]
In a 1952 letter to Coretta Scott, he said: "I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic ..."[394][395] In one speech, he stated that "something is wrong with capitalism" and said, "There must be a better distribution of wealth, and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism."[396] King further said that "capitalism has outlived its usefulness" and "failed to meet the needs of the masses".[397]
King was critical of American culture saying "when machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered" and that America must undergo a "radical revolution of values".[398][399] King considered that in America "the problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor".[400][401]
Compensation
See also: Reparations for slavery debate in the United States
King stated that black Americans, as well as other disadvantaged Americans, should be compensated for historical wrongs. In an interview conducted for Playboy in 1965, he said that granting black Americans only equality could not realistically close the economic gap between them and whites. King said that he did not seek a full restitution of wages lost to slavery, which he believed impossible, but proposed a government compensatory program of $50 billion over ten years to all disadvantaged groups.[402]
He posited that "the money spent would be more than amply justified by the benefits that would accrue to the nation through a spectacular decline in school dropouts, family breakups, crime rates, illegitimacy, swollen relief rolls, rioting and other social evils."[403] He presented this idea as an application of the common law regarding settlement of unpaid labor but clarified that he felt that the money should not be spent exclusively on blacks. He stated, "It should benefit the disadvantaged of all races."[404]
Television
Actress Nichelle Nichols planned to leave the science-fiction television series Star Trek in 1967 after its first season.[405] She changed her mind after talking to King,[406] who was a fan of the show. King explained that her character signified a future of greater racial cooperation.[407] King told Nichols, "You are our image of where we're going, you're 300 years from now, and that means that's where we are and it takes place now. Keep doing what you're doing, you are our inspiration."[408] As Nichols recounted:
Star Trek was one of the only shows that [King] and his wife Coretta would allow their little children to watch. And I thanked him and I told him I was leaving the show. All the smile came off his face. And he said, 'Don't you understand for the first time we're seen as we should be seen. You don't have a black role. You have an equal role.'[405]
The series' creator, Gene Roddenberry, was deeply moved upon learning of King's support.[409]
State surveillance and coercion
FBI surveillance and wiretapping
Memo describing FBI attempts to disrupt the Poor People's Campaign with fraudulent claims about King—part of the COINTELPRO campaign against the anti-war and civil rights movements
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover personally ordered surveillance of King, with the intent to undermine his power as a civil rights leader.[410][411] The Church Committee, a 1975 investigation by the U.S. Congress, found that "From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to 'neutralize' him as an effective civil rights leader."[412]
In the fall of 1963, the FBI received authorization from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to proceed with wiretapping of King's phone lines, purportedly due to his association with Stanley Levison.[413] The Bureau informed President John F. Kennedy. He and his brother unsuccessfully tried to persuade King to dissociate himself from Levison, a New York lawyer who had been involved with Communist Party USA.[414][415] Although Robert Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's telephone lines "on a trial basis, for a month or so",[416] Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.[118]
The Bureau placed wiretaps on the home and office phone lines of both Levison and King, and bugged King's rooms in hotels as he traveled across the country.[414][417] In 1967, Hoover listed the SCLC as a black nationalist hate group, with the instructions: "No opportunity should be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques the organizational and personal conflicts of the leaderships of the groups ... to insure [sic] the targeted group is disrupted, ridiculed, or discredited."[411][418]
Police surveillance
King was also the subject of extensive surveillance by local police agencies throughout the United States. At the March on Washington, where King declared, "We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality", undercover police from both the Birmingham Police Department and the Philadelphia Police Department were on hand to monitor the day's proceedings. Additional documented instances of local police that monitored King include the New York Police Department and the Chicago Police Department.[419]
The Memphis Police Department also spied on King in the spring of 1968, as the civil rights leader was taking part in a campaign to support striking sanitation workers in the Tennessee city. A fire station was located across from the Lorraine Motel, next to the boarding house in which James Earl Ray was staying. Police officers were stationed in the fire station to keep King under surveillance.[420] Agents were watching King at the time he was shot.[421] Immediately following the shooting, officers rushed to the motel. Marrell McCollough, an undercover police officer, was the first person to administer first aid to King.[422] The antagonism between King and the FBI, the lack of an all points bulletin to find the killer, and the police presence nearby led to speculation that the FBI was involved in the assassination.[423]
NSA monitoring of King's communications
In a secret operation code-named "Minaret", the National Security Agency monitored the communications of leading Americans, including King, who were critical of the U.S. war in Vietnam.[424] A review by the NSA itself concluded that Minaret was "disreputable if not outright illegal".[424]
Allegations of communism
For years, Hoover had been suspicious of potential influence of communists in social movements such as labor unions and civil rights.[425] Hoover directed the FBI to track King in 1957, and the SCLC when it was established.[3]
Due to the relationship between King and Stanley Levison, the FBI feared Levison was working as an "agent of influence" over King, in spite of its own reports in 1963 that Levison had left the Party and was no longer associated in business dealings with them.[426] Another King lieutenant, Jack O'Dell, was also linked to the Communist Party by sworn testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).[427]
Despite the extensive surveillance, by 1976 the FBI had acknowledged that it had not obtained any evidence that King himself or the SCLC were actually involved with any communist organizations.[412]
For his part, King adamantly denied having any connections to communism. In a 1965 Playboy interview, he stated that "there are as many Communists in this freedom movement as there are Eskimos in Florida."[428] He argued that Hoover was "following the path of appeasement of political powers in the South" and that his concern for communist infiltration of the civil rights movement was meant to "aid and abet the salacious claims of southern racists and the extreme right-wing elements."[412] Hoover replied by saying that King was "the most notorious liar in the country".[429] After his "I Have A Dream" speech, the FBI described King as "the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country".[417] It alleged that he was "knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists."[430]
The attempts to prove that King was a communist were related to the feeling of many segregationists that blacks in the South were content with the status quo but had been stirred up by "communists" and "outside agitators".[431] King said that "the Negro revolution is a genuine revolution, born from the same womb that produces all massive social upheavals—the womb of intolerable conditions and unendurable situations."[432]
CIA surveillance
CIA files declassified in 2017 revealed that the agency was investigating possible links between King and Communism after a Washington Post article dated November 4, 1964, claimed he was invited to the Soviet Union and that Ralph Abernathy, as spokesman for King, refused to comment on the source of the invitation.[433] Mail belonging to King and other civil rights activists was intercepted by the CIA program HTLINGUAL.[434]
Allegations of adultery
The only meeting of King and Malcolm X, outside the United States Senate chamber, March 26, 1964, during the Senate debates regarding the (eventual) Civil Rights Act of 1964[435]
The FBI attempted to discredit King through revelations regarding his private life. FBI surveillance, some of it since made public, attempted to demonstrate that he had extramarital affairs.[417] The FBI distributed reports regarding such affairs to the executive branch, friendly reporters, potential coalition partners and funding sources of the SCLC, and King's family.[436] The bureau sent anonymous letters to King threatening to reveal information about his affairs.[437] The FBI–King letter sent to King just before he received the Nobel Peace Prize read, in part:
Part of the FBI–King letter,[438] mailed anonymously by the FBI. Other portions of the letter which were previously not made public would be uncovered in 2014.[438]
The American public, the church organizations that have been helping—Protestants, Catholics and Jews will know you for what you are—an evil beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significant [sic]). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy fraudulent self is bared to the nation.[439]
The letter was accompanied by a tape recording—excerpted from FBI wiretaps—of several of King's extramarital liaisons.[440] King interpreted this package as an attempt to drive him to suicide,[441] although William Sullivan, then head of the Domestic Intelligence Division, argued it may have only been intended to "convince Dr. King to resign from the SCLC."[412] Upon the release of the full letter in 2014, Yale history professor Beverly Gage noted in a New York Times article that the claim that the FBI "simply meant to push King out, not induce suicide" was a possibility, pointing out that "Another uncovered portion of the note praises "older leaders" like the NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins, urging King to step aside and let other men lead the civil rights movement."[438] King refused to succumb to the FBI's threats.[417]
In 1977, district court judge John Lewis Smith Jr. ordered the recorded audiotapes and written transcripts resulting from the FBI's electronic surveillance of King between 1963-68 to be sealed from public access in the National Archives until 2027.[442] In 2019, an FBI file emerged on which a handwritten note alleged that King "looked on, laughed and offered advice" as one of his friends raped a woman. Historians who have examined this notional evidence have dismissed it as highly unreliable.[443][444] David Garrow, a King biographer, wrote that "the suggestion ... that he either actively tolerated or personally employed violence against any woman, even while drunk, poses so fundamental a challenge to his historical stature as to require the most complete and extensive historical review possible".[445][444] Garrow's reliance on a handwritten note appended to a typed report is considered poor scholarship by other authorities. The professor of American studies at the University of Nottingham, Peter Ling, pointed out that Garrow was excessively credulous, if not naive, in accepting the accuracy of FBI reports during a period when it was undertaking an operation to attempt to discredit King.[446] Professors Jeanne Theoharis, Barbara Ransby, Nathan Connolly and Glenda Gilmore have expressed reservations about Garrow's scholarship. Theoharis commented "Most scholars I know would penalize graduate students for doing this." It is not the first time the rigor of Garrow's work has been called into serious question.[444] Clayborne Carson, King biographer and overseer of the Dr. King records at Stanford University states that he came to the opposite conclusion of Garrow:
None of this is new. Garrow is talking about a recently added summary of a transcript of a 1964 recording from the Willard Hotel that others, including Mrs. King, have said they did not hear Martin's voice on it. The added summary was four layers removed from the actual recording. This supposedly new information comes from an anonymous source in a single paragraph in an FBI report. You have to ask how could anyone conclude King looked at a rape from an audio recording in a room where he was not present.[447]
The tapes that could confirm or refute the allegation are scheduled to be declassified in 2027.[448]
In his 1989 autobiography And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, Ralph Abernathy stated that King had a "weakness for women", although they "all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation."[449] In a later interview, Abernathy said he only wrote the term "womanizing", that he did not specifically say King had extramarital sex and that the infidelities were emotional rather than sexual.[450] Abernathy criticized the media for sensationalizing the statements he wrote about King's affairs,[450] such as the allegation King had a sexual affair the night before he was assassinated.[450] In his 1986 book Bearing the Cross, Garrow wrote about affairs, including one woman King saw almost daily. According to Garrow, "that relationship ... increasingly became the emotional centerpiece of King's life, but it did not eliminate the incidental couplings ... of King's travels." He alleged that King explained his affairs as "a form of anxiety reduction". Garrow asserted that King's supposed promiscuity caused him "painful and at times overwhelming guilt".[451] King's wife Coretta appeared to have accepted his affairs with equanimity, saying once that "all that other business just doesn't have a place in the very high-level relationship we enjoyed."[452] Shortly after Bearing the Cross was released, civil rights author Howell Raines gave the book a positive review but opined that Garrow's allegations about King's sex life were "sensational" and stated that Garrow was "amassing facts rather than analyzing them".[453]
Awards and recognition
King showing his medallion, which he received from Mayor Wagner, 1964
King was awarded at least fifty honorary degrees from colleges and universities.[454] On October 14, 1964, King became the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him for leading nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in the U.S.[455][456] In 1965, he was awarded the American Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee for his "exceptional advancement of the principles of human liberty."[454][457] In his acceptance remarks, King said, "Freedom is one thing. You have it all or you are not free."[458]
In 1957, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.[459] Two years later, he won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story.[460] In 1966, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America awarded King the Margaret Sanger Award for "his courageous resistance to bigotry and his lifelong dedication to the advancement of social justice and human dignity."[461] Also in 1966, King was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[462] In November 1967, he made a 24-hour trip to the UK to receive an honorary Doctorate in Civil Law from Newcastle University, becoming the first African American the institution had recognized in this way.[314] In an impromptu acceptance speech,[313] he said:
There are three urgent and indeed great problems that we face not only in the United States of America but all over the world today. That is the problem of racism, the problem of poverty and the problem of war.
King after receiving his honorary doctorate from Newcastle University
In addition to his nominations for three Grammy Awards, King posthumously won for Best Spoken Word Recording in 1971 for "Why I Oppose The War In Vietnam".[463]
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to King. The citation read:
Martin Luther King Jr. was the conscience of his generation. He gazed upon the great wall of segregation and saw that the power of love could bring it down. From the pain and exhaustion of his fight to fulfill the promises of our founding fathers for our humblest citizens, he wrung his eloquent statement of his dream for America. He made our nation stronger because he made it better. His dream sustains us yet.[464]
King and his wife were also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.[465]
King was second in Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.[466] In 1963, he was named Time Person of the Year, and, in 2000, he was voted sixth in an online "Person of the Century" poll by the same magazine.[467] King placed third in The Greatest American conducted by the Discovery Channel and AOL.[468]
Five-dollar bill
On April 20, 2016, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that the $5, $10, and $20 bills would all undergo redesign prior to 2020. Lew said that while Lincoln would remain on the front of the $5 bill, the reverse would be redesigned to depict various historical events that had occurred at the Lincoln Memorial. Among the planned designs are images from King's "I Have a Dream" speech.[469]
Memorials
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Main article: List of memorials to Martin Luther King Jr.
Many memorial sites, buildings and sculptures have been created to honor Martin Luther King Jr, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.,[470] the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose, California, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in West Potomac Park next to the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Honorary doctorates
King has received several honorary doctorates.[471]
1957: Doctor of Humane Letters, Morehouse College; Doctor of Laws, Howard University; Doctor of Divinity, Chicago Theological Seminary
1958: Doctor of Laws, Morgan State College; Doctor of Humanities, Central State College
1959: Doctor of Divinity, Boston University
1961: Doctor of Laws, Lincoln University; Doctor of Laws, University of Bridgeport
1962: Doctor of Civil Laws, Bard College
1963: Doctor of Letters, Keuka College
1964: Doctor of Divinity, Wesleyan College; Doctor of Laws, Jewish Theological Seminary; Doctor of Laws, Yale University; Doctor of Divinity, Springfield College
1965: Doctor of Laws, Hofstra University; Doctor of Humane Letters, Oberlin College; Doctor of Social Science, Amsterdam Free University; Doctor of Divinity, St. Peter's College
1967: Doctor of Civil Law, University of Newcastle upon Tyne; Doctor of Laws, Grinnell College
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of society and the state.
Civil rights generally include ensuring peoples' physical and mental integrity, life, and safety, protection from discrimination, the right to privacy, the freedom of thought, speech, religion, press, assembly, and movement.
Political rights include natural justice (procedural fairness) in law, such as the rights of the accused, including the right to a fair trial; due process; the right to seek redress or a legal remedy; and rights of participation in civil society and politics such as freedom of association, the right to assemble, the right to petition, the right of self-defense, and the right to vote. These rights also must follow the legal norm as in they must have the force of law and fit into the system of administrative justice. A key feature in modern society is that the more a state can guarantee political rights of citizens the better the states relations are with its citizens.[1]
Civil and political rights form the original and main part of international human rights.[2] They comprise the first portion of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with economic, social, and cultural rights comprising the second portion). The theory of three generations of human rights considers this group of rights to be "first-generation rights", and the theory of negative and positive rights considers them to be generally negative rights.
History
The phrase "civil rights" is a translation of Latin jus civis (right of the citizen). Roman citizens could be either free (libertas) or servile (servitus), but they all had rights in law.[3] After the Edict of Milan in 313, these rights included the freedom of religion; however, in 380, the Edict of Thessalonica required all subjects of the Roman Empire to profess Nicene Christianity.[4] Roman legal doctrine was lost during the Middle Ages, but claims of universal rights could still be made based on Christian doctrine. According to the leaders of Kett's Rebellion (1549), "all bond men may be made free, for God made all free with his precious blood-shedding."[5]
In the 17th century, English common law judge Sir Edward Coke revived the idea of rights based on citizenship by arguing that Englishmen had historically enjoyed such rights. The Parliament of England adopted the English Bill of Rights in 1689. It was one of the influences drawn on by George Mason and James Madison when drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776. The Virginia declaration heavily influenced the U.S. Bill of Rights (1789).[6]
The removal by legislation of a civil right constitutes a "civil disability". In early 19th century Britain, the phrase "civil rights" most commonly referred to the issue of such legal discrimination against Catholics. In the House of Commons, support for civil rights was divided, with many politicians agreeing with the existing civil disabilities of Catholics. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 restored their civil rights.[7]
In the United States, the term civil rights has been associated with the civil rights movement (1954–1968), which fought against racism.[8] The movement also fought segregation and Jim Crow laws and this fight took place in the streets, in public places, in government, and in the courts including the Supreme Court.[9] The civil rights movement was also not the only movement fighting for civil rights as The Black Panthers were also a group focused on fighting racism and Jim Crow.
Other things that civil rights have been associated with are not just race but also rights of Transgender and other LGBTQ individuals. These have been fights over sexuality instead of race and focused around whether these individuals may access certain spaces like bathrooms according to their sexual identity or biological sex. Gavin Grimm's fight in Virginia over whether he could use the bathroom of his choice is a well known case in these civil right fights.[10]
Another issue in civil rights has been the issue with police brutality in certain communities especially minority communities. This has been seen as another way for minority groups to be oppressed and their rights infringed upon. Outrage has also been a massive result of incidents caught on tape of police abusing and in some cases causing the deaths of people from minority groups such as African Americans. That is why to address the issue has been accountability to police engaging in such conduct as a way to deter other officers from committing similar actions.[11]
Protection of rights
T. H. Marshall notes that civil rights were among the first to be recognized and codified, followed later by political rights and still later by social rights. In many countries, they are constitutional rights and are included in a bill of rights or similar document. They are also defined in international human rights instruments, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Civil and political rights need not be codified to be protected. However, most democracies worldwide do have formal written guarantees of civil and political rights. Civil rights are considered to be natural rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his A Summary View of the Rights of British America that "a free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."
The question of to whom civil and political rights apply is a subject of controversy. Although in many countries citizens are considered to have greater protections against infringement of rights than non-citizens, civil and political rights are generally considered to be universal rights that apply to all persons. One thing to mention is that if individuals have fewer political rights than are they more likely to commit political violence such as in countries where individual rights are highly restricted.[12] That is why it is important for countries to protect the political rights of all citizens including minority groups. This extends to racial, ethnic, tribal, and religious groups. By granting them the same rights it helps reduce the risk of political violence breaking out.[13]
According to political scientist Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr., analyzing the causes of and lack of protection from human rights abuses in the Global South should be focusing on the interactions of domestic and international factors—an important perspective that has usually been systematically neglected in the social science literature.[14]
Other rights
Custom also plays a role. Implied or unenumerated rights are rights that courts may find to exist even though not expressly guaranteed by written law or custom; one example is the right to privacy in the United States, and the Ninth Amendment explicitly shows that other rights are also protected.
The United States Declaration of Independence states that people have unalienable rights including "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness". It is considered by some that the sole purpose of government is the protection of life, liberty , and property.[15]
Some thinkers have argued that the concepts of self-ownership and cognitive liberty affirm rights to choose the food one eats,[16][17] the medicine one takes,[18][19][20] and the habit one indulges.[21][22][23]
Social movements for civil rights
Main article: Civil rights movements
Savka Dabčević-Kučar, Croatian Spring participant; Europe's first female prime minister
Civil rights guarantee equal protection under the law. When civil and political rights are not guaranteed to all as part of equal protection of laws, or when such guarantees exist on paper but are not respected in practice, opposition, legal action and even social unrest may ensue.
Civil rights movements in the United States gathered steam by 1848 with such documents as the Declaration of Sentiment.[24][full citation needed] Consciously modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments became the founding document of the American women's movement, and it was adopted at the Seneca Falls Convention, July 19 and 20, 1848.[25][full citation needed]
Worldwide, several political movements for equality before the law occurred between approximately 1950 and 1980. These movements had a legal and constitutional aspect, and resulted in much law-making at both national and international levels. They also had an activist side, particularly in situations where violations of rights were widespread. Movements with the proclaimed aim of securing observance of civil and political rights included:
the civil rights movement in the United States, where rights of black citizens had been violated;
the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, formed in 1967 following failures in this province of the United Kingdom to respect the Roman Catholic minority's rights; and
movements in many Communist countries, such as the Prague Spring and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and the uprisings in Hungary.
Most civil rights movements relied on the technique of civil resistance, using nonviolent methods to achieve their aims.[26] In some countries, struggles for civil rights were accompanied, or followed, by civil unrest and even armed rebellion. While civil rights movements over the last sixty years have resulted in an extension of civil and political rights, the process was long and tenuous in many countries, and many of these movements did not achieve or fully achieve their objectives.
Problems and analysis
This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (January 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Questions about civil and political rights have frequently emerged. For example, to what extent should the government intervene to protect individuals from infringement on their rights by other individuals, or from corporations—e.g., in what way should employment discrimination in the private sector be dealt with?
Political theory deals with civil and political rights. Robert Nozick and John Rawls expressed competing visions in Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia and Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Other influential authors in the area include Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, and Jean Edward Smith.
First-generation rights
First-generation rights, often called "blue" rights,[citation needed] deal essentially with liberty and participation in political life. They are fundamentally civil and political in nature, as well as strongly individualistic: They serve negatively to protect the individual from excesses of the state. First-generation rights include, among other things, freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, (in some countries) the right to keep and bear arms, freedom of religion, freedom from discrimination, and voting rights. They were pioneered in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century during the Age of Enlightenment. Political theories associated with the English, American, and French revolutions were codified in the English Bill of Rights in 1689 (a restatement of Rights of Englishmen, some dating back to Magna Carta in 1215) and more fully in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 and the United States Bill of Rights in 1791.[27][28]
They were enshrined at the global level and given status in international law first by Articles 3 to 21 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and later in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In Europe, they were enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953.
The civil rights movement[b] was a social movement in the United States from 1954 to 1968 which aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country, which most commonly affected African Americans. The movement had origins in the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century, and modern roots in the 1940s.[1] After years of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience campaigns, the civil rights movement achieved many of its legislative goals in the 1960s, during which it secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.
Following the American Civil War (1861–1865), the three Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and granted citizenship to all African Americans, the majority of whom had recently been enslaved in the southern states. During Reconstruction, African-American men in the South voted and held political office, but after 1877 they were increasingly deprived of civil rights under racist Jim Crow laws (which for example banned interracial marriage, introduced literacy tests for voters, and segregated schools) and were subjected to violence from white supremacists during the nadir of American race relations. African Americans who moved to the North in order to improve their prospects in the Great Migration also faced barriers in employment and housing. Legal racial discrimination was upheld by the Supreme Court in its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the doctrine of "separate but equal". The movement for civil rights, led by figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, achieved few gains until after World War II. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order abolishing discrimination in the armed forces.
In 1954, the Supreme Court struck down state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education. A mass movement for civil rights, led by Martin Luther King Jr. and others, began a campaign of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience including the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955–1956, "sit-ins" in Greensboro and Nashville in 1960, the Birmingham campaign in 1963, and a march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Press coverage of events such as the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 and the use of fire hoses and dogs against protesters in Birmingham increased public support for the civil rights movement. In 1963, about 250,000 people participated in the March on Washington, after which President John F. Kennedy asked Congress to pass civil rights legislation. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, overcame the opposition of southern politicians to pass three major laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in public accommodations, employment, and federally assisted programs; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting laws and authorized federal oversight of election law in areas with a history of voter suppression; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned housing discrimination. The Supreme Court made further pro–civil rights rulings in cases including Browder v. Gayle (1956) and Loving v. Virginia (1967), banning segregation in public transport and striking down laws against interracial marriage.
The new civil rights laws ended most legal discrimination against African Americans, though informal racism remained. In the mid-1960s, the Black power movement emerged, which criticized leaders of the civil rights movement for their moderate and incremental tendencies. A wave of civil unrest in Black communities between 1964 and 1969, which peaked in 1967 and after the assassination of King in 1968, weakened support for the movement from White moderates. Despite affirmative action and other programs which expanded opportunities for Black and other minorities in the U.S. by the early 21st century, racial gaps in income, housing, education, and criminal justice continue to persist.
Background
Main articles: African-American history and Timeline of African-American history
American Civil War and Reconstruction era
Further information: Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
13th Amendment in the National Archives, bearing the signature of Abraham Lincoln
Before the American Civil War, eight serving presidents had owned slaves, almost four million black people remained enslaved in the South, generally only white men with property could vote, and the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U.S. citizenship to whites.[2][3][4] Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the 13th Amendment (1865) that ended slavery; the 14th Amendment (1869) that gave black people citizenship, adding their total for Congressional apportionment; and the 15th Amendment (1870) that gave black males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time).[5] From 1865 to 1877, the United States underwent a turbulent Reconstruction era during which the federal government tried to establish free labor and the civil rights of freedmen in the South after the end of slavery. Many whites resisted the social changes, leading to the formation of insurgent movements such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), whose members attacked black and white Republicans in order to maintain white supremacy. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant, the U.S. Army, and U.S. Attorney General Amos T. Akerman, initiated a campaign to repress the KKK under the Enforcement Acts.[6] Some states were reluctant to enforce the federal measures of the act. In addition, by the early 1870s, other white supremacist and insurgent paramilitary groups arose that violently opposed African-American legal equality and suffrage, intimidating and suppressing black voters, and assassinating Republican officeholders.[7][8] However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the Federal Government to get involved.[8] Many Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of war.[8]
Disenfranchisement after Reconstruction
Main article: Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era
Further information: Jim Crow laws, Civil rights movement (1865–1896), and Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
After the disputed election of 1876, which resulted in the end of Reconstruction and the withdrawal of federal troops, whites in the South regained political control of the region's state legislatures. They continued to intimidate and violently attack blacks before and during elections to suppress their voting, but the last African Americans were elected to Congress from the South before disenfranchisement of blacks by states throughout the region, as described below.
The mob-style lynching of Will James, Cairo, Illinois, 1909
From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to disenfranchise African Americans and many Poor Whites by creating barriers to voter registration; voting rolls were dramatically reduced as blacks and poor whites were forced out of electoral politics. After the landmark Supreme Court case of Smith v. Allwright (1944), which prohibited white primaries, progress was made in increasing black political participation in the Rim South and Acadiana – although almost entirely in urban areas[9] and a few rural localities where most blacks worked outside plantations.[10] The status quo ante of excluding African Americans from the political system lasted in the remainder of the South, especially North Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, until national civil rights legislation was passed in the mid-1960s to provide federal enforcement of constitutional voting rights. For more than sixty years, blacks in the South were essentially excluded from politics, unable to elect anyone to represent their interests in Congress or local government.[8] Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries.
During this period, the white-dominated Democratic Party maintained political control of the South. With whites controlling all the seats representing the total population of the South, they had a powerful voting bloc in Congress. The Republican Party—the "party of Lincoln" and the party to which most blacks had belonged—shrank to insignificance except in remote Unionist areas of Appalachia and the Ozarks as black voter registration was suppressed. The Republican lily-white movement also gained strength by excluding blacks. Until 1965, the "Solid South" was a one-party system under the white Democrats. Excepting the previously noted historic Unionist strongholds the Democratic Party nomination was tantamount to election for state and local office.[11] In 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, president of the Tuskegee Institute, to dine at the White House, making him the first African American to attend an official dinner there. "The invitation was roundly criticized by southern politicians and newspapers."[12] Washington persuaded the president to appoint more blacks to federal posts in the South and to try to boost African-American leadership in state Republican organizations. However, these actions were resisted by both white Democrats and white Republicans as an unwanted federal intrusion into state politics.[12]
Lynching victim Will Brown, who was mutilated and burned during the Omaha, Nebraska race riot of 1919. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the U.S.[13]
During the same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white southerners imposed racial segregation by law. Violence against blacks increased, with numerous lynchings through the turn of the century. The system of de jure state-sanctioned racial discrimination and oppression that emerged from the post-Reconstruction South became known as the "Jim Crow" system. The United States Supreme Court made up almost entirely of Northerners, upheld the constitutionality of those state laws that required racial segregation in public facilities in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, legitimizing them through the "separate but equal" doctrine.[14] Segregation, which began with slavery, continued with Jim Crow laws, with signs used to show blacks where they could legally walk, talk, drink, rest, or eat.[15] For those places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were served first.[15] Elected in 1912, President Woodrow Wilson gave in to demands by Southern members of his cabinet who ordered segregation of workplaces in the federal government.[16]
The early 20th century is a period often referred to as the "nadir of American race relations", when the number of lynchings was highest. While tensions and civil rights violations were most intense in the South, social discrimination affected African Americans in other regions as well.[17] At the national level, the Southern bloc controlled important committees in Congress, defeated passage of federal laws against lynching, and exercised considerable power beyond the number of whites in the South.
Characteristics of the post-Reconstruction period:
Racial segregation. By law, public facilities and government services such as education were divided into separate "white" and "colored" domains.[18] Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.
Disenfranchisement. When white Democrats regained power, they passed laws that made voter registration more restrictive, essentially forcing black voters off the voting rolls. The number of African-American voters dropped dramatically, and they were no longer able to elect representatives. From 1890 to 1908, Southern states of the former Confederacy created constitutions with provisions that disfranchised tens of thousands of African Americans, and U.S. states such as Alabama disenfranchised poor whites as well.
Exploitation. Increased economic oppression of blacks through the convict lease system, denial of economic opportunities, and widespread employment discrimination.
Violence. Individual, police, paramilitary, organizational, and mob racial violence against blacks .
African Americans rejected this regime. They resisted it in numerous ways and sought better opportunities through lawsuits, new organizations, political redress, and labor organizing (see the Civil rights movement (1896–1954)). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909. It fought to end race discrimination through litigation, education, and lobbying efforts. Its crowning achievement was its legal victory in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), when the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public schools in the US was unconstitutional and, by implication, overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896.[19][20] Following the unanimous Supreme Court ruling, many states began to gradually integrate their schools, but some areas of the South resisted by closing public schools altogether.[19][20]
The integration of Southern public libraries followed demonstrations and protests that used techniques seen in other elements of the larger civil rights movement.[21] This included sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance.[21] For example, in 1963 in the city of Anniston, Alabama, two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library.[21] Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries was generally quicker than the integration of other public institutions.[21]
National issues
Colored Sailors room in World War I
The situation for blacks outside the South was somewhat better (in most states they could vote and have their children educated, though they still faced discrimination in housing and jobs). In 1900 Reverend Matthew Anderson, speaking at the annual Hampton Negro Conference in Virginia, said that "...the lines along most of the avenues of wage-earning are more rigidly drawn in the North than in the South. There seems to be an apparent effort throughout the North, especially in the cities to debar the colored worker from all the avenues of higher remunerative labor, which makes it more difficult to improve his economic condition even than in the South."[22] From 1910 to 1970, blacks sought better lives by migrating north and west out of the South. A total of nearly seven million blacks left the South in what was known as the Great Migration, most during and after World War II. So many people migrated that the demographics of some previously black-majority states changed to a white majority (in combination with other developments). The rapid influx of blacks altered the demographics of Northern and Western cities; happening at a period of expanded European, Hispanic, and Asian immigration, it added to social competition and tensions, with the new migrants and immigrants battling for a place in jobs and housing.
A white gang looking for blacks during the Chicago race riot of 1919
Reflecting social tensions after World War I, as veterans struggled to return to the workforce and labor unions were organizing, the Red Summer of 1919 was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the U.S. as a result of white race riots against blacks that took place in more than three dozen cities. Urban problems such as crime and disease were blamed on the large influx of Southern blacks to cities in the north and west, based on stereotypes of rural southern African-Americans. Overall, blacks in Northern and Western cities experienced systemic discrimination in a plethora of aspects of life. Within employment, economic opportunities for blacks were routed to the lowest status and restrictive in potential mobility. Within the housing market, stronger discriminatory measures were used in correlation to the influx, resulting in a mix of "targeted violence, restrictive covenants, redlining and racial steering".[23] The Great Migration resulted in many African Americans becoming urbanized, and they began to realign from the Republican to the Democratic Party, especially because of opportunities under the New Deal of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression in the 1930s.[24] Substantially under pressure from African-American supporters who began the March on Washington Movement, President Roosevelt issued the first federal order banning discrimination and created the Fair Employment Practice Committee. After both World Wars, black veterans of the military pressed for full civil rights and often led activist movements. In 1948, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which ended segregation in the military.[25]
White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the housing project erected this sign, Detroit, 1942
Housing segregation became a nationwide problem following the Great Migration of black people out of the South. Racial covenants were employed by many real estate developers to "protect" entire subdivisions, with the primary intent to keep "white" neighborhoods "white". Ninety percent of the housing projects built in the years following World War II were racially restricted by such covenants.[26] Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee,[27] Los Angeles, Seattle, and St. Louis.[28]
Said premises shall not be rented, leased, or conveyed to, or occupied by, any person other than of the white or Caucasian race.
— Racial covenant for a home in Beverly Hills, California.[29]
While many whites defended their space with violence, intimidation, or legal tactics toward black people, many other whites migrated to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions, a process known as white flight.[30] From the 1930s to the 1960s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) issued guidelines that specified that a realtor "should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character or property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will be clearly detrimental to property values in a neighborhood." The result was the development of all-black ghettos in the North and West, where much housing was older, as well as South.[31]
The first anti-miscegenation law was passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 1691, criminalizing interracial marriage.[32] In a speech in Charleston, Illinois in 1858, Abraham Lincoln stated, "I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people".[33] By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes.[32] By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states.[32] While interracial marriage had been legal in California since 1948, in 1957 actor Sammy Davis Jr. faced a backlash for his involvement with white actress Kim Novak.[34] Davis briefly married a black dancer in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence.[34] In 1958, officers in Virginia entered the home of Mildred and Richard Loving and dragged them out of bed for living together as an interracial couple, on the basis that "any white person intermarry with a colored person"— or vice versa—each party "shall be guilty of a felony" and face prison terms of five years.[32]
Invigorated by the victory of Brown and frustrated by the lack of immediate practical effect, private citizens increasingly rejected gradualist, legalistic approaches as the primary tool to bring about desegregation. They were faced with "massive resistance" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and voter suppression. In defiance, African-American activists adopted a combined strategy of direct action, nonviolence, nonviolent resistance, and many events described as civil disobedience, giving rise to the civil rights movement of 1954 to 1968.
A. Philip Randolph had planned a march on Washington, D.C., in 1941 to support demands for elimination of employment discrimination in the defense industry; he called off the march when the Roosevelt administration met the demand by issuing Executive Order 8802, which barred racial discrimination and created an agency to oversee compliance with the order.[35]
Protests begin
The strategy of public education, legislative lobbying, and litigation that had typified the civil rights movement during the first half of the 20th century broadened after Brown to a strategy that emphasized "direct action": boycotts, sit-ins, Freedom Rides, marches or walks, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, standing in line, and, at times, civil disobedience.[36]
Churches, local grassroots organizations, fraternal societies, and black-owned businesses mobilized volunteers to participate in broad-based actions. This was a more direct and potentially more rapid means of creating change than the traditional approach of mounting court challenges used by the NAACP and others.
In 1952, the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL), led by T. R. M. Howard, a black surgeon, entrepreneur, and planter organized a successful boycott of gas stations in Mississippi that refused to provide restrooms for blacks. Through the RCNL, Howard led campaigns to expose brutality by the Mississippi state highway patrol and to encourage blacks to make deposits in the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Nashville which, in turn, gave loans to civil rights activists who were victims of a "credit squeeze" by the White Citizens' Councils.[37]
After Claudette Colvin was arrested for not giving up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in March 1955, a bus boycott was considered and rejected. But when Rosa Parks was arrested in December, Jo Ann Gibson Robinson of the Montgomery Women's Political Council put the bus boycott protest in motion. Late that night, she, John Cannon (chairman of the Business Department at Alabama State University) and others mimeographed and distributed thousands of leaflets calling for a boycott.[38][39] The eventual success of the boycott made its spokesman Martin Luther King Jr., a nationally known figure. It also inspired other bus boycotts, such as the successful Tallahassee, Florida boycott of 1956–57.[40] This movement also sparked the 1956 Sugar Bowl riots in Atlanta which later became a major organizing center of the civil rights movement, with Martin Luther King Jr.[41][42]
In 1957, King and Ralph Abernathy, the leaders of the Montgomery Improvement Association, joined with other church leaders who had led similar boycott efforts, such as C. K. Steele of Tallahassee and T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, and other activists such as Fred Shuttlesworth, Ella Baker, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Stanley Levison, to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The SCLC, with its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, did not attempt to create a network of chapters as the NAACP did. It offered training and leadership assistance for local efforts to fight segregation. The headquarters organization raised funds, mostly from Northern sources, to support such campaigns. It made nonviolence both its central tenet and its primary method of confronting racism.
In 1959, Septima Clarke, Bernice Robinson, and Esau Jenkins, with the help of Myles Horton's Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, began the first Citizenship Schools in South Carolina's Sea Islands. They taught literacy to enable blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success and tripled the number of black voters on Johns Island. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere.
History
Main article: History of civil rights in the United States
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of the civil rights movement.
Further information: Civil rights movement (1865–1896) and Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
Main article: Brown v. Board of Education
In the spring of 1951, black students in Virginia protested their unequal status in the state's segregated educational system. Students at Moton High School protested the overcrowded conditions and failing facility.[43] Some local leaders of the NAACP had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Jim Crow laws of school segregation. When the students did not budge, the NAACP joined their battle against school segregation. The NAACP proceeded with five cases challenging the school systems; these were later combined under what is known today as Brown v. Board of Education.[43] Under the leadership of Walter Reuther, the United Auto Workers donated $75,000 to help pay for the NAACP's efforts at the Supreme Court.[44]
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that mandating, or even permitting, public schools to be segregated by race was unconstitutional.[19] Chief Justice Warren wrote in the court majority opinion that[19][20]
Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group.[45]
The lawyers from the NAACP had to gather plausible evidence in order to win the case of Brown vs. Board of Education. Their method of addressing the issue of school segregation was to enumerate several arguments. One pertained to having exposure to interracial contact in a school environment. It was argued that interracial contact would, in turn, help prepare children to live with the pressures that society exerts in regard to race and thereby afford them a better chance of living in a democracy. In addition, another argument emphasized how "'education' comprehends the entire process of developing and training the mental, physical and moral powers and capabilities of human beings".[46]
Risa Goluboff wrote that the NAACP's intention was to show the Courts that African American children were the victims of school segregation and their futures were at risk. The Court ruled that both Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had established the "separate but equal" standard in general, and Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899), which had applied that standard to schools, was unconstitutional.
The federal government filed a friend of the court brief in the case urging the justices to consider the effect that segregation had on America's image in the Cold War. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was quoted in the brief stating that "The United States is under constant attack in the foreign press, over the foreign radio, and in such international bodies as the United Nations because of various practices of discrimination in this country."[47][48]
The following year, in the case known as Brown II, the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed".[49] Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) did not overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy v. Ferguson was segregation in transportation modes. Brown v. Board of Education dealt with segregation in education. Brown v. Board of Education did set in motion the future overturning of 'separate but equal'.
School integration, Barnard School, Washington, D.C., 1955
On May 18, 1954, Greensboro, North Carolina, became the first city in the South to publicly announce that it would abide by the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling. "It is unthinkable,' remarked School Board Superintendent Benjamin Smith, 'that we will try to [override] the laws of the United States."[50] This positive reception for Brown, together with the appointment of African American David Jones to the school board in 1953, convinced numerous white and black citizens that Greensboro was heading in a progressive direction. Integration in Greensboro occurred rather peacefully compared to the process in Southern states such as Alabama, Arkansas, and Virginia where "massive resistance" was practiced by top officials and throughout the states. In Virginia, some counties closed their public schools rather than integrate, and many white Christian private schools were founded to accommodate students who used to go to public schools. Even in Greensboro, much local resistance to desegregation continued, and in 1969, the federal government found the city was not in compliance with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Transition to a fully integrated school system did not begin until 1971.[50]
Many Northern cities also had de facto segregation policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In Harlem, New York, for example, neither a single new school was built since the turn of the century, nor did a single nursery school exist – even as the Second Great Migration was causing overcrowding. Existing schools tended to be dilapidated and staffed with inexperienced teachers. Brown helped stimulate activism among New York City parents like Mae Mallory who, with the support of the NAACP, initiated a successful lawsuit against the city and state on Brown's principles. Mallory and thousands of other parents bolstered the pressure of the lawsuit with a school boycott in 1959. During the boycott, some of the first freedom schools of the period were established. The city responded to the campaign by permitting more open transfers to high-quality, historically white schools. (New York's African-American community, and Northern desegregation activists generally, now found themselves contending with the problem of white flight, however.)[51][52]
Emmett Till's murder, 1955
Main article: Emmett Till
Emmett Till's mother Mamie (middle) at her son's funeral in 1955. He was killed by white men after a white woman accused him of offending her in her family's grocery store.
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American from Chicago, visited his relatives in Money, Mississippi, for the summer. He allegedly had an interaction with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a small grocery store that violated the norms of Mississippi culture, and Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam brutally murdered young Emmett Till. They beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. After Emmett's mother, Mamie Till,[53] came to identify the remains of her son, she decided she wanted to "let the people see what I have seen".[54] Till's mother then had his body taken back to Chicago where she had it displayed in an open casket during the funeral services where many thousands of visitors arrived to show their respects.[54] A later publication of an image at the funeral in Jet is credited as a crucial moment in the civil rights era for displaying in vivid detail the violent racism that was being directed at black people in America.[55][54] In a column for The Atlantic, Vann R. Newkirk wrote: "The trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of white supremacy".[56] The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-white jury.[57]
"Emmett's murder," historian Tim Tyson writes, "would never have become a watershed historical moment without Mamie finding the strength to make her private grief a public matter."[58] The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S.[56] The murder and resulting trial ended up markedly impacting the views of several young black activists.[58] Joyce Ladner referred to such activists as the "Emmett Till generation."[58] One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.[59] Parks later informed Till's mother that her decision to stay in her seat was guided by the image she still vividly recalled of Till's brutalized remains.[59] The glass topped casket that was used for Till's Chicago funeral was found in a cemetery garage in 2009. Till had been reburied in a different casket after being exhumed in 2005.[60] Till's family decided to donate the original casket to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American Culture and History, where it is now on display.[61] In 2007, Bryant said that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her story in 1955.[55][62]
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, 1955–1956
Main articles: Rosa Parks and Montgomery bus boycott
Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after being arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus to a white person.
On December 1, 1955, nine months after a 15-year-old high school student, Claudette Colvin, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested, Rosa Parks did the same thing. Parks soon became the symbol of the resulting Montgomery bus boycott and received national publicity. She was later hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement".[63]
Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee where nonviolence as a strategy was taught by Myles Horton and others. After Parks' arrest, African Americans gathered and organized the Montgomery bus boycott to demand a bus system in which passengers would be treated equally.[64] The organization was led by Jo Ann Robinson, a member of the Women's Political Council who had been waiting for the opportunity to boycott the bus system. Following Rosa Parks' arrest, Jo Ann Robinson mimeographed 52,500 leaflets calling for a boycott. They were distributed around the city and helped gather the attention of civil rights leaders. After the city rejected many of its suggested reforms, the NAACP, led by E. D. Nixon, pushed for full desegregation of public buses. With the support of most of Montgomery's 50,000 African Americans, the boycott lasted for 381 days, until the local ordinance segregating African Americans and whites on public buses was repealed. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue significantly, as they comprised the majority of the riders. This movement also sparked riots leading up to the 1956 Sugar Bowl.[65] In November 1956, the United States Supreme Court upheld a district court ruling in the case of Browder v. Gayle and ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated, ending the boycott.[64]
Local leaders established the Montgomery Improvement Association to focus their efforts. Martin Luther King Jr. was elected President of this organization. The lengthy protest attracted national attention for him and the city. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.[39]
Little Rock Nine, 1957
Main article: Little Rock Nine
White parents rally against integrating Little Rock's schools in August 1959.
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine students who attended segregated black high schools in Little Rock, the capital of the state of Arkansas. They each volunteered when the NAACP and the national civil rights movement obtained federal court orders to integrate the prestigious Little Rock Central High School in September, 1957. The Nine faced intense harassment and threats of violence from white parents and students, as well as organized white supremacy groups. The enraged opposition emphasized miscegenation as the threat to white society. Arkansas Governor, Orval Faubus, claiming his only goal was to preserve the peace, deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering the school. Faubus defied federal court orders, whereupon President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened. He federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent them home. Then he sent in an elite Army unit to escort the students to school and protect them between classes during the 1957–58 school year. In class, however, the Nine were teased and ridiculed every day. In the city compromise efforts all failed and political tensions continued to fester. A year later in September 1958 the Supreme Court ruled that all the city's high schools had to be integrated immediately. Governor Faubus and the legislature responded by immediately shutting down all the public high schools in the city for the entire 1958–1959 school year, despite the harm it did to all the students. The decision to integrate the school was a landmark event in the civil rights movement, and the students' bravery and determination in the face of violent opposition is remembered as a key moment in American history. The city and state were entangled in very expensive legal disputes for decades, while suffering a reputation for hatred and obstruction.[66][67]
Method of nonviolence and nonviolence training
During the time period considered to be the "African-American civil rights" era, the predominant use of protest was nonviolent, or peaceful.[68] Often referred to as pacifism, the method of nonviolence is considered to be an attempt to impact society positively. Although acts of racial discrimination have occurred historically throughout the United States, perhaps the most violent regions have been in the former Confederate states. During the 1950s and 1960s, the nonviolent protesting of the civil rights movement caused definite tension, which gained national attention.
In order to prepare for protests physically and psychologically, demonstrators received training in nonviolence. According to former civil rights activist Bruce Hartford, there are two main components of nonviolence training. There is the philosophical method, which involves understanding the method of nonviolence and why it is considered useful, and there is the tactical method, which ultimately teaches demonstrators "how to be a protestor—how to sit-in, how to picket, how to defend yourself against attack, giving training on how to remain cool when people are screaming racist insults into your face and pouring stuff on you and hitting you" (Civil Rights Movement Archive). The philosophical basis of the practice of nonviolence in the American civil rights movement was largely inspired by Mahatma Gandhi's "non-cooperation" policies during his involvement in the Indian independence movement, which were intended to gain attention so that the public would either "intervene in advance" or "provide public pressure in support of the action to be taken" (Erikson, 415). As Hartford explains it, philosophical nonviolence training aims to "shape the individual person's attitude and mental response to crises and violence" (Civil Rights Movement Archive). Hartford and activists like him, who trained in tactical nonviolence, considered it necessary in order to ensure physical safety, instill discipline, teach demonstrators how to demonstrate, and form mutual confidence among demonstrators (Civil Rights Movement Archive).[68][69]
For many, the concept of nonviolent protest was a way of life, a culture. However, not everyone agreed with this notion. James Forman, former SNCC (and later Black Panther) member, and nonviolence trainer was among those who did not. In his autobiography, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, Forman revealed his perspective on the method of nonviolence as "strictly a tactic, not a way of life without limitations." Similarly, Bob Moses, who was also an active member of SNCC, felt that the method of nonviolence was practical. When interviewed by author Robert Penn Warren, Moses said "There's no question that he (Martin Luther King Jr.) had a great deal of influence with the masses. But I don't think it's in the direction of love. It's in a practical direction … ." (Who Speaks for the Negro? Warren).[70][71]
According to a 2020 study in the American Political Science Review, nonviolent civil rights protests boosted vote shares for the Democratic party in presidential elections in nearby counties, but violent protests substantially boosted white support for Republicans in counties near to the violent protests.[72]
Sit-ins, 1958–1960
See also: Greensboro sit-ins, Nashville sit-ins, and Sit-in movement
In July 1958, the NAACP Youth Council sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Dockum Drug Store in downtown Wichita, Kansas. After three weeks, the movement successfully got the store to change its policy of segregated seating, and soon afterward all Dockum stores in Kansas were desegregated. This movement was quickly followed in the same year by a student sit-in at a Katz Drug Store in Oklahoma City led by Clara Luper, which also was successful.[73]
Student sit-in at Woolworth in Durham, North Carolina on February 10, 1960.
Mostly black students from area colleges led a sit-in at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina.[74] On February 1, 1960, four students, Ezell A. Blair Jr., David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, and Franklin McCain from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, an all-black college, sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth's policy of excluding African Americans from being served food there.[75] The four students purchased small items in other parts of the store and kept their receipts, then sat down at the lunch counter and asked to be served. After being denied service, they produced their receipts and asked why their money was good everywhere else at the store, but not at the lunch counter.[76]
The protesters had been encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in. The Greensboro sit-in was quickly followed by other sit-ins in Richmond, Virginia;[77][78] Nashville, Tennessee; and Atlanta, Georgia.[79][80] The most immediately effective of these was in Nashville, where hundreds of well organized and highly disciplined college students conducted sit-ins in coordination with a boycott campaign.[81][82] As students across the south began to "sit-in" at the lunch counters of local stores, police and other officials sometimes used brutal force to physically escort the demonstrators from the lunch facilities.
The "sit-in" technique was not new—as far back as 1939, African-American attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, library.[83] In 1960 the technique succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement.[84] On March 9, 1960, an Atlanta University Center group of students released An Appeal for Human Rights as a full-page advertisement in newspapers, including the Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta Journal, and Atlanta Daily World.[85] Known as the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the group initiated the Atlanta Student Movement and began to lead sit-ins starting on March 15, 1960.[80][86] By the end of 1960, the process of sit-ins had spread to every southern and border state, and even to facilities in Nevada, Illinois, and Ohio that discriminated against blacks.
Demonstrators focused not only on lunch counters but also on parks, beaches, libraries, theaters, museums, and other public facilities. In April 1960 activists who had led these sit-ins were invited by SCLC activist Ella Baker to hold a conference at Shaw University, a historically black university in Raleigh, North Carolina. This conference led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).[87] SNCC took these tactics of nonviolent confrontation further, and organized the freedom rides. As the constitution protected interstate commerce, they decided to challenge segregation on interstate buses and in public bus facilities by putting interracial teams on them, to travel from the North through the segregated South.[88]
Freedom Rides, 1961
Main articles: Freedom Rider and Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks
Freedom Rides were journeys by civil rights activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregation was unconstitutional for passengers engaged in interstate travel. Organized by CORE, the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.[89]
During the first and subsequent Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the Deep South to integrate seating patterns on buses and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains. That proved to be a dangerous mission. In Anniston, Alabama, one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives.[90]
A mob beats Freedom Riders in Birmingham. This picture was reclaimed by the FBI from a local journalist who also was beaten and whose camera was smashed.
In Birmingham, Alabama, an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor gave Ku Klux Klan members fifteen minutes to attack an incoming group of freedom riders before having police "protect" them. The riders were severely beaten "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them." James Peck, a white activist, was beaten so badly that he required fifty stitches to his head.[90]
In a similar occurrence in Montgomery, Alabama, the Freedom Riders followed in the footsteps of Rosa Parks and rode an integrated Greyhound bus from Birmingham. Although they were protesting interstate bus segregation in peace, they were met with violence in Montgomery as a large, white mob attacked them for their activism. They caused an enormous, 2-hour long riot which resulted in 22 injuries, five of whom were hospitalized.[91]
Mob violence in Anniston and Birmingham temporarily halted the rides. SNCC activists from Nashville brought in new riders to continue the journey from Birmingham to New Orleans. In Montgomery, Alabama, at the Greyhound Bus Station, a mob charged another busload of riders, knocking John Lewis[92] unconscious with a crate and smashing Life photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded James Zwerg,[93] a white student from Fisk University, and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.[90]
On May 24, 1961, the freedom riders continued their rides into Jackson, Mississippi, where they were arrested for "breaching the peace" by using "white only" facilities. New Freedom Rides were organized by many different organizations and continued to flow into the South. As riders arrived in Jackson, they were arrested. By the end of summer, more than 300 had been jailed in Mississippi.[89]
… When the weary Riders arrive in Jackson and attempt to use "white only" restrooms and lunch counters they are immediately arrested for Breach of Peace and Refusal to Obey an Officer. Says Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett in defense of segregation: "The Negro is different because God made him different to punish him." From lockup, the Riders announce "Jail No Bail"—they will not pay fines for unconstitutional arrests and illegal convictions—and by staying in jail they keep the issue alive. Each prisoner will remain in jail for 39 days, the maximum time they can serve without losing their right to appeal the unconstitutionality of their arrests, trials, and convictions. After 39 days, they file an appeal and post bond...[94]
The jailed freedom riders were treated harshly, crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In Jackson, some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100 °F (38 °C) heat. Others were transferred to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, where they were treated to harsh conditions. 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.
Public sympathy and support for the freedom riders led John F. Kennedy's administration to order the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue a new desegregation order. When the new ICC rule took effect on November 1, 1961, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they chose on the bus; "white" and "colored" signs came down in the terminals; separate drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and lunch counters began serving people regardless of skin color.
The student movement involved such celebrated figures as John Lewis, a single-minded activist; James Lawson,[95] the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; Diane Nash,[96] an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; Bob Moses, pioneer of voting registration in Mississippi; and James Bevel, a fiery preacher and charismatic organizer, strategist, and facilitator. Other prominent student activists included Dion Diamond,[97] Charles McDew, Bernard Lafayette,[98] Charles Jones, Lonnie King, Julian Bond,[99] Hosea Williams, and Stokely Carmichael.
Voter registration organizing
After the Freedom Rides, local black leaders in Mississippi such as Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, Medgar Evers, and others asked SNCC to help register black voters and to build community organizations that could win a share of political power in the state. Since Mississippi ratified its new constitution in 1890 with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests, it made registration more complicated and stripped blacks from voter rolls and voting. Also, violence at the time of elections had earlier suppressed black voting.
By the mid-20th century, preventing blacks from voting had become an essential part of the culture of white supremacy. In June and July 1959, members of the black community in Fayette County, TN formed the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League to spur voting. At the time, there were 16,927 blacks in the county, yet only 17 of them had voted in the previous seven years. Within a year, some 1,400 blacks had registered, and the white community responded with harsh economic reprisals. Using registration rolls, the White Citizens Council circulated a blacklist of all registered black voters, allowing banks, local stores, and gas stations to conspire to deny registered black voters essential services. What's more, sharecropping blacks who registered to vote were getting evicted from their homes. All in all, the number of evictions came to 257 families, many of whom were forced to live in a makeshift Tent City for well over a year. Finally, in December 1960, the Justice Department invoked its powers authorized by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to file a suit against seventy parties accused of violating the civil rights of black Fayette County citizens.[100] In the following year the first voter registration project in McComb and the surrounding counties in the Southwest corner of the state. Their efforts were met with violent repression from state and local lawmen, the White Citizens' Council, and the Ku Klux Klan. Activists were beaten, there were hundreds of arrests of local citizens, and the voting activist Herbert Lee was murdered.[101]
White opposition to black voter registration was so intense in Mississippi that Freedom Movement activists concluded that all of the state's civil rights organizations had to unite in a coordinated effort to have any chance of success. In February 1962, representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP formed the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). At a subsequent meeting in August, SCLC became part of COFO.[102]
In the Spring of 1962, with funds from the Voter Education Project, SNCC/COFO began voter registration organizing in the Mississippi Delta area around Greenwood, and the areas surrounding Hattiesburg, Laurel, and Holly Springs. As in McComb, their efforts were met with fierce opposition—arrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. Registrars used the literacy test to keep blacks off the voting roles by creating standards that even highly educated people could not meet. In addition, employers fired blacks who tried to register, and landlords evicted them from their rental homes.[103] Despite these actions, over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state.
Similar voter registration campaigns—with similar responses—were begun by SNCC, CORE, and SCLC in Louisiana, Alabama, southwest Georgia, and South Carolina. By 1963, voter registration campaigns in the South were as integral to the Freedom Movement as desegregation efforts. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[104] protecting and facilitating voter registration despite state barriers became the main effort of the movement. It resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which had provisions to enforce the constitutional right to vote for all citizens.
Integration of Mississippi universities, 1956–1965
Further information: Ole Miss riot of 1962
Beginning in 1956, Clyde Kennard, a black Korean War-veteran, wanted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now the University of Southern Mississippi) at Hattiesburg under the G.I. Bill. William David McCain, the college president, used the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, in order to prevent his enrollment by appealing to local black leaders and the segregationist state political establishment.[105]
The state-funded organization tried to counter the civil rights movement by positively portraying segregationist policies. More significantly, it collected data on activists, harassed them legally, and used economic boycotts against them by threatening their jobs (or causing them to lose their jobs) to try to suppress their work.
Kennard was twice arrested on trumped-up charges, and eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in the state prison.[106] After three years at hard labor, Kennard was paroled by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. Journalists had investigated his case and publicized the state's mistreatment of his colon cancer.[106]
McCain's role in Kennard's arrests and convictions is unknown.[107][108][109][110] While trying to prevent Kennard's enrollment, McCain made a speech in Chicago, with his travel sponsored by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. He described the blacks' seeking to desegregate Southern schools as "imports" from the North. (Kennard was a native and resident of Hattiesburg.) McCain said:
We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a segregated society...In all fairness, I admit that we are not encouraging Negro voting...The Negroes prefer that control of the government remain in the white man's hands.[107][109][110]
Note: Mississippi had passed a new constitution in 1890 that effectively disfranchised most blacks by changing electoral and voter registration requirements; although it deprived them of constitutional rights authorized under post-Civil War amendments, it survived U.S. Supreme Court challenges at the time. It was not until after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that most blacks in Mississippi and other southern states gained federal protection to enforce the constitutional right of citizens to vote.
James Meredith walking to class accompanied by a U.S. Marshal and a Justice Department official.
In September 1962, James Meredith won a lawsuit to secure admission to the previously segregated University of Mississippi. He attempted to enter campus on September 20, on September 25, and again on September 26. He was blocked by Governor Ross Barnett, who said, "[N]o school will be integrated in Mississippi while I am your Governor." The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Barnett and Lieutenant Governor Paul B. Johnson Jr. in contempt, ordering them arrested and fined more than $10,000 for each day they refused to allow Meredith to enroll.
U.S. Army trucks loaded with Federal law enforcement personnel on the University of Mississippi campus, 1962.
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent in a force of U.S. Marshals and deputized U.S. Border Patrol agents and Federal Bureau of Prisons officers. On September 30, 1962, Meredith entered the campus under their escort. Students and other whites began rioting that evening, throwing rocks and firing on the federal agents guarding Meredith at Lyceum Hall. Rioters ended up killing two civilians, including a French journalist; 28 federal agents suffered gunshot wounds, and 160 others were injured. President John F. Kennedy sent U.S. Army and federalized Mississippi National Guard forces to the campus to quell the riot. Meredith began classes the day after the troops arrived.[111]
Kennard and other activists continued to work on public university desegregation. In 1965 Raylawni Branch and Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong became the first African-American students to attend the University of Southern Mississippi. By that time, McCain helped ensure they had a peaceful entry.[112] In 2006, Judge Robert Helfrich ruled that Kennard was factually innocent of all charges for which he had been convicted in the 1950s.[106]
Albany Movement, 1961–1962
Main article: Albany Movement
The SCLC, which had been criticized 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 because of the canny tactics of Laurie Pritchett, the local police chief, and divisions within the black community. The goals may not have been specific enough. Pritchett contained the marchers without violent attacks on demonstrators that inflamed national opinion. He also arranged for arrested demonstrators to be taken to jails in surrounding communities, allowing plenty of room to remain in his jail. Pritchett also foresaw King's presence as a danger and forced his release to avoid King's rallying the black community. King left in 1962 without having achieved any dramatic victories. The local movement, however, continued the struggle, and it obtained significant gains in the next few years.[113]
Birmingham campaign, 1963
Main article: Birmingham campaign
See also: Children's Crusade (1963)
The Albany movement was shown to be an important education for the SCLC, however, when it undertook the Birmingham campaign in 1963. Executive Director Wyatt Tee Walker carefully planned the early strategy and tactics for the campaign. It focused on one goal—the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants, rather than total desegregation, as in Albany.
The movement's efforts were helped by the brutal response of local authorities, in particular Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety. He had long held much political power but had lost a recent election for mayor to a less rabidly segregationist candidate. Refusing to accept the new mayor's authority, Connor intended to stay in office.
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.[114]
Recreation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s cell in Birmingham Jail at the National Civil Rights Museum
While in jail, King wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail"[115] on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement.[116] Supporters appealed to the Kennedy administration, which intervened to obtain King's release. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, arranged for $160,000 to bail out King and his fellow protestors.[117] King was allowed to call his wife, who was recuperating at home after the birth of their fourth child and was released early on April 19.
The campaign, however, faltered as it ran out of demonstrators willing to risk arrest. James Bevel, SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, then came up with a bold and controversial alternative: to train high school students to take part in the demonstrations. As a result, in what would be called the Children's Crusade, more than one thousand students skipped school on May 2 to meet at the 16th Street Baptist Church to join the demonstrations. More than six hundred marched out of the church fifty at a time in an attempt to walk to City Hall to speak to Birmingham's mayor about segregation. They were arrested and put into jail. In this first encounter, the police acted with restraint. On the next day, however, another one thousand students gathered at the church. When Bevel started them marching fifty at a time, Bull Connor finally unleashed police dogs on them and then turned the city's fire hoses water streams on the children. National television networks broadcast the scenes of the dogs attacking demonstrators and the water from the fire hoses knocking down the schoolchildren.[118]
Widespread public outrage led the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully in 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.
A black and white photograph of a building in ruins next to an intact wall
Wreckage at the Gaston Motel following the bomb explosion on May 11, 1963
Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement—Fred Shuttlesworth was particularly critical, since he was skeptical about the good faith of Birmingham's power structure from his experience in dealing with them. Parts of the white community reacted violently. They bombed the Gaston Motel, which housed the SCLC's unofficial headquarters, and the home of King's brother, the Reverend A. D. King. In response, thousands of blacks rioted, burning numerous buildings and one of them stabbed and wounded a police officer.[119]
Alabama governor George Wallace tried to block desegregation at the University of Alabama and is confronted by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach in 1963.
Kennedy prepared to federalize the Alabama National Guard if the need arose. Four months later, on September 15, a conspiracy of Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young girls.
"Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's response, 1963
Main articles: Gloria Richardson, Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, and Civil Rights Address
Birmingham was only one of over a hundred cities rocked by the chaotic protest that spring and summer, some of them in the North but mainly in the South. During the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr. would refer to such protests as "the whirlwinds of revolt." In Chicago, blacks rioted through the South Side in late May after a white police officer shot a fourteen-year-old black boy who was fleeing the scene of a robbery.[120] Violent clashes between black activists and white workers took place in both Philadelphia and Harlem in successful efforts to integrate state construction projects.[121][122] On June 6, over a thousand whites attacked a sit-in in Lexington, North Carolina; blacks fought back and one white man was killed.[123][124] Edwin C. Berry of the National Urban League warned of a complete breakdown in race relations: "My message from the beer gardens and the barbershops all indicate the fact that the Negro is ready for war."[120]
In Cambridge, Maryland, a working‐class city on the Eastern Shore, Gloria Richardson of SNCC led a movement that pressed for desegregation but also demanded low‐rent public housing, job‐training, public and private jobs, and an end to police brutality.[125] On June 11, struggles between blacks and whites escalated into violent rioting, leading Maryland Governor J. Millard Tawes to declare martial law. When negotiations between Richardson and Maryland officials faltered, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy directly intervened to negotiate a desegregation agreement.[126] Richardson felt that the increasing participation of poor and working-class blacks was expanding both the power and parameters of the movement, asserting that "the people as a whole really do have more intelligence than a few of their leaders.ʺ[125]
In their deliberations during this wave of protests, the Kennedy administration privately felt that militant demonstrations were ʺbad for the countryʺ and that "Negroes are going to push this thing too far."[127] On May 24, Robert Kennedy had a meeting with prominent black intellectuals to discuss the racial situation. The black delegation criticized Kennedy harshly for vacillating on civil rights and said that the African-American community's thoughts were increasingly turning to violence. The meeting ended with ill will on all sides.[128][129][130] Nonetheless, the Kennedys ultimately decided that new legislation for equal public accommodations was essential to drive activists "into the courts and out of the streets."[127][131]
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the National Mall
Leaders of the March on Washington posing before the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963
On June 11, 1963, George Wallace, Governor of Alabama, tried to block[132] the integration of the University of Alabama. President John F. Kennedy sent a military force to make Governor Wallace step aside, allowing the enrollment of Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood. That evening, President Kennedy addressed the nation on TV and radio with his historic civil rights speech, where he lamented "a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety." He called on Congress to pass new civil rights legislation, and urged the country to embrace civil rights as "a moral issue...in our daily lives."[133] In the early hours of June 12, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, was assassinated by a member of the Klan.[134][135] The next week, as promised, on June 19, 1963, President Kennedy submitted his Civil Rights bill to Congress.[136]
March on Washington, 1963
Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Bayard Rustin (left) and Cleveland Robinson (right), organizers of the March, on August 7, 1963
Randolph and Bayard Rustin were the chief planners of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which they proposed in 1962. In 1963, the Kennedy administration initially opposed the march out of concern it would negatively impact the drive for passage of civil rights legislation. However, Randolph and King were firm that the march would proceed.[137] With the march going forward, the Kennedys decided it was important to work to ensure its success. Concerned about the turnout, President Kennedy enlisted the aid of white church leaders and Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, to help mobilize white supporters for the march.[138][139]
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
adequate integrated education.
Of these, the march's major focus was on passage of the civil rights law that the Kennedy administration had proposed after the upheavals in Birmingham.
Martin Luther King Jr. at a civil rights march on Washington, D.C.
National media attention also greatly contributed to the march's national exposure and probable impact. In the essay "The March on Washington and Television News",[140] historian William Thomas notes: "Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers". By carrying the organizers' speeches and offering their own commentary, television stations framed the way their local audiences saw and understood the event.[140]
"I Have a Dream"
Duration: 30 seconds.0:30
30-second sample from "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963
Problems playing this file? See media help.
The march was a success, although not without controversy. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 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 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 not doing more to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South.
After the march, King and other civil rights leaders met with President Kennedy at the White House. While the Kennedy administration appeared sincerely committed to passing the bill, it was not clear that it had enough votes in Congress to do so. However, when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963,[136] the new President Lyndon Johnson decided to use his influence in Congress to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda.
St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–1964
Main article: St. Augustine movement
Further information: 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protest
"We Cater to White Trade Only" sign on a restaurant window in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1938. In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and spent a night in jail for attempting to eat at a white-only restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida.
In St. Augustine, Florida a local movement had been picketing segregated local institutions since 1963. In the fall of 1964, four teenagers who came to be known as "The St. Augustine Four" sat in at a local Woolworth's lunch counter, seeking to get served. They were arrested and convicted of trespassing, and sentenced to six months in jail and reform school. It took a special act of the governor and cabinet of Florida to release them after national protests by the Pittsburgh Courier, Jackie Robinson, and others.
Black and white photograph of segregationists fighting on a beach
White segregationists (foreground) trying to prevent black people from swimming at a "White only" beach in St. Augustine, Florida during the 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protests
In response to the repression, the St. Augustine movement practiced armed self-defense in addition to nonviolent direct action. In June 1963, Hayling publicly stated that "I and the others have armed. We will shoot first and answer questions later. We are not going to die like Medgar Evers." The comment made national headlines.[141] When Klan nightriders terrorized black neighborhoods in St. Augustine, Hayling's NAACP members often drove them off with gunfire. In October 1963, a Klansman was killed.[142]
In 1964, Hayling and other activists urged the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to come to St. Augustine. Four prominent Massachusetts women—Mary Parkman Peabody, Esther Burgess, Hester Campbell (all of whose husbands were Episcopal bishops), and Florence Rowe (whose husband was vice president of an insurance company)—also came to lend their support. The arrest of Peabody, the 72-year-old mother of the governor of Massachusetts, for attempting to eat at the segregated Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge in an integrated group, made front-page news across the country and brought the movement in St. Augustine to the attention of the world.[143]
Widely publicized activities continued in the ensuing months. When King was arrested, he sent a "Letter from the St. Augustine Jail" to a northern supporter, Rabbi Israel S. Dresner. A week later, in the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place, while they were conducting a pray-in at the segregated Monson Motel. A well-known photograph taken in St. Augustine shows the manager of the Monson Motel pouring hydrochloric acid in the swimming pool while blacks and whites are swimming in it. As he did so he yelled that he was "cleaning the pool", a presumed reference to it now being, in his eyes, racially contaminated.[144] The photograph was run on the front page of a Washington newspaper the day the Senate was to vote on passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Chester school protests, Spring 1964
Main article: Chester school protests
From November 1963 through April 1964, the Chester school protests were a series of civil rights protests led by George Raymond of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP) and Stanley Branche of the Committee for Freedom Now (CFFN) that made Chester, Pennsylvania one of the key battlegrounds of the civil rights movement. James Farmer, the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality called Chester "the Birmingham of the North".[145]
In 1962, Branche and the CFFN focused on improving conditions at the predominantly black Franklin Elementary school in Chester. Although the school was built to house 500 students, it had become overcrowded with 1,200 students. The school's average class size was 39, twice the number of nearby all-white schools.[146] The school was built in 1910 and had never been updated. Only two bathrooms were available for the entire school.[147] In November 1963, CFFN protesters blocked the entrance to Franklin Elementary school and the Chester Municipal Building resulting in the arrest of 240 protesters. Following public attention to the protests stoked by media coverage of the mass arrests, the mayor and school board negotiated with the CFFN and NAACP.[145] The Chester Board of Education agreed to reduce class sizes at Franklin school, remove unsanitary toilet facilities, relocate classes held in the boiler room and coal bin and repair school grounds.[147]
Emboldened by the success of the Franklin Elementary school demonstrations, the CFFN recruited new members, sponsored voter registration drives and planned a citywide boycott of Chester schools. Branche built close ties with students at nearby Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania Military College and Cheyney State College in order to ensure large turnouts at demonstrations and protests.[145] Branche invited Dick Gregory and Malcolm X to Chester to participate in the "Freedom Now Conference"[148] and other national civil rights leaders such as Gloria Richardson came to Chester in support of the demonstrations.[149]
In 1964, a series of almost nightly protests brought chaos to Chester as protestors argued that the Chester School Board had de facto segregation of schools. The mayor of Chester, James Gorbey, issued "The Police Position to Preserve the Public Peace", a ten-point statement promising an immediate return to law and order. The city deputized firemen and trash collectors to help handle demonstrators.[145] The State of Pennsylvania deployed 50 state troopers to assist the 77-member Chester police force.[147] The demonstrations were marked by violence and charges of police brutality.[150] Over six hundred people were arrested over a two-month period of civil rights rallies, marches, pickets, boycotts and sit-ins.[145] Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton became involved in the negotiations and convinced Branche to obey a court-ordered moratorium on demonstrations.[148] Scranton created the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission to conduct hearings on the de facto segregation of public schools. All protests were discontinued while the commission held hearings during the summer of 1964.[151]
In November 1964, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission concluded that the Chester School Board had violated the law and ordered the Chester School District to desegregate the city's six predominantly African-American schools. The city appealed the ruling, which delayed implementation.[147]
Freedom Summer, 1964
Main article: Freedom Summer
In the summer of 1964, COFO brought nearly 1,000 activists to Mississippi—most of them white college students from the North and West—to join with local black activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools", and organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).[152]
Many of Mississippi's white residents deeply resented the outsiders and attempts to change their society. State and local governments, police, the White Citizens' Council and the Ku Klux Klan used arrests, beatings, arson, murder, spying, firing, evictions, and other forms of intimidation and harassment to oppose the project and prevent blacks from registering to vote or achieving social equality.[153]
Missing persons poster created by the FBI in 1964 shows the photographs of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared: James Chaney, a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two Jewish activists, Andrew Goodman, a Queens College anthropology student; and Michael Schwerner, a CORE organizer from Manhattan's Lower East Side. They were found weeks later, murdered by conspirators who turned out to be local members of the Klan, some of the members of the Neshoba County sheriff's department. This outraged the public, leading the U.S. Justice Department along with the FBI (the latter which had previously avoided dealing with the issue of segregation and persecution of blacks) to take action. The outrage over these murders helped lead to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
From June to August, Freedom Summer activists worked in 38 local projects scattered across the state, with the largest number concentrated in the Mississippi Delta region. At least 30 Freedom Schools, with close to 3,500 students, were established, and 28 community centers were set up.[154]
Over the course of the Summer Project, some 17,000 Mississippi blacks attempted to become registered voters in defiance of the red tape and forces of white supremacy arrayed against them—only 1,600 (less than 10%) succeeded. But more than 80,000 joined the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), founded as an alternative political organization, showing their desire to vote and participate in politics.[155]
Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it had a significant effect on the course of the civil rights movement. It helped break down the decades of people's isolation and repression that were the foundation of the Jim Crow system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers. The progression of events throughout the South increased media attention to Mississippi.[156]
The deaths of affluent northern white students and threats to non-Southerners attracted the full attention of the media spotlight to the state. Many black activists became embittered, believing the media valued the lives of whites and blacks differently. Perhaps the most significant effect of Freedom Summer was on the volunteers, almost all of whom—black and white—still consider it to have been one of the defining periods of their lives.[156]
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Main article: Civil Rights Act of 1964
Although President Kennedy had proposed civil rights legislation and it had support from Northern Congressmen and Senators of both parties, Southern Senators blocked the bill by threatening filibusters. After considerable parliamentary maneuvering and 54 days of filibuster on the floor of the United States Senate, President Johnson got a bill through the Congress.[157]
Lyndon B. Johnson signs the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964
On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,[104] which banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations. The bill authorized the Attorney General to file lawsuits to enforce the new law. The law also nullified state and local laws that required such discrimination.
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964
Main article: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Blacks in Mississippi had been disfranchised by statutory and constitutional changes since the late 19th century. In 1963 COFO held a Freedom Ballot in Mississippi to demonstrate the desire of black Mississippians to vote. More than 80,000 people registered and voted in the mock election, which pitted an integrated slate of candidates from the "Freedom Party" against the official state Democratic Party candidates.[158]
President Lyndon B. Johnson (center) meets with civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young, and James Farmer, January 1964
In 1964, organizers launched the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) to challenge the all-white official party. When Mississippi voting registrars refused to recognize their candidates, they held their own primary. They selected Fannie Lou Hamer, Annie Devine, and Victoria Gray to run for Congress, and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.[152]
The presence of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was inconvenient, however, for the convention organizers. They had planned a triumphant celebration of the Johnson administration's achievements in civil rights, rather than a fight over racism within the Democratic Party. All-white delegations from other Southern states threatened to walk out if the official slate from Mississippi was not seated. Johnson was worried about the inroads that Republican Barry Goldwater's campaign was making in what previously had been the white Democratic stronghold of the "Solid South", as well as support that George Wallace had received in the North during the Democratic primaries.
Johnson could not, however, prevent the MFDP from taking its case to the Credentials Committee. There Fannie Lou Hamer testified eloquently about the beatings that she and others endured and the threats they faced for trying to register to vote. Turning to the television cameras, Hamer asked, "Is this America?"
Johnson offered the MFDP a "compromise" under which it would receive two non-voting, at-large seats, while the white delegation sent by the official Democratic Party would retain its seats. The MFDP angrily rejected the "compromise."
The MFDP kept up its agitation at the convention after it was denied official recognition. When all but three of the "regular" Mississippi delegates left because they refused to pledge allegiance to the party, the MFDP delegates borrowed passes from sympathetic delegates and took the seats vacated by the official Mississippi delegates. National party organizers removed them. When they returned the next day, they found convention organizers had removed the empty seats that had been there the day before. They stayed and sang "freedom songs".
The 1964 Democratic Party convention disillusioned many within the MFDP and the civil rights movement, but it did not destroy the MFDP. The MFDP became more radical after Atlantic City. It invited Malcolm X to speak at one of its conventions and opposed the war in Vietnam.
Selma Voting Rights Movement
Main articles: Selma to Montgomery marches and Voting Rights Act
SNCC had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in Selma, Alabama, in 1963, but by 1965 little headway had been made in the face of opposition from Selma's sheriff, Jim Clark. After local residents asked the SCLC for assistance, King came to Selma to lead several marches, at which he was arrested along with 250 other demonstrators. The marchers continued to meet violent resistance from the police. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a resident of nearby Marion, was killed by police at a later march on February 17, 1965. Jackson's death prompted James Bevel, director of the Selma Movement, to initiate and organize a plan to march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital.
On March 7, 1965, acting on Bevel's plan, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk the 54 miles (87 km) from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Six blocks into the march, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge where the marchers left the city and moved into the county, state troopers, and local county law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, rubber tubes wrapped in barbed wire, and bullwhips. They drove the marchers back into Selma. Lewis was knocked unconscious and dragged to safety. At least 16 other marchers were hospitalized. Among those gassed and beaten was Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was at the center of civil rights activity at the time.
Police attack non-violent marchers on "Bloody Sunday", the first day of the Selma to Montgomery marches.
The national broadcast of the news footage of lawmen attacking unresisting marchers seeking to exercise their constitutional right to vote provoked a national response and hundreds of people from all over the country came for a second march. These marchers were turned around by King at the last minute so as not to violate a federal injunction. This displeased many demonstrators, especially those who resented King's nonviolence (such as James Forman and Robert F. Williams).
