View source for Civil rights movement

{{Short description|1954–1968 U.S. social movement}}
{{About|the 1954–1968 movement in the United States|earlier movements in the United States and others elsewhere|Civil rights movement (disambiguation)||Civil rights movements}}
{{pp-semi-indef|small=yes}}
{{very long|date=August 2024|words=21,000}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2022}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2016}}
{{Infobox civil conflict
| title = Civil rights movement
| image = Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial) - NARA - 542010.jpg
| caption = The 1963 [[March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom|March on Washington]] participants and leaders marching from the [[Washington Monument]] to the [[Lincoln Memorial]]
| date = May 17, 1954 {{ndash}} April 11, 1968<!--IT'S 15 YEARS, INCLUDING 1954 AND 1968-->{{efn|Various other dates have been proposed as the date on which the civil rights movement began or ended.}}
| place = United States
| causes = {{hlist | [[Racism in the United States|Racism]] | [[racial segregation in the United States|racial segregation]] | [[disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disenfranchisement]] | [[Jim Crow laws]] | [[income inequality in the United States|socioeconomic inequality]]}}
| methods = {{hlist | [[Nonviolence]] | [[nonviolent resistance]] | [[civil disobedience]]}}
| result = * Rulings by federal judiciary:
** "[[Separate but equal]]" doctrine overturned by ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' (1954)
** Bus segregation ruled unconstitutional by ''[[Browder v. Gayle]]'' (1956)
** [[Anti-miscegenation laws]] ruled unconstitutional by ''[[McLaughlin v. Florida]]'' (1964)
** [[Interracial marriage in the United States|Interracial marriages]] legalized by ''[[Loving v. Virginia]]'' (1967)
* Passage of federal laws:<br />{{bulleted list|[[Civil Rights Act of 1957]] | [[Civil Rights Act of 1960]] | [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] | [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]] | [[Civil Rights Act of 1968]] ([[Fair Housing Act]])}}
* Ratification of the [[twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution|24th Amendment to the US Constitution]] (1964)
* Formation of federal agencies:<br />{{bulleted list|[[United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division|US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division]] (1957)|[[United States Commission on Civil Rights|US Commission on Civil Rights]] (1957)|[[Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]] (1965)|[[Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity]] (1968)}}
| side1 = [[Civil rights movement]]
| side2 = [[Federal government of the United States]]
| leadfigures1 = [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]<br />[[James Bevel]]<br />[[Rosa Parks]]
| leadfigures2 = [[Dwight Eisenhower]]<br />[[John Fitzgerald Kennedy]]<br />[[Lyndon B. Johnson]]<br />[[Richard Nixon]]
| notes = 
}}
{{Campaignbox Civil rights movement}}
The '''civil rights movement'''{{efn|The social movement has also been called the '''1960s civil rights movement''', the '''African-American civil rights movement''', the '''Afro-American civil rights movement''', the '''American civil rights movement''', the '''American freedom movement''', the '''Black civil rights movement''', the '''Black revolution''', the '''Black rights movement''', the '''civil rights revolution''', the '''civil rights struggle''', the '''modern civil rights movement''', the '''Negro American revolution''', the '''Negro freedom movement''', the '''Negro movement''', the '''Negro revolt''', the '''Negro revolution''', the '''Second Emancipation''', the '''Second Reconstruction''', the '''Southern freedom movement''', and the '''United States civil rights movement'''. ''[[Civil rights struggles]]''<!--Disambiguation on purpose--> can denote this or other [[social movements]] that occurred in the United States during the same period. The social movement's span of time is called the '''civil rights era'''.}} was a [[social movement]] in the [[United States]] from 1954 to 1968 which aimed to abolish legalized [[Racial segregation in the United States|racial segregation]], [[Racial discrimination in the United States|discrimination]], and [[disenfranchisement in the United States|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.<ref>Williams, Heather Andrea (2014) ''American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction''. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 118. {{isbn|978-0-19-992268-0}}</ref> 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, including the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] and the [[Voting Rights Act of 1965]].

Following the [[American Civil War]] (1861–1865), the three [[Reconstruction Amendments]] to the [[United States Constitution|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 [[Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States|banned interracial marriage]], introduced [[Literacy test|literacy tests for voters]], and [[School segregation in the United States|segregated schools]]) and were subjected to violence from [[White supremacy|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 (African American)|Great Migration]] also faced barriers in employment and housing. Legal racial discrimination was upheld by the [[Supreme Court of the United States|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 [[Executive Order 9981|an executive order]] abolishing discrimination in the armed forces.

In 1954, the Supreme Court struck down state laws establishing [[school segregation in the United States|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-in movement|sit-in]]s" in [[Greensboro sit-ins|Greensboro]] and [[Nashville sit-ins|Nashville]] in 1960, the [[Birmingham campaign]] in 1963, and a march from [[Selma to Montgomery marches|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. [[Ghetto riots (1964–1969)|A wave of civil unrest]] in Black communities between 1964 and 1969, which peaked in 1967 and after the [[Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.|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 persist.

== Background ==
{{main|African-American history|Timeline of African-American history}}

=== American Civil War and Reconstruction era ===
{{Further|Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution}}

[[File:13th Amendment Pg1of1 AC.jpg|190px|thumb|13th Amendment in the [[National Archives and Records Administration|National Archives]], bearing the signature of Abraham Lincoln]]

Before the [[American Civil War]], [[List of presidents of the United States who owned slaves|eight serving presidents had owned slaves]], almost four million black people remained [[Slavery in the United States|enslaved in the South]], generally only white men with property could vote, and the [[Naturalization Act of 1790]] limited U.S. citizenship to [[White people|whites]].<ref>{{cite news |title=How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war |work=The Guardian |date=August 30, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Schultz |first=Jeffrey D. |title=Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WDV40aK1T-sC&pg=PA284 |page=284 |year=2002 |publisher=Oryx Press |access-date=March 25, 2010 |isbn=978-1-57356-148-8}}</ref><ref>Leland T. Saito (1998). ''Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb''. p. 154. University of Illinois Press</ref> Following the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were passed, including the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|13th Amendment]] (1865) that ended slavery; the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|14th Amendment]] (1869) that gave black people citizenship, adding their total for [[United States congressional apportionment|Congressional apportionment]]; and the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|15th Amendment]] (1870) that gave black males the right to vote (only males could vote in the U.S. at the time).<ref>{{cite news |title=Black voting rights, 15th Amendment still challenged after 150 years |url=https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/03/black-voting-rights-15th-amendment-still-challenged-after-150-years/4587160002/ |access-date=December 3, 2020|first=Rick|last=Jervis|date=February 3, 2020 |newspaper=USA Today}}</ref> 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 [[Republican Party (United States)|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]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Jean Edward |title=Grant |date=2001 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-7432-1701-9 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/grant00smit/page/244 244]–247 |url=https://archive.org/details/grant00smit|url-access=registration }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |last=Wormser |first=Richard |title=The Enforcement Acts (1870–71) |url=https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |publisher=PBS: Jim Crow Stories |access-date=May 12, 2012}}</ref><ref name="States afraid to take action">[http://baic.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-state.html Black-American Representatives and Senators by Congress, 1870–Present] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090101092449/http://baic.house.gov/historical-data/representatives-senators-by-state.html |date=January 1, 2009 }}—U.S. House of Representatives</ref> However, if the states failed to implement the acts, the laws allowed the [[U.S. Federal Government|Federal Government]] to get involved.<ref name="States afraid to take action" /> Many Republican governors were afraid of sending black militia troops to fight the Klan for fear of war.<ref name="States afraid to take action" />

===Disenfranchisement after Reconstruction===
{{Main|Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era}}

{{Further|Jim Crow laws|Civil rights movement (1865–1896)|Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
}}
After the [[1876 United States presidential election|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.

[[File:Lynching-of-will-james.jpg|thumb|left|The mob-style [[Lynching in the United States|lynching]] of [[William "Froggie" James|Will James]], [[Cairo, Illinois]], 1909]]

From 1890 to 1908, southern states passed new constitutions and laws to [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchise]] African Americans and many [[Poor White]]s 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 [[United States Supreme Court|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<ref>Klarman, Michael J.; 'The White Primary Rulings: A Case Study in the Consequences of Supreme Court Decisionmaking'; ''Florida State University Law Review'', vol. 29, issue 55, pp. 55–107</ref> and a few rural localities where most blacks worked outside plantations.<ref>Walton, Hanes (junior); Puckett, Sherman and Deskins Donald R. (junior); ''The African American Electorate: A Statistical History'', p. 539 {{ISBN|0872895084}}</ref> 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.<ref name="States afraid to take action" /> Since they could not vote, they could not serve on local juries.

During this period, the white-dominated [[Democratic Party (United States)|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 (United States)|Republican Party]]{{mdash}}the "party of Lincoln" and the party to which most blacks had belonged{{mdash}}shrank to insignificance except in remote [[Southern Unionist|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.<ref>{{cite book |author1=Otis H Stephens, Jr |author2=John M Scheb, II |title=American Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFcwj2yrLcwC&pg=PA528 |year=2007 |publisher=Cengage Learning |page=528 |isbn=978-0-495-09705-1}}</ref> 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."<ref name="finkelman"/> 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.<ref name="finkelman">{{cite book |editor=Paul Finkelman |title=Encyclopedia of African American History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6gbQHxb_P0QC&pg=RA3-PA199 |year=2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=199–200 of vol 4 |isbn=978-0-19-516779-5}}</ref>

[[File:Omaha courthouse lynching.jpg|thumb|[[Lynching]] victim Will Brown, who was mutilated and burned during the [[Omaha race riot of 1919|Omaha, Nebraska race riot of 1919]]. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the U.S.<ref>Moyers, Bill. [https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html "Legacy of Lynching"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170829121124/https://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html |date=August 29, 2017 }}. PBS. Retrieved July 28, 2016</ref>]]

During the same time as African Americans were being disenfranchised, white southerners imposed [[Racial segregation in the United States|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.<ref>[[Rayford Logan]],''The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson'', pp. 97–98. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.</ref> 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.<ref name="Leon Litwack 2004">Litwack, Leon, ''Jim Crow Blues'', Magazine of History (OAH Publications, 2004).</ref> For those places that were racially mixed, non-whites had to wait until all white customers were served first.<ref name="Leon Litwack 2004" /> 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.<ref>Kazin, Michael, Rebecca Edwards, Adam Rothman (2009). ''The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History'', p. 245. Princeton University Press.</ref>

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.<ref>Woodward, C. Vann, ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow'', 3rd rev. edn (Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 67–109.</ref> 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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/info/seglaws.htm Birmingham Segregation Laws] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110204031120/http://www.crmvet.org/info/seglaws.htm |date=February 4, 2011 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> Characteristically, those for colored were underfunded and of inferior quality.
* [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|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 of labour|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 [[Mass racial violence in the United States|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 [[Warren Court|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.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483|title=Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1)|website=Oyez|language=en|access-date=October 3, 2019}}</ref><ref name=":1" /> 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.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />

The integration of Southern public libraries followed demonstrations and protests that used techniques seen in other elements of the larger civil rights movement.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006">Fultz, M. (2006). "Black Public Libraries in the South in the Era of De Jure Segregation", ''Libraries & The Cultural Record'', 41(3), 338–346.</ref> This included sit-ins, beatings, and white resistance.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006" /> For example, in 1963 in the city of [[Anniston, Alabama]], two black ministers were brutally beaten for attempting to integrate the public library.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006" /> Though there was resistance and violence, the integration of libraries was generally quicker than the integration of other public institutions.<ref name="Fultz, M. 2006" />

===National issues===
[[File:ColoredSailersRoomWWINOLA.jpg|thumb|left|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."<ref>{{cite book|title=Annual Report of the Hampton Negro Conference|chapter=The Economic Aspect of the Negro Problem|first=Anderson|last=Matthew|series=Hampton bulletinno. 9–10, 12–16|editor1-last=Browne |editor1-first=Hugh |editor2-last=Kruse |editor2-first=Edwina |editor4-last=Moton |editor3-last=Walker |editor3-first=Thomas C. |editor4-first=Robert Russa |editor4-link=Robert Russa Moton |editor5-last=Wheelock |editor5-first=Frederick D. |publisher=Hampton Institute Press|location=[[Hampton, Virginia]]|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gkQ9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA39|hdl=2027/chi.14025588?urlappend=%3Bseq=43|volume=4|year=1900|page=39}}</ref> 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 (African American)|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.

[[Image:chicago-race-riot.jpg|thumb|right|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|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 [[Racism in the United States|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]]".<ref>{{cite journal |last=Tolnay |first=Stewart |s2cid=145520215 |title=The African American 'Great Migration' and Beyond |journal=Annual Review of Sociology |year=2003 |volume=29 |issue=1 |pages=218–221 |doi=10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100009 |jstor=30036966}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite news |url=http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Party-Realignment--New-Deal/ |title=Party Realignment and the New Deal |agency=US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives |access-date=May 31, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180530121202/http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Keeping-the-Faith/Party-Realignment--New-Deal/ |archive-date=May 30, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> 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 [[Racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces|segregation in the military]].<ref name=trumanlibrary>{{cite web|title=Executive Order 9981|url=http://www.trumanlibrary.org/9981.htm|publisher=Harry S. Truman Library and Museum|access-date=May 18, 2019|archive-date=January 22, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190122055428/https://www.trumanlibrary.org/9981.htm}}</ref>

[[File:We want white tenants (cropped).jpg|thumb|White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the [[Public housing in Detroit|housing project]] erected this sign, [[Detroit]], 1942]]

[[Housing segregation]] became a nationwide problem following the Great Migration of black people out of the South. [[Covenant (law)#Exclusionary covenants|Racial covenants]] were employed by many [[real estate development|real estate developers]] to "protect" entire [[subdivision (land)|subdivisions]], with the primary intent to keep "[[white people|white]]" neighborhoods "white". Ninety percent of the housing projects built in the years following World War II were racially restricted by such covenants.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kennedy|first=Stetson|url=http://www.stetsonkennedy.com/jim_crow_guide/index.html|title=Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was|year=1959|chapter=Who May Live Where|chapter-url=http://www.stetsonkennedy.com/jim_crow_guide/chapter6.htm}}</ref> Cities known for their widespread use of racial covenants include [[Chicago]], [[Baltimore]], [[Detroit]], [[Milwaukee]],<ref>{{cite web|author1=Michelle Maternowski |author2= Joy Powers|date=March 3, 2017|title=How Did Metro Milwaukee Become So Segregated?|url=https://www.wuwm.com/post/how-did-metro-milwaukee-become-so-segregated|website=WUWM.com|ref=WUWM 89.7 Milwaukee NPR}}</ref> [[Los Angeles]], [[Seattle]], and [[St. Louis]].<ref>{{cite news |title=Racial Restrictive Covenants: Enforcing Neighborhood Segregation in Seattle – Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project |url=https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants_report.htm |access-date=December 5, 2020 |agency=University of Washington}}</ref>

{{blockquote|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.<ref>{{cite news |title=Racist language is still woven into home deeds across America. Erasing it isn't easy, and some don't want to |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/15/us/racist-deeds-covenants/index.html|date=February 15, 2020|first=Nick|last=Watt |author2=Jack Hannah |access-date=January 26, 2021 |agency=CNN}}</ref>}}

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]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Seligman|first=Amanda|title=Block by block: neighborhoods and public policy on Chicago's West Side|year=2005|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0-226-74663-0|pages=213–14}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/fairhousing/historical.html |title=Future of Fair Housing: How We Got Here |work=The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights |access-date=July 29, 2016  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160707035121/http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/fairhousing/historical.html |archive-date=July 7, 2016 }}</ref>

The first [[anti-miscegenation law]] was passed by the [[Maryland General Assembly]] in 1691, criminalizing [[interracial marriage]].<ref name="Anti-miscegenation"/> 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".<ref>{{cite book |first=Stephen A. |last=Douglas|title=The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 |date=1991 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |page=235}}</ref> By the late 1800s, 38 US states had anti-miscegenation statutes.<ref name="Anti-miscegenation"/> By 1924, the ban on interracial marriage was still in force in 29 states.<ref name="Anti-miscegenation"/> 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]].<ref name="Smithsonian" /> Davis briefly married a black dancer in 1958 to protect himself from mob violence.<ref name="Smithsonian">Lanzendorfer, Joy (August 9, 2017) [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/hollywood-loved-sammy-davis-jr-until-he-dated-white-movie-star-180964395/ "Hollywood Loved Sammy Davis Jr. Until He Dated a White Movie Star"], ''[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]]'' Retrieved February 23, 2021.</ref> In 1958, officers in [[Virginia]] entered the home of [[Loving v. Virginia#Plaintiffs|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.<ref name="Anti-miscegenation">{{cite news |title=Eugenics, Race, and Marriage |url=https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/eugenics-race-and-marriage |access-date=February 23, 2021 |website=Facing History.org}}</ref>

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 in the United States|desegregation]]. They were faced with "[[massive resistance]]" in the South by proponents of racial segregation and [[disfranchisement|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 [[Defence industry|defense industry]]; he called off the march when the [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] administration met the demand by issuing [[Executive Order 8802]], which barred racial discrimination and created an [[Fair Employment Practice Committee|agency]] to oversee compliance with the order.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Clawson|first1=Laura|title=A. Philip Randolph, the union leader who led the March on Washington|url=http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/28/1234481/-A-Philip-Randolph-the-union-leader-who-led-the-March-on-Washington#|date=August 28, 2013|access-date=May 6, 2015|website=Daily Kos|publisher=Daily Kos Group}}</ref>

=== 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-in]]s, [[Freedom Rides]], marches or walks, and similar tactics that relied on mass mobilization, nonviolent resistance, standing in line, and, at times, civil disobedience.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Carter|first=April|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OqJMHf438OEC&q=direct+action+in+united+states&pg=PR7|title=Direct Action and Democracy Today|date=January 14, 2005|publisher=Polity|isbn=978-0-7456-2936-0|page=x|language=en}}</ref>

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]].<ref name="Beito and Beito">David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, ''Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power'', Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009, pp. 81, 99–100.</ref>

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 Robinson|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.<ref>{{cite web |title=Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson |url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/robinson-jo-ann-gibson |website=The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute |date=June 22, 2017 |publisher=Stanford University |access-date=December 3, 2019 }}</ref><ref name="Robinson 1986">Robinson, Jo Ann & Garrow, David J. (foreword by Coretta Scott King) ''The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It'' (1986) {{ISBN|0-394-75623-1}} Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press</ref> 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.<ref>[http://www.tallahassee.com/special/boycott/reader-smith.html "The Tallahassee Bus Boycott—Fifty Years Later]," ''The Tallahassee Democrat'', May 21, 2006 {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071210094329/http://www.tallahassee.com/special/boycott/reader-smith.html |date=December 10, 2007 }}</ref> 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.<ref name=fcflu>{{cite news |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Cs9RAAAAIBAJ&pg=4796%2C5131560 |work=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |last=Sell |first=Jack |title=Panthers defeat flu; face Ga. Tech next |date=December 30, 1955 |page=1}}</ref><ref name="kruse">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c5763Zgu4_oC&pg=PP1|title=White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism|author=Kevin Michael Kruse|publisher=Princeton University Press|date=February 1, 2008|isbn=978-0-691-09260-7}}</ref>

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.&nbsp;K. Steele]] of Tallahassee and [[T.&nbsp;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 (U.S. state)|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 Research and Education Center|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, South Carolina|Johns Island]]. SCLC took over the program and duplicated its results elsewhere.

== History ==
{{Main|History of civil rights in the United States}}

{{For timeline|Timeline of the civil rights movement}}
{{Further|Civil rights movement (1865–1896)|Civil rights movement (1896–1954)}}

=== ''Brown v. Board of Education'', 1954 ===
{{Main|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 [[R.R. Moton High School|Moton High School]] protested the overcrowded conditions and failing facility.<ref name="autogenerated55">Klarman, Michael J., ''Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement'' : abridged edition of ''From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality'', Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 55.</ref> 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''.<ref name="autogenerated55" /> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Boyle|first=Kevin|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mt4ZDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA120|title=The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968|date=1995|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=978-1-5017-1327-9|page=121|language=en}}</ref>
[[File:Warren Supreme Court.jpg|thumb|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 [[Supreme Court of the United States|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, [[School segregation in the United States|public schools to be segregated]] by race was [[Constitutionality|unconstitutional]].<ref name=":0"/> [[Chief Justice of the United States|Chief Justice]] Warren wrote in the court majority opinion that<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/5-decision/courts-decision.html|title=The Court's Decision – Separate Is Not Equal|website=americanhistory.si.edu|access-date=October 3, 2019}}</ref>

{{blockquote|quote=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.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.civilrights.org/education/brown/brown.html |title=Brown v. Board of Education (Kansas) |website=The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights |access-date=March 28, 2016  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325194202/http://www.civilrights.org/education/brown/brown.html |archive-date=March 25, 2016 }}</ref>|sign=|source=}}

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".<ref>Risa L. Goluboff, ''The Lost Promise of Civil Rights'', Harvard University Press, MA: Cambridge, 2007, pp. 249–251</ref>

[[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."''<ref name="amphilsoc.org">{{Cite web|url=http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/480405.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150501080744/http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/480405.pdf  |title=Antonly Lester, "Brown v. Board of Education Overseas" ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'' Vol. 148, No. 4, December 2004|archive-date=May 1, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.history.ucsb.edu/courses/tempdownload.php?attach_id=5781|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141207210755/http://www.history.ucsb.edu/courses/tempdownload.php?attach_id=5781  |title=Mary L Dudziak "Brown as a Cold War Case" ''Journal of American History'', June 2004|archive-date=December 7, 2014}}</ref>

The following year, in the case known as ''Brown II'', the Court ordered segregation to be phased out over time, "with all deliberate speed".<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis54.htm#1954bvbe ''Brown v Board of Education'' Decision] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080605222536/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis54.htm#1954bvbe |date=June 5, 2008 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> ''[[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'.

[[File:Integration.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|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."<ref name="deseg" /> 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 [[Christianity|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.<ref name="deseg">{{cite web |url=http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/topicalessays/schooldeseginteg.aspx |title=Civil Rights Greensboro |access-date=July 29, 2016 |archive-date=May 15, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140515045050/http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/topicalessays/schooldeseginteg.aspx}}</ref>

Many Northern cities also had [[Racial segregation#United States|de facto segregation]] policies, which resulted in a vast gulf in educational resources between black and white communities. In [[Harlem (Manhattan)|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&nbsp;– even as the [[Second Great Migration (African American)|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.)<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AkPnRoKK-XYC&pg=PA54 |title=Power, Protest, and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City |first=Melissa F. |last=Weiner |date=2010 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-0-8135-4772-5}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| url = http://hisofblackamfall2014.voices.wooster.edu/files/2014/08/Adina_Back_Exposing_the_Whole_Segregation_Myth3.pdf| title = Adina Back "Exposing the Whole Segregation Myth: The Harlem Nine and New York City Schools" in ''Freedom north: Black freedom struggles outside the South, 1940–1980'', Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, eds.(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) pp. 65–91}}</ref>

=== Emmett Till's murder, 1955 ===
{{Main|Emmett Till}}

[[File:Emmett Till's funeral - mourners (restored).jpg|thumb|190px|[[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&nbsp;[[Tallahatchie River]]. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. After Emmett's mother, [[Mamie Till]],<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; The Murder of Emmett Till; Interview with Mamie Till Mobley, mother of Emmett Till|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-707wm14m9k|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> came to identify the remains of her son, she decided she wanted to "let the people see what I have seen".<ref name="timephoto"/> 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.<ref name="timephoto"/> A later publication of an image at the funeral in ''[[Jet (magazine)|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.<ref name="Weller"/><ref name="timephoto">{{Cite web |url=http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson |title=How The Horrific Photograph Of Emmett Till Helped Energize The Civil Rights Movement |website=100 Photographs {{!}} The Most Influential Images of All Time|access-date=July 3, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170706123149/http://100photos.time.com/photos/emmett-till-david-jackson|archive-date=July 6, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> In a column for ''[[The Atlantic]]'', Vann R. Newkirk wrote: "The trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of [[white supremacy]]".<ref name="Atlantic">{{Cite news |last=Newkirk II |first=Vann R. |date=February 16, 2017 |title=How ''The Blood of Emmett Till'' Still Stains America Today |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/how-the-blood-of-emmett-till-still-stains-america-today/516891/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170728213446/https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/how-the-blood-of-emmett-till-still-stains-america-today/516891/ |archive-date=July 28, 2017 |access-date=July 3, 2017 |work=The Atlantic}}</ref> The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an [[all-white jury]].<ref>Whitfield, Stephen (1991). ''A Death in the Delta: The story of Emmett Till''. pp 41–42. JHU Press. {{ISBN?}}</ref>

"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."<ref name="USA TODAY">{{Cite news |url=https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2017/01/30/the-blood-of-emmett-till-timothy-b-tyson-book-review/97058060/ |title='The Blood of Emmett Till' remembers a horrific crime |work=USA Today |access-date=July 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170807054440/https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2017/01/30/the-blood-of-emmett-till-timothy-b-tyson-book-review/97058060/ |archive-date=August 7, 2017 |url-status=live }}</ref> The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S.<ref name="Atlantic" /> The murder and resulting trial ended up markedly impacting the views of several young black activists.<ref name="USA TODAY" /> [[Joyce Ladner]] referred to such activists as the "Emmett Till generation."<ref name="USA TODAY" /> One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.<ref name="haas"/> 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.<ref name="haas">{{Cite book |title=The Assassination of Fred Hampton |last=Haas |first=Jeffrey |publisher=Chicago Review Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-56976-709-2 |location=Chicago |page=17}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/10/authorities-discover-original-casket-of-emmett-till|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090913122859/http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/10/authorities-discover-original-casket-of-emmett-till/|archive-date=September 13, 2009|title=Authorities discover original casket of Emmett Till|date=September 13, 2009|work=archive.is|access-date=September 30, 2018}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/emmett-tills-casket-goes-to-the-smithsonian-144696940/|title=Emmett Till's Casket Goes to the Smithsonian|last=Callard|first=Abby|work=Smithsonian|access-date=September 30, 2018|language=en}}</ref> In 2007, Bryant said that she had fabricated the most sensational part of her story in 1955.<ref name="Weller">{{cite magazine |last=Weller |first=Sheila |title=How Author Timothy Tyson Found the Woman at the Center of the Emmett Till Case |magazine=Vanity Fair |date=January 26, 2017 |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/how-author-timothy-tyson-found-the-woman-at-the-center-of-the-emmett-till-case}}</ref><ref name=TysonNotes>{{cite book |first=Timothy B. |last=Tyson |author-link=Timothy Tyson |title=The Blood of Emmett Till |year=2017 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4767-1486-8 |page=221 |quote=Carolyn Bryant Donham, interview with the author, Raleigh, NC, September 8, 2008.}}</ref>

=== Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, 1955–1956 ===
{{Main|Rosa Parks|Montgomery bus boycott}}

[[File:Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger on a segregated municipal bus in Montgomery, Alabama.jpg|thumb|[[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".<ref>J. Mills Thornton III, "Challenge and Response in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–1956." ''Alabama Review'' 67.1 (2014): 40–112.</ref>

Parks was secretary of the Montgomery NAACP chapter and had recently returned from a meeting at the [[Highlander Research and Education Center|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.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{cite book |last1=Chafe |first1=William Henry |title=The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II |date=2003 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-515049-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/unfinishedjourne0000chaf|url-access=registration }}</ref> 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 [[Edgar Nixon|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]].<ref>{{Cite news | last = Thamel | first = Pete |author-link=Pete Thamel | title = Grier Integrated a Game and Earned the World's Respect | newspaper = New York Times | date = January 1, 2006 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/sports/ncaafootball/01grier.html | access-date=April 15, 2009 }}</ref> 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.<ref name="ReferenceA" />

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.<ref name="Robinson 1986" />

===Little Rock Nine, 1957===
{{Main|Little Rock Nine}}

[[File:Little Rock integration protest.jpg|thumb|left|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, Arkansas|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. [[Governor of Arkansas|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.<ref>Karen Anderson, "The Little Rock school desegregation crisis: Moderation and social conflict." ''Journal of Southern History'' 70.3 (2004): 603–636 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27648479 online].</ref><ref>Elizabeth Jacoway, ''Turn away thy son: Little Rock, the crisis that shocked the nation'' (Simon and Schuster, 2007).{{ISBN?}}{{page needed|date=August 2023}}</ref>

=== 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.<ref name=Erikson>{{cite book |last1=Erikson |first1=Erik |title=Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence |date=1969 |publisher=Norton |location=New York City |isbn=978-0-393-31034-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/gandhistruth00erik_0/page/415 415] |url=https://archive.org/details/gandhistruth00erik_0/page/415 }}</ref> 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{{mdash}}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 movement (1919–22)|"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).<ref name=Erikson /><ref>{{cite web |title=Civil Rights Movement |url=http://www.crmvet.org/info/nv3.htm |website=Civil Rights Movement Archive|access-date=May 18, 2015}}</ref>

For many, the concept of nonviolent protest was a way of life, a culture. However, not everyone agreed with this notion. James Forman, former [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|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 (activist)|Bob Moses]], who was also an active member of [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|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).<ref>{{cite web |title=Bruce Hartford (full interview) |url=https://vimeo.com/17532881 |via=Vimeo |access-date=May 18, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Forman |first1=James |title=The Making of Black Revolutionaries |url=https://archive.org/details/makingofblackrev00form |url-access=registration |date=1972 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=978-0-940880-10-8}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wasow|first=Omar|date=2020|title=Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting|journal=American Political Science Review|language=en|volume=114|issue=3|pages=638–659|doi=10.1017/S000305542000009X|issn=0003-0554|doi-access=free}}</ref>

=== Sit-ins, 1958–1960 ===
{{See also|Greensboro sit-ins|Nashville sit-ins|Sit-in movement}}

In July 1958, the [[NAACP Youth Council]] sponsored sit-ins at the lunch counter of a [[Dockum Drug Store sit-in|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 [[Katz Drug Store sit-in|student sit-in at a Katz Drug Store]] in [[Oklahoma City]] led by [[Clara Luper]], which also was successful.<ref>[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6355095 "Kansas Sit-In Gets Its Due at Last"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180421030703/https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6355095 |date=April 21, 2018 }}; NPR; October 21, 2006</ref>

[[File:Civil Rights protesters and Woolworth's Sit-In, Durham, NC, 10 February 1960. From the N&O Negative Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, NC. Photos taken by The News & (24495308926).jpg|thumb|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 [[F. W. Woolworth Company|Woolworth]]'s store in [[Greensboro, North Carolina]].<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960greensboro First Southern Sit-in, Greensboro NC] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070306200430/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960greensboro |date=March 6, 2007 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> On February 1, 1960, four students, [[Ezell A. Blair Jr.]], David Richmond, [[Joseph McNeil]], and [[Franklin McCain]] from [[North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University|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.<ref name="chafe">{{Cite book |last=Chafe |first=William Henry |title=Civilities and civil rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black struggle for freedom |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1980 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/civilitiescivilr00chaf/page/81 81] |url=https://archive.org/details/civilitiescivilr00chaf |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-19-502625-2}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/topicalessays/busdesegsitins.aspx |title=Civil Rights Greensboro |access-date=July 29, 2016 |archive-date=June 30, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140630033454/http://library.uncg.edu/dp/crg/topicalessays/busdesegsitins.aspx}}</ref>

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]];<ref>{{cite web |title=60 years ago, the Richmond 34 were arrested during a sit-in at the Thalhimers lunch counter |url=https://www.richmond.com/from-the-archives/years-ago-the-richmond-were-arrested-during-a-sit-in/collection_6680a266-17e4-5c38-b6e9-5efb6aa69852.html |website=Richmond Times-Dispatch |access-date=February 20, 2020 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |url=http://southernspaces.org/2008/rising |title=Rising Up |journal=Southern Spaces |first=Community Ideas |last=Stations |date=January 1, 2008 |volume=2008 |access-date=July 29, 2016 |doi=10.18737/M7HP4M|doi-access=free }}</ref> [[Nashville, Tennessee]]; and Atlanta, Georgia.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960atlanta Atlanta Sit-ins] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070306200430/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960atlanta |date=March 6, 2007 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Archive</ref><ref name="Atlanta Sit-Ins">[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3615 "Atlanta Sit-Ins"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130117053611/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3615 |date=January 17, 2013 }}, ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia''</ref> The most immediately effective of these was in Nashville, where hundreds of well organized and highly disciplined college students [[Nashville sit-ins|conducted sit-ins]] in coordination with a boycott campaign.<ref>{{Cite book |title=The Nashville Way: Racial Etiquette and the Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City |first=Benjamin |last=Houston |year=2012 |location=Athens |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-4326-6}}</ref><ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960nsm Nashville Student Movement] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070306200430/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960nsm |date=March 6, 2007 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>
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{{mdash}}as far back as 1939, African-American attorney [[Samuel Wilbert Tucker]] organized a sit-in at the then-segregated [[Alexandria, Virginia]], library.<ref>{{cite web |title=America's First Sit-Down Strike: The 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In |url=http://oha.alexandriava.gov/bhrc/lessons/bh-lesson2_reading2.html |publisher=City of Alexandria |access-date=February 11, 2010  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100528015924/http://oha.alexandriava.gov/bhrc/lessons/bh-lesson2_reading2.html |archive-date=May 28, 2010 }}</ref> In 1960 the technique succeeded in bringing national attention to the movement.<ref name="davis">{{Cite book |last=Davis |first=Townsend |title=Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=1998 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/wearyfeetresteds00town/page/311 311] |url=https://archive.org/details/wearyfeetresteds00town |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-393-04592-5}}</ref>
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''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3615 |title=Atlanta Sit-ins |access-date=July 29, 2016 |archive-date=January 17, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130117053611/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-3615}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Atlanta Sit-Ins" /><ref>[http://www.atlantahighered.org/civilrights/essay_detail.asp?phase=3 Students Begin to Lead] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160113134157/http://www.atlantahighered.org/civilrights/essay_detail.asp?phase=3 |date=January 13, 2016 }}&nbsp;– The New Georgia Encyclopedia{{snd}}Atlanta Sit-Ins</ref> By the end of 1960, the process of sit-ins had spread to every southern and [[Border states (American Civil War)|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).<ref name="carson">{{Cite book |last=Carson |first=Clayborne |title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1981 |location=Cambridge |page=311 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fm9v7KKj_UQC |isbn=978-0-674-44727-1}}</ref> 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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960sncc Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Founded] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070306200430/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis60.htm#1960sncc |date=March 6, 2007 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

=== Freedom Rides, 1961 ===
{{Main|Freedom Rider|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 [[Congress of Racial Equality|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.<ref name="Freedom Rides">[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961frides Freedom Rides] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100707051408/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961frides |date=July 7, 2010 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

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 [[Anniston and Birmingham bus attacks|was firebombed]], forcing its passengers to flee for their lives.<ref name="Arsenault">{{cite book |last=Arsenault |first=Raymond |title=Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice |url=https://archive.org/details/freedomriders1960000arse |url-access=registration |publisher=Oxford Press |year=2006}}</ref>

[[File:Freedom Riders attacked.jpg|thumb|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 [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|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 (pacifist)|James Peck]], a white activist, was beaten so badly that he required fifty stitches to his head.<ref name="Arsenault" />

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.<ref>Black Protest (1961)</ref>

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 (Montgomery, Alabama)|Greyhound Bus Station]], a mob charged another busload of riders, knocking [[John Lewis]]<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with John Lewis, 1 of 3|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-tx3513w36f|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> unconscious with a crate and smashing ''[[Life (magazine)|Life]]'' photographer [[Don Urbrock]] in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded [[James Zwerg]],<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Jim Zwerg, 1 of 4|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-x639z91k99|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> a white student from [[Fisk University]], and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.<ref name="Arsenault" />

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.<ref name="Freedom Rides" />

{{blockquote|quote=… 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"{{mdash}}they will not pay fines for unconstitutional arrests and illegal convictions{{mdash}}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...<ref name=westwind>{{cite web |last=Hartford |first=Bruce Hartford |title=Arrests in Jackson MS |url=http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm |work=The Civil Rights Movement Archive|access-date=October 21, 2011}}</ref>}}

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 {{convert|100|°F|°C|abbr=on}} 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 (American activist)|James Lawson]],<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with James Lawson, 1 of 4|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-4746q1tc99|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; [[Diane Nash]],<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Diane Nash, 1 of 3|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-2f7jq0tn9b|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; [[Bob Moses (activist)|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]],<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Dion Diamond, 1 of 2|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-4b2x34nj5n|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> [[Charles McDew]], [[Bernard Lafayette]],<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Bernard Lafayette, Jr., 1 of 3|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-dn3zs2m89m|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> [[Charles Jones (activist)|Charles Jones]], [[Lonnie C. King Jr.|Lonnie King]], [[Julian Bond]],<ref>{{Citation|title=American Experience; Freedom Riders; Interview with Julian Bond, 1 of 2|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-0000000v8c|language=en|access-date=June 10, 2020}}</ref> [[Hosea Williams]], and [[Stokely Carmichael]].

