Buses and Lunch Counters

Movements to Integrate Public Accommodations

1955 - Montgomery Bus Boycott• Rosa Parks, seamstress and former secy NAACP, arrested for

refusing to give up seat, Dec. 1• Revs. Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King organize

boycott.• Demand first come first served seating, courteous treatment,

black drivers on black routes.• Bus company loses $ - 2/3 patrons are black• King’s home (+ 2 other leaders) dynamited• Boycott lasts one year -- brings support for non-violent

movement, visibility for MLK• 1956 - SC rules that Montgomery buses must desegregate• 1957 - MLK founds Southern Christian Leadership Conference

(SCLC) to mobilize black churches

Sit-in Movement• Feb 1960, Greensboro, NC: 4 freshmen from all black

NCA&T to Woolworth’s and sit at lunch counter. Spontaneous.

• Refused service, told to stand. Stayed until closing. No arrests

• 23 others join them on day 2. By end of week spread to other stores and other colleges, including local white colleges.

• Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organizes larger boycott of Woolworth and Kress, sit-ins in other cities.

• Business drops• July 1960 -- Two stores desegregate lunch counters.• Launches wave direct confrontational, nonviolent protest.• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Freedom Riders 1961• May 1961: CORE sponsors 13 white and black riders on 2

buses DC to NOLA• One bus firebombed in Anniston, AL, others assaulted in

Birmingham.• CORE bows out, but SNCC continues rides• Violence on national TV forces Kennedy admin to intervene,

ask AL Gov. for protection. Promised, but reneges.• Hundreds imprisoned in AL.• Fall 1961, RFK convinces ICC to enforce 1960 SC ruling

banning segregation interstate travel.• http://www.teachersdomain.org/resource/

fr11.soc.civil.tactics.frchange/

Birmingham 1963• “Bombingham” - 50 unsolved bombings, most segregated city in US• 1962 Fred Shuttlesworth invites MLK to lead all-out campaign vs.

discrimination. MLK hoping publicity will draw in Kennedy admin.

• Segregationist Bull Connor controls police and fire.• April: SCLC organizes sit-ins, marches, boycotts. 65 days and

nights, among largest protests of mvmt.• King arrested: “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”• King encourages public school children to participate.• Firehoses -- thousands of arrests. Leads the national news.• RFK pressures white and black leaders to come to terms:

businesses and facilities desegregated, protestors released.• http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=3992351n

March on Washington, Aug 1963• Militant black leaders impatient with MLK:

critical of Birmingham deal. Bombing of civil rights leaders continued.

• MLK wants meeting with Kennedy. March to create pressure for action.

• Kennedy worries march will compromise civil rights legislation, militants see it as accomodationist.

• 200,000 attend. • MLK meets with Kennedy afterwards• http://ia700402.us.archive.org/29/items/MLKDream/MLKDream_64kb.mp3

Questions on “I Have a Dream”

• Audience(s)

• Purpose(s)

• Main points

• Why is speech considered great? Consider imagery, themes, rhetorical devices.

Civil Rights Act 1964

• No discrimination in– Public Accommodations– Employment– [School Desegregation]– [Voting]

• Proposed by JFK two days before assassination, passed under Johnson

Freedom Summer

• 1962 – 6% of African-Americans in Miss. registered to vote

• 1963 – local civil rights leaders organize voter registration drives and education activities

• Summer 1964 – white college kids from North to Miss. for voter registration

• Three participants jailed. Police notify KKK of their release. Found murdered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op6YLm8XxeA

Voting

• 24th Amendment (1964)– No poll taxes– Breedlove case had upheld, only in 6 states

• Voting Rights Act (1965)– No literacy tests– Federal examiners can register voters– Federal “pre-clearance” of voting changes, 7

Southern states