Civil Rights in the United States

• Civil rights in the United States began in 1861.
• It follows decades of tensions between the North and South.
• Issues included slavery, states' rights, and westward expansion.
• The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 led 7 states to secede and form the Confederate States of America.
• Four more states later joined the Confederacy.
• Manufacturing and industry were well-established in the North.
• Agriculture in the North was mostly limited to small-scale operations.

Civil Rights

• The right to equal treatment, the right to vote, and the right to receive legal justice.

Integration

• The closing the racial divide in an attempt to give equal rights.

Jim Crow Laws

• Segregation laws were enforced in the Southern States.

Civil Rights Movement

• A protest campaign in the USA aimed at gaining full civil rights for African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s.

Desegregation

• Putting an end to racial segregation/divide.

Discrimination

• Violation of human rights based on gender, race, and religion.

Civil Disobedience

• Peaceful protests of unjust laws.

Passive Resistance

• Non-violent protests initiated by Mahatma Gandhi and adopted by Martin Luther King Jr. and other Civil Rights activists.
• Discrimination against African Americans persisted in the South.
• Jim Crow Laws (Black Codes) institutionalized segregation and discrimination in the Southern United States.
• Segregation was enforced in public facilities like schools and libraries, restaurants and cinemas.
• Interracial marriages were prohibited.
• Public Transportation was segregated.

Main Organizations of the Civil Rights Movement

• NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) dealt with issues in court.
• CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), organized sit-ins and freedom rides.
• SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), established by Martin Luther King Jr. and other ministers.
• SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee).

Various Forms of Protest in USA

• The Montgomery bus boycott began on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man.
• Rosa Parks was the secretary for the local NAACP since 1943.
• She had previously been ejected from a bus by the same driver in the early 1940s.
• The bus boycott was initiated after Rosa Park's arrest and was a well-planned and organized action.
• People walked to work or used carpools organized by MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association).
• The Montgomery bus boycott officially ended on December 20, 1956.
• The Montgomery bus boycott was a success.
• The bus company lost 65% of its profit.
• In June 1956, an Alabama federal district court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional and illegal.
• On December 20, 1956, the USA Supreme Court upheld the federal court ruling.
• Buses were desegregated.

School Desegregation: Little Rock Arkansas

• Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
• The Little Rock Nine were a group of African Americans enrolled at Central High, Little Rock in 1957.
• This tested if the ruling of the Supreme Court in 1954 declaring segregation in schools as unconstitutional would be enforced.
• Governor Faubus blocked the Little Rock Nine students from entering the high school.
• Elizabeth Eckford was one of the Little Rock Nine.
• Faubus was defying the federal law.
• The Little Rock Mayor (Woodrow Mann) ordered the students' removal for safety purposes.
• President Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce integration.
• The Arkansas National Guard was put under Federal law.
• Soldiers stayed in Little Rock for a year to protect the Little Rock Nine.
• This attracted worldwide attention.