That night, local Whites attacked James Reeb, a voting rights supporter. He died of his injuries in a Birmingham hospital on March 11. Due to the national outcry at a White minister being murdered so brazenly (as well as the subsequent civil disobedience led by Gorman and other SNCC leaders all over the country, especially in Montgomery and at the White House), the marchers were able to lift the injunction and obtain protection from federal troops, permitting them to make the march across Alabama without incident two weeks later; during the march, Gorman, Williams, and other more militant protesters carried bricks and sticks of their own.
Four Klansmen shot and killed Detroit homemaker Viola Liuzzo as she drove marchers back to Selma that night.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
'Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act'
Duration: 20 minutes and 40 seconds.20:40
Statement before the United States Congress by Johnson on August 6, 1965, about the Voting Rights Act
"Remarks on the Signing of the Voting Rights Act"
Duration: 21 minutes and 3 seconds.21:03
audio only
Problems playing these files? See media help.
Eight days after the first march, but before the final march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. In it he stated:
Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.
On May 26, the Senate passed S. 1564, the Voting Rights Act, by a vote of 77–19, with only Southern Senators opposing the bill.[159][160] On July 9, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6400, the House version of the bill, by a vote of 333-85.[159]: 163–165 [161] On August 3–4, the two houses of Congress reconciled the two bill, and on August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The bill suspended literacy tests and other subjective voter registration tests. It authorized Federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used and where African Americans were historically under-represented in voting rolls compared to the eligible population. African Americans who had been barred from registering to vote finally had an alternative to taking suits to local or state courts, which had seldom prosecuted their cases to success. If discrimination in voter registration occurred, the 1965 act authorized the Attorney General of the United States to send Federal examiners to replace local registrars.
Within months of the bill's passage, 250,000 new black voters had been registered, one-third of them by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In 1965, Mississippi had the highest black voter turnout at 74% and led the nation in the number of black public officials elected. In 1969, Tennessee had a 92% turnout among black voters; Arkansas, 78%; and Texas, 73%.
Several whites who had opposed the Voting Rights Act paid a quick price. In 1966 Sheriff Jim Clark of Selma, Alabama, infamous for using cattle prods against civil rights marchers, was up for reelection. Although he took off the notorious "Never" pin on his uniform, he was defeated. At the election, Clark lost as blacks voted to get him out of office.
Blacks' regaining the power to vote changed the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states. By 1989, there were more than 7,200 African Americans in office, including more than 4,800 in the South. Nearly every county where populations were majority black in Alabama had a black sheriff. Southern blacks held top positions in city, county, and state governments.
Atlanta elected a black mayor in 1982, Andrew Young, as did Jackson, Mississippi in 1997, with Harvey Johnson Jr., and New Orleans in 1978, with Ernest Morial. Black politicians on the national level included Barbara Jordan, elected as a Representative from Texas in Congress in 1973, and President Jimmy Carter appointed Andrew Young as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Julian Bond was elected to the Georgia State Legislature in 1965, although political reaction to his public opposition to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War prevented him from taking his seat until 1967. John Lewis was first elected in 1986 to represent Georgia's 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives, where he served from 1987 until his death in 2020. There were only two Black members of Congress from the states of the former Confederacy elected in 1980, and four elected in 1990, but this rose to 16 in 2000.
Fair housing movements, 1966–1968
The first major blow against housing segregation in the era, the Rumford Fair Housing Act, was passed in California in 1963. It was overturned by white California voters and real estate lobbyists the following year with Proposition 14, a move which helped precipitate the Watts riots.[162][163] In 1966, the California Supreme Court invalidated Proposition 14 and reinstated the Rumford Fair Housing Act.[164]
Working and organizing for fair housing laws became a major project of the movement over the next two years, with Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and Al Raby leading the Chicago Freedom Movement around the issue in 1966. In the following year, Father James Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council also attracted national attention with a fair housing campaign in Milwaukee.[165][166] Both movements faced violent resistance from white homeowners and legal opposition from conservative politicians.
The Fair Housing Bill was the most contentious civil rights legislation of the era. Senator Walter Mondale, who advocated for the bill, noted that over successive years, it was the most filibustered legislation in U.S. history. It was opposed by most Northern and Southern senators, as well as the National Association of Real Estate Boards. A proposed "Civil Rights Act of 1966" had collapsed completely because of its fair housing provision.[167] Mondale commented that:
A lot of civil rights [legislation] was about making the South behave and taking the teeth from George Wallace, [but] this came right to the neighborhoods across the country. This was civil rights getting personal.[168]
Nationwide riots, 1965–1967
Main article: Ghetto riots (1964–1969)
See also: Long Hot Summer of 1967
Further information: Watts riots, Detroit Riot of 1967, and 1967 Newark riots
In the mid-1960s, the U.S. experienced a series of "long hot summers" of civil unrest. While the early civil rights movement primarily focused on legal challenges to segregation in the South, the "long hot summers" brought attention to the racial disparities and issues within urban communities in the North.[169] Systemic racism, police brutality, high unemployment rates, poor living conditions in urban Black neighborhoods, and a sense of hopelessness contributed to the widespread unrest.[170][171][172]
Watts
Soldiers direct traffic away from an area of South Central Los Angeles burning during the 1965 Watts riot
The momentum for the advancement of civil rights came to a sudden halt in August 1965 with riots in the Watts district of Los Angeles. The riots were ignited by the arrest of Marquette Frye during a traffic stop, which escalated into a physical confrontation with police officers and drew a large crowd of onlookers. During the six days of unrest, rioters engaged in widespread looting of stores, burning buildings through arson, and in some cases, using sniper tactics to fire at authorities. To quell the violence, National Guard troops were deployed to the area, imposing a curfew.[173][174]
After 34 people were killed and $35 million (equivalent to $349.22 million in 2024) in property was damaged, the public feared an expansion of the violence to other cities, and so the appetite for additional programs in President Lyndon Johnson's agenda was lost.[175][176]
Newark and Detroit
1967 Newark riots
Destroyed buildings during the 1967 Detroit riots
Occurring well after the conclusion of the 1966 Chicago open housing movement, in what is known as the "Long hot summer of 1967" more than 150 riots erupted across the United States, with the most destructive occurring in Detroit, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey.[177] The Boston Globe called it "a revolution of black Americans against white Americans, a violent petition for the redress of long-standing grievances." The Globe asserted that Great Society legislation had affected little fundamental improvement.[178]
The Newark riots were sparked by the arrest and beating of John William Smith, a Black cab driver, by police officers. The unrest lasted for five days, involving widespread looting, arson, and violent confrontations with police and National Guard troops. Some 26 people were killed, more than 700 were injured, and more than 1,000 residents were arrested.[178][179]
In Detroit, a large black middle class had begun to develop among those African Americans who worked at unionized jobs in the automotive industry. These workers complained of persisting racist practices, limiting the jobs they could have and opportunities for promotion. The United Auto Workers channeled these complaints into bureaucratic and ineffective grievance procedures.[180] Violent white mobs enforced the segregation of housing up through the 1960s.[181] The Detroit riots were sparked by a police raid on an unlicensed after-hours bar, commonly called the "Blind Pig," in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The riots lasted for five days, causing significant property damage, 1,200 injuries, and at least 43 deaths (33 of those killed were Black residents of the city).[171] Governor George Romney sent in 7,400 National Guard troops to quell fire bombings, looting, and attacks on businesses and police. President Lyndon Johnson deployed U.S. Army troops with tanks and machine guns. Residents reported that police officers and National Guardsmen shot at black civilians and suspects indiscriminately.[181][182][183]
At an August 2, 1967 cabinet meeting, Attorney General Ramsey Clark warned that untrained and undisciplined local police forces and National Guardsmen might trigger a "guerrilla war in the streets," as evidenced by the climate of sniper fire in Newark and Detroit.[184][185][186][187] Snipers were a significant element in many of the riots, creating a dangerous situation for both law enforcement and civilians, with shooters often targeting from rooftops and other concealed locations.[188][189]
Kerner Commission
The riots confounded many civil rights activists of both races due to the recent passage of major civil rights legislation. They also caused a backlash among Northern whites, many of whom stopped supporting civil rights causes.[190] President Johnson formed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, informally known as the Kerner Commission, on July 28, 1967 to explore the causes behind the recurring outbreaks of urban civil disorder.[191][192] The commission's scope included the 164 disorders occurring in the first nine months of 1967. The president had directed them, in simple words, to document what happened, find out why it happened, and find out how to prevent it.[193]
The commission's 1968 report identified police practices, unemployment and underemployment, and lack of adequate housing as the most significant grievances motivating the rage.[194] It suggested legislative measures to promote racial integration and alleviate poverty and concluded that the nation was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal."[195] The president, fixated on the Vietnam War and keenly aware of budgetary constraints, barely acknowledged the report.[196]
Memphis, King assassination, and Civil Rights Act of 1968
Main articles: Poor People's Campaign, Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and Civil Rights Act of 1968
See also: King assassination riots and Orangeburg massacre
A 3,000-person shantytown called Resurrection City was established in 1968 on the National Mall as part of the Poor People's Campaign.
As 1968 began, the fair housing bill was being filibustered once again, but two developments revived it.[168] The Kerner Commission report on the 1967 ghetto riots was delivered to Congress on March 1, and it strongly recommended "a comprehensive and enforceable federal open housing law" as a remedy to the civil disturbances. The Senate was moved to end their filibuster that week.[197]
James Lawson invited King to Memphis, Tennessee, in March 1968 to support a sanitation workers' strike. These workers launched a campaign for union representation after two workers were accidentally killed on the job; they were seeking fair wages and improved working conditions. King considered their struggle to be a vital part of the Poor People's Campaign he was planning.
"I've Been to the Mountaintop"
Duration: 30 seconds.0:30
Final 30 seconds of "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. These are the final words from his final public speech.
Problems playing this file? See media help.
A day after delivering his stirring "I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon, which has become famous for his vision of American society, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Riots broke out in black neighborhoods in more than 110 cities across the United States in the days that followed, notably in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.
The day before King's funeral, April 8, a completely silent march with Coretta Scott King, SCLC, and UAW president Walter Reuther attracted approximately 42,000 participants.[198][199] Armed National Guardsmen lined the streets, sitting on M-48 tanks, to protect the marchers, and helicopters circled overhead. On April 9, Mrs. King led another 150,000 people in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta.[200] Her dignity revived courage and hope in many of the Movement's members, confirming her place as the new leader in the struggle for racial equality.
Coretta Scott King said,[201]
Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life for the poor of the world, the garbage workers of Memphis and the peasants of Vietnam. The day that Negro people and others in bondage are truly free, on the day want is abolished, on the day wars are no more, on that day I know my husband will rest in a long-deserved peace.
Aftermath of the King assassination riots in Washington, D.C.
Ralph Abernathy succeeded King as the head of the SCLC and attempted to carry forth King's plan for a Poor People's March. It was to unite blacks and whites to campaign for fundamental changes in American society and economic structure. The march went forward under Abernathy's plainspoken leadership but did not achieve its goals.
Civil Rights Act of 1968
The U.S. House of Representatives had been deliberating its Fair Housing Act in early April, before King's assassination and the aforementioned wave of unrest that followed, the largest since the Civil War.[202] Senator Charles Mathias wrote:
[S]ome Senators and Representatives publicly stated they would not be intimidated or rushed into legislating because of the disturbances. Nevertheless, the news coverage of the riots and the underlying disparities in income, jobs, housing, and education, between White and Black Americans helped educate citizens and Congress about the stark reality of an enormous social problem. Members of Congress knew they had to act to redress these imbalances in American life to fulfill the dream that King had so eloquently preached.[197]
The House passed the legislation on April 10, less than a week after King was murdered, and President Johnson signed it the next day. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin. It also made it a federal crime to "by force or by the threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone...by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin."[203]
Gates v. Collier
Mississippi State Penitentiary
Conditions at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, then known as Parchman Farm, became part of the public discussion of civil rights after activists were imprisoned there. In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders came to the South to test the desegregation of public facilities. By the end of June 1963, Freedom Riders had been convicted in Jackson, Mississippi.[204] Many were jailed in Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Mississippi employed the trusty system, a hierarchical order of inmates that used some inmates to control and enforce punishment of other inmates.[205]
In 1970 the civil rights lawyer Roy Haber began taking statements from inmates. He collected 50 pages of details of murders, rapes, beatings and other abuses suffered by the inmates from 1969 to 1971 at Mississippi State Penitentiary. In a landmark case known as Gates v. Collier (1972), four inmates represented by Haber sued the superintendent of Parchman Farm for violating their rights under the United States Constitution.
Federal Judge William C. Keady found in favor of the inmates, writing that Parchman Farm violated the civil rights of the inmates by inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. He ordered an immediate end to all unconstitutional conditions and practices. Racial segregation of inmates was abolished, as was the trusty system, which allowed certain inmates to have power and control over others.[206]
The prison was renovated in 1972 after the scathing ruling by Keady, who wrote that the prison was an affront to "modern standards of decency." Among other reforms, the accommodations were made fit for human habitation. The system of trusties was abolished. (The prison had armed lifers with rifles and given them authority to oversee and guard other inmates, which led to many cases of abuse and murders.)[207]
In integrated correctional facilities in northern and western states, blacks represented a disproportionate number of prisoners, in excess of their proportion of the general population. They were often treated as second-class citizens by white correctional officers. Blacks also represented a disproportionately high number of death row inmates. Eldridge Cleaver's book Soul on Ice was written from his experiences in the California correctional system; it contributed to black militancy.[208]
Legacy
Civil rights protest activity had an observable impact on white American's views on race and politics over time.[209] White people who live in counties in which civil rights protests of historical significance occurred have been found to have lower levels of racial resentment against blacks, are more likely to identify with the Democratic Party as well as more likely to support affirmative action.[209]
One study found that non-violent activism of the era tended to produce favorable media coverage and changes in public opinion focusing on the issues organizers were raising, but violent protests tended to generate unfavorable media coverage that generated public desire to restore law and order.[210]
The 1964 Act was passed to end discrimination in various fields based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in the areas of employment and public accommodation.[211][212] The 1964 Act did not prohibit sex discrimination against persons employed at educational institutions. A parallel law, Title VI, had also been enacted in 1964 to prohibit discrimination in federally funded private and public entities. It covered race, color, and national origin but excluded sex. Feminists during the early 1970s lobbied Congress to add sex as a protected class category. In 1972, Title IX was enacted to fill this gap and prohibit discrimination in all federally funded education programs. Title IX, or the Education Amendments of 1972 was later renamed the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act following Mink's death in 2002.[213]
Characteristics
Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (and other Mississippi-based organizations) is an example of local grassroots leadership in the movement.
African-American women
Main article: African-American women in the civil rights movement
African-American women in the civil rights movement were pivotal to its success.[214] They volunteered as activists, advocates, educators, clerics, writers, spiritual guides, caretakers and politicians for the civil rights movement; leading and participating in organizations that contributed to the cause of civil rights.[214] Rosa Parks's refusal to sit at the back of a public bus resulted in the year-long Montgomery bus boycott,[214] and the eventual desegregation of interstate travel in the United States.[215] Women were members of the NAACP because they believed it could help them contribute to the cause of civil rights.[214] Some of those involved with the Black Panthers were nationally recognized as leaders, and still others did editorial work on the Black Panther newspaper spurring internal discussions about gender issues.[216] Ella Baker founded the SNCC and was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement.[217][218] Female students involved with the SNCC helped to organize sit-ins and the Freedom Rides.[217] At the same time many elderly black women in towns across the Southern US cared for the organization's volunteers at their homes, providing the students food, a bed, healing aid and motherly love.[217] Other women involved also formed church groups, bridge clubs, and professional organizations, such as the National Council of Negro Women, to help achieve freedom for themselves and their race.[216] Several who participated in these organizations lost their jobs because of their involvement.[216]
Sexist discrimination
Many women who participated in the movement experienced gender discrimination and sexual harassment.[219] In the SCLC, Ella Baker's input was discouraged in spite of her being the oldest and most experienced person on the staff.[220] There are many other accounts and examples.[221][222][223][224]
Avoiding the "Communist" label
See also: Communist Party USA and African Americans
On December 17, 1951, the Communist Party–affiliated Civil Rights Congress delivered the petition We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People to the United Nations, arguing that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against lynching in the United States, was guilty of genocide under Article II of the UN Genocide Convention (see Black genocide).[225] The petition was presented to the United Nations at two separate venues: Paul Robeson, a concert singer and activist, presented it to a UN official in New York City, while William L. Patterson, executive director of the CRC, delivered copies of the drafted petition to a UN delegation in Paris.[226]
Patterson, the editor of the petition, was a leader of the Communist Party USA and head of the International Labor Defense, a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African Americans who were involved in cases that involved issues of political or racial persecution. The ILD was known for leading the defense of the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama in 1931, where the Communist Party had a considerable amount of influence among African Americans in the 1930s. This influence had largely declined by the late 1950s, although it could command international attention. As earlier civil rights figures such as Robeson, Du Bois and Patterson became more politically radical (and therefore targets of Cold War anti-Communism by the U.S. Government), they lost favor with mainstream Black America as well as with the NAACP.[226]
In order to secure a place in the political mainstream and gain the broadest base of support, the new generation of civil rights activists believed that it had to openly distance itself from anything and anyone associated with the Communist party. According to Ella Baker, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference added the word "Christian" to its name in order to deter charges that it was associated with Communism.[227] Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI had been concerned about communism since the early 20th century, and it kept civil rights activists under close surveillance and labeled some of them "Communist" or "subversive", a practice that continued during the civil rights movement. In the early 1960s, the practice of distancing the civil rights movement from "Reds" was challenged by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee which adopted a policy of accepting assistance and participation from anyone who supported the SNCC's political program and was willing to "put their body on the line, regardless of political affiliation." At times the SNCC's policy of political openness put it at odds with the NAACP.[226]
Grassroots leadership
While most popular representations of the movement are centered on the leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to one person, organization, or strategy. Sociologist Doug McAdam has stated that, "in King's case, it would be inaccurate to say that he was the leader of the modern civil rights movement...but more importantly, there was no singular civil rights movement. The movement was, in fact, a coalition of thousands of local efforts nationwide, spanning several decades, hundreds of discrete groups, and all manner of strategies and tactics—legal, illegal, institutional, non-institutional, violent, non-violent. Without discounting King's importance, it would be sheer fiction to call him the leader of what was fundamentally an amorphous, fluid, dispersed movement."[228] Decentralized grassroots leadership has been a major focus of movement scholarship in recent decades through the work of historians John Dittmer, Charles Payne, Barbara Ransby, and others.
Tactics and nonviolence
Armed Lumbee Indians aggressively confronting Klansmen in the Battle of Hayes Pond
The Jim Crow system employed "terror as a means of social control,"[229] with the most organized manifestations being the Ku Klux Klan and their collaborators in local police departments. This violence played a key role in blocking the progress of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s. Some black organizations in the South began practicing armed self-defense. The first to do so openly was the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the NAACP led by Robert F. Williams. Williams had rebuilt the chapter after its membership was terrorized out of public life by the Klan. He did so by encouraging a new, more working-class membership to arm itself thoroughly and defend against attack.[230] When Klan nightriders attacked the home of NAACP member Albert Perry in October 1957, Williams' militia exchanged gunfire with the stunned Klansmen, who quickly retreated. The following day, the city council held an emergency session and passed an ordinance banning KKK motorcades.[231] One year later, Lumbee Indians in North Carolina would have a similarly successful armed stand-off with the Klan (known as the Battle of Hayes Pond) which resulted in KKK leader James W. "Catfish" Cole being convicted of incitement to riot.[232]
After the acquittal of several white men charged with sexually assaulting black women in Monroe, Williams announced to United Press International reporters that he would "meet violence with violence" as a policy. Williams' declaration was quoted on the front page of The New York Times, and The Carolina Times considered it "the biggest civil rights story of 1959".[233] NAACP National chairman Roy Wilkins immediately suspended Williams from his position, but the Monroe organizer won support from numerous NAACP chapters across the country. Ultimately, Wilkins resorted to bribing influential organizer Daisy Bates to campaign against Williams at the NAACP national convention and the suspension was upheld. The convention nonetheless passed a resolution which stated: "We do not deny, but reaffirm the right of individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults."[234] Martin Luther King Jr. argued for Williams' removal,[235] but Ella Baker[236] and WEB Dubois[237] both publicly praised the Monroe leader's position.
Williams—along with his wife, Mabel Williams—continued to play a leadership role in the Monroe movement, and to some degree, in the national movement. The Williamses published The Crusader, a nationally circulated newsletter, beginning in 1960, and the influential book Negroes With Guns in 1962. Williams did not call for full militarization in this period, but "flexibility in the freedom struggle."[238] Williams was well-versed in legal tactics and publicity, which he had used successfully in the internationally known "Kissing Case" of 1958, as well as nonviolent methods, which he used at lunch counter sit-ins in Monroe—all with armed self-defense as a complementary tactic.
Williams led the Monroe movement in another armed stand-off with white supremacists during an August 1961 Freedom Ride; he had been invited to participate in the campaign by Ella Baker and James Forman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The incident (along with his campaigns for peace with Cuba) resulted in him being targeted by the FBI and prosecuted for kidnapping; he was cleared of all charges in 1976.[239] Meanwhile, armed self-defense continued discreetly in the Southern movement with such figures as SNCC's Amzie Moore,[239] Hartman Turnbow,[240] and Fannie Lou Hamer[241] all willing to use arms to defend their lives from nightrides. Taking refuge from the FBI in Cuba, the Willamses broadcast the radio show Radio Free Dixie throughout the eastern United States via Radio Progresso beginning in 1962. In this period, Williams advocated guerilla warfare against racist institutions and saw the large ghetto riots of the era as a manifestation of his strategy.
University of North Carolina historian Walter Rucker has written that "the emergence of Robert F Williams contributed to the marked decline in anti-black racial violence in the U.S....After centuries of anti-black violence, African Americans across the country began to defend their communities aggressively—employing overt force when necessary. This in turn evoked in whites real fear of black vengeance..." This opened up space for African Americans to use nonviolent demonstrations with less fear of deadly reprisal.[242] Of the many civil rights activists who share this view, the most prominent was Rosa Parks. Parks gave the eulogy at Williams' funeral in 1996, praising him for "his courage and for his commitment to freedom," and concluding that "The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten."[243]
Jewish support for the movement
Jewish Americans played an active role supporting the Civil Rights Movement and were actively involved in establishing and supporting a number of the most important civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). These organizations played pivotal roles in the civil rights movement, advocating for racial equality and justice.[244]
Despite representing less than 2% of the US population, Jews made up roughly half of all civil rights lawyers in the South during the 1960s and half of the white northern volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project.[245]
Opposition to police brutality
Organizers from the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee confronted police violence with sit-ins at precinct stations and pickets outside department headquarters, and by blocking traffic to bring attention to officer misdeeds. In return, activists found themselves the targets of political repression in the form of pervasive police surveillance, infiltration by undercover officers, and retaliatory prosecutions aimed at discrediting their movement. Many civil rights leaders—including Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, James Forman, Fannie Lou Hamer and John Lewis—criticized police brutality in writing and speeches at various points.[246]
Political responses
Truman administration: 1945–1953
Partly in response to the March on Washington Movement under Truman's predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Fair Employment Practices Committee was created to address racial discrimination in employment,[247] and in 1946, Truman created the President's Committee on Civil Rights. On June 29, 1947, Truman became the first president to address the demands of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The speech took place at the Lincoln Memorial during the NAACP convention and was carried nationally on radio. In that speech, Truman laid out his agreement on the need to end discrimination, which would be advanced by the first comprehensive, presidentially proposed civil rights legislation. Truman on "civil rights and human freedom" declared:[248]
… Our immediate task is to remove the last remnants of the barriers which stand between millions of our citizens and their birthright. There is no justifiable reason for discrimination because of ancestry, or religion, or race, or color. We must not tolerate such limitations on the freedom of any of our people and on their enjoyment of basic rights which every citizen in a truly democratic society must possess.
In February 1948, Truman delivered a formal message to Congress requesting adoption of his 10-point program to secure civil rights, including anti-lynching, voter rights, and elimination of segregation. "No political act since the Compromise of 1877," argued biographer Taylor Branch, "so profoundly influenced race relations; in a sense it was a repeal of 1877."[249] Truman was opposed by the conservative coalition in congress, so instead issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 ending discrimination in federal employment and in the armed forces.[249]
Eisenhower administration: 1953–1961
While not a key focus of his administration, President Eisenhower made several conservative strides toward making America a racially integrated country. The year he was elected, Eisenhower desegregated Washington D.C. after hearing a story about an African American man who was unable to rent a hotel room, buy a meal, access drinking water, and attend a movie.[250] Shortly after this act, Eisenhower utilized Hollywood personalities to pressure movie theatres into desegregating as well.[251]
Under the previous administration, President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the military. However, Truman's executive order had hardly been enforced. President Eisenhower made it a point to enforce the executive order. By October 30, 1954, there were no segregated combat units in the United States.[250] Not only this, but Eisenhower also desegregated the Veterans Administration and military bases in the South, including federal schools for military dependents. Expanding his work beyond the military, Eisenhower formed two non-discrimination committees, one to broker nondiscrimination agreements with government contractors, and a second to end discrimination within government departments and agencies.[250]
The first major piece of civil rights legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was also passed under the Eisenhower administration. President Eisenhower proposed, championed, and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The legislation established the Civil Rights Commission and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and banned intimidating, coercing, and other means of interfering with a citizen's right to vote. Eisenhower's work in desegregating the judicial system is also notable. The judges he appointed were liberal when it came to the subject of civil rights / desegregation, and he actively avoided placing segregationists in federal courts.[250]
Kennedy administration: 1961–1963
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy speaking before a hostile civil rights crowd protesting low minority hiring in his Justice Department, June 14, 1963[252]
For the first two years of the Kennedy administration, civil rights activists had mixed opinions of both the president and his younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General. Historian David Halberstam wrote that the race question was for a long time a minor ethnic political issue in Massachusetts where the Kennedy brothers came from, and had they been from another part of the country, "they might have been more immediately sensitive to the complexities and depth of black feelings."[253] A well of historical skepticism toward liberal politics had left African Americans with a sense of uneasy disdain for any white politician who claimed to share their concerns for freedom, particularly ones connected to the historically pro-segregationist Democratic Party. Still, many were encouraged by the discreet support Kennedy gave to King, and the administration's willingness, after dramatic pressure from civil disobedience, to bring forth racially egalitarian initiatives.
