Civil Rights Movement: Origins and Segregation

Reasons for the CRM

• After the American Civil War (1861-1865), segregation became the norm in the US, especially in the defeated Southern states.
• The "Jim Crow" laws legalized segregation, requiring black Americans to use separate facilities and services and live separately from whites.
• The Supreme Court upheld the states' right to enforce separate public facilities in the Plessy us Ferguson judgement of 1896 which was expressed as 'separate but equal'.
• Separate facilities, though meant to be equal, meant inferior quality services for black people.
• Black Americans were denied civil rights, especially in the Southern states, with many being disenfranchised, exploited economically, and violently attacked by racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
• Lynchings (illegal killings) occurred, but they declined from fifty-nine in 1921 to six or fewer per year in the early 1940s.
• The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 to promote black equality and used legal challenges, speeches, writings, demonstrations, and lobbying, initially without much success.
• World War II (1939-1945) influenced black servicemen who experienced a world where segregation was not the norm and returned to the US wanting to assert their rights and achieve equality.

Origins of the CRM

• In 1954, the US Supreme Court made a landmark decision in the case of Brown vs the Board of Education; it struck down the Plessy vs Ferguson ruling of 1896, declaring that segregation in public services was unconstitutional.
• In practice, separate did not mean equal; this decision meant, for example, that separate schools could no longer be maintained.
• In 1955, the brutal murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till by two white men for supposedly 'making a pass' showed attraction towards a white woman further stimulated the movement.
• The men were acquitted by an all-white jury.
• Emmett Till's mother insisted on an open casket so everyone could see the damage done to him.

Martin Luther King Jr.

• Martin Luther King Jr. was born on 15 January 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia.
• He became a pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954.
• This was followed by King becoming the spokesman for the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).
• King's home was bombed, but King responded by saying "Now let's not get panicky. If you have weapons, take them home; if you do not have them, please do not seek to get them... We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with non-violence."
• His actions led to King becoming not only the leader of the bus boycott in Montgomery but also a symbol of resistance to segregation.
• February 1957 saw the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) set up, with King as its leader.
• The mission was to lead non-violent direct action against segregation and achieve full civil rights for black Americans; King led the SCLC for eleven years.

Passive Resistance

• King realised violence was not the way for black people in the US to achieve their civil rights due to their small minority (about 11% of the population at the time).
• King adopted a philosophy of non-violence and would not carry arms, nor would he allow his drivers and bodyguards to do so.
• At university, King studied the writings of the American philosopher, Reinhold Niebuhr, who believed that even passive resistance and civil disobedience involved the use of a kind of force.
• King drew the conclusion that Niebuhr's thinking was too negative.
• In 1959, King visited Gandhi's birthplace in India and said "Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity."
• King became a firm believer in the power of mass non-violent direct action, that is, passive resistance and civil disobedience.
• After the boycott success, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) came into being, and Martin Luther King, Jr. accepted the presidency.
• On January 30, 1956, the King home was bombed, so King spoke to the crowd and said, "Don't get panicky. Don't do anything panicky. Don't get your weapons. If you have weapons, take them home. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword."