The Civil Rights Movement
a) It began on 1955 and ended on 1968.
b) The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights in Southern states. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the South. By 1966, the emergence of the Black Power Movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged the aims of the Civil Rights Movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and freedom from oppression by white Americans.
Many of those who were active in the Civil Rights Movement, with organizations such as NAACP, SNCC, CORE and SCLC, prefer the term "Southern Freedom Movement" because the struggle was about far more than just civil rights under law; it was also about fundamental issues of freedom, respect, dignity, and economic and social equality.
The movement was characterised by major campaigns of civil resistance. During the period 1955–1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to crisis situations which highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the influential Greensboro sit-in (1960) in North Carolina; marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities.
Noted legislative achievements during this phase of the Civil Rights Movement were passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964,[1] that banned discrimination based on "race, colour, religion, or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that restored and protected voting rights; the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, that dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional European groups; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and across the country young people were inspired to action.
c) 1. Brown v. Board of Education, 1954
Spring 1951 was the year in which great turmoil was felt amongst Black students in reference to Virginia state's educational system. At the time in Prince Edward County, Moton High School was segregated and students had decided to take matters into their own hands to fight against two things: the overpopulated school premises and the unsuitable conditions in their school. This particular behavior coming from Black people in the South was most likely unexpected and inappropriate as White people had expectations for Blacks to act in a subordinate manner. Moreover, 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 accept the NAACP's demands, the NAACP automatically joined them in their battle against school segregation. This became one of the five cases that made up what is known today as Brown v. Board of Education.
On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision regarding the case called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the plaintiffs charged that the education of black children in separate public schools from their white counterparts was unconstitutional. The opinion of the Court stated that the "segregation of white and coloured children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the coloured 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."
The lawyers from the NAACP had to gather some plausible evidence in order to win the case of Brown vs. Education. Their way of addressing the issue of school segregation was to enumerate several arguments. One of them pertained to having an exposure to interracial contact in a school environment. It was said that it would, in turn, help to prevent children to live with the pressures that society exerts in regards to race. Therefore, having a better chance of living in democracy. In addition, another was in reference to the emphasis of how "'education’ comprehends the entire process of developing and training the mental, physical and moral powers and capabilities of human beings”. In Goluboff's book, it has been stated that the goals of the NAACP was to bring to the Court’s awareness the fact that African American children were the victims of the legalization of school segregation and were not guaranteed a bright future. Without having the opportunity to be exposed to other cultures, it impedes on how Black children will function later on as adults trying to live a normal life.
The Court ruled that both Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had established the segregationist, "separate but equal" standard in general, and Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899), which had applied that standard to schools, were unconstitutional. The following year, in the case known as Brown v. Board of Education, the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed".
2. Albany Movement, 1961–1962
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. Prichett 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.
3. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks (the "mother of the Civil Rights Movement") refused to give up her seat on a public bus to make room for a white passenger. She was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the Highlander Center in Tennessee where nonviolent civil disobedience as a strategy had been discussed. Parks was arrested, tried, and convicted for disorderly conduct and violating a local ordinance. After word of this incident reached the black community, 50 African-American leaders gathered and organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott to demand a more humane bus transportation system. However, after any reforms were rejected 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 lifted. Ninety percent of African Americans in Montgomery partook in the boycotts, which reduced bus revenue by 80% until a federal court ordered Montgomery's buses desegregated in November 1956, and the boycott ended.
A young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. The protest made King a national figure. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South.
d) John F. Kennedy
e) It abolished slavery as a legal institution in the United States. The one irreconcilable difference between the North and the South during a time when our country was expanding was the introduction of slavery into new territories. In fact, the main prelude to the bloodbath to come was in "Bleeding Kansas" during the late 1850's as people actively killed one another over the question of slavery. It took two additional amendments to the U.S. Constitution and an additional hundred years of civil rights struggle to completely erase the stain of slavery, but the Civil War and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation began the process. The war settled once and for all an issue not addressed in our Constitution: Does an individual state have the right, through the will of its people, to dissolve its voluntary affiliation with the Federal Union? Jefferson Davis and his cohorts in the eleven states of the Confederacy thought yes and convened state conventions to dissolve their relationship to the federal government. Abraham Lincoln saw the secessionist movement as an unconstitutional attempt to nullify a presidential election. Lincoln, therefore, saw the issue as a simple matter of preserving the democratic process. No government, Lincoln said, could have in its philosophy the means to destroy itself. The issue that was left out of our Constitution, that could not be resolved by peaceful consensus,was settled by the Civil War. The North won, and the seceded states were eventually reabsorbed into the Union.