Robert F. Kennedy expressed the administration's commitment to civil rights during a May 6, 1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School:
Our position is quite clear. We are upholding the law. The federal government would not be running the schools in Prince Edward County any more than it is running the University of Georgia or the schools in my home state of Massachusetts. In this case, in all cases, I say to you today that if the orders of the court are circumvented, the Department of Justice will act. We will not stand by or be aloof—we will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is now the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law.[254]
Many of the initiatives resulted from Robert Kennedy's passion. The younger Kennedy gained a rapid education in the realities of racism through events such as the Baldwin–Kennedy meeting. The president came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matter, resulting in the landmark Civil Rights Address of June 1963 and the introduction of the first major civil rights act of the decade.[255][256]
That same month, during the Freedom Rides, Robert Kennedy became concerned with the issue when photographs of the burning bus and savage beatings in Anniston and Birmingham were broadcast around the world. They came at an especially embarrassing time, as President Kennedy was about to have a summit with the Soviet premier in Vienna. The White House was concerned with its image among the populations of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, and Robert Kennedy responded with an address for Voice of America stating that great progress had been made on the issue of race relations. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the administration worked to resolve the crisis with a minimum of violence and prevent the Freedom Riders from generating a fresh crop of headlines that might divert attention from the President's international agenda. The Freedom Riders documentary notes that, "The back burner issue of civil rights had collided with the urgent demands of Cold War realpolitik."[257]
On May 21, when a white mob attacked and burned the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where King was holding out with protesters, Robert Kennedy telephoned King to ask him to stay in the building until the U.S. Marshals and National Guard could secure the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked Kennedy for deploying the force to break up an attack that might otherwise have ended King's life.
With a very small majority in Congress, the president's ability to press ahead with legislation relied considerably on a balancing game with the Senators and Congressmen of the South. Without the support of Vice-president Johnson, a former Senator who had years of experience in Congress and longstanding relations there, many of the Attorney-General's programs would not have progressed.
By late 1962, frustration at the slow pace of political change was balanced by the movement's strong support for legislative initiatives, including administrative representation across all U.S. Government departments and greater access to the ballot box. From squaring off against Governor George Wallace, to "tearing into" Vice-president Johnson (for failing to desegregate areas of the administration), to threatening corrupt white Southern judges with disbarment, to desegregating interstate transport, Robert Kennedy came to be consumed by the civil rights movement. He continued to work on these social justice issues in his bid for the presidency in 1968.
On the night of Governor Wallace's capitulation to African-American enrollment at the University of Alabama, President Kennedy gave an address to the nation, which marked the changing tide, an address that was to become a landmark for the ensuing change in political policy as to civil rights. In 1966, Robert Kennedy visited South Africa and voiced his objections to apartheid, the first time a major US politician had done so:
At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence.
— LOOK Magazine[258]
Robert Kennedy's relationship with the movement was not always positive. As attorney general, he was called to account by activists—who booed him at a June 1963 speech—for the Justice Department's own poor record of hiring blacks.[252] He also presided over FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his COINTELPRO program. This program ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of Communist front groups, a category in which the paranoid Hoover included most civil rights organizations.[259][260] Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs.[261] According to Tim Weiner, "RFK knew much more about this surveillance than he ever admitted." Although Kennedy only gave approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so." Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of the black leader's life they deemed important; they then used this information to harass King.[262] Kennedy directly ordered surveillance on James Baldwin after their antagonistic racial summit in 1963.[263][264]
Johnson administration: 1963–1969
Further information: Civil Rights Act of 1964, War on Poverty, and Lyndon B. Johnson
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965
Lyndon Johnson made civil rights one of his highest priorities, coupling it with a "war on poverty." However, the increasing opposition to the Vietnam War, coupled with the cost of the war, undercut support for his domestic programs.[265]
Under Kennedy, major civil rights legislation had been stalled in Congress. His assassination changed everything. On one hand, President Lyndon Johnson was a much more skillful negotiator than Kennedy, but he had behind him a powerful national momentum demanding immediate action on moral and emotional grounds. Demands for immediate action originated from unexpected directions, especially white Protestant church groups. The Justice Department, led by Robert Kennedy, moved from a posture of defending Kennedy from the quagmire minefield of racial politics to acting to fulfill his legacy. The violent death and public reaction dramatically moved the conservative Republicans, led by Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen, whose support was the margin of victory for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act immediately ended de jure (legal) segregation and the era of Jim Crow.[266]
With the civil rights movement at full blast, Lyndon Johnson coupled black entrepreneurship with his war on poverty, setting up special programs in the Small Business Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and other agencies.[267] This time there was money for loans designed to boost minority business ownership. Richard Nixon greatly expanded the program, setting up the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) in the expectation that black entrepreneurs would help defuse racial tensions and possibly support his reelection.[268]
Foreign political reactions
China
In China, Mao Zedong in August 1963 expressed support for the U.S. civil rights movement, stating that the "fascist atrocities" committed against black people in the U.S. demonstrated the link between reactionary domestic U.S. policies and its policies of aggression abroad.[269]: 34 In 1968, a mass rally in China condemned the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.[270]: 91 Mao stated that racial discrimination in the U.S. resulted from its colonial system and that the struggle of Black people in the U.S. was an anti-imperialist struggle.[269]: 34 The Chinese Communist Party echoed this view of the civil rights movement.[270]: 91 During the Cultural Revolution, People's Daily repeated cited the example that King advocated nonviolence, but was violently killed, as an example of its view that violent struggle was necessary for the oppressed masses of the world to free themselves.[271]
Maoism influenced some components of the Black liberation movement, including the Black Panther Party and black self-defense advocate Robert F. Williams.[269]: 34
Popular reactions
Malcolm X's relationship with the movement, 1964–1965
Main articles: Malcolm X, Black Nationalism, and The Ballot or the Bullet
In March 1964, Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz), national representative of the Nation of Islam, formally broke with that organization, and made a public offer to collaborate with any civil rights organization that accepted the right to self-defense and the philosophy of Black nationalism (which Malcolm said no longer required Black separatism). Gloria Richardson, head of the Cambridge, Maryland, chapter of SNCC, and leader of the Cambridge rebellion,[272] an honored guest at The March on Washington, immediately embraced Malcolm's offer. Mrs. Richardson, "the nation's most prominent woman [civil rights] leader,"[273] told The Baltimore Afro-American that "Malcolm is being very practical...The federal government has moved into conflict situations only when matters approach the level of insurrection. Self-defense may force Washington to intervene sooner."[273] Earlier, in May 1963, writer and activist James Baldwin had stated publicly that "the Black Muslim movement is the only one in the country we can call grassroots, I hate to say it...Malcolm articulates for Negroes, their suffering...he corroborates their reality..."[274] On the local level, Malcolm and the NOI had been allied with the Harlem chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) since at least 1962.[275]
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. speak to each other thoughtfully as others look on.
Malcolm X meets with Martin Luther King Jr., March 26, 1964
On March 26, 1964, as the Civil Rights Act was facing stiff opposition in Congress, Malcolm had a public meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. at the Capitol. Malcolm had tried to begin a dialog with King as early as 1957, but King had rebuffed him. Malcolm had responded by calling King an "Uncle Tom", saying he had turned his back on black militancy in order to appease the white power structure. But the two men were on good terms at their face-to-face meeting.[276] There is evidence that King was preparing to support Malcolm's plan to formally bring the U.S. government before the United Nations on charges of human rights violations against African Americans.[277] Malcolm now encouraged Black nationalists to get involved in voter registration drives and other forms of community organizing to redefine and expand the movement.[278]
Civil rights activists became increasingly combative in the 1963 to 1964 period, seeking to defy such events as the thwarting of the Albany campaign, police repression and Ku Klux Klan terrorism in Birmingham, and the assassination of Medgar Evers. The latter's brother Charles Evers, who took over as Mississippi NAACP Field Director, told a public NAACP conference on February 15, 1964, that "non-violence won't work in Mississippi...we made up our minds...that if a white man shoots at a Negro in Mississippi, we will shoot back."[279] The repression of sit-ins in Jacksonville, Florida, provoked a riot in which black youth threw Molotov cocktails at police on March 24, 1964.[280] Malcolm X gave numerous speeches in this period warning that such militant activity would escalate further if African Americans' rights were not fully recognized. In his landmark April 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet", Malcolm presented an ultimatum to white America: "There's new strategy coming in. It'll be Molotov cocktails this month, hand grenades next month, and something else next month. It'll be ballots, or it'll be bullets."[281]
As noted in the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize, "Malcolm X had a far-reaching effect on the civil rights movement. In the South, there had been a long tradition of self-reliance. Malcolm X's ideas now touched that tradition".[282] Self-reliance was becoming paramount in light of the 1964 Democratic National Convention's decision to refuse seating to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and instead to seat the regular state delegation, which had been elected in violation of the party's own rules, and by Jim Crow law instead.[283] SNCC moved in an increasingly militant direction and worked with Malcolm X on two Harlem MFDP fundraisers in December 1964.
When Fannie Lou Hamer spoke to Harlemites about the Jim Crow violence that she'd suffered in Mississippi, she linked it directly to the Northern police brutality against blacks that Malcolm protested against;[284] When Malcolm asserted that African Americans should emulate the Mau Mau army of Kenya in efforts to gain their independence, many in SNCC applauded.[285]
During the Selma campaign for voting rights in 1965, Malcolm made it known that he'd heard reports of increased threats of lynching around Selma. In late January he sent an open telegram to George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, stating:
"if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans...you and your KKK friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not handcuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence."[286]
The following month, the Selma chapter of SNCC invited Malcolm to speak to a mass meeting there. On the day of Malcolm's appearance, President Johnson made his first public statement in support of the Selma campaign.[287] Paul Ryan Haygood, a co-director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, credits Malcolm with a role in gaining support by the federal government. Haygood noted that "shortly after Malcolm's visit to Selma, a federal judge, responding to a suit brought by the Department of Justice, required Dallas County, Alabama, registrars to process at least 100 Black applications each day their offices were open."[288]
American Jews
See also: African American–Jewish relations; New York City teachers' strike of 1968; and Brownsville, Brooklyn
Main article: Jews in the civil rights movement
Jewish civil rights activist Joseph L. Rauh Jr. marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963
Many in the Jewish community supported the civil rights movement. In fact, statistically, Jews were one of the most actively involved non-black groups in the Movement. Many Jewish students worked in concert with African Americans for CORE, SCLC, and SNCC as full-time organizers and summer volunteers during the Civil Rights era. Jews made up roughly half of the white northern and western volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project and approximately half of the civil rights attorneys active in the South during the 1960s.[289]
Jewish leaders were arrested while heeding a call from Martin Luther King Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida, in June 1964, where the largest mass arrest of rabbis in American history took place at the Monson Motor Lodge. Abraham Joshua Heschel, a writer, rabbi, and professor of theology at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, was outspoken on the subject of civil rights. He marched arm-in-arm with King in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. In the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, the two white activists killed, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were both Jewish.
Brandeis University, the only nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored college university in the world, created the Transitional Year Program (TYP) in 1968, in part response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The faculty created it to renew the university's commitment to social justice. Recognizing Brandeis as a university with a commitment to academic excellence, these faculty members created a chance for disadvantaged students to participate in an empowering educational experience.
The American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) actively promoted civil rights. While Jews were very active in the civil rights movement in the South, in the North, many had experienced a more strained relationship with African Americans. It has been argued that with Black militancy and the Black Power movements on the rise, "Black Anti-Semitism" increased leading to strained relations between Blacks and Jews in Northern communities. In New York City, most notably, there was a major socio-economic class difference in the perception of African Americans by Jews.[290] Jews from better educated Upper-Middle-Class backgrounds were often very supportive of African American civil rights activities while the Jews in poorer urban communities that became increasingly minority were often less supportive largely in part due to more negative and violent interactions between the two groups.
According to political scientist Michael Rogin, Jewish-Black hostility was a two-way street extending to earlier decades. In the post-World War II era, Jews were granted white privilege and most moved into the middle-class while Blacks were left behind in the ghetto.[291] Urban Jews engaged in the same sort of conflicts with Blacks—over integration busing, local control of schools, housing, crime, communal identity, and class divides—that other white ethnics did, leading to Jews participating in white flight. The culmination of this was the 1968 New York City teachers' strike, pitting largely Jewish schoolteachers against predominantly Black parents in Brownsville, New York.[292]
Due to the prohibition against discrimination on the basis of race, nationality, and religion, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited both antisemitic and anti-Black covenants from being enforced. The act was supported by many Jewish organizations.[293]
Public profile
Many Jews in the Southern states who supported civil rights for African Americans tended to keep a low profile on "the race issue", in order to avoid attracting the attention of the anti-Black and antisemitic Ku Klux Klan.[294] However, Klan groups exploited the issue of African-American integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle in order to commit violently antisemitic hate crimes. As an example of this hatred, in one year alone, from November 1957 to October 1958, temples and other Jewish communal gatherings were bombed and desecrated in Atlanta, Nashville, Jacksonville, and Miami, and dynamite was found under synagogues in Birmingham, Charlotte, and Gastonia, North Carolina. Some rabbis received death threats, but there were no injuries following these outbursts of violence.[294]
Black segregationists
Despite the common notion that the ideas of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Black Power only conflicted with each other and were the only ideologies of the civil rights movement, there were other sentiments felt by many blacks. Fearing the events during the movement was occurring too quickly, there were some blacks who felt that leaders should take their activism at an incremental pace. Others had reservations on how focused blacks were on the movement and felt that such attention was better spent on reforming issues within the black community.
While Conservatives, in general, supported integration, some defended incrementally phased out segregation as a backstop against assimilation. Based on her interpretation of a 1966 study made by Donald Matthews and James Prothro detailing the relative percentage of blacks for integration, against it or feeling something else, Lauren Winner asserts that:
Black defenders of segregation look, at first blush, very much like black nationalists, especially in their preference for all-black institutions; but black defenders of segregation differ from nationalists in two key ways. First, while both groups criticize NAACP-style integration, nationalists articulate a third alternative to integration and Jim Crow, while segregationists preferred to stick with the status quo. Second, absent from black defenders of segregation's political vocabulary was the demand for self-determination. They called for all-black institutions, but not autonomous all-black institutions; indeed, some defenders of segregation asserted that black people needed white paternalism and oversight in order to thrive.[295]
Oftentimes, African-American community leaders would be staunch defenders of segregation. Church ministers, businessmen, and educators were among those who wished to keep segregation and segregationist ideals in order to retain the privileges they gained from patronage from whites, such as monetary gains. In addition, they relied on segregation to keep their jobs and economies in their communities thriving. It was feared that if integration became widespread in the South, black-owned businesses and other establishments would lose a large chunk of their customer base to white-owned businesses, and many blacks would lose opportunities for jobs that were presently exclusive to their interests.[296] On the other hand, there were the everyday, average black people who criticized integration as well. For them, they took issue with different parts of the civil rights movement and the potential for blacks to exercise consumerism and economic liberty without hindrance from whites.[297]
For Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and other leading activists and groups during the movement, these opposing viewpoints acted as an obstacle against their ideas. These different views made such leaders' work much harder to accomplish, but they were nonetheless important in the overall scope of the movement. For the most part, the black individuals who had reservations on various aspects of the movement and ideologies of the activists were not able to make a game-changing dent in their efforts, but the existence of these alternate ideas gave some blacks an outlet to express their concerns about the changing social structure.
"Black Power" militants
Main articles: Black Power and Black Power movement
Gold medalist Tommie Smith (center) and bronze medalist John Carlos (right) showing the raised fist on the podium after the 200 m race at the 1968 Summer Olympics; both wear Olympic Project for Human Rights badges. Peter Norman (silver medalist, left) from Australia also wears an OPHR badge in solidarity with Smith and Carlos.
During the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964, numerous tensions within the civil rights movement came to the forefront. Many blacks in SNCC developed concerns that white activists from the North and West were taking over the movement. The participation by numerous white students was not reducing the amount of violence that SNCC suffered, but seemed to exacerbate it. Additionally, there was profound disillusionment at Lyndon Johnson's denial of voting status for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention.[298][299] Meanwhile, during CORE's work in Louisiana that summer, that group found the federal government would not respond to requests to enforce the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or to protect the lives of activists who challenged segregation. The Louisiana campaign survived by relying on a local African-American militia called the Deacons for Defense and Justice, who used arms to repel white supremacist violence and police repression. CORE's collaboration with the Deacons was effective in disrupting Jim Crow in numerous Louisiana areas.[300][301]
In 1965, SNCC helped organize an independent political party, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), in the heart of the Alabama Black Belt, also Klan territory. It permitted its black leaders to openly promote the use of armed self-defense. Meanwhile, the Deacons for Defense and Justice expanded into Mississippi and assisted Charles Evers' NAACP chapter with a successful campaign in Natchez. Charles had taken the lead after his brother Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963.[302] The same year, the 1965 Watts Rebellion took place in Los Angeles. Many black youths were committed to the use of violence to protest inequality and oppression.[303]
During the March Against Fear in 1966, initiated by James Meredith, SNCC and CORE fully embraced the slogan of "black power" to describe these trends towards militancy and self-reliance. In Mississippi, Stokely Carmichael declared, "I'm not going to beg the white man for anything that I deserve, I'm going to take it. We need power."[304]
Some people engaging in the Black Power movement claimed a growing sense of black pride and identity. In gaining more of a sense of a cultural identity, blacks demanded that whites no longer refer to them as "Negroes" but as "Afro-Americans," similar to other ethnic groups, such as Irish Americans and Italian Americans. Until the mid-1960s, blacks had dressed similarly to whites and often straightened their hair. As a part of affirming their identity, blacks started to wear African-based dashikis and grow their hair out as a natural afro. The afro, sometimes nicknamed the "'fro," remained a popular black hairstyle until the late 1970s. Other variations of traditional African styles have become popular, often featuring braids, extensions, and dreadlocks.
The Black Panther Party (BPP), which was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, in 1966, gained the most attention for Black Power nationally. The group began following the revolutionary pan-Africanism of late-period Malcolm X, using a "by-any-means necessary" approach to stopping racial inequality. They sought to rid African-American neighborhoods of police brutality and to establish socialist community control in the ghettos. While they conducted armed confrontation with police, they also set up free breakfast and healthcare programs for children.[305] Between 1968 and 1971, the BPP was one of the most important black organizations in the country and had support from the NAACP, SCLC, Peace and Freedom Party, and others.[306]
Black Power was taken to another level inside prison walls. In 1966, George Jackson formed the Black Guerrilla Family in the California San Quentin State Prison. The goal of this group was to overthrow the white-run government in America and the prison system. In 1970, this group displayed their dedication after a white prison guard was found not guilty of shooting and killing three black prisoners from the prison tower. They retaliated by killing a white prison guard.
"Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud"
Duration: 16 seconds.0:16
James Brown's "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud" (1968)
Problems playing this file? See media help.
Numerous popular cultural expressions associated with black power appeared at this time. Released in August 1968, the number one Rhythm & Blues single for the Billboard Year-End list was James Brown's "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud".[307] In October 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, while being awarded the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the 1968 Summer Olympics, donned human rights badges and each raised a black-gloved Black Power salute during their podium ceremony.
King was not comfortable with the "Black Power" slogan, which sounded too much like black nationalism to him. When King was assassinated in 1968, Stokely Carmichael said that whites had murdered the one person who would prevent rampant rioting and that blacks would burn every major city to the ground. Riots broke out in more than 100 cities across the country. Some cities did not recover from the damage for more than a generation; other city neighborhoods never recovered.
Native Americans
King and the civil rights movement inspired the Native American rights movement of the 1960s and many of its leaders.[308] Native Americans had been dehumanized as "merciless Indian savages" in the United States Declaration of Independence,[309] and in King's 1964 book Why We Can't Wait he wrote: "Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race."[310] John Echohawk, a member of the Pawnee tribe and the executive director and one of the founders of the Native American Rights Fund, stated: "Inspired by Dr. King, who was advancing the civil rights agenda of equality under the laws of this country, we thought that we could also use the laws to advance our Indianship, to live as tribes in our territories governed by our own laws under the principles of tribal sovereignty that had been with us ever since 1831. We believed that we could fight for a policy of self-determination that was consistent with U.S. law and that we could govern our own affairs, define our own ways and continue to survive in this society".[311] Native Americans were also active supporters of King's movement throughout the 1960s, which included a sizable Native American contingent at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.[308]
Northern Ireland
See also: Northern Ireland civil rights movement
Mural of Malcolm X in Belfast
Due to policies of segregation and disenfranchisement present in Northern Ireland many Irish activists took inspiration from American civil rights activists. People's Democracy had organized a "Long March" from Belfast to Derry which was inspired by the Selma to Montgomery marches.[312] During the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland protesters often sang the American protest song We Shall Overcome and sometimes referred to themselves as the "negroes of Northern Ireland".[313]
Soviet Union
There was an international context for the actions of the U.S. federal government during these years. The Soviet media frequently covered racial discrimination in the U.S.[314] Deeming American criticism of its own human rights abuses hypocritical, the Soviet government would respond by stating "And you are lynching Negroes".[315] In his 1934 book Russia Today: What Can We Learn from It?, Sherwood Eddy wrote: "In the most remote villages of Russia today Americans are frequently asked what they are going to do to the Scottsboro Negro boys and why they lynch Negroes."[316]
In Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, the historian Mary L. Dudziak wrote that Communists who were critical of the United States accused it of practicing hypocrisy when it portrayed itself as the "leader of the free world," while so many of its citizens were being subjected to severe racial discrimination and violence; she argued that this was a major factor in moving the government to support civil rights legislation.[317]
White "status quo" Southerners
A majority of White Southerners have been estimated to have been opposed to the civil rights movement and racial equality, though most did not engage in violence or join the clan.[318] Many did not enjoy the idea of expanding civil rights but were uncomfortable with the language and often violent tactics used by those who resisted the civil rights movement as part of the Massive resistance.[319] Many only reacted to the movement once forced to by their changing environment, and when they did their response was usually whatever they felt would disturb their daily life the least. Most of their personal reactions, whether eventually in support or resistance were not in extreme.[318]
White segregationists
See also: Neo-Nazism § United States
Ku Klux Klan demonstration in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964
King reached the height of popular acclaim during his life in 1964, when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After that point, his career was filled with frustrating challenges. The liberal coalition that had gained passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 began to fray.
King was becoming more estranged from the Johnson administration. In 1965 he broke with it by calling for peace negotiations and a halt to the bombing of Vietnam. He moved further left in the following years, speaking about the need for economic justice and thoroughgoing changes in American society. He believed that change was needed beyond the civil rights which had been gained by the movement.
However, King's attempts to broaden the scope of the civil rights movement were halting and largely unsuccessful. In 1965 King made several attempts to take the Movement north in order to address housing discrimination. The SCLC's campaign in Chicago publicly failed, because Chicago's Mayor Richard J. Daley marginalized the SCLC's campaign by promising to "study" the city's problems. In 1966, white demonstrators in notoriously racist Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, held "white power" signs and threw stones at marchers who were demonstrating against housing segregation.[320]
Politicians and journalists quickly blamed this white backlash on the movement's shift towards Black Power in the mid-1960s; today most scholars believe the backlash was a phenomenon that was already developing in the mid-1950s, and it was embodied in the "massive resistance" movement in the South where even the few moderate white leaders (including George Wallace, who had once been endorsed by the NAACP) shifted to openly racist positions.[321][322] Northern and Western racists opposed the southerners on a regional and cultural basis, but also held segregationist attitudes which became more pronounced as the civil rights movement headed north and west. For instance, prior to the Watts riot, California whites had already mobilized to repeal the state's 1963 fair housing law.[320]
Even so, the backlash which occurred at the time was not able to roll back the major civil rights victories which had been achieved or swing the country into reaction. Social historians Matthew Lassiter and Barbara Ehrenreich note that the backlash's primary constituency was suburban and middle-class, not working-class whites: "among the white electorate, one half of blue-collar voters…cast their ballot for [the liberal presidential candidate] Hubert Humphrey in 1968…only in the South did George Wallace draw substantially more blue-collar than white-collar support."[323]
In popular culture
Main article: Civil rights movement in popular culture
The 1954 to 1968 civil rights movement contributed strong cultural threads to American and international theater, song, film, television, and art.
Activist organizations
National/regional civil rights organizations
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Deacons for Defense and Justice
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR)
Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR)
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF)
Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC)
National economic empowerment organizations
Operation Breadbasket
Urban League
Local civil rights organizations
Albany Movement (Albany, Georgia)
Council of Federated Organizations (Mississippi)
Montgomery Improvement Association (Montgomery, Alabama)
Nashville Student Movement (Nashville, Tennessee)
Regional Council of Negro Leadership (Mississippi)
Women's Political Council (Montgomery, Alabama)
Individual activists
This article may contain excessive or irrelevant examples. Please help improve it by removing less pertinent examples and elaborating on existing ones. (April 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Ralph Abernathy
Victoria Gray Adams
Muhammad Ali
Maya Angelou
Louis Austin
Ella Baker
James Baldwin
Marion Barry
Daisy Bates
Harry Belafonte
Fay Bellamy Powell
James Bevel
Claude Black
Unita Blackwell
Julian Bond
Anne Braden
Carl Braden
Stanley Branche
Ralph Bunche
Mary Fair Burks
Stokely Carmichael
James Chaney
Shirley Chisholm
Septima Poinsette Clark
Xernona Clayton
Albert Cleage
Eldridge Cleaver
Charles E. Cobb Jr.
