Civil Rights Movement

On August 28, 1963, Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King held the march on Washington. This march was a collaborative effort of all anti-racist organizations. The march was a success. King delivered his “I have a Dream” speech to about 300,000 people in front of the Lincoln statue. After the march, King met at the White House with president Kennedy and other civil rights leaders.

Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10,1964. He was the youngest man to ever recieve that award at 35 years of age.

On August 6, 1965 Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act suspended poll taxes and literary tests which hindered blacks from voting. If voting discrimination continued, the Attorney General of the United States had the right to send a Federal examiners to replace local registrars. The act had a very positive effect on African-Americans.

One day after King delivered his famous “Mountaintop” sermon, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Riots broke out in more than 110 cities in the days following this tragedy. The day before his funeral on April 8, Coretta Scott King led 20,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis. The following day she led 150,000 marchers on a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta.

The american jewish community supported the civil rights movement and many were more actively involved in it than most whites. Jews were a major part of most civil rights organizations and they would stand and even be arrested with blacks. By the end of World War II, more than half the black population in the country lived in northern cities rather than southern rural areas. Most lived in these areas for better job oppurtunities, education, and to escape segregation. Although the KKK wasn’t as prevalent in the civil rights era, there was problems for blacks getting jobs because they were the last to enter the industrial field. Also since they did not make as much money, they often ended up in the lowest ranked schools academically that hardly contained whites. Many riots broke out. One thing that often stirred up riots was the unfair treatment of white officers to blacks.

In the mid-1960’s a new idea came about – Black Power. Black Power expressed a range of goals ranging from the defense against racial oppression to the establishment of separate, distinct social societies and a self-suffucient economy. The first person to use the term “Black Power” to refer to these goals was Kwame Ture. Several people who started engaging in this movement took on a sense of black pride. They started demanding that whites start referring to them as “Afro-Americans” instead of “Negroes”. Black Power really took of when supported by a extremist group called the Black Panthers. This group was led by the ideaology of Malcolm X and Nation of Islam. They followed an “any means necessary” doctrine. They sought to rid the nation of police brutality and used the saying “Power to the People”. The civil rights movement took place in other places than just neighborhoods and towns. It had a huge effect on prisons and jails also. Many jails had trustee systems which was where some prisoners were given power over others. This led to hundreds of rapes, beatings, and murders in jails and prisons. So in a decisive case named Gates vs. Collier, four inmates sued their superintendent for violating their constitutional rights. The court ruled in favor of the inmates, and all jails and prisons were desegregated and the trustee system was abolished.