The Civil War united the country as never before. Prior to the four-year blood bath, there was no particular sense of nation and commonality among the individual states. Sectional differences and profound resentments brought on by slavery, and egalitarian issues brought on by industrialization and immigration in the North became a toxic brew that could only boil over into the struggle our Civil War became. When the North won the struggle through force of attrition and overpowering industrial strength, the South had to succumb and accept what they already knew was true: The United States was an indissoluble country and their future was with the Union. Before the Civil War, sentences began with, "The United States ARE" After the war, it became, "The United States IS"
The war resulted in accelerating invention and technology. Battles on the scale of Gettysburg, for example, required advances in weaponry, transportation and logistics. The lessons learned in troop movement, supply, and armament were carried over into an exploding industrial revolution that followed the U.S. Civil War. Just four years after the War, the country's rail system became bicoastal as the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met at Promontory Point Utah.
There were, of course, other significant outcomes of the Civil War. For example, with over one million men mobilized, and the war finished, the United States could once again assert its prerogatives in the Western Hemisphere. One striking example of this was the 1862 French occupation of Mexico and their installation of a puppet "emperor" Maximilian. It was the pressure from the United States, no longer encumbered by internal matters, that caused the withdrawal of French military support and the collapse of their bogus emperor.
There was the human element that the tragedy of war always highlights. Families who lost sons, brothers, and husbands in the carnage of the ghastly battles of the war had their lives altered forever. Young soldiers fortunate enough to survive had their outlook and perspective of their country likewise altered. At the upper echelons of the military, leaders like U.S. Grant became wildly popular and brokered that popularity into political office. A succession of five presidents following the Civil War (Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, and McKinley) were all veterans.
Finally, no discussion of the outcome of the U.S. Civil War would be complete without acknowledging the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, who had no precedent to follow in his quest to keep our country together, was perhaps the single most important influence on the outcome of the Civil War. It was Lincoln's desire to "let em up easy" and allow the defeated South to return to the Union peacefully and without rancor. What could have degenerated into a conflict with the defeated Confederate armies melting into the countryside to wage a protracted struggle, actually resulted in our country's reunion.
f) - (giving my opinion in the future)
Montgomery Bus Boycott and Scottsboro trials
a) Scottsboro trials
The prisoners were brought to court by 118 Alabama guardsmen, armed with machine guns. It was market day in Scottsboro, and farmers were in town to sell produce and buy supplies. A crowd of thousands soon formed. Courthouse access required a permit due to the salacious nature of the testimony expected. As the Supreme Court later described this situation, “…the proceedings…took place in an atmosphere of tense, hostile, and excited public sentiment."
Defense attorneys
The pace of the trials was extremely fast before the standing-room-only, all-white audience. The judge and prosecutor wanted to speed the nine trials to avoid violence, so the first trial took a day and a half, and the rest took place one right after the other in just one day. The Judge had ordered the Alabama bar to assist the defendants, but the only attorney who volunteered was Milo Moody, a 69-year-old attorney who had not defended a case in decades. The judge persuaded Stephen Roddy, a Chattanooga real estate lawyer, to assist him. Roddy admitted he had not had time to prepare and was not familiar with Alabama law, but agreed to aid Moody. He agreed, "I will go ahead and help do anything I can." Against accepted practice, Roddy presented both the testimony of his clients and the case of the girls. Because of the mob atmosphere, Roddy petitioned the court for a change of venue, entering into evidence newspaper and law enforcement accounts describing the crowd as "impelled by curiosity". Judge Hawkins found that the crowd merely curious and not hostile.
The attorneys were not given time to conduct an investigation, nor to research the law. There were three trials, and some of the defendants were juveniles tried as adults.
Norris and Weems trial
Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems were tried first. During prosecution testimony, Victoria Price stated that she and Ruby Bates witnessed the fight, that one of the black boys had a gun, and that they all raped her at knifepoint. During Attorney Roddy's cross-examination, Price livened her testimony with "wise cracks" that brought roars of laughter. Dr. Bridges testified that his examination of Victoria Price found no vaginal tearing, and that she had had semen in her for several hours. Ruby Bates failed to mention that either of the girls were raped until she was cross-examined. The prosecution ended with testimony from three men who claimed the black youths fought the white youths, put them off the train, and “took charge” of the white girls. The prosecution rested without calling any of the white youths as witness.
During the defense testimony defendant Charles Weems testified that he was not part of the fight, that Patterson had the pistol, and that he had not seen the white girls until the train pulled into Paint Rock.
Defendant Clarence Norris stunned the courtroom by implicating the other defendants. He denied participating in the fight or even being in the gondola car where the fight took place, alleging that he saw the rapes by the other blacks from atop the next boxcar. The defense put on no further witnesses.
During closing, the prosecution thundered "If you don't give these men death sentences, the electric chair might as well be abolished." The defense made no closing argument at all—not even against the death penalty for their clients.
The Court started the next case while the jury was still deliberating the first. The first jury deliberated less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict and imposing the death sentence on both Weems and Norris.
Patterson trial
The trial for Haywood Patterson occurred while the Norris and Weems cases were still under consideration by the jury. When the jury returned its verdict from the first trial, the jury from the second trial was taken out of the courtroom. When the verdicts of guilty were announced, the courtroom erupted in cheers, as did the crowd outside. A band, there to play for a show of Ford Motor Company cars outside, struck up Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here and There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. The celebration was so loud that it was likely heard by the second jury inside. After the outburst, defense moved for a mistrial, but Judge Hawkins denied the motion and testimony continued. The second trial continued.
During the second trial’s prosecution testimony, Victoria Price stuck with her story mostly, stating flatly that Patterson raped her. She also accused Patterson of shooting one of the white youths. Price also volunteered "I have not had intercourse with any other white man but my husband. I want you to know that."
Dr. Bridges repeated his testimony from the first trial. Other witnesses testified that "the negroes" had gotten out of the same gondola car as Price and Bates, and a farmer claimed to have seen white women [on the train] with the black youths.
Patterson defended his actions, testifying again that he had seen Price and Bates in the gondola car, but had nothing to do with them. On cross-examination he testified that he had seen "all but three of those negroes ravish that girl,” but then changed his story, claiming he had not even seen "any white women" until the train "got to Paint Rock".
The younger Wright brother testified that Patterson was not involved with the girls, but that nine black boys had sex with the girls. On cross examination, Roy Wright testified that Patterson “was not involved with the girls, but that, “The long, tall, black fellow had the pistol. He is not here.” He claimed to also have been on top of the boxcar, and that Clarence Norris had a knife.
Co-defendants Andy Wright, Eugene Williams, and Ozie Powell all testified that they did not see any women on the train. Olen Montgomery testified that he sat alone on the train and did not even know any of it had happened at all. The jury quickly convicted Patterson and sentenced him to death by electrocution.
Powell, Roberson, Williams, Montgomery and Andy Wright trial
This trial began within minutes of the previous case. Again the jury had to be sent out while the previous trial’s guilty verdict was read.
Once again Victoria Price repeated her testimony, adding that the black boys split into two groups of six to rape her and Ruby Bates. Price also accused Eugene Williams of holding the knife to her throat, and accused all the other boys of having knives. Under cross examination she went into detail, adding that someone also held a knife to the white boy, Gilley, during the rapes.
This trial was also interrupted for a guilty verdict from the previous trial, this time without uproar. Ruby Bates then took the stand to identify all five defendants as among the twelve entering the gondola car, putting off the whites, and “ravishing” her and Price.
Dr. Bridges was the next prosecution witness, repeating his earlier testimony. On cross examination, Bridges testified detecting no movement in the spermatozoa found in either woman. He also testified that defendant Willie Roberson was "diseased with syphilis and gonorrhea, a bad case of it.” He also admitted that Price told him that she had had sex with her husband and that Bates had earlier had intercourse as well.