=== Voter registration organizing ===
After the Freedom Rides, local black leaders in Mississippi such as [[Amzie Moore]], [[Aaron Henry (politician)|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.<ref>Our Portion of Hell: Fayette County, Tennessee, an Oral History of the Struggle For Civil Rights by Robert Hamburger (New York; Links Books, 1973)</ref> In the following year the first voter registration project in [[McComb, Mississippi|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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961mccomb Voter Registration & Direct-action in McComb MS] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100707051408/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961mccomb |date=July 7, 2010 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962cofo Council of Federated Organizations Formed in Mississippi] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004011259/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962cofo |date=October 4, 2006 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

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, Mississippi|Greenwood]], and the areas surrounding [[Hattiesburg, Mississippi|Hattiesburg]], [[Laurel, Mississippi|Laurel]], and [[Holly Springs, Mississippi|Holly Springs]]. As in McComb, their efforts were met with fierce opposition{{mdash}}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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm Mississippi Voter Registration – Greenwood] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004011259/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm |date=October 4, 2006 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> Despite these actions, over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state.

Similar voter registration campaigns{{mdash}}with similar responses{{mdash}}were begun by SNCC, CORE, and SCLC in [[Louisiana]], [[Alabama]], southwest [[Georgia (U.S. state)|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]],<ref name="cra64">{{cite web |url=http://finduslaw.com/civil_rights_act_of_1964_cra_title_vii_equal_employment_opportunities_42_us_code_chapter_21 |title=Civil Rights Act of 1964&nbsp;– CRA&nbsp;– Title VII&nbsp;– Equal Employment Opportunities&nbsp;– 42 US Code Chapter 21&nbsp;– findUSlaw |access-date=July 29, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101021141154/http://finduslaw.com/civil_rights_act_of_1964_cra_title_vii_equal_employment_opportunities_42_us_code_chapter_21 |archive-date=October 21, 2010}}</ref> 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|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.<ref>{{cite web |last1=handeyside |first1=Hugh |title=What Have We Learned from the Spies of Mississippi? |url=https://www.aclu.org/blog/speakeasy/what-have-we-learned-spies-mississippi |website=American Civil Liberty Union |date=February 13, 2014 |publisher=ACLU National Security Project |access-date=May 6, 2015}}</ref>

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.<ref name="Kennard" /> After three years at [[hard labor]], Kennard was paroled by [[Governor of Mississippi|Mississippi Governor]] [[Ross Barnett]]. Journalists had investigated his case and publicized the state's mistreatment of his [[colon cancer]].<ref name="Kennard" />

McCain's role in Kennard's arrests and convictions is unknown.<ref name="Funding">William H. Tucker, ''The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund'', University of Illinois Press (May 30, 2007), pp 165–66.</ref><ref name="Confederacy">''Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction'', Edited by Euan Hague, Heidi Beirich, Edward H. Sebesta, University of Texas Press (2008) pp. 284–285 {{ISBN?}}</ref><ref name="report">{{cite web |url=http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=135 |title=A House Divided |publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center |access-date=October 30, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100202111430/http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=135 |archive-date=February 2, 2010 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="Evers">Jennie Brown, ''Medgar Evers'', Holloway House Publishing, 1994, pp. 128–132</ref> 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:
<blockquote>We insist that educationally and socially, we maintain a [[Racial segregation in the United States|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.<ref name="Funding" /><ref name="report" /><ref name="Evers" /></blockquote>

Note: Mississippi had passed a new constitution in 1890 that effectively [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|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.

[[File:James Meredith OleMiss.jpg|thumb|[[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 of court|contempt]], ordering them arrested and fined more than $10,000 for each day they refused to allow Meredith to enroll.

[[File:US Marshals at Ole Miss October 1962 cph.3c35522.jpg|thumb|[[United States Army|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 [[United States Marshals Service|U.S. Marshals]] and deputized [[United States Border Patrol|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 [[United States Army|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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962olmiss "James Meredith Integrates Ole Miss"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061004011259/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis62.htm#1962olmiss |date=October 4, 2006 }}, Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

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.<ref name="sketch">[http://www.lib.usm.edu/~archives/m393.htm?m393text.htm~mainFrameBiographical/Historical], University of Southern Mississippi Library {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090917124123/http://www.lib.usm.edu/~archives/m393.htm?m393text.htm~mainFrameBiographical%2FHistorical|date=September 17, 2009}}</ref> In 2006, Judge Robert Helfrich ruled that Kennard was factually innocent of all charges for which he had been convicted in the 1950s.<ref name="Kennard">[http://www6.district125.k12.il.us/~bbradfor/kennardmission.html "Carrying the burden: the story of Clyde Kennard"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071009153750/http://www6.district125.k12.il.us/~bbradfor/kennardmission.html |date=October 9, 2007 }}, District 125, Mississippi. Retrieved November 5, 2007</ref>

=== Albany Movement, 1961–1962 ===
{{Main|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{{mdash}}and given the derisive nickname "De Lawd" as a result{{mdash}}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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961albany Albany GA, Movement] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100707051408/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis61.htm#1961albany |date=July 7, 2010 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

=== Birmingham campaign, 1963 ===
{{Main|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{{mdash}}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 [[Bull Connor|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 arrest]]s of its supporters. King elected to be among those arrested on April 12, 1963.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963bham The Birmingham Campaign] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615060449/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963bham |date=June 15, 2009 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

[[File:Recreation of Martin Luther King's Cell in Birmingham Jail - National Civil Rights Museum - Downtown Memphis - Tennessee - USA.jpg|thumb|left|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]]"<ref>[http://www.stanford.edu/group/King//popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf Letter from a Birmingham Jail] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080407103314/http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030404084236/http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/popular_requests/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf |archive-date=2003-04-04 |url-status=live |date=April 7, 2008 }} ~ King Research & Education Institute at Stanford Univ.</ref> on the margins of a newspaper, since he had not been allowed any writing paper while held in solitary confinement.<ref>Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) ''Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"''. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. {{ISBN|0-8071-2655-1}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hoover.org/research/great-society-new-history-amity-shlaes-0|title=The Great Society: A New History with Amity Shlaes|website=Hoover Institution|language=en|access-date=April 29, 2020}}</ref> 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 (1963)|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.<ref>{{cite news|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/02/20/children-have-changed-america-before-braving-fire-hoses-and-police-dogs-for-civil-rights/|title=Children have changed America before, braving fire hoses and police dogs for civil rights|date=March 23, 2018}}</ref>

Widespread public outrage led the [[Presidency of John F. Kennedy|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.

[[File:Bomb wreckage near Gaston Motel (14 May 1963).JPG|thumb|right|alt=A black and white photograph of a building in ruins next to an intact wall|Wreckage at the Gaston Motel following the [[Birmingham crisis|bomb explosion]] on May 11, 1963]]
Not everyone in the black community approved of the agreement{{mdash}}[[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 [[Birmingham riot of 1963#Gaston Motel|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, [[Birmingham crisis|thousands of blacks rioted]], burning numerous buildings and one of them stabbed and wounded a police officer.<ref>[http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9605/15/ Freedom-Now" ''Time'', May 17, 1963] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150309014723/http://cgi.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9605/15/ |date=March 9, 2015 }}; Glenn T. Eskew, ''But for Birmingham: The Local and National Struggles in the Civil Rights Movement'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 301.</ref>

[[File:Wallace at University of Alabama edit2.jpg|thumb|Alabama governor [[George Wallace]] [[Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|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 [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing|bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church]] in Birmingham, killing four young girls.

=== "Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's response, 1963 ===
{{Main|Gloria Richardson|Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|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.<ref name="Nicholas Andrew Bryant 2006 pg. 2">Nicholas Andrew Bryant, ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy And the Struggle for Black Equality'' (Basic Books, 2006), p. 2</ref> Violent clashes between black activists and white workers took place in both Philadelphia and Harlem in successful efforts to integrate state construction projects.<ref>{{cite web| url = http://intellhisblackamerica.voices.wooster.edu/files/2012/03/Thomas_Sugrue_Affirmative_Action_from_Below.pdf| title = Thomas J Sugrue, "Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the Urban North, 1945–1969" ''The Journal of American History'', Vol. 91, Issue 1}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/events/4279/civil_rights_movement/532945 |title=Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission website, "The Civil Rights Movement" }}</ref> On June 6, over a thousand whites attacked a sit-in in Lexington, North Carolina; blacks fought back and one white man was killed.<ref>T [https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/2922918/ he Daily Capital News(Missouri) June 14, 1963, p. 4] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150925190639/http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/2922918/ |date=September 25, 2015 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=BU8cAAAAIBAJ&pg=2472,3798134&dq=north%20carolina%201963%20riot&hl=en |title=The Dispatch&nbsp;– Google News Archive Search |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref> 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."<ref name="Nicholas Andrew Bryant 2006 pg. 2" />

In [[Cambridge, Maryland]], a working‐class city on the [[Eastern Shore of Maryland|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.<ref name="Jackson167">{{cite book |last1=Jackson |first1=Thomas F. |title=From Civil Rights to Human Rights |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |location=Philadelphia |page=167 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6YwXAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA167 |isbn=978-0-8122-0000-3 |date=2013}}</ref> On June 11, struggles between blacks and whites [[Cambridge riot of 1963|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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://teaching.msa.maryland.gov/000001/000000/000033/html/t33.html |title=Teaching American History in Maryland&nbsp;– Documents for the Classroom&nbsp;– Maryland State Archives |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref> 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<ref name="Jackson167" />

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."<ref name="web1.millercenter.org">{{Cite web|url=http://web1.millercenter.org/apd/colloquia/pdf/col_2008_0410_jackson.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606153917/http://web1.millercenter.org/apd/colloquia/pdf/col_2008_0410_jackson.pdf |archive-date=2011-06-06 |url-status=live|title=Thomas F. Jackson, "Jobs and Freedom: The Black Revolt of 1963 and the Contested Meanings of the March on Washington" ''Virginia Foundation for the Humanities'' April 2, 2008, pp. 10–14}}</ref> On May 24, Robert Kennedy had a [[Baldwin-Kennedy meeting|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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/05/clip_job_miss_h.php |title=Miss Lorraine Hansberry & Bobby Kennedy |first=Tony |last=Ortega |work=Runnin' Scared |date=May 4, 2009 |access-date=July 29, 2016  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121018054636/http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/05/clip_job_miss_h.php |archive-date=October 18, 2012 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Za8TAQAAQBAJ |title=Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector |first=James |last=Hilty |date=2000 |publisher=Temple University Press |access-date=July 29, 2016 |via=Google Books |isbn=978-1-4399-0519-7}}</ref><ref name=Schlesinger333>Schlesinger, ''Robert Kennedy and His Times'' (1978), pp. 332–333.</ref> 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."<ref name="web1.millercenter.org" /><ref>{{cite journal |url = http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/4/1319.1.extract |title = "Book Reviews-The Bystander by Nicholas A. Bryant" ''The Journal of American History'' (2007) 93 (4) |journal = Journal of American History |date = March 2007 |volume = 93 |issue = 4 |page = 1319 |doi = 10.2307/25094745 |jstor = 25094745 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121010023123/http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/4/1319.1.extract |archive-date=October 10, 2012 |last1 = O'Reilly |first1 = Kenneth |url-access = subscription }}</ref>[[File:March on Washington edit.jpg|thumb|The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the [[National Mall]]]]
[[File:Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Leaders of the march posing in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln... - NARA - 542063 (cropped).jpg|thumb|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 [[Stand in the Schoolhouse Door|to block]]<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963tuscaloosa Standing In the Schoolhouse Door] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615060449/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963tuscaloosa |date=June 15, 2009 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> 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 Address|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."<ref>"Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights," June 11, 1963, [http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03CivilRights06111963.htm transcript from the JFK library.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070205051926/http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical%2BResources/Archives/Reference%2BDesk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03CivilRights06111963.htm |date=February 5, 2007 }}</ref> In the early hours of June 12, [[Medgar Evers]], field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP, was assassinated by a member of the Klan.<ref>[http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/evers_medgar/ Medgar Evers] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051107211340/http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/evers_medgar/ |date=November 7, 2005 }}, a worthwhile article, on ''The Mississippi Writers Page'', a website of the University of Mississippi English Department.</ref><ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963medgar Medgar Evers Assassination] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090615060449/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis63.htm#1963medgar |date=June 15, 2009 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> The next week, as promised, on June 19, 1963, President Kennedy submitted his Civil Rights bill to Congress.<ref name="abbeville">[http://www.abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp Civil Rights bill submitted, and date of JFK murder, plus graphic events of the March on Washington.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012121716/http://abbeville.com/civilrights/washington.asp |date=October 12, 2007 }} This is an Abbeville Press website, a large informative article apparently from the book ''The Civil Rights Movement'' ({{ISBN|0-7892-0123-2}}).</ref>

=== March on Washington, 1963 ===
{{Main|March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom}}

[[File:Bayard Rustin NYWTS 3.jpg|thumb|[[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.<ref>{{cite book |title=Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes |last1=Rosenberg |first1=Jonathan |first2=Zachary |last2=Karabell |page=[https://archive.org/details/kennedyjohnsonth00rose/page/130 130] |isbn=978-0-393-05122-3 |year=2003 |publisher=WW Norton & Co |url=https://archive.org/details/kennedyjohnsonth00rose/page/130 }}</ref> 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 [[United Automobile Workers|UAW]], to help mobilize white supporters for the march.<ref>{{cite book |title=Robert Kennedy and His Times |last=Schlesinger |first=Arthur M. Jr. |pages=[https://archive.org/details/robertkennedyhis01schl/page/350 350, 351] |isbn=978-0-618-21928-5 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Books |orig-date=1978 |year=2002 |url=https://archive.org/details/robertkennedyhis01schl/page/350 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/in-march-on-washington-white-activists-were-largely-overlooked-but-strategically-essential/2013/08/25/f2738c2a-eb27-11e2-8023-b7f07811d98e_story.html |title=In March on Washington, white activists were largely overlooked but strategically essential |last=Thompson |first=Krissah |date=August 25, 2013 |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=March 24, 2018 |issn=0190-8286 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180320230800/https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/in-march-on-washington-white-activists-were-largely-overlooked-but-strategically-essential/2013/08/25/f2738c2a-eb27-11e2-8023-b7f07811d98e_story.html |archive-date=March 20, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref>

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.

[[File:Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mathew Ahmann in a crowd.) - NARA - 542015 - Restoration.jpg|thumb|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",<ref name="southernspaces.org">{{Cite journal |url=http://southernspaces.org/2004/television-news-and-civil-rights-struggle-views-virginia-and-mississippi |author=William G. Thomas III|title=Television News and the Civil Rights Struggle: The Views in Virginia and Mississippi |journal=Southern Spaces|date=November 3, 2004 |access-date=November 8, 2012|doi=10.18737/M73C7X|doi-access=free}}</ref> 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.<ref name="southernspaces.org" />

{{listen
| filename=I Have A Dream sample.ogg
| title="I Have a Dream"
| description=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
| filetype=[[Ogg]]
| pos=right
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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 [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|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 [[John F. Kennedy assassination|President Kennedy was assassinated]] on November 22, 1963,<ref name="abbeville" /> the new President [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Lyndon Johnson]] decided to use his influence in [[United States Congress|Congress]] to bring about much of Kennedy's legislative agenda.

=== St. Augustine, Florida, 1963–1964 ===
{{Main|St. Augustine movement}}

{{Further|1964 Monson Motor Lodge protest}}
[[File:WhiteTradeOnlyLancasterOhio.jpg|thumb|"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.