John Conyers
Sam Cooke
Annie Lee Cooper
Dorothy Cotton
Claudette Colvin
Jonathan Daniels
Ossie Davis
Ruby Dee
Annie Devine
Doris Derby
Marian Wright Edelman
Medgar Evers
James L. Farmer Jr.
Walter E. Fauntroy
Karl Fleming
Sarah Mae Flemming
James Forman
Frankie Muse Freeman
Andrew Goodman
Fred Gray
Jack Greenberg
Dick Gregory
Prathia Hall
Fannie Lou Hamer
Lorraine Hansberry
Robert Hayling
Dorothy Height
Lola Hendricks
Aaron Henry
Libby Holman
Myles Horton
T. R. M. Howard
Winson Hudson
Jesse Jackson
Jimmie Lee Jackson
Mahalia Jackson
Esau Jenkins
Clarence B. Jones
Barbara Jordan
Vernon Jordan
Clyde Kennard
Coretta Scott King
Martin Luther King Jr.
Bernard Lafayette
James Lawson
Bernard Lee
John Lewis
Stanley Levison
Viola Liuzzo
Audre Lorde
Joseph Lowery
Autherine Lucy
Clara Luper
Thurgood Marshall
Benjamin Mays
Franklin McCain
Floyd McKissick
James Meredith
Loren Miller
Jack Minnis
Anne Moody
Harry T. Moore
E. Frederic Morrow
Bob Moses
Bill Moyer
Elijah Muhammad
Diane Nash
Denise Nicholas
E. D. Nixon
David Nolan
James Orange
Nan Grogan Orrock
Rosa Parks
Rutledge Pearson
Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
Gloria Johnson-Powell
A. Philip Randolph
George Raymond
George Raymond Jr.
James Reeb
Frederick D. Reese
Walter Reuther
Gloria Richardson
David Richmond
Paul Robeson
Amelia Boynton Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Jo Ann Robinson
Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
Bayard Rustin
Michael Schwerner
Cleveland Sellers
Charles Sherrod
Fred Shuttlesworth
Modjeska Monteith Simkins
Nina Simone
Charles Kenzie Steele
Annie Stein
Dempsey Travis
C. T. Vivian
Wyatt Tee Walker
Roy Wilkins
Hosea Williams
Robert F. Williams
Andrew Young
Whitney Young
See also
Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
Civil rights movement (1865–1896)
American Indian Movement
Asian American movement
Chicano Movement
History of civil rights in the United States
Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands (2002) fiction novel
List of civil rights leaders
List of Kentucky women in the civil rights era
List of photographers of the civil rights movement
South Carolina in the civil rights movement
Timeline of the civil rights movement
"We Shall Overcome," the unofficial anthem of the movement
African-American Jeremiad
History preservation
Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument
Civil Rights Movement Archive
Freedom Riders National Monument
Read's Drug Store (Baltimore), the site of a 1955 desegregation sit-in
Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950–1970
Nonviolent resistance, or nonviolent action, sometimes called civil resistance, is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, constructive program, or other methods, while refraining from violence and the threat of violence.[1] This type of action highlights the desires of an individual or group that feels that something needs to change to improve the current condition of the resisting person or group.
Mahatma Gandhi is the most popular figure related to this type of protest; United Nations celebrates Gandhi's birthday, October 2, as the International Day of Non-Violence. Other prominent advocates include Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Henry David Thoreau, Etienne de la Boétie, Charles Stewart Parnell, Te Whiti o Rongomai, Tohu Kākahi, Leo Tolstoy, Alice Paul, Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, James Bevel, Václav Havel, Andrei Sakharov, Lech Wałęsa, Gene Sharp, Nelson Mandela, Jose Rizal, and many others. From 1966 to 1999, nonviolent civic resistance played a critical role in fifty of sixty-seven transitions from authoritarianism.[2]
The "Singing revolution" (1989–1991) in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, led to the three Baltic countries' restoration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.[citation needed] Recently,[when?] nonviolent resistance has led to the Rose Revolution in Georgia. Research shows that nonviolent campaigns diffuse spatially. Information on nonviolent resistance in one country could significantly affect nonviolent activism in other countries.[3][4]
Many movements which promote philosophies of nonviolence or pacifism have pragmatically adopted the methods of nonviolent action as an effective way to achieve social or political goals.[5] They employ nonviolent resistance tactics such as: information warfare, picketing, marches, vigils, leafletting, samizdat, magnitizdat, satyagraha, protest art, protest music and poetry, community education and consciousness raising, lobbying, tax resistance, civil disobedience, boycotts or sanctions, legal/diplomatic wrestling, Underground Railroads, principled refusal of awards/honors, and general strikes.[6] Current nonviolent resistance movements include: the Jeans Revolution in Belarus, the fight of the Cuban dissidents, and internationally the Extinction Rebellion and School Strike for Climate.
Although nonviolent movements can maintain broader public legitimacy by refraining from violence, some segments of society may perceive protest movements as being more violent than they really are when they disagree with the social goals of the movement.[7] Research also shows that the perceived violence of a movement is not only influenced by its tactics but also by the identity of its participants. For example, protests led or dominated by women are generally seen as less violent than those led by men, though this effect depends on whether female protesters conform to or challenge traditional gender norms.[8] A great deal of work has addressed the factors that lead to violent mobilization, but less attention has been paid to understanding why disputes become violent or nonviolent, comparing these two as strategic choices relative to conventional politics.[9]
History
Dates Region Main article Summary
BCE 470–391 China Mohism The Mohist philosophical school disapproved of war. However, since they lived in a time of warring polities, they cultivated the science of fortification.
Around CE 26–36 Judea Pontius Pilate Jews demonstrated in Caesarea to try to convince Pontius Pilate not to set up Roman standards, with images of the Roman emperor and the eagle of Jupiter, in Jerusalem (both images were considered idolatrous by religious Jews). Pilate surrounded the Jewish protesters with soldiers and threatened them with death, to which they replied that they were willing to die rather than see the laws of the Torah violated.
Before 1500–1835 Chatham Islands, New Zealand Moriori The Moriori were a branch of the New Zealand Māori that colonized the Chatham Islands and eventually became hunter-gatherers. Their lack of resources and small population made conventional war unsustainable, so it became customary to resolve disputes nonviolently or ritually. Due to this tradition of nonviolence, some of the population of 2000 people were killed when 900 Māori invaded the island in 1835.[10][11][12][13]
1819 England Peterloo Massacre Famine and chronic unemployment, coupled with the lack of suffrage in northern England, led to a peaceful demonstration of 60,000–80,000 persons, including women and children. The demonstration was organized and rehearsed, with a "prohibition of all weapons of offence or defence" and exhortations to come "armed with no other weapon but that of a self-approving conscience". Cavalry charged into the crowd, with sabres drawn, and in the ensuing confusion, 15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured. Newspapers expressed horror, and Percy Shelley glorified nonviolent resistance in the poem The Masque of Anarchy. However, the British government cracked down on reform, with the passing of what became known as the Six Acts.
1823–1829 Ireland Catholic Association One of the first mass-membership political movements of Europe, the Catholic Association, was founded by Daniel O'Connell to use nonviolent means to push the British government to pass Catholic emancipation, which culminated in the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 by the government of the Duke of Wellington
1834–1838 Trinidad End of Slavery in Trinidad The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, then the colonial power in Trinidad, first announced in 1833 the impending total liberation of slaves by 1840. In 1834 at an address by the Governor at Government House about the new laws, an unarmed group of mainly elderly people of African descent began chanting: "Pas de six ans. Point de six ans" ("No six years. Not at all six years"), drowning out the voice of the Governor. Peaceful protests continued until the passing of a resolution to abolish apprenticeship and the achievement of de facto freedom.[14][15]
1838 US Cherokee removal The majority of Cherokee refused to recognize the minority-promulgated Treaty of New Echota and therefore did not sell their livestock or goods, and did not pack anything to travel to the west before the soldiers came and forcibly removed them. That ended tragically in the Cherokee trail of tears.
1848–1920 US Women's suffrage in the United States A political movement that spanned over a century, where women protested in order to receive the right to suffrage in the United States.
1849–1867 Austrian Empire Passive Resistance (Hungary) In the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarians tried to regain independence and were defeated by the Austrian Empire only with the aid of the Russian Empire. After 1848, the empire instituted several constitutional reforms, trying to resolve the problem, but without success. The resistance was instrumental in keeping up hope and spirit in a Hungary fully incorporated into Austria and characterized by reprisals against political dissidents, thousands of treason trials, military governance, centralization, absolutism, censorship and direct control of Vienna over every aspect of public life. Their followers carefully avoided any political agitation or criticism of the establishment, and strictly concentrated on national issues of non-political nature, such as the use of the Hungarian language, development of the Hungarian economy, and protection of the legal standing of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
1867–1918 Austria-Hungary Old Czech Party Passive resistance of the Old Czech Party reacted on autonomy gained to the Kingdom of Hungary, but not to the Lands of the Bohemian Crown within the Austrian Empire. After 1874, wing of the party disagreeing with passive resistance stance, formed new Young Czech Party. Old Czechs remained with their politics, but they lost decisive influence in the politics of the Kingdom of Bohemia.
1860–1894, 1915–1918 New Zealand Tainui-Waikato Māori King Tāwhiao forbade Waikato Māori using violence in the face of British colonisation, saying in 1881, "The killing of men must stop; the destruction of land must stop. I shall bury my patu in the earth and it shall not rise again ... Waikato, lie down. Do not allow blood to flow from this time on." This was inspirational to Waikato Māori who refused to fight in World War I. In response, the government brought in conscription for the Tainui-Waikato people (other Māori iwi were exempt) but they continued to resist, the majority of conscripts choosing to suffer harsh military punishments rather than join the army. For the duration of the war, no Tainui soldiers were sent overseas.[16]
1879–1881 New Zealand Parihaka The Māori village of Parihaka became the center of passive resistance campaigns against Europeans occupying confiscated land in the area. More than 400 followers of the prophet Te Whiti o Rongomai were arrested and jailed, most without trial. Sentences as long as 16 months were handed out for the acts of ploughing land and erecting fences on their property. More than 2000 inhabitants remained seated when 1600 armed soldiers raided and destroyed the village.[17][18]
1879 Ireland Boycott Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell, in a speech in Ennis proposed that when dealing with tenants who took farms where another tenant was evicted, rather than resorting to violence, everyone in the locality should shun them. Following this Captain Charles Boycott, the land agent of an absentee landlord in County Mayo, Ireland, was subject to social ostracism organized by the Irish Land League in 1880. Boycott attempted to evict eleven tenants from his land. While Parnell's speech did not refer to land agents or landlords, the tactic was applied to Boycott when the alarm was raised about the evictions. Despite the short-term economic hardship to those undertaking this action, Boycott soon found himself isolated – his workers stopped work in the fields and stables, as well as in his house. Local businessmen stopped trading with him, and the local postman refused to deliver mail. The success of this led to the movement spreading throughout Ireland and gave rise to the term to Boycott, and eventually led to legal reform and increased support for Irish independence.[19]
1903–1906 United Kingdom Protest against the Education Act 1902 This civil disobedience movement was launched against the Education Act 1902 to defend the rights and influence of Nonconformist denominations in British school boards. Nonconformists believed this law to be calculated to support denominational (mainly Anglican and Catholic) religious teaching in the schools. John Clifford, a baptist minister, led the movement, which consisted in refusing to pay the taxes established by the Education Act 1902. By 1906, over 170 men had been imprisoned for this refusal, and yet no change to the law was made.[20] The movement had a large share in the defeat of the Unionist government in January 1906 but failed to achieve its ultimate aim of getting a nondenominational act passed.[21]
1905 Russia Bloody Sunday (1905) Unarmed demonstrators led by Father Georgy Gapon marched to the Winter Palace to present a petition to the Czar. They were fired upon by soldiers of the Imperial Guard.[22]
1908–1962 Samoa Mau movement Nonviolent movement for Samoan independence from colonial rule in the early 20th century.[23][24][25]
1919. 2.8, 3.1 Korea March 1st Movement This movement became the inspiration of the later Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's Satyagraha—resistance and many other nonviolent movements in Asia.[26]
1919–22 Egypt Egyptian Revolution of 1919 A countrywide revolution against the British occupation of Egypt. It was carried out by Egyptians from different walks of life in the wake of the British-ordered exile of revolutionary leader Saad Zaghlul and other members of the Wafd Party in 1919. The event led to Egyptian independence in 1922 and the implementation of a new constitution in 1923.
1919–1921 Ireland Irish Non-cooperation movement During the Irish War for Independence, Irish nationalists used many nonviolent means to resist British rule. Amongst these was abstention from the British parliament, tax boycotts, and the creation of alternative local government, Dáil Courts, and police.[27]
1919–present Israel/Palestine Palestinian nonviolent resistance Peace camps and strategic nonviolent resistance to Israeli construction of Jewish settlements and of the West Bank Barrier have been adopted as tactics by Palestinians as part of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. For example, citizens of the Palestinian village of Beit Sahour engaged in a tax strike during the First Intifada.
In 2010, A "White Intifada" took hold in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Activities included weekly peaceful protests by Palestinian activists accompanied by Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem and Israeli academics and students against settlers and security forces. The EU, through its foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has criticised Israel for convicting an organiser of the peaceful movement and said that she was deeply concerned about the arrest of Abdullah Abu Rahmeh. There have been two fatalities among protesters and an American peace activist suffered brain damage after being hit by a tear gas canister.[28][29][30][31][32][33]
1920–1922 India Non-cooperation movement A series of nationwide people's movements of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience, led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) and the Indian National Congress. In addition to bringing about independence, Gandhi's nonviolence also helped improve the status of the Untouchables in Indian society.[citation needed]
1929-1946 Pakistan Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) Abdul Ghaffar Khan along with his companions established an organization among Pashtun in the North Western Frontier Province and called it Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God). The organization recruited over 250,000 unarmed members. They committed daily two hours community service and practiced nonviolence resistance to British Raj occupation.
1920–1925 Punjab Province Akali Movement Peaceful movement to free Gurdwaras from Mahants.
1923 Germany The Occupation of the Ruhr With the aim of occupying the centre of German coal, iron, and steel production in the Ruhr valley, France invaded Germany for neglecting some of its reparation payments after World War I. The occupation of the Ruhr was initially greeted by a campaign of passive resistance.
1930–1934 India Civil disobedience movement Nonviolent resistance marked by rejecting British imposed taxes, boycotting British manufactured products and mass strikes, led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) and the Indian National Congress.
1933–1945 Germany German Resistance Throughout World War II, there were a series of small and usually isolated groups that used nonviolent techniques against the Nazis. These groups include the White Rose and the Confessional Church.
1940–1943 Denmark Danish resistance movement During World War II, after the invasion of the Wehrmacht, the Danish government adopted a policy of official co-operation (and unofficial obstruction) which they called "negotiation under protest." Embraced by many Danes, the unofficial resistance included slow production, emphatic celebration of Danish culture and history, and bureaucratic quagmires.
1940–1944 France Le Chambon-sur-Lignon Jewish refuge During World War II, with the leadership of two pacifist local ministers André Trocmé and Edouard Theis, the citizens of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon (and of the neighbouring areas) risked their lives to hide Jews who were being rounded up by the Nazis and the collaborationist Vichy regime and sent to the death camps. This was done in open defiance of the Vichy government's orders. It is estimated that the people of the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon saved between 3,000 and 5,000 Jews from certain death. A small garden and plaque on the grounds of the Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust in Israel was dedicated to the people of le Chambon-sur-Lignon.
1940–1945 Norway Norwegian resistance movement During World War II, Norwegian civil disobedience included preventing the Nazification of Norway's educational system, distributing of illegal newspapers, and maintaining social distance (an "ice front") from the German soldiers.
1942 India Quit India Movement The Quit India Movement (Bharat Chhodo Andolan or the August Movement) was a civil disobedience movement launched in India in August 1942 in response to Mohandas Gandhi's call for immediate independence.
1945–1971 South Africa Defiance Campaign
Internal resistance to South African apartheid The ANC and allied anti-apartheid groups initially carried out nonviolent resistance against pro-racial segregation and apartheid governments in South Africa.
1946–1958 Territory of Hawaii Hawaii Democratic Revolution of 1954 Following World War II, general strikes were initiated by the large working poor against racial and economic inequality under Hawaii's plantation economy. Movement members took over most of the government in 1954 and the State of Hawaii was established in 1959.
1955–1968 USA Civil Rights Movement
Chicano Movement
Mass anti-war protests in the United States Tactics of nonviolent resistance, such as bus boycotts, Freedom Rides, sit-ins, marches, and mass demonstrations, were used during the Civil Rights Movement. This movement succeeded in bringing about legislative change, making separate seats, drinking fountains, and schools for African Americans illegal, and obtaining full voting rights and open housing. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel were prominent leaders of this movement, and were inspired by the nonviolent resistance of Gandhi. One study found that nonviolent activism of the era tended to produce favorable media coverage and changes in public opinion focusing on the issues organizers were raising, but violent protests tended to generate unfavorable media coverage that generated public desire to restore law and order.[34][35][36]
1957–present USA Committee for Non-Violent Action Among the most dedicated to nonviolent resistance against the US arsenal of nuclear weapons has been the Plowshares Movement, consisting largely of Catholic priests, such as Dan Berrigan, and nuns. Since the first Plowshares action in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, during the autumn of 1980, more than 70 of these actions have taken place.[37][38][39]
1959–present Cuba Cuban opposition since 1959 There have been many nonviolent activists in opposition to Cuba's authoritarian regime. Among these are Pedro Luis Boitel (1931–1972), Guillermo Fariñas Hernández ("El Coco"), and Jorge Luis García Pérez (known as Antúnez), all of whom have performed hunger strikes.[40][41][42]
1965–1972 USA Draft resistance During the Vietnam War, many young Americans chose to resist the military draft by refusing to cooperate with the Selective Service System. Techniques of resistance included misrepresenting one's physical or mental condition to the draft board, disrupting draft board processes, going "underground", going to jail, leaving the country, and publicly promoting such activities.[43][44][45]
February 11, 1967 USA Los Angeles Black Cat Tavern Protest A tense standoff and potential riot between hundreds of LAPD riot gear-laden police officers and swelling crowds of more than four hundred homosexual citizens was averted after a last minute plea from then new Governor Ronald Reagan. The resulting stand-down order directed the hundreds of LAPD officers present to cease and desist from further unprovoked harassment of homosexuals in Los Angeles. As a result, the Los Angeles Police Department ceased raiding establishments or public assemblies of homosexuals in Los Angeles for decades.[46][47][48]
1967–1972 Northern Ireland Northern Ireland civil rights movement Movement led by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association seeking an end to discrimination against Catholics in areas such as elections (which were subject to gerrymandering and property requirements), discrimination in employment, in public housing, policing; and abuse of the Special Powers Act. The movement used marches, pickets, sit-ins and protests. In the wake of rising violence (Battle of the Bogside, 1969 Northern Ireland riots, Bloody Sunday 1972) NICRA ceased operation and the conflict descended into the violent "Troubles" which lasted until 1998.
1968 Worldwide Protests of 1968 The protests that raged throughout 1968 were for the most part student-led. Worldwide, campuses became the front-line battle grounds for social change. While opposition to the Vietnam War dominated the protests, students also protested for civil liberties, against racism, for feminism, and the beginnings of the ecology movement can be traced to the protests against nuclear and biological weapons during this year.[49]
1968 Czechoslovakia Prague Spring During the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak citizens responded to the attack on their sovereignty with passive resistance. Russian troops were frustrated as street signs were painted over, their water supplies mysteriously shut off, and buildings decorated with flowers, flags, and slogans like, "An elephant cannot swallow a hedgehog".
1970–1981 France Larzac In response to an expansion of a military base, local farmers including José Bové and other supporters including Lanza del Vasto took part in nonviolent resistance. The military expansion was canceled after ten years of resistance.
1979 Iran Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution of 1979 or 1979 Revolution (often known as the Islamic Revolution), refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.[50]
1980–1981 as movement Poland Solidarity
Fighting Solidarity
Orange Alternative etc. Solidarity, a broad anti-communist social movement ranging from people associated with the Roman Catholic Church workers and intellectuals to members of the anti-communist Left (minority), advocated nonviolence in its members' activities. Additionally, the Orange Alternative offered a wider group of citizens an alternative way of opposition against the authoritarian regime by means of a peaceful protest that used absurd and nonsensical elements.[51][52][53][self-published source]
1986 Philippines People Power Revolution A series of nonviolent and prayerful mass street demonstrations that toppled Ferdinand Marcos and placed Corazon C. Aquino into power. After an election which had been condemned by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, over two million Filipinos protested human rights violations, election fraud, massive political corruption, and other abuses of the Marcos regime. Yellow was a predominant theme, the colour being associated with Corazon Aquino and her husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., who was assassinated three years prior.
1988–2016 Burma Nonviolent Movement for Freedom and Democracy Starting from 1988 Peaceful Demonstration led by Aung San Suu Kyi that caused her house arrest and thousands killed and jailed and tortured by the military, the struggle continues more than two decades. Despite many victims and painful process (including annulled winning of 1990 election), it was happily ended by the victory of opposition party on 2015 election and Aung San Suu Kyi has elected as the country first state counsellor.[clarification needed] Following the restoration of military rule in 2021, civil resistance has been used as part of campaigns for democracy.[54]
1987–1989/1991 The Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) Singing revolution A cycle of mass demonstrations featuring spontaneous singing in the three Baltic countries. The movement eventually collected 4,000,000 people who sang national songs and hymns, which were strictly forbidden during the years of the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States, as local rock musicians played. In later years, people acted as human shields to protect radio and TV stations from the Soviet tanks, eventually regaining Lithuania's, Latvia's, and Estonia's independence without almost any blood shed.[55]
1989 China Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 Nonviolence in 1989 Tiananmen protests.
1989 Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia Baltic Way Approximately two million people joined their hands on 23 August 1989 to form a human chain spanning 675.5 kilometres (419.7 mi) across the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were at the time under the Soviet rule. It marked the 50th anniversary of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
1989 Czechoslovakia Velvet Revolution Protesters protested peacefully against the one-party rule.
1989–90 East Germany Monday demonstrations in East Germany The Monday demonstrations in East Germany in 1989 and 1990 (German: Montagsdemonstrationen) were a series of peaceful political protests against the authoritarian government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) of East Germany that took place every Monday evening.[56]
1990–91 Azerbaijan SSR Black January A crackdown of Azeri protest demonstrations by the Red Army in Baku, Azerbaijan SSR. The demonstrators protested against ethnic violence, demanded the ousting of communist officials and called for independence from the Soviet Union.
1996–97 Serbia 1996–1997 protests in Serbia The protests started 17 November 1996 in Niš where thousands of opposition supporters gathered to protest against election fraud. Belgrade University students joined on 19 November 1996, and protests lasted even after 11 February 1997, when Slobodan Milošević signed the "lex specialis", which accepted the opposition victory and instated local government in several cities, but without acknowledging any wrongdoing. The protests were strongest in the capital Belgrade, where they gathered up to 200,000 people, but spread over most cities and towns in Serbia.
2000 Serbia Otpor! Otpor! (English: Resistance!) was a civic youth movement that existed as such from 1998 until 2003 in Serbia (then a federal unit within FR Yugoslavia), employing nonviolent struggle against the regime of Slobodan Milošević as their course of action. In the course of two-year nonviolent struggle against Milosevic, Otpor spread across Serbia and attracted more than 70,000 supporters. They were credited for their role in the successful overthrow of Slobodan Milošević on 5 October 2000.
2003 Liberia Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace This peace movement, started by women praying and singing in a fish market, brought an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003.[57]
2003 Georgia Rose Revolution A pro-Western peaceful change of power in Georgia in November 2003. The revolution was brought about by widespread protests over the disputed parliamentary elections and culminated in the ousting of President Eduard Shevardnadze, which marked the end of the Soviet era of leadership in the country. The event derives its name from the climactic moment, when demonstrators led by Mikheil Saakashvili stormed the Parliament session with red roses in hand.
2004–2005 Ukraine Orange Revolution A series of protests and political events that took place in Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of the run-off vote of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election which was marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation and direct electoral fraud. Nationwide, the democratic revolution was highlighted by a series of acts of civil disobedience, sit-ins, and general strikes organized by the opposition movement.
2005 Lebanon Cedar Revolution A chain of demonstrations in Lebanon (especially in the capital Beirut) triggered by the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on 14 February 2005.
2005–06, 2009 Ukraine Remember about the Gas – Do not buy Russian goods! A campaign to boycott Russian goods as a reaction to political pressure of Russian Federation to Ukraine in the gas conflicts of 2005–2006 and 2008–2009 years.
2009–present Guatemala Escobal mine protests Protests against the construction of the Escobal mine in San Rafael Las Flores, centering around environmental concerns and the land rights of the indigenous Xinca people. Protesters have used nonviolent tactics such as standing to block access to mine facilities and organizing community referendums, and they have been met with extreme violence from both the mine's private security and the Guatemalan state.[58][59][60]
2010–2011 Tunisia Tunisian Revolution A chain of demonstrations against unemployment and government corruption in Tunisia began in December 2010. Protests were triggered by the self-immolation of vegetable seller Mohamed Bouazizi and resulted in the overthrow of 24-year-ruling president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011.
2011 Egypt Egyptian Revolution A chain of protests, sit-ins, and strikes by millions of Egyptians starting 25 January 2011 eventually led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak on 11 February.
2011 Libya Libyan Protests Protests against the regime of Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi began on 13 January 2011. In late January, Jamal al-Hajji, a writer, political commentator and accountant, "call[ed] on the Internet for demonstrations to be held in support of greater freedoms in Libya" inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. He was arrested on 1 February by plain-clothes police officers, and charged on 3 February with injuring someone with his car. Amnesty International stated that because al-Hajji had previously been imprisoned for his nonviolent political opinions, the real reason for the present arrest appeared to be his call for demonstrations.[61] In early February, Gaddafi, on behalf of the Jamahiriya, met with political activists, journalists and media figures and warned them that they would be held responsible if they disturbed the peace or created chaos in Libya.[62] The plans to protest were inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolution.[62]
2011 Syria Syrian Uprising Protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad began on March 15, 2011. Security forces responded with a harsh crackdown, arresting thousands of dissidents and killing hundreds of protesters. Peaceful protests were largely crushed by the army or subsided as rebels and Islamist fighters took up arms against the government, leading to a full-blown rebellion against the Assad regime.
2011 India 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement The movement gained momentum from 5 April 2011, when anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare began a hunger strike at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. The chief legislative aim of the movement was to alleviate corruption in the Indian government through introduction of the Jan Lokpal Bill. Another aim, spearheaded by Ramdev, was the repatriation of black money from Swiss and other foreign banks.
2011–2014 Bahrain Bahraini uprising of 2011 Inspired by the regional Arab Spring, protests started in Bahrain on 14 February. The government responded harshly, killing four protesters camping in Pearl Roundabout. Later, protesters were allowed to reoccupy the roundabout where they staged large marches amounting to 150,000 participants.
On 14 March, Saudi-led GCC forces were requested by the government and entered the country, which the opposition called an "occupation". The following day, a state of emergency was declared and protests paused after a brutal crackdown was launched against protesters, including doctors and bloggers. Nearly 3,000 people have been arrested, and at least five people died due to torture while in police custody.
Protests resumed after lifting emergency law on 1 June, and several large rallies were staged by the opposition parties, including a march on 9 March 2012 attended by over 100,000. Smaller-scale protests and clashes outside of the capital have continued to occur almost daily. More than 80 people had died since the start of the uprising.[63]
1979–present Saudi Arabia Saudi uprising (1979–present)
1979 Qatif Uprising
Saudi Arabian protests
Shia Islam in Saudi Arabia#Discrimination in the workforce
Execution of Nimr al-Nimr#Street protests Shiite community leaders in Qatif announced that they would publicly celebrate the Day of Ashura festival, despite the fact that celebration of Shiite festivals was banned. Despite government threats to disperse protests, on 25 November 1979, 4,000 Shiite in Safwa took to the streets to publicly celebrate the Day of Ashura. Shia are prohibited from becoming teachers of religious subjects, which constitute about half of the courses in secondary education. Shia cannot become principals of schools. Some Shia have become university professors but often face harassment from students and faculty alike. Shia are disqualified as witnesses in court, as Saudi Sunni sources cite the Shi'a practise of Taqiyya wherein it is permissible to lie while one is in fear or at risk of significant persecution. Shia cannot serve as judges in ordinary court, and are banned from gaining admission to military academies,[34] and from high-ranking government or security posts, including becoming pilots in Saudi Airlines. Amir Taheri quotes a Shi'ite businessman from Dhahran as saying "It is not normal that there are no Shi'ite army officers, ministers, governors, mayors and ambassadors in this kingdom. This form of religious apartheid is as intolerable as was apartheid based on race.[64][circular reference] In October 2011, during the 2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests, al-Nimr said that young people protesting in response to the arrests of two al-Awamiyah septuagenarians were provoked by police firing at them with live ammunition. On 4 October, he called for calm, stating, "The [Saudi] authorities depend on bullets ... and killing and imprisonment. We must depend on the roar of the word, on the words of justice".[11] He explained further, "We do not accept [the use of firearms]. This is not our practice. We will lose it. It is not in our favour. This is our approach [use of words]. We welcome those who follow such [an] attitude. Nonetheless, we cannot enforce our methodology on those who want to pursue different approaches [and] do not commit to ours. The weapon of the word is stronger than the power of bullets."[65][circular reference]
2012–2013 Mexico Yo Soy 132
2013 Turkey Gezi Park protests Peaceful protests against reconstruction of Gezi Park at Istanbul's landmark Taksim Square, turned into protests against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Over one million people nonviolently resisted police brutal force. Started in Istanbul, protests spread in 10 days to over 82 cities of Turkey. Significant violence from the police side was manifested by use of tear gas and rubber bullets. Many people were arrested, including haphazard arrests of people simply standing at the square.[66]
2013–present Ukraine Do not buy Russian goods! A campaign to boycott Russian goods as a reaction to a series of Russian trade embargos against Ukraine and military invasion of Russia in Ukraine.
2014 Taiwan Sunflower Student Movement The activists protested the passing of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) by occupying the Legislative Yuan from 18 March to 10 April 2014.
2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution Student class boycotts and public demonstrations followed by spontaneous outbreak of civil disobedience and street occupation lasting 79 days.[67][68]
2016–present Zimbabwe #ThisFlag Movement Mass Stay Aways which were backed by a rigorous social media campaign to bring social and political change in Zimbabwe.
2017 Tamil Nadu – India 2017 pro-Jallikattu protests Peaceful demonstrations organized primarily by civilians, without any specific leaders, followed by outbreak of civil disobedience and people occupying Marina shore in Chennai and other prominent places across the state, demanding permanent solution for Jallikattu by passing permanent ordinance to support Jallikattu and to boycott foreign companies such as Pepsi, Coca-Cola as their water consumption is affecting local farmers.
2016–2017 South Korea Impeachment of Park Geun-hye Peaceful demonstrations against President Park Geun-hye resulted the impeachment of the South Korean president.
2017 Catalonia – Spain Catalan independence referendum On 1 October 2017, an illegal referendum was held on the independence of Catalonia. 2,286,217 people participated. During the celebration the police forces acted hard against the voters.
2018–present Iran White Wednesdays
Girl of Enghelab Street Peaceful demonstrations against compulsory hijab and sex discrimination.
2018 Tamil Nadu – India Anti-Sterlite protest 100-day peaceful demonstration against Sterlite Copper Corporation in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu. Despite pollution control regulatory and environmental research institute reports along with apex court orders to shut down the industry, smelting operations were continued. Public demanded state to stop further expansion plans as a continuum of response against ill effects of pollution caused by the smelter.
2018–2019 Sudan 2018–19 Sudanese protests
Khartoum massacre Peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins against the regime of Omar al-Bashir and succeeding military junta.
2019–2021 Algeria 2019 Algerian protests Peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins against the regime of Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
2019–2020 India Shaheen Bagh protest Peaceful protests led by Muslim ladies against CAA among other things.
2020–2021 Belarus 2020–2021 Belarusian protests Peaceful mass demonstrations against the contested re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko and state violence.
2020–2021 India 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest Peaceful protest against the three farm bills passed by parliament.
2020–2021 Thailand 2020–2021 Thai Protests Ongoing peaceful protest to reform the Thai Monarchy and coup-installed government.
2021–present Turkey 2021 Boğaziçi University protests Ongoing peaceful protests against the rector appointment without election
2022–present Pakistan 2022 Regime Change Conspiracy[69] Ongoing peaceful protests all over the country and worldwide (among nonresident Pakistanis especially UK and USA) against the alleged foreign conspiracy and military backed government and demanding fresh elections.
2022 China White Paper Protests A series of protests against COVID-19 lockdowns began in mainland China in November 2022. Protesters usually held blank sheets of paper as a symbol.
Comparison with civil disobedience
Nonviolent resistance is often but wrongly taken as synonymous with civil disobedience. Each of these terms—nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience—has different connotations and commitments. Berel Lang argues against the conflation of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience on the grounds that the necessary conditions for an act instancing civil disobedience are: (1) that the act violates the law, (2) that the act is performed intentionally, and (3) that the actor anticipates and willingly accepts punitive measures made on the part of the state against him in retaliation for the act. Since acts of nonviolent political resistance need not satisfy any of these criteria, Lang argues that the two categories of action cannot be identified with one another.[70] Furthermore, civil disobedience is a form of political action which necessarily aims at reform, rather than revolution. Its efforts are typically directed at the disputing of particular laws or groups of laws while conceding the authority of the government responsible for them.[70] In contrast, political acts of nonviolent resistance can have revolutionary ends.[70] According to Lang, civil disobedience need not be nonviolent, although the extent and intensity of the violence is limited by the non-revolutionary intentions of the persons engaging in civil disobedience.[70] Lang argues the violent resistance by citizens being forcibly relocated to detentions, short of the use of lethal violence against representatives of the state, could plausibly count as civil disobed
Martin Luther King, Jr. (born January 15, 1929, Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.—died April 4, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee) was a Baptist minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968. His leadership was fundamental to that movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. King rose to national prominence as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which promoted nonviolent tactics, such as the massive March on Washington (1963), to achieve civil rights. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Early years
King came from a comfortable middle-class family steeped in the tradition of the Southern Black ministry: both his father and maternal grandfather were Baptist preachers. His parents were college-educated, and King’s father had succeeded his father-in-law as pastor of the prestigious Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The family lived on Auburn Avenue, otherwise known as “Sweet Auburn,” the bustling “Black Wall Street,” home to some of the country’s largest and most prosperous Black businesses and Black churches in the years before the civil rights movement. Young Martin received a solid education and grew up in a loving extended family.
This secure upbringing, however, did not prevent King from experiencing the prejudices then common in the South. He never forgot the time when, at about age six, one of his white playmates announced that his parents would no longer allow him to play with King, because the children were now attending segregated schools. Dearest to King in these early years was his maternal grandmother, whose death in 1941 left him shaken and unstable. Upset because he had learned of her fatal heart attack while attending a parade without his parents’ permission, the 12-year-old King attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window.
In 1944, at age 15, King entered Morehouse College in Atlanta under a special wartime program intended to boost enrollment by admitting promising high-school students like King. Before beginning college, however, King spent the summer on a tobacco farm in Connecticut; it was his first extended stay away from home and his first substantial experience of race relations outside the segregated South. He was shocked by how peacefully the races mixed in the North. “Negroes and whites go [to] the same church,” he noted in a letter to his parents. “I never [thought] that a person of my race could eat anywhere.” This summer experience in the North only deepened King’s growing hatred of racial segregation.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), with other civil rights supporters lock arms on as they lead the way along Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington, Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.
Britannica Quiz
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About the American Civil Rights Movement
The life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.Explore the life and accomplishments of American Baptist minister and social activist Martin Luther King, Jr.
See all videos for this article
At Morehouse, King favored studies in medicine and law, but these were eclipsed in his senior year by a decision to enter the ministry, as his father had urged. King’s mentor at Morehouse was the college president, Benjamin Mays, a social gospel activist whose rich oratory and progressive ideas had left an indelible imprint on King’s father. Committed to fighting racial inequality, Mays accused the African American community of complacency in the face of oppression, and he prodded the Black church into social action by criticizing its emphasis on the hereafter instead of the here and now; it was a call to service that was not lost on the teenage King. He graduated from Morehouse in 1948.
King spent the next three years at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, where he became acquainted with Mohandas Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence as well as with the thought of contemporary Protestant theologians. He earned a bachelor of divinity degree in 1951. Renowned for his oratorical skills, King was elected president of Crozer’s student body, which was composed almost exclusively of white students. As a professor at Crozer wrote in a letter of recommendation for King, “The fact that with our student body largely Southern in constitution a colored man should be elected to and be popular [in] such a position is in itself no mean recommendation.” From Crozer, King went to Boston University, where, in seeking a firm foundation for his own theological and ethical inclinations, he studied man’s relationship to God and received a doctorate (1955) for a dissertation titled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman.”
Access for the whole family!
Bundle Britannica Premium and Kids for the ultimate resource destination.
The Montgomery bus boycott
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott KingCivil rights activists Martin Luther King, Jr., and Coretta Scott King, 1964.
While in Boston, King met Coretta Scott, a native Alabamian who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. They were married in 1953 and had four children. King had been pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, slightly more than a year when the city’s small group of civil rights advocates decided to contest racial segregation on that city’s public bus system following the incident on December 1, 1955, in which Rosa Parks, an African American woman, had refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger and as a consequence was arrested for violating the city’s segregation law. Activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to boycott the transit system and chose King as their leader. He had the advantage of being a young, well-trained man who was too new in town to have made enemies; he was generally respected, and it was thought that his family connections and professional standing would enable him to find another pastorate should the boycott fail.
In his first speech to the group as its president, King declared:
We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from that patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice.
These words introduced to the country a fresh voice, a skillful rhetoric, an inspiring personality, and in time a dynamic new doctrine of civil struggle. Although King’s home was dynamited and his family’s safety threatened, he continued to lead the boycott until, one year and a few weeks later, the city’s buses were desegregated.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Recognizing the need for a mass movement to capitalize on the successful Montgomery action, King set about organizing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which gave him a base of operation throughout the South, as well as a national platform from which to speak. King lectured in all parts of the country and discussed race-related issues with religious and civil rights leaders at home and abroad. In February 1959 he and his party were warmly received by India’s Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and others; as the result of a brief discussion with followers of Gandhi about the Gandhian concepts of peaceful noncompliance (satyagraha), King became increasingly convinced that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. King also looked to Africa for inspiration. “The liberation struggle in Africa has been the greatest single international influence on American Negro students,” he wrote. “Frequently I hear them say that if their African brothers can break the bonds of colonialism, surely the American Negro can break Jim Crow.”
In 1960 King and his family moved to his native city of Atlanta, where he became co-pastor with his father of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. At this post he devoted most of his time to the SCLC and the civil rights movement, declaring that the “psychological moment has come when a concentrated drive against injustice can bring great, tangible gains.” His thesis was soon tested as he agreed to support the sit-in demonstrations undertaken by local Black college students. In late October he was arrested with 33 young people protesting segregation at the lunch counter in an Atlanta department store. Charges were dropped, but King was sentenced to Reidsville State Prison Farm on the pretext that he had violated his probation on a minor traffic offense committed several months earlier. The case assumed national proportions, with widespread concern over his safety, outrage at Georgia’s flouting of legal forms, and the failure of Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower to intervene. King was released only upon the intercession of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy—an action so widely publicized that it was felt to have contributed substantially to Kennedy’s slender election victory eight days later.
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon Johnson
1 of 2
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lyndon JohnsonU.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson talking with Martin Luther King, Jr., in the Oval Office at the White House, Washington, D.C., 1963.
Each section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, explained
2 of 2
Each section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, explainedDecades later, the Civil Rights Act is still a critical piece of American legislation.
See all videos for this article
In the years from 1960 to 1965, King’s influence reached its zenith. Handsome, eloquent, and doggedly determined, King quickly caught the attention of the news media, particularly of the producers of that budding medium of social change—television. He understood the power of television to nationalize and internationalize the struggle for civil rights, and his well-publicized tactics of active nonviolence (sit-ins, protest marches) aroused the devoted allegiance of many African Americans and liberal whites in all parts of the country, as well as support from the administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. But there were also notable failures, as in Albany, Georgia (1961–62), when King and his colleagues failed to achieve their desegregation goals for public parks and other facilities.
The letter from the Birmingham jail
In Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, King’s campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and in hiring practices drew nationwide attention when police turned dogs and fire hoses on the demonstrators. King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, including hundreds of schoolchildren. His supporters did not, however, include all the Black clergy of Birmingham, and he was strongly opposed by some of the white clergy who had issued a statement urging African Americans not to support the demonstrations. From the Birmingham jail, King wrote a letter of great eloquence in which he spelled out his philosophy of nonviolence:
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.
Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering “I Have a Dream”
1 of 4
Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering “I Have a Dream”Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
2 of 4
Martin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King, Jr., at the March on Washington, 1963.
March on Washington
3 of 4
March on WashingtonCivil rights supporters at the March on Washington, held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.
White House meeting of civil rights leaders in 1963
4 of 4
White House meeting of civil rights leaders in 1963American civil rights leaders meeting with government officials at the White House on the day of the March on Washington, August 28, 1963. From left to right, Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, Mathew Ahmann, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, Joachim Prinz, Eugene Carson Blake, A. Philip Randolph, Pres. John F. Kennedy, Vice Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, Walter Reuther, Whitney M. Young, Jr., and Floyd McKissick.
Near the end of the Birmingham campaign, in an effort to draw together the multiple forces for peaceful change and to dramatize to the country and to the world the importance of solving the U.S. racial problem, King joined other civil rights leaders in organizing the historic March on Washington. On August 28, 1963, an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 gathered peaceably in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. Here the crowds were uplifted by the emotional strength and prophetic quality of King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he emphasized his faith that all men, someday, would be brothers.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
1 of 2
Civil Rights Act of 1964U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Martin Luther King, Jr., and others look on, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1964.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
2 of 2
Martin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking at a press conference, 1964.
The rising tide of civil rights agitation produced, as King had hoped, a strong effect on national opinion and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, authorizing the federal government to enforce desegregation of public accommodations and outlawing discrimination in publicly owned facilities, as well as in employment. That eventful year was climaxed by the award to King of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo in December. “I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind,” said King in his acceptance speech. “I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him.”
Challenges of the final years of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., at Montgomery
1 of 3
Martin Luther King, Jr., at MontgomeryMartin Luther King, Jr., delivering his “How Long, Not Long” speech in Montgomery, Alabama, March 25, 1965.
Selma March
2 of 3
Selma MarchArm in arm, Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, leading the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, March 1965.
A brief history of the Selma March
3 of 3
A brief history of the Selma MarchThis infographic provides maps and a timeline of events associated with the Selma March, which occurred March 21–25, 1965, and was a landmark event of the American civil rights movement.
The first signs of opposition to King’s tactics from within the civil rights movement surfaced during the March 1965 demonstrations in Selma, Alabama, which were aimed at dramatizing the need for a federal voting-rights law that would provide legal support for the enfranchisement of African Americans in the South. King organized an initial march from Selma to the state capitol building in Montgomery but did not lead it himself. Led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams on March 7, the marchers were turned back by state troopers with nightsticks and tear gas; captured on television, the brutal scene became known as "Bloody Sunday." King was determined to lead a second march two days later, despite an injunction by a federal court and efforts from Washington to persuade him to cancel it. Heading a procession of 1,500 marchers, Black and white, he set out across Pettus Bridge outside Selma until the group came to a barricade of state troopers. But, instead of going on and forcing a confrontation, he led his followers to kneel in prayer and then unexpectedly turned back. This decision cost King the support of many young radicals who were already faulting him for being too cautious. The suspicion of an “arrangement” with federal and local authorities—vigorously but not entirely convincingly denied—clung to the Selma affair. The country was nevertheless aroused, resulting in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Throughout the nation, impatience with the lack of greater substantive progress encouraged the growth of Black militancy. Especially in the poorest areas of the large Northern cities, King’s religious philosophy of nonviolence was increasingly questioned. The rioting in the Watts district of Los Angeles in August 1965 demonstrated the depth of unrest among urban African Americans. In an effort to meet the challenge of urban poverty, King and his forces initiated a drive against racial discrimination in Chicago at the beginning of the following year. The chief target was to be segregation in housing. After a spring and summer of rallies, marches, and demonstrations, an agreement was signed between the city and a coalition of African Americans, liberals, and labour organizations, calling for various measures to enforce the existing laws and regulations with respect to housing. But this agreement was to have little effect; the impression remained that King’s Chicago campaign was nullified partly because of the opposition of that city’s powerful mayor, Richard J. Daley, and partly because of the unexpected complexities of Northern racism.
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X
Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm XA meeting of Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), and Malcolm X (right), 1964.
In Illinois and Mississippi alike, King was now being challenged and even publicly derided by young Black-power enthusiasts. Whereas King stood for patience, middle-class respectability, and a measured approach to social change, the sharp-tongued, blue jean-clad young urban radicals stood for confrontation and immediate change. In the latter’s eyes, the suit-wearing, calm-spoken civil rights leader was irresponsibly passive and old beyond his years (King was in his 30s)—more a member of the other side of the generation gap than their revolutionary leader. Malcolm X went so far as to call King’s tactics “criminal”: “Concerning nonviolence, it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.”
In the face of mounting criticism, King broadened his approach to include concerns other than racism. On April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City and again on the 15th at a mammoth peace rally in that city, he committed himself irrevocably to opposing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Once before, in early January 1966, he had condemned the war, but official outrage from Washington and strenuous opposition within the Black community itself had caused him to relent. He next sought to widen his base by forming a coalition of the poor of all races that would address itself to economic problems such as poverty and unemployment. It was a version of populism—seeking to enroll janitors, hospital workers, seasonal labourers, and the destitute of Appalachia, along with the student militants and pacifist intellectuals. His endeavors along these lines, however, did not engender much support in any segment of the population.
Meanwhile, the strain and changing dynamics of the civil rights movement had taken a toll on King, especially in the final months of his life. “I’m frankly tired of marching. I’m tired of going to jail,” he admitted in 1968. “Living every day under the threat of death, I feel discouraged every now and then and feel my work’s in vain, but then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.”
Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.
1 of 2
Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.Funeral procession for Martin Luther King, Jr., April 9, 1968, Atlanta.
Aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
2 of 2
Aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.Building in Washington, D.C., destroyed during the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., April 1968.
King’s plans for a Poor People’s March to Washington were interrupted in the spring of 1968 by a trip to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of a strike by that city’s sanitation workers. In the opinion of many of his followers and biographers, King seemed to sense his end was near. As King prophetically told a crowd at the Mason Temple Church in Memphis on April 3, the night before he died, “I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” The next day, while standing on the second-story balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where he and his associates were staying, King was killed by a sniper’s bullet. The killing sparked riots and disturbances in over 100 cities across the country. On March 10, 1969, the accused assassin, a white man, James Earl Ray, pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Ray later recanted his confession, claiming lawyers had coerced him into confessing and that he was the victim of a conspiracy. In a surprising turn of events, members of the King family eventually came to Ray’s defense. King’s son Dexter met with the reputed assassin in March 1997 and then publicly joined Ray’s plea for a reopening of his case. When Ray died on April 23, 1998, Coretta Scott King declared, “America will never have the benefit of Mr. Ray’s trial, which would have produced new revelations about the assassination…as well as establish the facts concerning Mr. Ray’s innocence.” Although the U.S. government conducted several investigations into the murder of King and each time concluded that Ray was the sole assassin, the killing remains a matter of controversy.
David L. Lewis
Historical significance and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference president Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Mathew Ahmann, executive director of the National Catholic Conference for Interrracial Justice, at the March on Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963.
In the years after his death, King remained the most widely known African American leader of his era. His stature as a major historical figure was confirmed by the successful campaign to establish a national holiday in his honor in the United States and by the building of a King memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., near the Lincoln Memorial, the site of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. Many states and municipalities have enacted King holidays, authorized public statues and paintings of him, and named streets, schools, and other entities for him. These efforts to honor King have focused more on his role as a civil rights advocate than on his controversial speeches, during his final year, condemning American intervention in Vietnam and calling for the Poor People’s Campaign.
Timeline: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement
Timeline: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movementMartin Luther King, Jr., Day was established as an annual observance in the United States in 1983.
See all videos for this article
The King holiday campaign overcame forceful opposition, with critics citing FBI surveillance files suggesting that King was an adulterous radical influenced by communists. Although the release of these files during the 1970s under the Freedom of Information Act fueled the public debate over King’s legacy, the extensive archives that now exist document King’s life and thought and have informed numerous serious studies offering balanced and comprehensive perspectives. Two major books featuring King—David J. Garrow’s Bearing the Cross (1986) and Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters (1988)—won Pulitzer Prizes. Subsequent books and articles reaffirmed King’s historical significance while portraying him as a complex figure: flawed, fallible, and limited in his control over the mass movements with which he was associated, yet also a visionary leader who was deeply committed to achieving social justice through nonviolent means.
Although the idea of a King national holiday did not gain significant congressional support until the late 1970s, efforts to commemorate King’s life began almost immediately after his assassination. In 1968 Rep. John Conyers of Michigan introduced a King holiday bill. The idea gradually began to attract political support once the newly formed Congressional Black Caucus included the holiday in its reform agenda. Coretta Scott King also played a central role in building popular support for the King holiday campaign while serving as founding president of the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change (later renamed the King Center), which became one of the major archives of King’s papers.
Despite the overall conservative trend in American politics in the 1980s, which might have been expected to work against recognition of the efforts of a controversial activist, King holiday advocates gained political support by portraying him as a symbol of the country’s progress in race relations. Musician Stevie Wonder contributed to the campaign by writing and recording “Happy Birthday,” a popular tribute to King. In 1983 Coretta Scott King and Stevie Wonder participated in the 20th Anniversary March on Washington, which drew a bigger crowd than the original march.
After the House and the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of the King holiday bill sponsored by Sen. Ted Kennedy, Pres. Ronald Reagan put aside his initial doubts and signed the legislation on November 3, 1983, establishing Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, to be celebrated annually on the third Monday in January. Coretta Scott King also succeeded in gaining congressional approval to establish a King Federal Holiday Commission to plan annual celebrations, beginning January 20, 1986, that would encourage “Americans to reflect on the principles of racial equality and nonviolent social change espoused by Dr. King.”
Celebration of the King national holiday did not end contention over King’s legacy, but his status as an American icon became more widely accepted over time. The revelation during the early 1990s that King had plagiarized some of his academic writings and the occasional controversies involving his heirs did little to undermine recognition of King’s enduring impact on the country. Even before the first King national holiday, members of King’s fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, had proposed a permanent memorial in Washington, D.C. By the end of the 20th century, that proposal had secured governmental approval for the site on the Tidal Basin, near the Mall. In 2000 an international design competition ended with the selection of a proposal by ROMA Design Group. To build and maintain the memorial, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation eventually raised more than $100 million. Commemorations of King’s life were also held in other countries, and in 2009 a congressional delegation traveled to India to mark the 50th anniversary of King’s pilgrimage to what he called the “Land of Gandhi.”
Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering a speech in Berkeley, California, 1967.
As with the lives of other major historical figures, King’s life has been interpreted in new ways by successive generations of scholars, many of whom have drawn attention to the crucial role of local Black leaders in the African American protest movements of the 1950s and ’60s. Recognizing that grassroots activists such as Rosa Parks, Fred Shuttlesworth, and others prepared the way for King’s rise to national prominence, biographers and historians have questioned the view that Southern Black protest movements relied on King’s charismatic guidance. Nonetheless, studies of King continue to acknowledge his distinctive leadership role. For example, though he often downplayed his contribution to the Montgomery bus boycott, King’s inspirational leadership and his speeches helped to transform a local protest over bus seating into a historically important event. More generally, studies of King have suggested that his most significant contribution to the modern African American freedom struggle was to link Black aspirations to transcendent, widely shared democratic and Christian ideals. While helping grassroots leaders mobilize African Americans for sustained mass struggles, he inspired participants to believe that their cause was just and consistent with traditional American egalitarian values. King also appealed to the consciences of all Americans, thus building popular support for civil rights reform. His strategy of emphasizing nonviolent protest and interracial cooperation enabled him to fight effectively against the Southern system of legalized racial segregation and discrimination, but it also proved inadequate during his final years as he sought to overcome racial and economic problems that were national in scope.
Clayborne Carson
American civil rights movement
Table of Contents
Introduction & Top Questions
Abolitionism to Jim Crow
Du Bois to Brown
Montgomery bus boycott to the Voting Rights Act
From Black power to the assassination of Martin Luther King
Into the 21st century
Black Lives Matter and Shelby County v. Holder
References & Edit History
Quick Facts & Related Topics
Images & Videos
March on Washington Declaration of Independence Nat Turner William Lloyd Garrison Frederick Douglass Dred Scott decision Abraham Lincoln campaign banner Emancipation Proclamation Booker T. Washington W.E.B. Du Bois
For Students
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Pop Quiz: 15 Things to Know About Martin Luther King, Jr.
March on Washington
Key Facts About the American Civil Rights Movement
March on Washington
Causes and Effects of the American Civil Rights Movement
Quizzes
Martin Luther King, Jr. (left of centre) and Malcolm X (right) waiting for a press conference, 1964.
American Civil Rights Movement Quiz
Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), with other civil rights supporters lock arms on as they lead the way along Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington, Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About the American Civil Rights Movement
Related Questions
Who were some key figures of the American civil rights movement?
Lifestyles & Social Issues
Human Rights
March on Washington
March on Washington Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), with other leaders and supporters of the American civil rights movement at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.
American civil rights movement
Written by
Fact-checked by
Article History
Quick Facts
Date:
c. 1950 - present
Location:
United States
Context:
civil rights
nonviolence
Major Events:
Brown v. Board of Education
Poor People’s Campaign
Loving v. Virginia
Medical Committee for Human Rights
Watts Riots of 1965
Key People:
James Baldwin
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Benjamin Mays
Henry MacNeal Turner
Pauli Murray
Top Questions
When did the American civil rights movement start?
Who were some key figures of the American civil rights movement?
What did the American civil rights movement accomplish?
News • Michigan museum preserves Civil Rights artifacts amid federal efforts to downplay Black history • Aug. 6, 2025, 8:48 AM ET (AP)
American civil rights movement, mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s. This movement had its roots in the centuries-long efforts of enslaved Africans and their descendants to resist racial oppression and abolish the institution of slavery. Although enslaved people were emancipated as a result of the American Civil War and were then granted basic civil rights through the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, struggles to secure federal protection of these rights continued during the next century. Through nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s broke the pattern of public facilities’ being segregated by “race” in the South and achieved the most important breakthrough in equal-rights legislation for African Americans since the Reconstruction period (1865–77). Although the passage in 1964 and 1965 of major civil rights legislation was victorious for the movement, by then militant Black activists had begun to see their struggle as a freedom or liberation movement not just seeking civil rights reforms but instead confronting the enduring economic, political, and cultural consequences of past racial oppression.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s Britannica essay on “Monuments of Hope.”)
Abolitionism to Jim Crow
Declaration of Independence
Declaration of IndependenceImage of the Declaration of Independence (1776) taken from an engraving made by printer William J. Stone in 1823.
American history has been marked by persistent and determined efforts to expand the scope and inclusiveness of civil rights. Although equal rights for all were affirmed in the founding documents of the United States, many of the new country’s inhabitants were denied essential rights. Enslaved Africans and indentured servants did not have the inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that British colonists asserted to justify their Declaration of Independence. Nor were they included among the “People of the United States” who established the Constitution in order to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Instead, the Constitution protected slavery by allowing the importation of enslaved persons until 1808 and providing for the return of enslaved people who had escaped to other states.
As the United States expanded its boundaries, Native American peoples resisted conquest and absorption. Individual states, which determined most of the rights of American citizens, generally limited voting rights to white property-owning males, and other rights—such as the right to own land or serve on juries—were often denied on the basis of racial or gender distinctions. A small proportion of Black Americans lived outside the slave system, but those so-called “free Blacks” endured racial discrimination and enforced segregation. Although some enslaved persons violently rebelled against their enslavement (see slave rebellions), African Americans and other subordinated groups mainly used nonviolent means—protests, legal challenges, pleas and petitions addressed to government officials, as well as sustained and massive civil rights movements—to achieve gradual improvements in their status.
Nat Turner
1 of 5
Nat TurnerWood engraving depicting Nat Turner (left), who in 1831 led the only effective slave rebellion in U.S. history.
William Lloyd Garrison
2 of 5
William Lloyd GarrisonAmerican abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
Frederick Douglass
3 of 5
Frederick DouglassAmerican abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass, 1862.
Dred Scott decision
4 of 5
Dred Scott decisionNewspaper notice for a pamphlet on the U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision.
Abraham Lincoln campaign banner
5 of 5
Abraham Lincoln campaign bannerThis American flag banner promoted Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. presidency in 1860.
During the first half of the 19th century, movements to extend voting rights to non-property-owning white male labourers resulted in the elimination of most property qualifications for voting, but this expansion of suffrage was accompanied by brutal suppression of American Indians and increasing restrictions on free Blacks. Owners of enslaved people in the South reacted to the 1831 Nat Turner slave revolt in Virginia by passing laws to discourage antislavery activism and prevent the teaching of enslaved people to read and write. Despite this repression, a growing number of Black Americans freed themselves from slavery by escaping or negotiating agreements to purchase their freedom through wage labour. By the 1830s, free Black communities in the Northern states had become sufficiently large and organized to hold regular national conventions, where Black leaders gathered to discuss alternative strategies of racial advancement. In 1833 a small minority of whites joined with Black antislavery activists to form the American Anti-Slavery Society under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), with other civil rights supporters lock arms on as they lead the way along Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington, Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.
Britannica Quiz
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About the American Civil Rights Movement
Frederick Douglass became the most famous of the formerly enslaved persons who joined the abolition movement. His autobiography—one of many slave narratives—and his stirring orations heightened public awareness of the horrors of slavery. Although Black leaders became increasingly militant in their attacks against slavery and other forms of racial oppression, their efforts to secure equal rights received a major setback in 1857, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected African American citizenship claims. The Dred Scott decision stated that the country’s founders had viewed Blacks as so inferior that they had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” This ruling—by declaring unconstitutional the Missouri Compromise (1820), through which Congress had limited the expansion of slavery into western territories—ironically strengthened the antislavery movement, because it angered many whites who did not hold enslaved people. The inability of the country’s political leaders to resolve that dispute fueled the successful presidential campaign of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the antislavery Republican Party. Lincoln’s victory in turn prompted the Southern slave states to secede and form the Confederate States of America in 1860–61.
Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation ProclamationEmancipation Proclamation, 1863.
Although Lincoln did not initially seek to abolish slavery, his determination to punish the rebellious states and his increasing reliance on Black soldiers in the Union army prompted him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) to deprive the Confederacy of its enslaved property. After the American Civil War ended, Republican leaders cemented the Union victory by gaining the ratification of constitutional amendments to abolish slavery (Thirteenth Amendment) and to protect the legal equality of formerly enslaved persons (Fourteenth Amendment) and the voting rights of male ex-slaves (Fifteenth Amendment). Despite those constitutional guarantees of rights, almost a century of civil rights agitation and litigation would be required to bring about consistent federal enforcement of those rights in the former Confederate states. Moreover, after federal military forces were removed from the South at the end of Reconstruction, white leaders in the region enacted new laws to strengthen the “Jim Crow” system of racial segregation and discrimination. In its Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1896), the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” facilities for African Americans did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, ignoring evidence that the facilities for Blacks were inferior to those intended for whites.
Access for the whole family!
Bundle Britannica Premium and Kids for the ultimate resource destination.
The Southern system of white supremacy was accompanied by the expansion of European and American imperial control over nonwhite people in Africa and Asia as well as in island countries of the Pacific and Caribbean regions. Like African Americans, most nonwhite people throughout the world were colonized or economically exploited and denied basic rights, such as the right to vote. With few exceptions, women of all races everywhere were also denied suffrage rights (see woman suffrage).
Du Bois to Brown
Booker T. Washington
1 of 4
Booker T. WashingtonAmerican educator Booker T. Washington, c. 1906.
W.E.B. Du Bois
2 of 4
W.E.B. Du BoisW.E.B. Du Bois, 1918.
NAACP march
3 of 4
NAACP marchIn New York City during World War I the NAACP led a march protesting brutality against African Americans. One of the many banners read: “Mr. President, why not make America safe for democracy?”
segregated movie theatre
4 of 4
segregated movie theatreSegregated movie theatre in Waco, Texas, in 1939.
During the early decades of the 20th century, movements to resist such racial and gender discrimination gained strength in many countries. While a Pan-African movement emerged in response to European imperialism, African Americans developed various strategies to challenge racial discrimination in the United States. Educator Booker T. Washington emphasized economic development without openly challenging the Jim Crow system, Harvard University-educated scholar W.E.B. Du Bois became a leading advocate for civil rights and Pan-African unity among Africans and African descendants elsewhere in the world. In 1909 Du Bois and other African American leaders joined with white proponents of racial equality to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which became the country’s most enduring civil rights organization. Under the leadership of Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, Thurgood Marshall, and others, the NAACP publicized racial injustices and initiated lawsuits to secure equal treatment for Black Americans in education, employment, housing, and public accommodations.
Brown v. Board of Education
1 of 2
Brown v. Board of Education(From left) Lawyers George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit, Jr., celebrating outside the U.S. Supreme Court, Washington, D.C., after the Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, May 17, 1954.
Brown v. Board of Education
2 of 2
Brown v. Board of EducationFirst page of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, May 17, 1954.
The NAACP faced competition from various groups offering alternative strategies for racial advancement. In 1941 labour leader A. Philip Randolph’s threat to stage a march on Washington, D.C., prodded Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue an executive order against employment discrimination in the wartime defense industries. The interracial Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) also undertook small-scale civil disobedience to combat segregation in Northern cities.
In the aftermath of World War II, African American civil rights efforts were hampered by ideological splits. Du Bois and prominent African American entertainer Paul Robeson were among the leftist leaders advocating mass civil rights protests while opposing the Cold War foreign and domestic policies of Pres. Harry S. Truman, but Truman prevailed in the 1948 presidential election with critical backing from NAACP leaders and most African Americans able to vote. Marshall and other NAACP leaders gained additional Black support when the Supreme Court ruled public school segregation unconstitutional in 1954 in the NAACP-sponsored case of Brown v. Board of Education.
Yet, even as the NAACP consolidated its national dominance in the civil rights field, local Black activists acted on their own to protest racial segregation and discrimination. For example, in 1951 a student walkout at a Virginia high school led by Barbara Johns, age 16, was one of the local efforts that culminated in the Brown decision. When the Supreme Court did not set a time limit for states to desegregate their school systems and instead merely called for desegregation “with all deliberate speed,” the stage was set for years of conflicts over public school desegregation and other discriminatory practices.
Montgomery bus boycott to the Voting Rights Act
Rosa Parks
Rosa ParksStatue of Rosa Parks seated on a Montgomery bus; at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, Alabama.
In December 1955 NAACP activist Rosa Parks’s impromptu refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked a sustained bus boycott that inspired mass protests elsewhere to speed the pace of civil rights reform. After boycott supporters chose Baptist minister Martin Luther King, Jr., to head the newly established Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), King soon became the country’s most influential advocate of the concepts of nonviolent resistance forged by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Despite the bombing of King’s house and other acts of intimidation by segregationists, MIA leaders were able to sustain the boycott until November 1956, when the NAACP won a Supreme Court order to desegregate the bus system. In 1957 King and his supporters founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to provide an institutional framework supporting local protest movements.
Greensboro sit-in
Greensboro sit-inThe Woolworth's lunch counter where the Greensboro sit-in was held in 1960; on display at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina.
Four Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparked a new phase of the Southern civil rights movement on February 1, 1960, when they staged a sit-in at a drugstore lunch counter reserved for whites. In the wake of the Greensboro sit-in, thousands of students in at least 60 communities, mostly in the upper, urbanized South, joined the sit-in campaign during the winter and spring of 1960. Despite efforts by the NAACP, SCLC, and CORE to impose some control over the sit-in movement, the student protesters formed their own group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), to coordinate the new movement. SNCC gradually acquired a staff of full-time organizers, many of whom were former student protesters, and launched a number of local projects designed to achieve desegregation and voting rights. Although SNCC’s nonviolent tactics were influenced by King, SNCC organizers typically stressed the need to develop self-reliant local leaders to sustain grassroots movements.
Freedom Riders
Freedom RidersFreedom Riders preparing to board a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, May 24, 1961.
The Freedom Rides of 1961 signaled the beginning of a period when civil rights protest activity grew in scale and intensity. CORE sponsored the first group of bus riders who sought to desegregate Southern bus terminals. After attacks by white mobs in Alabama turned back the initial protesters, student activists from Nashville and other centers of sit-in activities continued the rides into Jackson, Mississippi, where they were promptly arrested for disobeying racial segregation rules. Despite U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s plea for a “cooling-off” period, the Freedom Rides demonstrated that militant but nonviolent young activists could confront Southern segregation at its strongest points and pressure the federal government to intervene to protect the constitutional rights of African Americans. The Freedom Rides encouraged similar protests elsewhere against segregated transportation facilities and stimulated local campaigns in many Southern communities that had been untouched by the student sit-ins.
Each section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, explained
1 of 6
Each section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, explainedDecades later, the Civil Rights Act is still a critical piece of American legislation.
See all videos for this article
Civil rights movement
2 of 6
Civil rights movementWalter Gadsden, a 15-year-old civil rights demonstrator, being attacked by police dogs, May 3, 1963, Birmingham, Alabama.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
3 of 6
Civil Rights Act of 1964U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act as Martin Luther King, Jr., and others look on, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1964.
March on Washington
4 of 6
March on WashingtonCivil rights supporters carrying placards at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
5 of 6
Martin Luther King, Jr.Martin Luther King, Jr., during the March on Washington, D.C., in 1963.
civil rights movement: March on Washington
6 of 6
civil rights movement: March on WashingtonCrowd surrounding the Reflecting Pool and continuing to the Washington Monument—part of the March on Washington—in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963.
SCLC leaders worked with Birmingham, Alabama, minister Fred Shuttlesworth to launch a major campaign featuring confrontations between nonviolent demonstrators and the often brutal law-enforcement personnel directed by Birmingham’s police commissioner, Eugene T. (“Bull”) Connor. Televised confrontations between nonviolent protesters and vicious policemen with clubs and police dogs attracted Northern support and resulted in federal intervention to bring about a settlement that included civil rights concessions. King’s “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” of April 16, 1963, defended civil disobedience and warned that frustrated African Americans might turn to Black nationalism, a development that he predicted would lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare. International news coverage of the Birmingham clashes prompted Pres. John F. Kennedy to introduce legislation that eventually became the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Listen to a participant sharing memories and photographs of the March on Washington in 1963
Listen to a participant sharing memories and photographs of the March on Washington in 1963A participant in the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, sharing memories and photographs.
See all videos for this article
Similar mass protests in dozens of other cities made white Americans more aware of the antiquated Jim Crow system, though Black militancy also prompted a white “backlash.” Those mass protests culminated on August 28, 1963, in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which attracted over 200,000 participants. King used his concluding “I Have a Dream” speech at the march as an opportunity to link Black civil rights aspirations with traditional American political values. He insisted that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution comprised “a promissory note” guaranteeing all Americans “the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), with other civil rights supporters lock arms on as they lead the way along Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington, Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.
Britannica Quiz
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About the American Civil Rights Movement
While media attention concentrated on the urban demonstrations in Birmingham, the voter-registration campaign in rural Mississippi and Alabama, spearheaded by SNCC and groups under the auspices of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), stimulated the emergence of resilient indigenous leadership and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). COFO director Robert Moses spearheaded a summer project in 1964 that brought together voting rights organizers and hundreds of Northern white volunteers. While the murders of three civil rights workers focused national attention on Mississippi, the MFDP, led by Fannie Lou Hamer, failed in its attempt to unseat the regular all-white delegation at the 1964 National Democratic Convention. During the following year, however, mass protests in the Alabama cities of Selma and Montgomery led Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson to introduce legislation that became the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
From Black power to the assassination of Martin Luther King
Selma March
1 of 3
Selma MarchSelma March, Alabama, March 1965.
A brief history of the Selma March
2 of 3
A brief history of the Selma MarchThis infographic provides maps and a timeline of events associated with the Selma March, which occurred March 21–25, 1965, and was a landmark event of the American civil rights movement.
Malcolm X
3 of 3
Malcolm XBlack Power advocate Malcolm X photographed in New York City, March 5, 1964.
The Selma-to-Montgomery march—led by King, John Lewis, and Hosea Williams—in March 1965 would be the last sustained Southern protest campaign that was able to secure widespread support among whites outside the region. The passage of voting rights legislation, the upsurge in Northern urban racial violence, and white resentment of Black militancy lessened the effectiveness and popularity of nonviolent protests as a means of advancing African American interests. In addition, the growing militancy of Black activists inspired by the then recently assassinated Black nationalist Malcolm X spawned an increasing determination among African Americans to achieve political power and cultural autonomy by building Black-controlled institutions.
James Meredith
James MeredithJames Meredith (center) with federal marshals, University of Mississippi, October 1, 1962.
When he accepted the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, King connected the Black American struggle to the anticolonial struggles that had overcome European domination elsewhere in the world. In 1966 King launched a new campaign in Chicago against Northern slum conditions and segregation, but he soon faced a major challenge from “Black power” proponents, such as SNCC chairman Stokely Carmichael. This ideological conflict came to a head in June 1966 during a voting rights march through Mississippi following the wounding of James Meredith, who had desegregated the University of Mississippi in 1962. Carmichael’s use of the “Black power” slogan encapsulated the emerging notion of a freedom struggle seeking political, economic, and cultural objectives beyond narrowly defined civil rights reforms. By the late 1960s not only the NAACP and SCLC but even SNCC and CORE faced challenges from new militant organizations, such as the Black Panther Party, whose leaders argued that civil rights reforms were insufficient because they did not fully address the problems of poor and powerless Blacks. They also dismissed nonviolent principles, often quoting Malcolm X’s imperative: “by any means necessary.” Questioning American citizenship and identity as goals for African Americans, Black power proponents called instead for a global struggle for Black national “self-determination” rather than merely for civil rights.
Poor People's Campaign
1 of 2
Poor People's CampaignParticipants in the Poor People's March in Washington, D.C., 1968.
Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton
2 of 2
Bobby Seale and Huey P. NewtonBlack Panther Party national chairman Bobby Seale (left) and defense minister Huey P. Newton standing in front of the Black Panther Party's headquarters, Oakland, California, c. 1971.
Although King criticized calls for Black separatism and armed self-defense, he supported anticolonial movements and agreed that African Americans should seek compensatory government actions to redress historical injustices and end poverty. He criticized U.S. military intervention in the Vietnam War, which he characterized as a civil war, insisting that war was immoral and that the American government had wrongly opposed nationalist movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In December 1967 he announced a Poor People’s Campaign that intended to bring thousands of protesters to Washington, D.C., to lobby for an end to poverty.
After King’s assassination in April 1968, the Poor People’s Campaign floundered, and the Black Panther Party and other Black militant groups encountered intense government repression from local police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). In 1968 the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) concluded that the country, despite civil rights reforms, was moving “toward two societies one Black, one white—separate and unequal.” By the time of the commission’s report, claims that Black gains had resulted in “reverse discrimination” against whites were effectively used against significant new civil rights initiatives during the 1970s and ’80s.
Into the 21st century
John Lewis
1 of 3
John LewisU.S. congressman John Lewis.
Civil Rights History Project Act
2 of 3
Civil Rights History Project ActU.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn (second from right) witnessing the official signing into law of the Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 by Pres. Barack Obama in the White House Oval Office on May 12, 2009. Other representatives in attendance included (from left) Mike Quigley, Carolyn McCarthy, Sanford Bishop, Lacy Clay, and John Lewis.
Jesse Jackson
3 of 3
Jesse JacksonJesse Jackson, 1988.
As was the case for formerly colonized people in countries that achieved independence during the period after World War II, the acquisition of citizenship rights by African Americans brought fewer gains for those who were poor than for those who possessed educational and class advantages. American civil rights legislation of the 1960s became the basis for affirmative action—programs that increased opportunities for many Black students and workers as well as for women, disabled people, and other victims of discrimination. Increased participation in the American electoral system lessened Black reliance on extralegal tactics. Some former civil rights activists, such as John Lewis, Andrew Young, and Jesse Jackson, launched careers in electoral politics. Black elected officials, including mayors, began to exert greater influence than either Black power proponents or advocates of nonviolent civil rights protests. In 1969, believing that by speaking with a single voice they would have greater influence, 13 African American members of the U.S. House of Representatives formed the Congressional Black Caucus “to promote the public welfare through legislation designed to meet the needs of millions of neglected citizens.” By the early 21st century that caucus numbered more than 40 members and could count among its achievements legislative initiatives involving minority business development, expansion of educational opportunities, and opposition to South Africa’s former apartheid system.
United States
More From Britannica
United States: The civil rights movement
However, civil rights issues continued to stimulate protests, particularly when previous gains appeared to be threatened. Overall, the 20th-century struggle for civil rights produced an enduring transformation of the legal status of African Americans and other victims of discrimination. It also increased the responsibility of the government to enforce civil rights laws and the provisions of the Civil War-era constitutional amendments. Civil rights reforms did not, however, alter other determinants of the subordinate status of African Americans who remain in racially segregated communities where housing, public schools, and health care services are inferior. Like freedom struggles in Africa, the African American freedom struggle eliminated slavery and legally mandated forms of racial oppression, but the descendants of formerly enslaved people and colonized people generally remained in subordinate positions within the global capitalist economic order.
Barack and Michelle Obama
Barack and Michelle ObamaBarack Obama—with his wife, Michelle, watching—is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States on January 20, 2009.
Still, in the early 21st century the ascent to the U.S. presidency of an African American, Barack Obama, seemed to reflect a transformation of American society with ramifications for the civil rights movement (see United States presidential election of 2008). Jesse Jackson in his own landmark campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 had reached beyond the effort to mobilize African American voters and attempted to fashion a “Rainbow Coalition” of “red, yellow, brown, black, and white” Americans. Obama—whose father was a Black Kenyan and whose mother was a white American—presented a life story grounded in a search for a satisfactory racial identity. Ultimately, Obama’s approach to the world and, arguably, his appeal to many voters were transracial, grounded in a sophisticated understanding of the complex nature of racial identity that was no longer merely dichotomous—no longer simply a matter of Black or white. Given the deeply rooted racial conflicts of the American past, however, it was unlikely that Obama’s election had signaled the start of a postracial era without divisive racial issues and controversies.
Clayborne Carson
Black Lives Matter and Shelby County v. Holder
Black Lives Matter
Black Lives MatterProtesters carrying Black Lives Matter signs at a demonstration against police brutality in Boston, May 2020.
Indeed, during Obama’s presidency the issue of police brutality against Black Americans was increasingly in the headlines, and a seemingly unending series of high-profile incidents that resulted in the deaths of unarmed African Americans at the hands of police or while in police custody, including those of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, in 2014, as well as that of Freddie Gray in Baltimore in 2015, prompted widespread protest. The fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Sanford, Florida, in February 2012, by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer, and Zimmerman’s subsequent acquittal on charges of second-degree murder sparked the founding online in 2013 of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement by three Black community organizers—Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi. A decentralized grassroots movement led by activists in local chapters, BLM attempted to emphasize the many ways in which Black people continued to be treated unfairly in society and the ways in which laws, policies, and institutions had perpetrated that unfairness. The movement’s name signaled condemnation of the unjust killings by police of Black people (who were far more likely to be killed by police in the United States than white people) and the demand that society value the humanity and lives of Black people as much as it values those of white people. In 2020 the death of George Floyd as a result of a Minneapolis policeman kneeling on his neck for some nine minutes (graphically videotaped by a witness) brought a massive explosion of outrage and protest in cities and towns throughout the United States as BLM gained active support from millions of Americans.
Moreover, earlier in the decade, the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 was significantly weakened in 2013 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder. In a 5–4 ruling, the Court declared unconstitutional Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, which established a formula for determining which jurisdictions were required (under Section 5 of the act) to seek federal approval (“preclearance”) of any proposed change to their electoral procedures or laws. Originally scheduled to expire after five years, Sections 4 and 5, along with other provisions of the act, had been renewed repeatedly, most recently in 2006 for a period of 25 years. The Court’s conservative majority argued that the conditions that had fostered discriminatory voting practices and low voter registration and turnout in the jurisdictions singled out by the act had been almost completely eradicated, largely because of the enforcement of the act. In the wake of the decision, a number of states enacted voter identification and registration requirements and voting procedures that voting and civil rights activists were quick to label as attempts at voter suppression.