The defense then called the only witnesses they had had time to find—the defendants. No new evidence came up.
Next prosecution witnesses testified Roberson had run over train cars leaping from one to another, and that he was in much better shape than he claimed. Sim Gilley testified that he saw "every one of those five in the gondola", but did not confirm that he had seen the women raped.
The defense again waived closing argument, and surprisingly the prosecution then proceeded to make more argument. The defense objected vigorously, but the Court allowed it.
Judge Hawkins then instructed the jury, stating that any defendant aiding in the crime was as guilty as any of the defendants who had committing it. The jury began deliberating at four in the afternoon.
Roy Wright Trial
The prosecution agreed that 12-year-old Roy Wright was too young for the death penalty and did not seek it. The prosecution presented only testimony from Price and Bates. His case went to jury at nine that evening, with both juries deliberating at the same time. At nine on Thursday morning April 9, 1931 the five defendants in Wednesday’s earlier trial were all found guilty. Roy Wright's jury could not all agree, and was declared a hung jury that afternoon. All the jurors agreed on his guilt, but seven insisted on the death sentence while five held out for life imprisonment. Hawkins declared amistrial.
Death Sentences
The eight convicted defendants were assembled on April 9, 1931 and sentenced to death by electrocution. The Associated Press reported that the defendants were "calm" and "stoic", as Judge Hawkins handed down the death sentences one after another.
Judge Hawkins set the executions for July 10, 1931, the earliest date Alabama law allowed. While appeals were filed for them, the Alabama Supreme Court issued indefinite stays of executions just seventy-two hours before they were scheduled to die. Their cells were next to the execution chamber, and they heard the July 10, 1931 execution of William Hokes later recalling that he "died hard". This is why it is so significant.
b) – (give answer in the future)
c) All of the people who did the trials will be sentenced to death.
Trials of a true Southern Belle and Southern Gentleman
a) Southern Belle must learn how to cook, do needle work and have ballroom dancing skills. Southern Gentleman must be kind, honest, and lastly, respect a lady.
b) They cook, do needle work and dance.
Harper Lee
a) Nelle Harper Lee (born April 28, 1926) is an American authorbest known for her 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird, which deals with the issues of racism that were observed by the author as a child in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Despite being Lee's only published book, it led to Lee being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007. Lee has also been the recipient of numerous honorary degrees, but has always declined to make a speech.
Other significant contributions of Lee include assisting her close friend, Truman Capote, in his research for the book In Cold Blood.
b) Early life
Nelle Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama, the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee. Her mother's name was Finch. Her father, a former newspaper editor and proprietor, was a lawyer who served in the Alabama State Legislature from 1926 to 1938. As a child, Lee was a tomboy and a precocious reader, and was best friends with her schoolmate and neighbour, the young Truman Capote.
In 1944, Lee graduated from Monroe County High School in Monroeville, and enrolled at the all-female Huntingdon College in Montgomery for one year, and pursued a law degree at the University of Alabama from 1945 to 1949, pledging the Chi Omega sorority. Lee wrote for several student publications and spent a year as editor of the campus humor magazine, Rammer Jammer. Though she did not complete the law degree, she studied for a summer in Oxford,England, before moving to New York City in 1950, where she worked as a reservation clerk with Eastern Air Lines and BOAC.
Lee continued as a reservation clerk until 1958, when she devoted herself to writing. She lived a frugal life, traveling between her cold-water-only apartment in New York City and her family home in south-central Alabama to care for her father.
c) Novels written by her:
§ To Kill a Mockingbird. (1960) New York: J. B. Lippincott.
§ "Love—In Other Words". (April 15, 1961) Vogue, pp.64–65
§ "Christmas to Me". (December 1961) McCall's
§ "When Children Discover America". (August 1965) McCall's
§ "Romance and High Adventure" (1983), a paper presented in Eufaula, Alabama and collected in 1985 in the anthology Clearings in the Thicket.
§ Open letter to Oprah Winfrey (July 2006), O: The Oprah Magazine
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