[[File:Rc17739 04.jpg|alt=Black and white photograph of segregationists fighting on a beach|thumb|left|upright|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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug Civil Rights Movement Archive. "St. Augustine FL, Movement – 1963"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160816034441/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug |date=August 16, 2016 }}; [https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/hayling-robert-b "Hayling, Robert B.", Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University]; [http://www.augustine.com/history/black_history/dr_robert_hayling/ "Black History: Dr. Robert B. Hayling"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160122042950/http://augustine.com/history/black_history/dr_robert_hayling/ |date=January 22, 2016 }}, Augustine.com; David J. Garrow, ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'' (Harper Collins, 1987) pp. 316–318</ref> 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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug Civil Rights Movement Archive. "St. Augustine FL, Movement – 1963"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160816034441/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm#1963staug |date=August 16, 2016 }}; [https://books.google.com/books?id=HecWJnClV3wC&pg=PA316 David J. Garrow, ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'' (Harper Collins, 1987) p. 317];</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/07/obituaries/mary-peabody-89-rights-activist-dies.html|title=Mary Peabody, 89, Rights Activist, Dies|work=[[The New York Times]]|date=February 7, 1981}}</ref>

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 [[1964 Monson Motor Lodge protests|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.<ref>{{cite book|last=Snodgrass|first=M. E.|title=Civil Disobedience: A–Z entries|publisher=Sharpe Reference|year=2009|page=181|isbn=978-0-76568-127-0|location=New York}}</ref> 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|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''".<ref name=Mele>{{cite book |last1=Mele |first1=Christopher |title=Race and the Politics of Deception: The Making of an American City |date=2017 |publisher=New York University Press |location=New York |isbn=978-1-4798-6609-0 |pages=74–100 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xAl3DQAAQBAJ |access-date=October 27, 2018}}</ref>

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.<ref name=Phoenix>{{cite web |last1=Holcomb |first1=Lindsay |title=Questions surround student activism fifty-two years later |url=https://swarthmorephoenix.com/2015/10/29/questions-surround-student-activism-fifty-two-years-later/ |website=www.swarthmorephoenix.com |access-date=October 25, 2018|date=October 29, 2015 }}</ref> The school was built in 1910 and had never been updated. Only two bathrooms were available for the entire school.<ref name=nvdbase/> 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.<ref name=Mele/> The Chester Board of Education agreed to [[class-size reduction|reduce class sizes]] at Franklin school, remove unsanitary toilet facilities, relocate classes held in the boiler room and coal bin and repair school grounds.<ref name=nvdbase/>

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.<ref name=Mele/> Branche invited [[Dick Gregory]] and [[Malcolm X]] to Chester to participate in the "Freedom Now Conference"<ref name=McLarnon/> and other national civil rights leaders such as [[Gloria Richardson]] came to Chester in support of the demonstrations.<ref>{{cite web |title=Chester NAACP Scrapbook 1963–1964 |url=http://digitalwolfgram.widener.edu/digital/collection/p270801coll18/id/588 |website=www.digitalwolfgram.widener.edu |access-date=October 20, 2018}}</ref>

In 1964, a series of almost nightly protests brought chaos to Chester as protestors argued that the Chester School Board had [[de facto]] [[Racial segregation|segregation]] [[School segregation in the United States|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.<ref name=Mele/> The State of Pennsylvania deployed 50 state troopers to assist the 77-member Chester police force.<ref name=nvdbase>{{cite web |title=African American residents of Chester, PA, demonstrate to end de facto segregation in public schools, 1963–1966 |url=https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/african-american-residents-chester-pa-demonstrate-end-de-facto-segregation-public-schools-19 |website=www.nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu |access-date=October 26, 2018}}</ref> The demonstrations were marked by violence and charges of police brutality.<ref>{{Cite news |title=RIOTS MAR PEACE IN CHESTER, PA.; Negro Protests Continue – School Policy at Issue |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1964/04/26/archives/riots-mar-peace-in-chester-pa-negro-protests-continueschool-policy.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=July 13, 2018|date=April 26, 1964 }}</ref> Over six hundred people were arrested over a two-month period of civil rights rallies, marches, pickets, boycotts and sit-ins.<ref name=Mele/> Pennsylvania Governor [[William Scranton]] became involved in the negotiations and convinced Branche to obey a court-ordered moratorium on demonstrations.<ref name=McLarnon>{{cite journal |last1=McLarnon |first1=John M. |title='Old Scratchhead' Reconsidered: George Raymond & Civil Rights in Chester, Pennsylvania |journal=Pennsylvania History |date=2002 |volume=69 |issue=3 |pages=318–326 |url=https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/viewFile/25768/25537 |access-date=October 27, 2018}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Mele|2017|p=96}}

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.<ref name=nvdbase/>

=== Freedom Summer, 1964 ===
{{Main|Freedom Summer}}

In the summer of 1964, [[Council of Federated Organizations|COFO]] brought nearly 1,000 activists to Mississippi{{mdash}}most of them white college students from the North and West{{mdash}}to join with local black activists to register voters, teach in "Freedom Schools", and organize the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (MFDP).<ref name="crmvet.org">[http://www.crmvet.org/disc/mfdp.htm The Mississippi Movement & the MFDP] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080424084752/http://www.crmvet.org/disc/mfdp.htm |date=April 24, 2008 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/docs/msrv64.pdf Mississippi: Subversion of the Right to Vote] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100505032056/http://www.crmvet.org/docs/msrv64.pdf |date=May 5, 2010 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

[[File:FBI Poster of Missing Civil Rights Workers.jpg|thumb|[[Missing persons]] poster created by the [[FBI]] in 1964 [[Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner|shows the photographs]] of [[Andrew Goodman (activist)|Andrew Goodman]], [[James Chaney]], and [[Michael Schwerner]]]]

On June 21, 1964, [[Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner|three civil rights workers disappeared]]: [[James Chaney]], a young black Mississippian and plasterer's apprentice; and two [[Jewish]] activists, [[Andrew Goodman (activist)|Andrew Goodman]], a [[Queens College, City University of New York|Queens College]] anthropology student; and [[Michael Schwerner]], a [[Congress of Racial Equality|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, Mississippi|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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=McAdam |first=Doug |title=Freedom Summer |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-19-504367-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/freedomsummer00mcad }}</ref>

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{{mdash}}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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Carson |first=Clayborne |title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1981}}</ref>

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 laws|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.<ref name="crmvet1">[http://www.crmvet.org/vet/vethome.htm Veterans Roll Call] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080423070052/http://www.crmvet.org/vet/vethome.htm |date=April 23, 2008 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

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{{mdash}}black and white{{mdash}}still consider it to have been one of the defining periods of their lives.<ref name="crmvet1" />

=== Civil Rights Act of 1964 ===
{{Main|Civil Rights Act of 1964}}

Although President Kennedy had [[Civil Rights Address|proposed civil rights legislation]] and it had support from Northern Congressmen and Senators of both parties, Southern Senators blocked the bill by threatening [[filibuster]]s. 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.{{sfn|Reeves|1993|pp=521–524}}

[[File:Lyndon Johnson signing Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964.jpg|thumb|Lyndon B. Johnson signs the historic [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]]]]

On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]],<ref name="cra64" /> 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|Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party}}

Blacks in Mississippi had been [[Disfranchisement|disfranchised]] by statutory and constitutional changes since the late 19th century. In 1963 COFO held a [[1963 Freedom Ballot|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.<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm Freedom Ballot in MS] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160816034441/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/tim63b.htm |date=August 16, 2016 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref>

[[File:Lyndon Johnson meeting with civil rights leaders.jpg|thumb|upright=1.36|President [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] ''(center)'' meets with civil rights leaders [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], [[Whitney Young]], and [[James L. Farmer Jr.|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 Bell Robinson Devine|Annie Devine]], and [[Victoria Gray Adams|Victoria Gray]] to run for [[United States Congress|Congress]], and a slate of delegates to represent Mississippi at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.<ref name="crmvet.org" />

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 [[Vietnam War|war in Vietnam]].

=== Selma Voting Rights Movement ===
{{Main|Selma to Montgomery marches|Voting Rights Act}}

[[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|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, Alabama|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&nbsp;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.

[[File:Bloody Sunday-Alabama police attack.jpeg|thumb|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 ===
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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:

{{blockquote|quote=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 of 1965|Voting Rights Act]], by a vote of 77–19, with only Southern Senators opposing the bill.<ref name="Bending">{{cite book|last=May|first=Gary|title=Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy|publisher=Basic Books|location=New York, NY|isbn=978-0-465-01846-8|date=April 9, 2013|edition=Kindle|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/bendingtowardjus0000mayg}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Senate Vote #78 in 1965: To Pass S. 1564, the Voting Rights Act of 1965|url=http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1965/s78|work=govtrack.us|publisher=Civic Impulse, LLC|access-date=October 14, 2013}}</ref> On July 9, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6400, the House version of the bill, by a vote of 333–85.<ref name=Bending />{{rp|163–165}}<ref>{{cite web|title=House Vote #87 in 1965: To Pass H.R. 6400, the Voting Rights Act of 1965|url=http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/89-1965/h87|work=govtrack.us|publisher=Civic Impulse, LLC|access-date=October 14, 2013}}</ref> 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 [[Jim Clark (sheriff)|Sheriff Jim Clark]] of Selma, Alabama, infamous for using [[cattle prod]]s 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 Nathan Morial|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 General Assembly|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 [[List of African-American United States representatives|Black members of Congress]] from the states of the former Confederacy [[1980 United States House of Representatives elections|elected in 1980]], and four [[1990 United States House of Representatives elections|elected in 1990]], but this rose to 16 [[2000 United States House of Representatives elections|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 [[California Proposition 14 (1964)|Proposition 14]], a move which helped precipitate the [[Watts riots]].<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b8MeAgAAQBAJ |title=American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland |first=Robert O. |last=Self |date=2005 |publisher=Princeton University Press |access-date=July 29, 2016 |via=Google Books |isbn=978-1-4008-4417-3}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-watts11aug11-story.html |title=Watts Riots, 40 Years Later |first1=Valerie |last1=Reitman |first2=Mitchell |last2=Landsberg |date=August 11, 2005 |access-date=July 29, 2016 |newspaper=Los Angeles Times}}</ref> In 1966, the [[Supreme Court of California|California Supreme Court]] invalidated Proposition 14 and reinstated the Rumford Fair Housing Act.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt0b69q1bw/entire_text/ |title=No on Proposition 14: California Fair Housing Initiative Collection |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.blackthursday.uwosh.edu/milwaukee.html |title=Black Thursday |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-05-mn-4337-story.html |url-access=subscription |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200408181140/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-05-mn-4337-story.html |archive-date=April 8, 2020 |title=James Groppi, Ex-Priest, Civil Rights Activist, Dies |first=Burt A. |last=Folkart |date=November 5, 1985 |access-date=July 29, 2016 |url-status=live |newspaper=Los Angeles Times}}{{cbignore}}</ref> 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 [[filibuster]]ed 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.<ref>{{Cite journal|url=http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/wihr/pdfs/MilesWIHRSp09.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141223193406/http://www.wiu.edu/cas/history/wihr/pdfs/MilesWIHRSp09.pdf |archive-date=2014-12-23 |url-status=live|author=Darren Miles |title=Everett Dirksen's Role in Civil Rights Legislation|journal=Western Illinois Historical Review|volume= I |date=Spring 2009}}</ref> Mondale commented that:

{{blockquote|quote=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.<ref name="propublica.org">{{cite web |url=https://www.propublica.org/article/living-apart-how-the-government-betrayed-a-landmark-civil-rights-law |title=Living Apart: How the Government Betrayed a Landmark Civil Rights Law |first=Nikole |last=Hannah-Jones |date=June 25, 2015 |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref>}}

=== Nationwide riots, 1965–1967 ===
{{Main|Ghetto riots (1964–1969)}}

{{See also|Long Hot Summer of 1967}}
{{Further|Watts riots|Detroit Riot of 1967|1967 Newark riots}}

In the mid-1960s, the U.S. experienced a series of "long hot summers" of [[Ghetto riots (1964–1969)|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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Upchurch |first1=T. Adams |title=Race Relations in the United States, 1960-1980 |date=2007 |page=35}}</ref> Systemic racism, police brutality, high unemployment rates, poor living conditions in urban Black neighborhoods, and a sense of hopelessness contributed to the widespread unrest.<ref name="Sullivan2021">{{cite book |last1=Sullivan |first1=Patricia |title=Justice Rising: Robert KennedyÕs America in Black and White |date=2021 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-73745-7 |page=346 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vOsmEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA346 |quote=The summer of 1967—the “summer of love” for America's youth counterculture—was a “long hot summer” for Black urban Americans, a season of the deadliest and most widespread racial strife in US history. Racial clashes, disorders, and rebellions erupted in an estimated 164 cities in thirty-four states, bringing the nation's crisis to a boil.}}</ref><ref name="The Riots of the Long, Hot Summer">{{cite web |title=The Riots of the Long, Hot Summer |url=https://www.britannica.com/story/the-riots-of-the-long-hot-summer |website=[[Encyclopedia Britannica]] |access-date=8 December 2024}}</ref><ref name=Ghettos>{{cite journal|title=The Ghetto Rebellions and Urban Class Conflict|author=Herbert J Gans|journal = Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science|year = 1968|volume = 29|issue = 1|pages = 42–51|doi = 10.2307/3700905|jstor = 3700905}}</ref>

====Watts====
[[File:40th in Watts.jpg|thumb|Soldiers direct traffic away from an area of [[South Central Los Angeles]] burning during the [[Watts Riots|1965 Watts riot]]]]

The momentum for the advancement of civil rights came to a sudden halt in August 1965 with [[Watts Riots|riots]] in the [[Watts, Los Angeles|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 (United States)|National Guard]] troops were deployed to the area, imposing a [[curfew]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles) |url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/watts-rebellion-los-angeles |website=The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute |access-date=11 December 2024}}</ref><ref name="Oberschall">{{Cite journal | last1 = Oberschall | first1 = Anthony | year = 1968 | title = The Los Angeles Riot of August 1965 | journal = Social Problems | volume = 15 | issue = 3 | pages = 322–341 | jstor = 799788 | doi=10.2307/799788}}</ref>

After 34 people were killed and $35&nbsp;million (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US|35|1965|r=2}}&nbsp;million in {{Inflation-year|US}}) 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Dallek |first=Robert |title=Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 |url=https://archive.org/details/flawedgiantlyndo00dall/ |url-access=registration |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1998 |isbn=978-0-19-505465-1 |pages=222–223}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| title=Lyndon B. Johnson: The American Franchise| date=October 4, 2016| url=https://millercenter.org/president/lbjohnson/the-american-franchise| location=Charlottesville, Virginia| publisher=Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia| access-date=June 22, 2017}}</ref>

====Newark and Detroit====
[[File:Newark Riots 1967 (305517077) (cropped).jpg|thumb|[[1967 Newark riots]]]]
[[File:Detroit 1967.jpg|thumb|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|Newark]], New Jersey.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.thirteen.org/newark/history3.html |title=A Walk Through Newark. History. The Riots|publisher=Thirteen/WNET |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Dallek 1998, p. 412">Dallek (1998), p. 412.</ref>

The [[1967 Newark riots|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.<ref name="Dallek 1998, p. 412"/><ref>{{cite web |last1=Evans |first1=Farrell |title=The 1967 Riots: When Outrage Over Racial Injustice Boiled Over |url=https://www.history.com/news/1967-summer-riots-detroit-newark-kerner-commission |website=History.com |date=October 6, 2023 |access-date=8 December 2024}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3527 |title=Review of Georgakas, Dan; Surkin, Marvin, ''Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution'' |first=Karen |last=Miller |date=October 1, 1999 }}</ref> Violent white mobs enforced the segregation of housing up through the 1960s.<ref name="pbs.org">{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/profiles/57_mi.html |title=American Experience. Eyes on the Prize. Profiles |website=[[PBS]] |access-date=July 29, 2016 |archive-date=February 18, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170218081425/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/profiles/57_mi.html}}</ref> The [[1967 Detroit riot|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).<ref name="The Riots of the Long, Hot Summer"/> Governor [[George W. Romney|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.<ref name="pbs.org" /><ref>Hubert G. Locke, ''The Detroit Riot of 1967'' (Wayne State University Press, 1969).</ref>{{sfn|McLaughlin|2014|pp=1–9; 40–41}}

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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hinton |first1=Elizabeth |title=From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America |date=2016 |publisher=Harvard University Press |page=108}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Flamm |first1=Michael W. |title=In the Heat of the Summer: The New York Riots of 1964 and the War on Crime |date=2017 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |page=276}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Bigart |first1=Homer |title=Newark Riot Deaths at 21 As Negro Sniping Widens; Hughes May Seek U.S. Aid |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/national/race/071667race-ra.html |agency=The New York Times |date=July 16, 1967}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Roberts |first1=Gene |title=Troops Battle Detroit Snipers, Firing Machine Guns From Tanks; Lindsay Appeals To East Harlem; Detroit Toll Is 31 Rioters Rout Police-- Guardsmen Released To Aid Other Cities |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1967/07/26/archives/troops-battle-detroit-snipers-firing-machine-guns-from-tanks.html |agency=The New York Times |date=July 26, 1967}}</ref> 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.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=1lUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA17&dq=1967+life+magazine+newark+snipers&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizzOfjxpiKAxXwkYkEHfRfG9AQ6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false LIFE Magazine, July 28, 1967]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=51UEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=1967+life+magazine+detroit&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiLpLyDyJiKAxXsrYkEHavxEjAQ6AF6BAgEEAI#v=onepage&q=1967%20life%20magazine%20detroit&f=false LIFE Magazine, August 4, 1967]</ref>

==== 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.<ref>Mackenzie and Weisbrot (2008), pp. 337–338</ref> 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.<ref>Mackenzie and Weisbrot (2008), p. 335</ref><ref name=africanaonline>{{cite web|url=http://www.africanaonline.com/reports_kerner.htm |author=Toonari |title=Kerner Report |website=Africana Online |access-date=23 November 2009 |archive-date= 7 January 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100107022536/http://www.africanaonline.com/reports_kerner.htm |url-status=usurped }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Johnson1967Remarks">{{cite web |last=Johnson |first=Lyndon B. |author-link=Lyndon B. Johnson |date=July 29, 1967 |editor1-last=Woolley |editor1-first=John T. |editor2-last=Peters |editor2-first=Gerhard |title=Remarks Upon Signing Order Establishing the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders |url=https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238046 |website=The American Presidency Project |publisher=University of California |location=Santa Barbara, CA}}</ref>

The commission's 1968 report identified police practices, unemployment and underemployment, and lack of adequate housing as the most significant grievances motivating the rage.<ref name=kerner>{{cite web|url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/1968-kerner-commission-got-it-right-nobody-listened-180968318/|title=The 1968 Kerner Commission Got It Right, But Nobody Listened|author=Alice George}}</ref> 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."<ref name=kernerreport>{{cite web| title="Our Nation Is Moving Toward Two Societies, One Black, One White—Separate and Unequal": Excerpts from the Kerner Report| url=http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6545/| publisher=American Social History Productions| work=History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web| others=Source: United States. Kerner Commission, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968)| access-date=July 12, 2017}}</ref> The president, fixated on the Vietnam War and keenly aware of budgetary constraints, barely acknowledged the report.<ref name=LHS67>{{cite book| last=McLaughlin| first=Malcolm| title=The Long, Hot Summer of 1967: Urban Rebellion in America| date=2014| publisher=Palgrave Macmillan| location=New York City| isbn=978-1-137-26963-8|pages=1–9; 40–41| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QI17AwAAQBAJ&q=%22long+hot+summer%22+1967&pg=PA1}}</ref>

=== Memphis, King assassination, and Civil Rights Act of 1968 ===
{{Main|Poor People's Campaign|Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.|Civil Rights Act of 1968}}

{{See also|King assassination riots|Orangeburg massacre}}
[[File:Resurrection City Washington D.C. 1968.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|A 3,000-person shantytown called [[Poor People's Campaign#Resurrection City|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.<ref name="propublica.org" /> The [[Kerner Commission]] report on the [[Long hot summer of 1967|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.<ref name="huduser.org">{{Cite web|url=http://www.huduser.org/portal/Periodicals/CITYSCPE/VOL4NUM3/mathias.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141227020632/http://www.huduser.org/portal/Periodicals/CITYSCPE/VOL4NUM3/mathias.pdf |archive-date=2014-12-27 |url-status=live|title=Honorable Charles Mathias Jr. "Fair Housing Legislation: Not an Easy Row To Hoe" US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research}}</ref>

[[James Lawson (American activist)|James Lawson]] invited King to [[Memphis, Tennessee]], in March 1968 to support a [[Memphis sanitation strike|sanitation workers' strike]]. These workers launched a campaign for [[trade union|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.

{{listen
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| description  = 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.
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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. [[King assassination riots|Riots broke out]] in black neighborhoods in more than 110 cities across the United States in the days that followed, notably [[1968 Chicago riots|in Chicago]], [[Baltimore riot of 1968|Baltimore]], and [[1968 Washington, D.C., riots|Washington, D.C.]]

The day before [[Funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.|King's funeral]], April 8, a completely silent march with [[Coretta Scott King]], [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference|SCLC]], and UAW president [[Walter Reuther]] attracted approximately 42,000 participants.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Memphis, Tennessee, sanitation workers strike, 1968 {{!}} Global Nonviolent Action Database|url=https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/memphis-tennessee-sanitation-workers-strike-1968|website=nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu|access-date=May 19, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Reuther, Walter Philip|url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/reuther-walter-philip|publisher= Stanford University|date=June 21, 2017|website=The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute|language=en|access-date=May 19, 2020}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcoretta.htm |title=Coretta Scott King |publisher=Spartacus Educational Publishers |access-date=October 30, 2010  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100705051610/http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcoretta.htm |archive-date=July 5, 2010 }}</ref> 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,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gregg |first1=Khyree |title=A Concise Chronicle History of the African-American People Experience in America |publisher=Henry Epps |page=284}}</ref>

{{blockquote|quote=[[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.}}

[[File:Leffler - 1968 Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr. riots.jpg|thumb|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 [[United States House of Representatives|U.S. House of Representatives]] had been deliberating its Fair Housing Act in early April, before King's assassination and the aforementioned [[King assassination riots|wave of unrest]] that followed, the largest since the Civil War.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1800/2148_ch1.pdf |title=Peter B. Levy, "The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968" in ''Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth in an American city'' (Temple University Press, 2011), p. 6 |access-date=December 29, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924123559/http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1800/2148_ch1.pdf |archive-date=September 24, 2015}}</ref> Senator [[Charles Mathias]] wrote:

{{blockquote|quote=[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.<ref name="huduser.org" />}}

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."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg73.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140716002812/http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-82/pdf/STATUTE-82-Pg73.pdf |archive-date=2014-07-16 |url-status=live|title=Public Law 90-284, Government Printing Office}}</ref>

=== ''Gates v. Collier'' ===
[[File:MississippiStatePen.jpg|thumb|[[Mississippi State Penitentiary]]]]

Conditions at the [[Mississippi State Penitentiary]] at [[Mississippi State Penitentiary|Parchman]], then known as Parchman Farm, became part of the public discussion of civil rights after [[Activism|activists]] were imprisoned there. In the spring of 1961, Freedom Riders came to the South to test the [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]] of public facilities. By the end of June 1963, Freedom Riders had been convicted in [[Jackson, Mississippi]].<ref>{{Cite news |title=Riding On |magazine=Time |date=July 7, 1961 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872521,00.html?promoid=googlep |access-date=October 23, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080304105758/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872521,00.html?promoid=googlep |archive-date=March 4, 2008}}</ref> Many were jailed in Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Mississippi employed the [[Trusty system (prison)|trusty system]], a hierarchical order of inmates that used some inmates to control and enforce punishment of other inmates.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.dsl.psu.edu/civilrights/chapter1.html |title=ACLU Parchman Prison |access-date=November 29, 2007  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080307222545/http://www.dsl.psu.edu/civilrights/chapter1.html |archive-date=March 7, 2008}}</ref>

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.<ref name="hnet">{{cite web |url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459 |title=Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice |access-date=August 28, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060826214105/http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459 |archive-date=August 26, 2006 }}</ref>

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 [[Life imprisonment|lifers]] with rifles and given them authority to oversee and guard other inmates, which led to many cases of abuse and murders.)<ref>{{cite web |last=Goldman |first=Robert M. |date=April 1997 |url=http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459 |title="Worse Than Slavery": Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice&nbsp;– book review |publisher=Hnet-online |access-date=August 29, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060829200032/http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=22500870194459 |archive-date=August 29, 2006 }}</ref>

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 (book)|Soul on Ice]]'' was written from his experiences in the California correctional system; it contributed to black militancy.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Cleaver |first=Eldridge |title=Soul on Ice |publisher=McGraw-Hill |year=1967 |location=New York}}</ref>

=== Legacy ===
Civil rights protest activity had an observable impact on white American's views on race and politics over time.<ref name="mazumdar"/> 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 (United States)|Democratic Party]] as well as more likely to support [[affirmative action]].<ref name="mazumdar">{{Cite journal|last=Mazumder|first=Soumyajit|date=August 30, 2018|title=The Persistent Effect of U.S. Civil Rights Protests on Political Attitudes|journal=American Journal of Political Science|volume=62|issue=4|pages=922–935|language=en|doi=10.1111/ajps.12384|s2cid=158718227|issn=0092-5853|url=http://osf.io/uvm2a/}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150910075753/http://www.omarwasow.com/Protests_on_Voting.pdf |archive-date=2015-09-10 |url-status=live |title=Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting |author=[[Omar Wasow]] |access-date=January 12, 2021}}</ref>

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.<ref>Section 703(a)(1), Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241, 255 (July 2, 1964).</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act|title=The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission|date=August 15, 2016|work=National Archives|access-date=October 20, 2017|language=en|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171020043707/https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act|archive-date=October 20, 2017}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-joint-resolution/113|title=H.J.Res.113 – 107th Congress (2001–2002): Recognizing the contributions of Patsy Takemoto Mink.|last=Miller|first=George|date=October 29, 2002|website=www.congress.gov|access-date=March 30, 2020}}</ref>

==Characteristics==
[[File:Fannie Lou Hamer 1964-08-22.jpg|upright|thumb|[[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|African-American women in the civil rights movement}}

[[African-American]] women in the civil rights movement were pivotal to its success.<ref name="gyant"/> 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.<ref name="gyant"/> [[Rosa Parks]]'s refusal to sit at the back of a [[public bus]] resulted in the year-long [[Montgomery bus boycott]],<ref name="gyant"/> and the eventual [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]] of interstate travel in the [[United States]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline, 1955 |url=https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis55.htm#1955mbb |website=www.crmvet.org}}</ref> Women were members of the NAACP because they believed it could help them contribute to the cause of civil rights.<ref name="gyant">{{Cite journal |last=Gyant |first=LaVerne |year=1996 |title=Passing the Torch: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement |jstor=2784888 |journal=Journal of Black Studies |volume=26 |issue=5 |pages=629–647|doi=10.1177/002193479602600508 |s2cid=143581432 }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Greene">{{Cite book |last=Greene |first=Christina |date=November 22, 2016 |chapter=Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements |title=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History |chapter-url=https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-212 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.212|isbn=978-0-19-932917-5 |access-date=March 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180304055329/http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-212#acrefore-9780199329175-e-212-div1-6 |archive-date=March 4, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Ella Baker]] founded the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|SNCC]] and was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement.<ref name="urban"/><ref>{{Cite news |last=Ransby |author-link=Barbara Ransby |first=Barbara |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/martin-luther-king-ella-baker.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200120101115/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/martin-luther-king-ella-baker.html |archive-date=January 20, 2020 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Opinion: Ella Baker's Legacy Runs Deep. Know Her Name. |date=January 20, 2020 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=April 24, 2020 |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Female students involved with the SNCC helped to organize sit-ins and the Freedom Rides.<ref name="urban"/> 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.<ref name="urban">{{Cite journal |last=Urban|first=Dennis J. |year=2002 |jstor=41887103 |journal=International Social Science Review |volume=77 |issue=3/4 |pages=185–190|title=The Women of SNCC: Struggle, Sexism, and the Emergence of Feminist Consciousness, 1960–66 }}</ref> 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.<ref name="Greene" /> Several who participated in these organizations lost their jobs because of their involvement.<ref name="Greene" />

==== Sexist discrimination ====
Many women who participated in the movement experienced [[Sexism|gender discrimination]] and [[sexual harassment]].<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement/ |title=Women in the Civil Rights Movement – Civil Rights History Project |work=The Library of Congress |access-date=March 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180328070559/https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement/ |archive-date=March 28, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> In the SCLC, [[Ella Baker]]'s input was discouraged in spite of her being the oldest and most experienced person on the staff.<ref>{{Cite magazine |url=https://time.com/4633460/mlk-day-ella-baker/ |title=On MLK Day, Honor the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement |magazine=Time |access-date=March 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180220173039/http://time.com/4633460/mlk-day-ella-baker/ |archive-date=February 20, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> There are many other accounts and examples.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Sexism in the Civil Rights Movement: A Discussion Guide|url=https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/sexism-in-the-civil-rights-movement-a-discussion-guide|last=Holladay|first=Jennifer|date=2009}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Gender and the Civil Rights Movement|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0-8135-3438-1|editor-last=Ling|editor-first=Peter J.|editor2-last=Monteith|editor2-first=Sharon}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Women in the Civil Rights Movement|url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement/|website=Library of Congress}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Dorothy Height and the Sexism of the Civil Rights Movement|url=https://www.theroot.com/dorothy-height-and-the-sexism-of-the-civil-rights-movem-1790879502|last=Delaney|first=Paul|date=May 12, 2010|website=The Root}}</ref>

=== Avoiding the "Communist" label ===
{{See also|Communist Party USA and African Americans}}

On December 17, 1951, the [[Communist Party USA|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 [[Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide|UN Genocide Convention]] (see [[Black genocide]]).<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis51.htm ''We Charge Genocide''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080402015621/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis51.htm |date=April 2, 2008 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> 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.<ref name="autogenerated1981">{{cite book |last=Carson |first=Clayborne |title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s |url=https://archive.org/details/instrugglesnccbl00cars_1 |url-access=registration |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1981|isbn=978-0-674-44726-4 }}</ref>

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.<ref name="autogenerated1981" />

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]].<ref>{{cite interview |url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/html_use/G-0007.html |title=Oral History Interview with Ella Baker, September 4, 1974. Interview G-0007. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007): Electronic Edition. Ella Baker Describes Her Role in the Formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee |last=Baker |first=Ella |author-link=Ella Baker }}</ref> 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.<ref name="autogenerated1981" />

=== 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{{mdash}}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."<ref name="bostonreview.net">{{Cite news|url=https://bostonreview.net/forum/occupy-future/what-should-sustained-movement-look|title=What Should a Sustained Movement Look Like?|date=June 26, 2012|website=Boston Review}}</ref> Decentralized grassroots leadership has been a major focus of movement scholarship in recent decades through the work of historians [[John Dittmer]], [[Charles M. Payne|Charles Payne]], [[Barbara Ransby]], and others.

=== Tactics and nonviolence ===
[[File:White men and Robeson County indians (Lumbee Indians) in crowd with a car and guns (State's Exhibit No.5). Photo taken by Bill Shaw, Fayetteville Observer newspaper photographer. Photo used as state's (8223346871).jpg|thumb|Armed Lumbee Indians aggressively confronting Klansmen in the [[Battle of Hayes Pond]]]]

The Jim Crow system employed "terror as a means of social control,"<ref>Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, ''[[Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, How They Fail]]'' (Random House, 1977), 182</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-1534.html|title=Timothy B. Tyson, ''Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of "Black Power"'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 79–80|access-date=September 9, 2013|archive-date=March 26, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140326100437/http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-1534.html}}</ref> 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.<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 88–89</ref> 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.<ref>Nicholas Graham, [http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-postwar/6068 "January 1958: The Lumbees face the Klan"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180206071001/http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-postwar/6068 |date=February 6, 2018 }}, This Month in North Carolina History</ref>

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".<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 149</ref> 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."<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 159–164</ref> Martin Luther King Jr. argued for Williams' removal,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/williams-robert-franklin|title=Williams, Robert Franklin|date=July 13, 2017|access-date=December 3, 2019}}</ref> but [[Ella Baker]]<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SEfOhvXSvZsC&pg=PA213|title=Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision|first=Barbara|last=Ransby|author-link=Barbara Ransby|date=November 20, 2003|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-8078-6270-4|via=Google Books}}</ref> and [[W. E. B. Du Bois|WEB Dubois]]<ref name="history.msu.edu">{{cite journal| url = http://history.msu.edu/files/2010/04/Timothy-Tyson.pdf| first = Timothy B. |last=Tyson|title=Robert F. Williams, 'Black Power,' and the Roots of the African American Freedom Struggle|journal=Journal of American History|volume= 85|number= 2 |date=September 1998|pages=540–570| doi = 10.2307/2567750 | jstor = 2567750 | issn=0021-8723}}</ref> both publicly praised the Monroe leader's position.

Williams{{mdash}}along with his wife, Mabel Williams{{mdash}}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."<ref>"[http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/9353_BlackPowerMovemPt2.pdf The Black Power Movement, Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams" A Guide to the Microfilm Editions of the Black Studies Research Sources (University Publications of America)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130108060037/http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/9353_BlackPowerMovemPt2.pdf |date=January 8, 2013 }}</ref> 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{{mdash}}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.<ref name="Tyson 1998">Tyson, ''Journal of American History'' (September 1998)</ref> Meanwhile, armed self-defense continued discreetly in the Southern movement with such figures as SNCC's [[Amzie Moore]],<ref name="Tyson 1998" /> [[Hartman Turnbow]],<ref>[[Taylor Branch]], ''[[Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963]]'' (Simon and Schuster, 1988), 781</ref> and [[Fannie Lou Hamer]]<ref>{{Cite news |last=Marqusee |first=Mike |author-link=Mike Marqusee |date=June 17, 2004 |title=By Any Means Necessary |magazine=The Nation |language=en-US |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/any-means-necessary/ |url-status=live |access-date=October 1, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140224101340/http://www.thenation.com/article/any-means-necessary |archive-date=February 24, 2014 |issn=0027-8378}}</ref> 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 at Chapel Hill|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{{mdash}}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.<ref>Walter Rucker, "Crusader in Exile: Robert F. Williams and the International Struggle for Black Freedom in America" The Black Scholar 36, No. 2–3 (Summer–Fall 2006): 19–33. [https://www.academia.edu/223267/_Crusader_in_Exile_Robert_F._Williams_and_the_Internationalized_Struggle_for_Black_Freedom_in_America._2006_ URL] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170727005417/http://www.academia.edu/223267/_Crusader_in_Exile_Robert_F._Williams_and_the_Internationalized_Struggle_for_Black_Freedom_in_America._2006_ |date=July 27, 2017 }}</ref> 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."<ref>Timothy B. Tyson, [http://investigatinghistory.ashp.cuny.edu/m11d.html "Robert Franklin Williams: A Warrior For Freedom, 1925–1996"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130708140451/http://investigatinghistory.ashp.cuny.edu/m11d.html |date=July 8, 2013 }}, Southern Exposure, Winter 1996, Investigating U.S. History (City University of New York)</ref>

=== 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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Brief History of Jews and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s {{!}} Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism |url=https://rac.org/issues/civil-rights-voting-rights/brief-history-jews-and-civil-rights-movement-1960s |access-date=2023-12-14 |website=rac.org |language=en}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite web |title=American Jews and the Civil Rights Movement |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/american-jews-and-the-civil-rights-movement |access-date=2023-12-14 |website=www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org}}</ref>

=== 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.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Davis |first=Joshua Clark |url= |title=Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2025 |location=Princeton, N.J. |publication-date=2025 |isbn=9780691238838}}</ref>

==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,<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Fair Employment Practices Committee |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |date=March 20, 2023 |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fair-Employment-Practices-Committee |language=en}}</ref> 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:<ref>{{Cite news |last=Glass |first=Andrew |date=June 29, 2018 |title=Truman addresses NAACP, June 29, 1947 |language=en |work=Politico |url=https://politi.co/2Mz2C4K |access-date=July 27, 2021}}</ref>

{{blockquote|… 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."<ref name=Mikas>{{Cite book |last1=Milkis |first1=Sidney M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bW9KEAAAQBAJ&dq=en&pg=PA1946 |title=The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2021 |last2=Nelson |first2=Michael |date=2021 |publisher=CQ Press |isbn=978-1-0718-2463-4 |language=en |page=1946}}</ref>  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.<ref name=Mikas/>

=== 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.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|last=Nichols|first=David A.|date=June 8, 2020|title='Unless we progress, we regress': How Eisenhower Broke Ground on Desegregation|url=https://www.historynet.com/unless-we-progress-we-regress.htm|access-date=March 4, 2021|website=HistoryNet|language=en-US}}</ref> Shortly after this act, Eisenhower utilized Hollywood personalities to pressure movie theatres into desegregating as well.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Pipes|first=Kasey|date=April 4, 2016|title=Ike's Forgotten Legacy on Civil Rights: A Lesson in Leadership for Today|url=https://riponsociety.org/article/ikes-forgotten-legacy-a-lesson-in-leadership-for-today/|access-date=March 4, 2021|website=RiponSociety|language=en-US}}</ref>

Under the previous administration, President Truman signed [[Executive Order 9981|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.<ref name="auto"/> 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.<ref name="auto"/>

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.<ref name="auto"/>

=== Kennedy administration: 1961–1963 ===
[[File:Robert Kennedy speaking before a crowd, June 14, 1963.jpg|thumb|[[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]] [[Robert F. Kennedy]] speaking before a hostile civil rights crowd protesting low [[Affirmative action in the United States|minority hiring]] in his [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]], June 14, 1963<ref name="Risen 2014 76">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eOu1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA76 |title=The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act |last=Risen |first=Clay |date=2014 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-1-60819-824-5 |page=76 |language=en}}</ref>]]

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 [[United States Attorney General|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."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Halberstam |first1=David |title=The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy |date=1968 |publisher=Random House |page=142}}</ref> 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 [[Law Day Address|speech]] at the [[University of Georgia Law School]]:
{{blockquote|Our position is quite clear. We are upholding the law. The federal government would not be running the schools in [[Massive resistance|Prince Edward County]] any more than it is running the University of Georgia or the schools in my home state of [[Boston desegregation busing crisis#Racial Imbalance Act|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 [[Brown v. Board of Education|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.<ref>{{cite web |title=Kennedy, Robert F.: Address for Law Day Exercises of the University of Georgia Law School, 6 May 1961 |url=https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/jfkwhsfhw-014-013#?image_identifier=JFKWHSFHW-014-013-p0003 |website=John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum |access-date=5 May 2025}}</ref>}}

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.<ref>James Hilty, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Za8TAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA356 ''Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector''] (Temple University Press, 2000), p. 350-361.</ref><ref>Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002)</ref>

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, Alabama|Anniston]] and Birmingham were broadcast around the world. They came at an especially embarrassing time, as President Kennedy was about to have a [[Vienna summit|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 (film)|''Freedom Riders'']] documentary notes that, "The back burner issue of civil rights had collided with the urgent demands of Cold War [[realpolitik]]."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-cold-war/|title=The Cold War &#124; American Experience|website=www.pbs.org}}</ref>

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 [[Civil Rights Address|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:

{{blockquote|quote=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.|Robert Kennedy |''LOOK'' Magazine<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.rfksa.org/magazines/magazine.php?id=6|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050313181151/http://www.rfksa.org/magazines/magazine.php?id=6|title=Ripple of Hope in the Land of Apartheid: Robert Kennedy in South Africa, June 1966|archive-date=March 13, 2005}}</ref>}}

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.<ref name="Risen 2014 76" /> He also presided over [[Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation|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.<ref name="WRH">{{cite web |url=http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/COINTELPRO-FBI.docs.html |title=COINTELPRO Revisited – Spying & Disruption – In Black and White: The F.B.I. Papers |website=What Really Happened}}</ref><ref name="pbsco">{{cite web |title=A Huey P. Newton Story – Actions – COINTELPRO |url=https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html |website=[[PBS]] |access-date=June 23, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080420042603/http://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html |archive-date=April 20, 2008}}</ref> Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs.<ref>Weiner, Tim (2012). Enemies: A History of the FBI (1st ed.). New York: Random House. {{ISBN|978-1-4000-6748-0}}. OCLC 1001918388</ref> 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.<ref>Hersh, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America''. Basic Books. {{ISBN|978-0-7867-1982-2}}. OCLC 493616276</ref> Kennedy directly ordered surveillance on [[James Baldwin]] after their antagonistic racial summit in 1963.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 4384813|title = James Baldwin and the FBI|journal = The Threepenny Review|issue = 77|page = 11|last1 = Campbell|first1 = James|year = 1999}}</ref><ref>Talia Whyte, "[http://www.baystate-banner.com/issues/2008/02/14/news/blackhistory02140890.htm Baldwin: A literary standard] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402133252/http://www.baystate-banner.com/issues/2008/02/14/news/blackhistory02140890.htm |date=April 2, 2015 }}", ''Black History'' 43 (27), February 14, 2009.</ref>

=== Johnson administration: 1963–1969 ===
{{Further|Civil Rights Act of 1964|War on Poverty|Lyndon B. Johnson}}
[[File:LyndonJohnson signs Voting Rights Act of 1965.jpg|thumb|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.<ref>[[David Zarefsky]], ''President Johnson's war on poverty: Rhetoric and history'' (2005).</ref>

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.<ref>Peter J. Ling, "What a difference a death makes: JFK, LBJ, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964." ''The Sixties'' 8#2 (2015): 121–137.</ref>

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.<ref>Robert E. Weems Jr., ''Business in Black and White: American Presidents and Black Entrepreneurs'' (2009).</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |author=Douglas Schoen |author-link=Douglas Schoen |title=The Nixon Effect: How His Presidency Has Changed American Politics |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cgRDCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT34 |year=2015 |publisher=Encounter Books |pages=34–35 |isbn=978-1-59403-800-6}}</ref>

=== 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.<ref name=":Minami">{{Cite book |last=Minami |first=Kazushi |title=People's Diplomacy: How Americans and Chinese Transformed US-China Relations during the Cold War |date=2024 |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |isbn=9781501774157 |location=Ithaca, NY}}</ref>{{Rp|page=34}} In 1968, a mass rally in China condemned the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.<ref name=":Reinders">{{Cite book |last=Reinders |first=Eric |title=Reading Tolkien in Chinese: Religion, Fantasy, and Translation |date=2024 |publisher=[[Bloomsbury Publishing|Bloomsbury]] Academic |isbn=9781350374645 |series=Perspectives on Fantasy series |location=London, UK}}</ref>{{Rp|page=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-imperialism|anti-imperialist]] struggle.<ref name=":Minami" />{{Rp|page=34}} The [[Chinese Communist Party]] echoed this view of the civil rights movement.<ref name=":Reinders" />{{Rp|page=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.<ref name=":Gao">{{Cite book |last=Gao |first=Yunxiang |title=Arise, Africa! Roar, China! Black and Chinese Citizens of the World in the Twentieth Century |date=2021 |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |isbn=9781469664606 |location=Chapel Hill, NC |pages=66}}</ref>

[[Maoism]] influenced some components of the Black liberation movement, including the Black Panther Party and black self-defense advocate [[Robert F. Williams]].<ref name=":Minami" />{{Rp|page=34}}

==== Soviet Union ====
There was an international context for the actions of the U.S. federal government during these years. The Soviet media frequently covered [[Racism in the United States|racial discrimination in the U.S.]]<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/soviet-propaganda-back-in-play-with-ferguson-coverage/511975.html |title=Soviet Propaganda Back in Play With Ferguson Coverage |last1=Quinn |first1=Allison |access-date=December 17, 2016 |date=November 27, 2014 |work=[[The Moscow Times]]}}</ref> Deeming American criticism of [[Human rights in the Soviet Union|its own human rights abuses]] hypocritical, the Soviet government would respond by stating "[[And you are lynching Negroes]]".<ref>{{citation |work=[[The Diplomat (magazine)|The Diplomat]] |access-date=December 17, 2016 |url=https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/the-history-behind-chinas-response-to-the-baltimore-riots/ |title=The History Behind China's Response to the Baltimore Riots |first=David |last=Volodzko |date=May 12, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160428092343/https://thediplomat.com/2015/05/the-history-behind-chinas-response-to-the-baltimore-riots |archive-date=April 28, 2016 |quote=Soon Americans who criticized the Soviet Union for its human rights violations were answered with the famous tu quoque argument: 'A u vas negrov linchuyut' (and you are lynching Negroes).}}</ref> 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 boys|Scottsboro Negro boys]] and why they lynch Negroes."<ref name=sherwoodeddy>{{citation |first=Sherwood |last=Eddy |title=Russia Today: What Can We Learn from It? |pages=73, 151 |publisher=Farrar & Rinehar |year=1934 |location=New York |oclc=1617454}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TyT1r03nTCAC&q=Cold+War+Civil+Rights:+Race+and+the+Image+of+American+Democracy|access-date=July 13, 2019|isbn = 978-0-691-15243-1|last1 = Dudziak|first1 = Mary L.|date = July 31, 2011| publisher=Princeton University Press }}</ref>

== Popular reactions ==
=== Malcolm X's relationship with the movement, 1964–1965 ===
{{Main|Malcolm X|Black Nationalism|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,<ref>{{cite web |title=Cambridge, Maryland, activists campaign for desegregation, USA, 1962–1963 |url=http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/cambridge-maryland-activists-campaign-desegregation-usa-1962-1963 |website=Global Nonviolent Action Database |publisher=[[Swarthmore College]] |access-date=January 13, 2015}}</ref> an honored guest at The March on Washington, immediately embraced Malcolm's offer. Mrs. Richardson, "the nation's most prominent woman [civil rights] leader,"<ref name="BAA"/> 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."<ref name="BAA">{{cite web |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=1mY8AAAAIBAJ&pg=1694,6977757&dq=gloria%20richardson%20malcolm%20x&hl=en |title=Mrs. Richardson okeys Malcolm X |work=Baltimore Afro-American |first1=Wliliam |last1=Worthy |date=Mar 10, 1964 |via=Google News Archive Search |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref> 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..."<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk/sfeature/sf_video_pop_04c_tr_qry.html "The Negro and the American Promise,"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161225033405/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk/sfeature/sf_video_pop_04c_tr_qry.html |date=December 25, 2016 }} produced by Boston public television station WGBH in 1963</ref> 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.<ref>Harlem CORE, [http://harlemcore.com/omeka/items/show/162 "Film clip of Harlem CORE chairman Gladys Harrington speaking on Malcolm X"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304204921/http://harlemcore.com/omeka/items/show/162 |date=March 4, 2016 }}.</ref>

[[File:MLK and Malcolm X USNWR cropped.jpg|thumb|left|[[Malcolm X]] meets with [[Martin Luther King Jr.]], March 26, 1964|alt=Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. speak to each other thoughtfully as others look on.]]

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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/malcolm-x|title=Malcolm X|date=June 29, 2017|website=The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RownbjVryWIC&pg=PT429|title=Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention|first=Manning|last=Marable|date=2011|publisher=Penguin|isbn=978-1-101-44527-3|via=Google Books}}</ref> Malcolm now encouraged Black nationalists to get involved in voter registration drives and other forms of community organizing to redefine and expand the movement.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/mx.html |title=Say it Plain, Say it Loud&nbsp;– American RadioWorks |first=American Public |last=Media |access-date=July 29, 2016}}</ref>

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 [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing|Ku Klux Klan terrorism]] in [[Birmingham campaign|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."<ref>Akinyele Umoja, ''We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement'' (NYU Press, 2013), p. 126</ref> The repression of sit-ins in [[Jacksonville, Florida]], provoked a riot in which black youth threw [[Molotov cocktail]]s at police on March 24, 1964.<ref>Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, ''Regulating the Poor'' (Random House 1971), p. 238; [https://books.google.com/books?id=bBQvmMnKmbcC&pg=PA118 Abel A. Bartley, ''Keeping the Faith: Race, Politics and Social Development in Jacksonville, 1940–1970'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000), 111]</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~public/civilrights/a0146.html |title=The Ballot or the Bullet |access-date=July 29, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150110073828/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~public/civilrights/a0146.html |archive-date=January 10, 2015}}</ref>

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".<ref>Blackside Productions, ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement 1954–1985'', [https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100423154235/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html |date=April 23, 2010 }}, The Time Has Come", Public Broadcasting System</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Lewis |first=John |title=Walking With the Wind |url=https://archive.org/details/walkingwithwindm00lewi |url-access=registration |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1998|isbn=978-0-684-81065-2 }}</ref> 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;<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/docs/flh64.htm Fannie Lou Hamer, Speech Delivered with Malcolm X at the Williams Institutional CME Church, Harlem, New York, December 20, 1964] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160114204507/http://www.crmvet.org/docs/flh64.htm |date=January 14, 2016 }}.</ref> When Malcolm asserted that African Americans should emulate the [[Kenya Land and Freedom Army|Mau Mau army]] of [[Kenya]] in efforts to gain their independence, many in SNCC applauded.<ref>George Breitman, ed. ''Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements'' (Grove Press, 1965), pp. 106–109</ref>

During the [[Selma to Montgomery marches|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:
<blockquote>"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."<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EAhHl-0ERn8C&pg=PA92|title=Pure Fire: Self-defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era|first=Christopher B.|last=Strain|date=2005|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=978-0-8203-2687-0|via=Google Books}}</ref></blockquote>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.<ref>Juan Williams, et al, ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954–1965'' (Penguin Group, 1988), p. 262</ref> 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 [[United States Department of Justice|Department of Justice]], required [[Dallas County, Alabama]], registrars to process at least 100 Black applications each day their offices were open."<ref>Paul Ryan Haygood, [http://www.blackcommentator.com/127/127_guest_malcolm.html "Malcolm's Contribution to Black Voting Rights"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304135106/http://www.blackcommentator.com/127/127_guest_malcolm.html |date=March 4, 2016 }}, ''The Black Commentator''</ref>

=== American Jews ===
{{See also|African American–Jewish relations|New York City teachers' strike of 1968|Brownsville, Brooklyn}}{{Main|Jews in the civil rights movement}}

[[File:March on washington Aug 28 1963.jpg|250px|thumb|Jewish civil rights activist [[Joseph L. Rauh Jr.]] marching with [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] in 1963]]

Many in the [[American Jews|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.<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/relations.html ''From Swastika to Jim Crow''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150722212600/http://www.pbs.org/itvs/fromswastikatojimcrow/relations.html |date=July 22, 2015 }}—PBS Documentary</ref>

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 marches#The march to Montgomery|Selma to Montgomery march]]. In the 1964 [[murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner]], the two white activists killed, [[Andrew Goodman (activist)|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. <!-- In communities experiencing white flight, racial rioting, and urban decay, Jewish Americans were more often the last remaining whites in the communities most affected.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}} --> 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.<ref>Cannato, Vincent "The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his struggle to save New York" Better Books, 2001. {{ISBN|0-465-00843-7}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |title=How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America |author=Karen Brodkin |date=2000 |publisher=Rutgers University Press}}</ref> 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 [[New York City teachers' strike of 1968|1968 New York City teachers' strike]], pitting largely Jewish schoolteachers against predominantly Black parents in [[Brownsville, New York]].<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=va8wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA263 |title=Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot |last=Rogin |first=Michael |date=May 29, 1998 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-21380-7 |pages=262–267 |language=en}}</ref>

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 [[Covenant (law)|covenants]] from being enforced. The act was supported by many Jewish organizations.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://jewishcurrents.org/april-11-the-fair-housing-act |title=April 11: The Fair Housing Act |publisher=[[Jewish Currents]] |accessdate=2025-07-18}}</ref>

==== 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.<ref name="My Jewish Learning" /> However, Klan groups exploited the issue of African-American integration and Jewish involvement in the struggle in order to commit violently antisemitic [[hate crime]]s. 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, Florida|Jacksonville]], and [[Miami]], and [[dynamite]] was found under [[synagogue]]s in [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]], [[Charlotte, North Carolina|Charlotte]], and [[Gastonia, North Carolina]]. Some [[rabbi]]s received [[death threat]]s, but there were no injuries following these outbursts of [[violence]].<ref name="My Jewish Learning">{{cite web |last1=Sachar |first1=Howard |author-link1=Howard Sachar |title=A History of Jews in America |url=http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1948-1980/America/Liberal_Politics/Black-Jewish_Relations/Civil_Rights_Movement.shtml?p=2 |website=My Jewish Learning |publisher=Vintage Books |access-date=March 1, 2015 |date=November 2, 1993  |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140721012334/http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1948-1980/America/Liberal_Politics/Black-Jewish_Relations/Civil_Rights_Movement.shtml?p=2 |archive-date=July 21, 2014}}</ref>

=== 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:

{{blockquote|quote=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.<ref>Winner, Lauren F. "Doubtless Sincere: New Characters in the Civil Rights Cast." In The Role of Ideas in the Civil Rights South, edited by Ted Ownby. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002, pp. 158–159.</ref>}}

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.<ref>Winner, Lauren F., 164–165.</ref> 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.<ref>Winner, Lauren F., 166–167.</ref>

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|Black Power|Black Power movement}}

[[File:John Carlos, Tommie Smith, Peter Norman 1968cr.jpg|thumb|Gold medalist [[Tommie Smith]] ''(center)'' and bronze medalist [[John Carlos]] ''(right)'' showing the [[1968 Olympics Black Power salute|raised fist on the podium]] after the 200&nbsp;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.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.academia.edu/384127 |title=SNCC, the Federal Government & the Road to Black Power |access-date=July 29, 2016|last1=Davies |first1=Tom Adam }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.studythepast.com/4333_spring12/acrm/ACRM%205.1.pdf|title=Allen J. Matusow "From Civil Rights to Black Power: The Case of SNCC", in ''Twentieth-Century America: Recent Interpretations'' (Harcourt Press, 1972), pp. 367–378}}</ref> Meanwhile, during [[Congress of Racial Equality|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.<ref>{{Cite magazine |url=http://www.thenation.com/article/any-means-necessary?page=0,0 |title=By Any Means Necessary |magazine=The Nation |access-date=July 29, 2016 |date=June 18, 2004 |last1=Marqusee |first1=Mike |author-link1=Mike Marqusee |archive-date=March 13, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150313004902/http://www.thenation.com/article/any-means-necessary?page=0,0}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/25hicks.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100427044144/http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/us/25hicks.html |archive-date=April 27, 2010 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Robert Hicks, Leader in Armed Rights Group, Dies at 81|first=Douglas|last=Martin|newspaper=The New York Times|date=April 24, 2010}}</ref>

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, Mississippi|Natchez]]. Charles had taken the lead after his brother [[Medgar Evers]] was assassinated in 1963.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8H9Me8LZ488C&pg=PA206|title=The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement|first=Lance|last=Hill|date=February 1, 2006|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-8078-5702-1|via=Google Books}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/watts-rebellion-los-angeles|title=Watts Rebellion (Los Angeles)|date=June 12, 2017|publisher=Stanford University|access-date=December 3, 2019}}</ref>

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."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html |title=American Experience. ''Eyes on the Prize''. Transcript |publisher=PBS |access-date=July 29, 2016 |archive-date=April 23, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100423154235/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eyesontheprize/about/pt_201.html}}</ref>

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 [[Hair straightening|straightened their hair]]. As a part of affirming their identity, blacks started to wear African-based [[dashiki]]s 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]] [[dual power|community control]] in the ghettos. While they conducted armed confrontation with police, they also set up free breakfast and healthcare programs for children.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4KogCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA273 |title=We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination |last=Rickford |first=Russell |date=January 14, 2016 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-986148-4 |language=en}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D7UwDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA118 |title=Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party |last1=Bloom |first1=Joshua |last2=Martin |first2=Waldo E. |date=October 25, 2016 |publisher=Univ of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-29328-1 |pages=223–236 |language=en}}</ref>

Black Power was taken to another level inside prison walls. In 1966, [[George Jackson (Black Panther)|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.

{{listen
| filename     = Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) sample.ogg
| title        = "Say It Loud&nbsp;– I'm Black and I'm Proud"
| description  = [[James Brown]]'s "[[Say It Loud&nbsp;– I'm Black and I'm Proud]]" (1968)
| filetype     = [[Ogg]]
| pos          = left
}}

Numerous popular cultural expressions associated with black power appeared at this time. Released in August 1968, the number one [[Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs|Rhythm & Blues single]] for the [[Billboard Year-End|''Billboard'' Year-End]] list was [[James Brown]]'s "[[Say It Loud&nbsp;– I'm Black and I'm Proud]]".<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/yearend_chart_display.jsp?f=Hot+R%26B/Hip-Hop+Songs&g=Year-end+Singles&year=1968 |title=Year End Charts&nbsp;– Year-end Singles&nbsp;– Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs |magazine=Billboard |access-date=September 8, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071211040751/http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/charts/yearend_chart_display.jsp?f=Hot+R&B%2FHip-Hop+Songs&g=Year-end+Singles&year=1968 |archive-date=December 11, 2007}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Natives King">{{cite web |last1=Bender |first1=Albert |title=Dr. King spoke out against the genocide of Native Americans |url=http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/dr-king-spoke-out-against-the-genocide-of-native-americans/ |website=People's World |access-date=November 25, 2018 |date=February 13, 2014}}</ref> Native Americans had been [[dehumanized]] as "merciless Indian savages" in the [[United States Declaration of Independence]],<ref>{{cite news |title=Facebook labels declaration of independence as 'hate speech' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/05/facebook-declaration-of-independence-hate-speech |access-date=September 7, 2020 |newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rickert |first1=Levi |title=Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: Our Nation was Born in Genocide |url=https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nation-born-genocide/ |website=Native News Online |access-date=November 25, 2018 |date=January 16, 2017 |archive-date=November 26, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181126092832/https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nation-born-genocide/}}</ref> John Echohawk, a member of the [[Pawnee people|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".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Cook |first1=Roy |title='I have a dream for all God's children,' Martin Luther King Jr. Day |url=http://americanindiansource.com/mlkechohawk.html |website=American Indian Source |access-date=November 25, 2018}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Natives King"/>

=== Northern Ireland ===
{{See also|Northern Ireland civil rights movement}}
[[File:Malcolm X Ireland.jpg|thumb|Mural of [[Malcolm X]] in [[Belfast]]]]

Due to policies of [[Segregation in Northern Ireland|segregation]] and disenfranchisement present in Northern Ireland many Irish activists took inspiration from American civil rights activists. [[People's Democracy (Ireland)|People's Democracy]] had organized a [[Burntollet Bridge incident|"Long March" from Belfast to Derry]] which was inspired by the [[Selma to Montgomery marches]].<ref name=kingireland>{{Cite web |url=https://www.irishcentral.com/opinion/niallodowd/how-martin-luther-king-inspired-north-uprising |title=How Martin Luther King inspired a Northern Ireland uprising|website=irishcentral.com|access-date=September 11, 2020}}</ref> 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".<ref name=civilrightsireland>{{Cite web |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/dr-king-s-impact-fight-civil-rights-northern-ireland-n495701 |title=Dr. King's Impact on the Fight for Civil Rights in Northern Ireland|website=NBC News|date=January 18, 2016 |access-date=September 11, 2020}}</ref>

=== 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.<ref name=NPRprof>{{Cite news |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15290717 |title=White Southerners' Role in Civil Rights
|website=NPR|date=October 15, 2007|access-date=April 19, 2020}}</ref> 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]].<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47477354 |title=The white Southerners who fought US segregation
|work=BBC News
|date=March 12, 2019
|access-date=April 19, 2020}}</ref> 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.<ref name=NPRprof/>

=== White segregationists ===
{{see also|Neo-Nazism#United States}}
[[File:Rc17739 03.jpg|250px|thumb|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 [[Liberalism|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 [[Operation Rolling Thunder|bombing of Vietnam]]. He moved further [[Left-wing politics|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, Illinois|Cicero]], a suburb of Chicago, held "white power" signs and threw stones at marchers who were demonstrating against [[housing segregation]].<ref name="Urgency 7">{{Cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w835AwAAQBAJ&pg=PT128 |title=The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society |last=Zelizer |first=Julian E. |date=January 8, 2015 |publisher=Penguin |isbn=978-1-101-60549-3 |chapter=Chapter Seven}}</ref>

Politicians and journalists quickly blamed this white [[backlash (sociology)|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.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://networks.h-net.org/node/16794/reviews/17020/gillman-klarman-jim-crow-civil-rights-supreme-court-and-struggle-racial |title=Gillman on Klarman, 'From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality' {{!}} H-Law {{!}} H-Net|website=networks.h-net.org|access-date=March 26, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180326202852/https://networks.h-net.org/node/16794/reviews/17020/gillman-klarman-jim-crow-civil-rights-supreme-court-and-struggle-racial|archive-date=March 26, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2000/marchapril/feature/racism-redemption |title=Racism to Redemption |website=National Endowment for the Humanities |access-date=March 26, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171210064143/https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2000/marchapril/feature/racism-redemption |archive-date=December 10, 2017}}</ref> 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 [[California Proposition 14 (1964)|repeal the state's 1963 fair housing law]].<ref name="Urgency 7" />

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] [[38th Vice President of the United States|Hubert Humphrey]] in 1968…only in the South did [[George Wallace]] draw substantially more blue-collar than white-collar support."<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_a0EAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA6 |title=The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South |last=Lassiter |first=Matthew D. |date=October 24, 2013 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-4942-0 |pages=6–7, 302–304}}</ref>

== In popular culture ==
{{Main|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 ==
{{excessive examples|date=April 2025}}
<!-- Note if adding: List is in alphabetical order by last name. -->
{{Div col|colwidth=15em}}
* [[Ralph Abernathy]]
* [[Victoria Gray Adams]]
* [[Muhammad Ali]]
* [[Maya Angelou]]
* [[Louis Austin]]
* [[Ella Baker]]
* [[James Baldwin]]
* [[Marion Barry]]
* [[Daisy Bates (civil rights activist)|Daisy Bates]]
* [[Harry Belafonte]]
* [[Fay Bellamy Powell]]
* [[James Bevel]]
* [[Claude Black (minister)|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 Farmer|James L. Farmer Jr.]]
* [[Walter Fauntroy|Walter E. Fauntroy]]
* [[Karl Fleming]]
* [[Sarah Mae Flemming]]
* [[James Forman]]
* [[Frankie Muse Freeman]]
* [[Andrew Goodman (activist)|Andrew Goodman]]
* [[Fred Gray (attorney)|Fred Gray]]
* [[Jack Greenberg (lawyer)|Jack Greenberg]]
* [[Dick Gregory]]
* [[Prathia Hall]]
* [[Fannie Lou Hamer]]
* [[Lorraine Hansberry]]
* [[Robert Hayling]]
* [[Dorothy Height]]
* [[Lola Hendricks]]
* [[Aaron Henry (politician)|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 (American activist)|James Lawson]]
* [[Bernard Lee (activist)|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 (judge)|Loren Miller]]
* [[Jack Minnis]]
* [[Anne Moody]]
* [[Harry T. Moore]]
* [[E. Frederic Morrow]]
* [[Bob Moses (activist)|Bob Moses]]
* [[William Moyer|Bill Moyer]]
* [[Elijah Muhammad]]
* [[Diane Nash]]
* [[Denise Nicholas]]
* [[E. D. Nixon]]
* [[David Nolan (American author)|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 (activist)|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]]
{{div col end}}

== 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]]

===Post–civil rights movement===
* [[Black Lives Matter]]
* [[Post–civil rights era in African-American history]]

==References==
'''Informational notes'''
{{Notelist}}

'''Citations'''
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |last=Arsenault |first=Raymond |title=Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice |url=https://archive.org/details/freedomriders1960000arse |url-access=registration |publisher=Oxford Press |year=2006}}
* Back, Adina "[http://hisofblackamfall2014.voices.wooster.edu/files/2014/08/Adina_Back_Exposing_the_Whole_Segregation_Myth3.pdf Exposing the Whole Segregation Myth: The Harlem Nine and New York City Schools]" in ''Freedom north: Black freedom struggles outside the South, 1940–1980'', Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, eds.(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).
* Bartley, Abel A. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=bBQvmMnKmbcC&pg=PA118 Keeping the Faith: Race, Politics and Social Development in Jacksonville, 1940–1970]'' (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000)
* Bass, S. Jonathan (2001) ''Blessed Are The Peacemakers: Martin Luther King Jr., Eight White Religious Leaders, and the "Letter from Birmingham Jail"''. Baton Rouge: LSU Press. {{ISBN|0-8071-2655-1}}
* Beito, David T. and Beito, Linda Royster, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=dS4eA77qau0C Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power]'', University of Illinois Press, 2009. {{ISBN|978-0-252-03420-6}}
* Branch, Taylor. ''Parting the waters: America in the King years, 1954–1963''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988
* Breitman, George ed. ''Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements'' (Grove Press, 1965)
* Brown, Jennie ''Medgar Evers'', Holloway House Publishing, 1994
* Bryant, Nicholas Andrew ''The Bystander: John F. Kennedy And the Struggle for Black Equality'' (Basic Books, 2006)
* Cannato, Vincent "The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and his struggle to save New York" Better Books, 2001. {{ISBN|0-465-00843-7}}
* {{Cite book |last=Carson |first=Clayborne |title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1981 |location=Cambridge |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fm9v7KKj_UQC |isbn=978-0-674-44727-1}}
* {{Cite book |last=Chafe |first=William Henry |title=Civilities and civil rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black struggle for freedom |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1980 |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/civilitiescivilr0000chaf_h5c0 |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-19-502625-2}}
* {{cite book |last1=Chafe |first1=William Henry |title=The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II |date=2003 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-515049-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/unfinishedjourne0000chaf|url-access=registration }}
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* Crump, Spencer ''Black riot in Los Angeles: the story of the Watts tragedy'' (1966)
* {{cite book|first1=Mike|last1=Davis|author-link1=Mike Davis (scholar)|first2=Jon|last2=Wiener|author-link2=Jon Weiner|title=[[Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties]]|publisher=Verso Books|location=New York|date=2020}}
* {{Cite book |last=Davis |first=Townsend |title=Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |year=1998 |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/wearyfeetresteds00town |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-393-04592-5}}
* Dudziak, M.L.: ''[https://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-Civil-Rights-Twentieth-Century/dp/0691152438 Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy]''
* {{cite book |last1=Erikson |first1=Erik |title=Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence |date=1969 |publisher=Norton |location=New York |isbn=978-0-393-31034-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/gandhistruth00erik_0 }}
* Eskew, Glenn T. ''But for Birmingham: The Local and National Struggles in the Civil Rights Movement'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1997)
* Fine, Sidney ''Expanding the Frontier of Civil Rights: Michigan, 1948–1968'' (Wayne State University Press, 2000)
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Finkelman |editor1-first=Paul |title=Encyclopedia of African American History |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6gbQHxb_P0QC&pg=RA3-PA199 |year=2009 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-516779-5}}
* {{cite book |last1=Forman |first1=James |title=The Making of Black Revolutionaries |url=https://archive.org/details/makingofblackrev00form |url-access=registration |date=1972 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=978-0-940880-10-8}}
* {{cite book |last1=Friedman |first1=Michael Jay |title=Free at Last: The U. S. Civil Rights Movement |date=2008 |publisher=[[U.S. Department of State]] |url=https://tr.usembassy.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/91/free_at_last.pdf}}
* Garrow, David J. ''Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference'' (HarperCollins, 1987)
* {{cite book |last=Gershenhorn |first=Jerry |year=2018 |title=Louis Austin and ''The Carolina Times'': A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle |publisher=[[University of North Carolina Press]] |location=Chapel Hill, NC }}
* Goluboff, Risa L. ''The Lost Promise of Civil Rights'', Harvard University Press, MA: Cambridge, 2007.
* {{cite book |last1=Gregg |first1=Khyree |title=A Concise Chronicle History of the African-American People Experience in America |publisher=Henry Epps}}
* {{cite book |last1=Hague |first1=Euan |last2=Sebesta |first2=Edward H. |last3=Beirich |first3=Heidi |title=Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction |date=2008 |publisher=University of Texas Press |isbn=978-0-292-71837-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EYnoDAAAQBAJ}}
* Hill, Lance ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=8H9Me8LZ488C&pg=PA206 The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement]'' (University of North Carolina Press, 2006)
* {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Za8TAQAAQBAJ |title=Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector |first=James |last=Hilty |date=2000 |publisher=Temple University Press |isbn=978-1-4399-0519-7}}
* {{cite book |last1=Hoose |first1=Phillip |title=Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice |url=https://archive.org/details/claudettecolvint00hoos |url-access=registration |date=2009 |publisher=Melanie Kroupa Books/Farrar Straus Giroux |location=New York |isbn=978-0-312-66105-2}}
* {{cite book |title=The Nashville Way: Racial Etiquette and the Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City |first=Benjamin |last=Houston |year=2012 |location=Athens |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-4326-6}}
* {{cite book |last1=Jackson |first1=Thomas F. |title=From Civil Rights to Human Rights |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press |location=Philadelphia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6YwXAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA167 |isbn=978-0-8122-0000-3 |date=July 17, 2013}}
* Klarman, Michael J., ''Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement'' [electronic resource] : abridged edition of ''From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality'', Oxford; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.
* Levy, Peter B. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20150924123559/http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters_1800/2148_ch1.pdf The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968]" in ''Baltimore '68 : Riots and Rebirth in an American city'' (Temple University Press, 2011)
* {{cite book |last=Lewis |first=John |title=Walking With the Wind |url=https://archive.org/details/walkingwithwindm00lewi |url-access=registration |publisher=Simon & Schuster |year=1998|isbn=978-0-684-81065-2 }}
* Locke, Hubert G. ''The Detroit riot of 1967'' (Wayne State University Press, 1969)
* [[Rayford Logan|Logan, Rayford]],''The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson''. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997.
* {{Cite book |last=McAdam |first=Doug |title=Freedom Summer |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1988 |isbn=978-0-19-504367-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/freedomsummer00mcad }}
* Marable, Manning ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=RownbjVryWIC&pg=PT429 Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention]'' (Penguin Books, 2011)
* Matusow, Allen J. "[http://www.studythepast.com/4333_spring12/acrm/ACRM%205.1.pdf From Civil Rights to Black Power: The Case of SNCC" in Twentieth Century America: Recent Interpretations] (Harcourt Press, 1972)
* Pinkney, Alphnso and Woock, Roger ''Poverty and Politics in Harlem'', College & University Press Services, Inc., 1970
* Piven, Francis Fox and Cloward, Richard ''Regulating the Poor'' (Random House 1971)
* Piven, Francis Fox and Cloward, Richard ''Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, How They Fail'' (Random House, 1977)
* Ransby, Barbara [https://books.google.com/books?id=SEfOhvXSvZsC&pg=PA213 ''Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision''] (University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
* {{cite book |last=Reeves |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Reeves (American writer) |year=1993 |title=President Kennedy: Profile of Power |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |isbn=978-0-671-64879-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/presidentkennedy00reev_0 }}
* Robinson, Jo Ann & Garrow, David J. (foreword by Coretta Scott King) ''The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It'' (1986) {{ISBN|0-394-75623-1}} Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press.
* {{cite book |title=Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes |last1=Rosenberg |first1=Jonathan |first2=Zachary |last2=Karabell |isbn=978-0-393-05122-3 |year=2003 |publisher=WW Norton & Co |url=https://archive.org/details/kennedyjohnsonth00rose }}
* Saito, Leland T. (1998). ''Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb''. University of Illinois Press.
* {{cite book |last=Schultz |first=Jeffrey D. |title=Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics: African Americans and Asian Americans |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WDV40aK1T-sC&pg=PA284 |year=2002 |publisher=Oryx Press |isbn=978-1-57356-148-8}}
* {{cite book |title=Robert Kennedy and His Times |last=Schlesinger |first=Arthur M. Jr. |isbn=978-0-618-21928-5 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Books |orig-date=1978 |year=2002 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/robertkennedyhis01schl }}
* {{cite book |last=Schoen |first=Douglas |author-link=Douglas Schoen |title=The Nixon Effect: How His Presidency Has Changed American Politics |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cgRDCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT34 |year=2015 |publisher=Encounter Books |isbn=978-1-59403-800-6}}
* {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b8MeAgAAQBAJ |title=American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland |first=Robert O. |last=Self |date=2005 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-1-4008-4417-3}}
* {{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=Jean Edward |title=Grant |date=2001 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=978-0-7432-1701-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/grant00smit|url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/grant00smit/page/544 544] }}
* {{cite book |last1=Stephens |first1=Otis H. Jr. |last2=Scheb |first2=John M. II |title=American Constitutional Law: Civil Rights and Liberties |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tFcwj2yrLcwC&pg=PA528 |year=2007 |publisher=Cengage Learning |isbn=978-0-495-09705-1}}
* Strain, Christopher ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=EAhHl-0ERn8C&pg=PA92 Pure Fire:Self-Defense as Activism in the Civil Rights Era]'' (University of Georgia Press, 2005)
* Sugrue, Thomas J. ''Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North '' (2008). 720pp comprehensive history of civil rights issue in the North, 1930s–2000s [https://archive.org/details/sweetlandofliber0000thom online]
* Sugrue, Thomas J. ''The origins of the urban crisis : race and inequality in postwar Detroit'' (2014) [https://archive.org/details/originsofurbancr0000sugr online] 
* Tucker, William H. ''The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund'', University of Illinois Press (2007)
* Tyson, Timothy B. ''Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of "Black Power"'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1999)
* Umoja, Akinyele ''We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement'' (NYU Press, 2013)
* Weems, Robert E. Jr., ''Business in Black and White: American presidents and Black Entrepreneurs'' (2009)
* {{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AkPnRoKK-XYC&pg=PA54 |title=Power, Protest, and the Public Schools: Jewish and African American Struggles in New York City |first=Melissa F. |last=Weiner |date=2010 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-0-8135-4772-5}}
* Wendt, Simon The Spirit and the Shotgun: Armed Resistance and the Struggle for Civil Rights (University of Florida Press, 2007).
* [[Juan Williams|Williams, Juan]]. ''Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965''. Penguin Books, 1987. {{ISBN|0-14-009653-1}}.
* Winner, Lauren F. "Doubtless Sincere: New Characters in the Civil Rights Cast." In The Role of Ideas in the Civil Rights South, edited by Ted Ownby. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002
* Woodward, C. Vann ''The Strange Career of Jim Crow'', 3rd rev. ed. (Oxford University Press, 1974).
* Young, Coleman ''Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young'' (1994)
* [[David Zarefsky|Zarefsky, David]] ''President Johnson's war on poverty: Rhetoric and history'' (2005)
{{Refend}}

===Further reading===
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* [[Elizabeth Abel|Abel, Elizabeth]]. ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520261839 Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow]''. (U of California Press, 2010).
* Bader, Michael D.M., and Siri Warkentien. "The fragmented evolution of racial integration since the civil rights movement." ''Sociological Science'' 3 (2016): 135–166. [https://sociologicalscience.com/download/vol-3/march/SocSci_v3_135to166.pdf online]
* Barnes, Catherine A. ''Journey from Jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit'' (Columbia UP, 1983).
* {{cite book |last=Bennett |first=Lerone Jr. |author-link=Lerone Bennett Jr. |title=Confrontation Black and White |publisher=Johnson Publishing Company, Inc. |year=1965 |location=Chicago |url=https://archive.org/details/confrontationbla0000unse/page/n9/mode/2up |ref=bennett1965}}
* Bloom, Jack M. ''Class, race, and the civil rights movement'' (Indiana University Press, 2019).
* Branch, Taylor. ''Pillar of fire: America in the King years, 1963–1965''. (1998)
* [[Taylor Branch|Branch, Taylor]]. ''[[At Canaan's Edge: America In the King Years, 1965–1968]]''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006. {{ISBN|0-684-85712-X}}
* Chandra, Siddharth and Angela Williams-Foster. "The 'Revolution of Rising Expectations,' Relative Deprivation, and the Urban Social Disorders of the 1960s: Evidence from State-Level Data." ''Social Science History'', (2005) 29#2 pp:299–332, [https://www.jstor.org/stable/40267877 in JSTOR]
* Cox, Julian. ''Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956–1968,'' Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 2008.
* Eig, Jonathan. ''[[King: A Life]]'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), won Pulitzer Prize.
* Ellis, Sylvia. ''Freedom's Pragmatist: Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights'' (U Press of Florida, 2013).
* Fairclough, Adam. ''To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference & Martin Luther King''. The University of Georgia Press, 1987.
* Faulkenbury, Evan. [https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469652009/poll-power/ Poll Power: The Voter Education Project and the Movement for the Ballot in the American South]. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019.
* Garrow, David J. ''The FBI and Martin Luther King''. New York: W.W. Norton. 1981. Viking Press Reprint edition. 1983. {{ISBN|0-14-006486-9}}. Yale University Press; Revised and Expanded edition. 2006. {{ISBN|0-300-08731-4}}.
* Greene, Christina. ''Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham''. North Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
* Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. ''Black Women in America'' (3 Vol. 2nd ed. 2005; several multivolume editions). Short biographies by scholars.
* Horne, Gerald. ''The Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s''. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 1995. Da Capo Press; 1st Da Capo Press ed. 1997. {{ISBN|0-306-80792-0}}
* Jones, Jacqueline. ''Labor of love, labor of sorrow: Black women, work, and the family, from slavery to the present'' (2009).
* Kasher, Steven. ''The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History'', New York: Abbeville Press, 1996.
* Keppel, Ben. ''Brown v. Board and the Transformation of American Culture'' (LSU Press, 2016). xiv, 225 pp.
* Kirk, John A. ''Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940–1970''. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002. {{ISBN|0-8130-2496-X}}
* Kirk, John A. ''Martin Luther King Jr.'' London: Longman, 2005. {{ISBN|0-582-41431-8}}.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20071014221044/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3651/is_200004/ai_n8888452 Kousser, J. Morgan, "The Supreme Court And The Undoing of the Second Reconstruction," ''National Forum'', (Spring 2000).]
* Kryn, Randall L. "James L. Bevel, The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement", 1984 paper with 1988 addendum, printed in ''We Shall Overcome, Volume II'' edited by David Garrow, New York: Carlson Publishing Co., 1989.
* Levy, Peter B. ''The Civil Rights Movement: A Reference Guide'' (ABC-CLIO, 2019).
* Lowery, Charles D. ''Encyclopedia of African-American civil rights: from emancipation to the present'' (Greenwood, 1992). 
* [[Manning Marable|Marable, Manning]]. ''Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1982''. 249 pages. University Press of Mississippi, 1984. {{ISBN|0-87805-225-9}}.
* [[Doug McAdam|McAdam, Doug]]. ''Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1982.
* [[Doug McAdam|McAdam, Doug]], 'The US Civil Rights Movement: Power from Below and Above, 1945–70', in [[Adam Roberts (scholar)|Adam Roberts]] and [[Timothy Garton Ash]] (eds.), ''Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present''. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. {{ISBN|978-0-19-955201-6}}.
* Minchin, Timothy J. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=hb3ETCCaWV4C Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960–1980]''. University of North Carolina Press, 1999. {{ISBN|0-8078-2470-4}}.
* Morris, Aldon D. ''The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change''. New York: The Free Press, 1984. {{ISBN|0-02-922130-7}}
* {{Cite book |last=Ogletree |first=Charles J. Jr. |author-link=Charles Ogletree |title=All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half Century of ''Brown v. Board of Education'' |location=New York |publisher=W.W. Norton |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-393-05897-0 |url=https://archive.org/details/alldeliberatespe00ogle}}
* [[Charles M. Payne|Payne, Charles M.]] ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520251762 I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle]''. U of California Press, 1995.
* Patterson, James T. [https://archive.org/details/brownvboardofedu2001patt ''Brown v. Board of Education : a civil rights milestone and its troubled legacy'']. Oxford University Press, 2002. {{ISBN|0-19-515632-3}}.
* Raffel, Jeffrey. ''Historical dictionary of school segregation and desegregation: The American experience'' (Bloomsbury, 1998) [https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2a7OEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=HISTORICAL+DICTIONARY+OF+SCHOOL+SEGREGATION+AND+DESEGREGATION&ots=FNVMhQhrqU&sig=IpyhybKlG5BpZFJxVxtOMfHU_q4 online]
* Raiford, Leigh. ''[http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1771 Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare: Photography and the African American Freedom Struggle] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822225520/http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=1771 |date=August 22, 2016 }}''. (U of North Carolina Press, 2011).
* Reed, Thomas Vernon. ''The art of protest: Culture and activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the present'' (U of Minnesota Press, 2019).
* {{cite book |editor=Richardson, Christopher M. |editor2=Ralph E. Luker |title=Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement (2nd ed.) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CafcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PR13 |year=2014 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8108-8037-5}}
* Riches, William. ''The civil rights movement: Struggle and resistance'' (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), short survey
* Sitkoff, Howard. ''The Struggle for Black Equality'' (2nd ed. 2008)
* Smith, Jessie Carney, ed. ''Encyclopedia of African American Business'' (2 vol. Greenwood 2006). [https://books.google.com/books?id=-VYN_LWZwf4C&pg=PA164 excerpt]
* [[Jason Sokol|Sokol, Jason.]] ''[[There Goes My Everything (book)|There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945–1975]]''. (Knopf, 2006).
* [[Alexander Tsesis|Tsesis, Alexander]]. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=A94zj6PYV7gC We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law]''. (Yale University Press, 2008). {{ISBN|978-0-300-11837-7}}
* [[Stephen Tuck|Tuck, Stephen]]. ''We Ain't What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama'' (2011).
{{Refend}}

===Historiography and memory===
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Armstrong |editor1-first=Julie Buckner |title=The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature |date=2015 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-316-24038-0 |pages=xxiv, 209 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JvrIBgAAQBAJ}}
* Berger, Martin A. ''[http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520268647 Seeing through Race: A Reinterpretation of Civil Rights Photography]''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
* Berger, Maurice. ''[https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300121315/all-world-see For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights]''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010.
* Carawan, Candie. ''Sing for freedom: The story of the civil rights movement through its songs'' (NewSouth Books, 2021).
* {{cite journal |last1=Catsam |first1=Derek |title=The Civil Rights Movement and the Presidency in the Hot Years of the Cold War: A Historical and Historiographical Assessment |journal=History Compass |date=January 2008 |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=314–344 |doi=10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00486.x}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Cha-Jua |first1=Sundiata Keita |last2=Lang |first2=Clarence |s2cid=140436349 |title=The 'Long Movement' as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies |journal=The Journal of African American History |date=Spring 2007 |volume=92 |issue=2 |pages=265–288 |doi=10.1086/JAAHv92n2p265}}
* Clayton, Dewey M. "Black Lives Matter and the civil rights movement: A comparative analysis of two social movements in the United States." ''Journal of Black Studies'' 49.5 (2018): 448–480.
* {{cite journal |last1=Eagles |first1=Charles W. |title=Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era |journal=The Journal of Southern History |date=November 2000 |volume=66 |issue=4 |pages=815–848 |doi=10.2307/2588012 |jstor=2588012}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Fairclough |first1=Adam |title=Historians and the Civil Rights Movement |journal=Journal of American Studies |date=December 1990 |volume=24 |issue=3 |pages=387–398 |doi=10.1017/S0021875800033697 |doi-access=free}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Frost |first1=Jennifer |title=Using 'Master Narratives' to Teach History: The Case of the Civil Rights Movement |journal=History Teacher |date=May 2012 |volume=45 |issue=3 |pages=437–446 |url=http://www.societyforhistoryeducation.org/pdfs/M12_Frost.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150412005207/http://www.societyforhistoryeducation.org/pdfs/M12_Frost.pdf |archive-date=2015-04-12 |url-status=live}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Hall |first1=Jacquelyn Dowd |title=The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past |journal=The Journal of American History |date=March 2005 |volume=91 |issue=4 |pages=1233–1263 |doi=10.2307/3660172 |url=http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ows/seminars/tcentury/movinglr/longcivilrights.pdf |jstor=3660172 |access-date=May 16, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190727061353/http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ows/seminars/tcentury/movinglr/longcivilrights.pdf |archive-date=July 27, 2019}}
* Lang, Clarence. "Locating the civil rights movement: An essay on the Deep South, Midwest, and border South in Black Freedom Studies." ''Journal of Social History'' 47.2 (2013): 371–400. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/43305919 Online]
* {{cite journal |last1=Lawson |first1=Steven F. |title=Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement |journal=The American Historical Review |date=April 1991 |volume=96 |issue=2 |pages=456–471 |doi=10.2307/2163219 |jstor=2163219}}
* {{cite book |last1=Lawson |first1=Steven F. |last2=Payne |first2=Charles M. |title=Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1968 |date=1998 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-0-8476-9053-4}}
* {{cite book |last1=Lawson |first1=Steven F. |title=Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the Black Freedom Struggle |date=2003 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=978-0-8131-2693-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/civilrightscross0000laws |url-access=registration}}
* {{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=Charles M. |title=I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle |date=2007 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-25176-2 |pages=413–442 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4eh_iGj2bzsC |chapter=Bibliographic Essay: The Social Construction of History |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4eh_iGj2bzsC&pg=PA413}}
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Robinson |editor1-first=Armstead L. |editor2-last=Sullivan |editor2-first=Patricia |title=New Directions in Civil Rights Studies |date=1991 |publisher=University of Virginia Press |isbn=978-0-8139-1319-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MTn8CT5SNp4C}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Sandage |first1=Scott A. |title=A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939–1963 |journal=The Journal of American History |date=June 1993 |volume=80 |issue=1 |pages=135–167 |doi=10.2307/2079700 |url=http://www.journalofamericanhistory.orgwww.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/lincoln/bibliography/articles/pdf/LIJ-Article-1990s.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402144202/http://www.journalofamericanhistory.orgwww.journalofamericanhistory.org/projects/lincoln/bibliography/articles/pdf/LIJ-Article-1990s.pdf |archive-date=April 2, 2015 |jstor=2079700}}
* {{cite book |editor1-last=Strickland |editor1-first=Arvarh E. |editor2-last=Weems |editor2-first=Robert E. |title=The African American Experience: An Historiographical and Bibliographical Guide |date=2001 |publisher=Greenwood Press |isbn=978-0-313-29838-7}}
* {{cite book |last1=[[Alex Zamalin|Zamalin]] |first1=Alex |title=African American Political Thought and American Culture: The Nation's Struggle for Racial Justice |date=2015 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-137-52810-0 |pages=xii, 192 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RizeCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT6}}
{{Refend}}

===Autobiographies and memoirs===
{{Refbegin|30em}}
* Carson, Clayborne; Garrow, David J.; Kovach, Bill; Polsgrove, Carol, eds. ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941–1963'' and ''Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1963–1973''. New York: [[Library of America]], 2003. {{ISBN|1-931082-28-6|1-931082-29-4}}.
* Dann, Jim. ''Challenging the Mississippi Firebombers, Memories of Mississippi 1964–65''. Baraka Books, 2013. {{ISBN|978-1-926824-87-1}}.
* Holsaert, Faith et al. ''Hands on the Freedom Plow Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC''. University of Illinois Press, 2010. {{ISBN|978-0-252-03557-9}}.
* Malcolm&nbsp;X (with the assistance of [[Alex Haley]]). ''[[The Autobiography of Malcolm X]]''. New York: Random House, 1965. Paperback {{ISBN|0-345-35068-5}}. Hardcover {{ISBN|0-345-37975-6}}.
{{Refend}}

== External links ==
{{Commons category|Civil Rights Movement}}
* [https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/modern-civil-rights-movement.htm/index.htm The Modern Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1964] Information from [[Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument|The National Park Service]]
* [https://home.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/index.htm/index.htm Civil Rights in America] Information from [[National Park Service|The National Park Service]]
* [https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/civil-rights Voices from the Southern Civil Rights Movement] Exhibit – Provided by the [[American Archive of Public Broadcasting]]
* [http://crdl.usg.edu/ Civil Rights Digital Library]&nbsp;– Provided by the [[Digital Library of Georgia]].
* [https://www.crmvet.org/ Civil Rights Movement Archive] – provides movement history, personal stories, documents, and photos (hosted by [[Tougaloo College]])
* [https://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement/civil-rights-movement-timeline Civil Rights Movement Timeline] – Provided by [[History (American TV network)|History.com]] on December 4, 2017, and updated on January 19, 2021. [https://web.archive.org/web/20210119164457/https://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement/civil-rights-movement-timeline Archived] from the original on January 19, 2021
* [http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/civilrightstv/ Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950–1970]&nbsp;– Provided by the [[University of Virginia]].
* Provided by the [[Library of Congress]]:
**[https://guides.loc.gov/civil-rights-in-america/introduction Civil Rights in America: A Resource Guide]
** [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart9.html The Civil Rights Era]&nbsp;– Part of ''The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship'' presentation.
** [https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civilrights/ Voices of Civil Rights]&nbsp;– A project with the collaboration of [[AARP]] and the [[Leadership Conference on Civil Rights]] (LCCR).
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20070630090557/http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/ We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement]&nbsp;– Provided by the [[National Park Service]].
* Provided by [[Southern Poverty Law Center]]:
** [https://www.splcenter.org/20110920/teaching-movement-state-standards-we-deserve "Teaching the Movement: The State Standards We Deserve"]&nbsp;– Part of "Teaching Tolerance" project published on September 19, 2011.
** [https://www.splcenter.org/news/2014/03/27/teaching-tolerance-publishes-guide-teaching-civil-rights-movement "Teaching Tolerance Publishes Guide for Teaching the Civil Rights Movement"]&nbsp;– Part of "Teaching Tolerance" project published on March 26, 2014.
** [http://www.tolerance.org/TTM2014 "Teaching the Movement 2014: The State of Civil Rights Education in the United States"]&nbsp;– Part of "Teaching Tolerance" project published in 2014.
* [http://civilrightsteaching.org/ Civil Rights Teaching]&nbsp;– Provided by [[Teaching for Change]], a [[501(c)(3) organization]].
* [https://snccdigital.org SNCC Digital Gateway]&nbsp;– Profiles and primary documents on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the national civil rights movement organization led by young people. A project of the SNCC Legacy Project, Duke's Center for Documentary Studies, and [[Duke University Libraries]].
*[https://exchange.umma.umich.edu/resources/23901 Collection: "U.S. Civil Rights Movement"] from the [[University of Michigan Museum of Art]]

{{Civil rights movement|state=uncollapsed}}
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[[Category:Civil rights movement| ]]
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