a year and dramatized to the American public the determination of blacks in the
South to end segregation. A federal court ordered Montgomery’s buses
desegregated in November 1956, and the boycott ended in triumph. A young Baptist
minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., was president of the Montgomery
Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. The protest
made King a national figure. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and
American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and
outside the South. King became the president of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) when it was founded in 1957. SCLC wanted to
complement the NAACP legal strategy by encouraging the use of nonviolent, direct
action to protest segregation. These activities included marches, demonstrations,
and boycotts. The violent white response to black direct action eventually
forced the federal government to confront the issues of injustice and racism in
the South. In addition to his large following among blacks, King had a powerful
appeal to liberal Northerners that helped him influence national public opinion.
His advocacy of nonviolence attracted supporters among peace activists. He
forged alliances in the American Jewish community and developed strong ties to
the ministers of wealthy, influential Protestant congregations in Northern
cities. King often preached to those congregations, where he raised funds for
SCLC. The Sit-Ins
On February 1, 1960, four black college students at North Carolina A&T
University began protesting racial segregation in restaurants by sitting at
“white-only” lunch counters and waiting to be served. This was not a new form of
protest, but the response to the sit-ins in North Carolina was unique. Within
days sit-ins had spread throughout North Carolina, and within weeks they were
taking place in cities across the South. Many restaurants were desegregated. The
sit-in movement also demonstrated clearly to blacks and whites alike that young
blacks were determined to reject segregation openly. In April 1960 the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina,
to help organize and direct the student sit-in movement. King encouraged SNCC’s
creation, but the most important early advisor to the students was Ella Baker,
who had worked for both the NAACP and SCLC. She believed that SNCC should not be
part of SCLC but a separate, independent organization run by the students. She
also believed that civil rights activities should be based in individual black
communities. SNCC adopted Baker’s approach and focused on making changes in
local communities, rather than striving for national change. This goal differed
from that of SCLC which worked to change national laws. During the civil rights
movement, tensions occasionally arose between SCLC and SNCC because of their
different methods. Freedom Riders
After the sit-ins, some SNCC members participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides
organized by CORE. The Freedom Riders, both black and white, traveled around the
South in buses to test the effectiveness of a 1960 Supreme Court decision. This
decision had declared that segregation was illegal in bus stations that were
open to interstate travel. The Freedom Rides began in Washington, D.C. Except
for some violence in Rock Hill, South Carolina, the trip southward was peaceful
until they reached Alabama, where violence erupted. At Anniston one bus was
burned and some riders were beaten. In Birmingham, a mob attacked the riders
when they got off the bus. They suffered even more severe beatings by a mob in
Montgomery, Alabama. The violence brought national attention to the Freedom
Riders and fierce condemnation of Alabama officials for allowing the violence.
The administration of President John Kennedy interceded to protect the Freedom
Riders when it became clear that Alabama state officials would not guarantee
safe travel. The riders continued on to Jackson, Mississippi, where they were
arrested and imprisoned at the state penitentiary, ending the protest. The
Freedom Rides did result in the desegregation of some bus stations, but more
importantly, they demonstrated to the American public how far civil rights
workers would go to achieve their goals.
SCLC Campaigns
SCLC’s greatest contribution to the civil rights movement was a series of highly
publicized protest campaigns in Southern cities during the early 1960s. These
protests were intended to create such public disorder that local white officials
and business leaders would end segregation in order to restore normal business
activity. The demonstrations required the mobilization of hundreds, even
thousands, of protesters who were willing to participate in protest marches as
long as necessary to achieve their goal and who were also willing to be arrested
and sent to jail. The first SCLC direct-action campaign began in 1961 in Albany,
Georgia, where the organization joined local demonstrations against segregated
public accommodations. The presence of SCLC and King escalated the Albany
protests by bringing national attention and additional people to the
demonstrations, but the demonstrations did not force negotiations to end
segregation. During months of protest, Albany’s police chief continued to jail
demonstrators without a show of police violence. The Albany protests ended in
failure. In the spring of 1963, however, the direct-action strategy worked in
Birmingham, Alabama. SCLC joined the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a local civil
rights leader, who believed that the Birmingham police commissioner, Eugene
“Bull” Connor, would meet protesters with violence. In May the SCLC staff
stepped up antisegregation marches by persuading teenagers and school children
to join. The singing and chanting adolescents who filled the streets of
Birmingham caused Connor to abandon restraint. He ordered police to attack
demonstrators with dogs and firefighters to turn high-pressure water hoses on
them. The ensuing scenes of violence were shown throughout the nation and the
world in newspapers, magazines, and most importantly, on television. Much of the
world was shocked by the events in Birmingham, and the reaction to the violence
increased support for black civil rights. In Birmingham white leaders promised
to negotiate an end to some segregation practices. Business leaders agreed to
hire and promote more black employees and to desegregate some public
accommodations. More important, however, the Birmingham demonstrations built
support for national legislation against segregation.
Desegregating Southern Universities
In 1962 a black man from Mississippi, James Meredith, applied for admission to
University of Mississippi. His action was an example of how the struggle for
civil rights belonged to individuals acting alone as well as to organizations.
The university attempted to block Meredith’s admission, and he filed suit. After
working through the state courts, Meredith was successful when a federal court
ordered the university to desegregate and accept Meredith as a student. The
governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, defied the court order and tried to
prevent Meredith from enrolling. In response, the administration of President
Kennedy intervened to uphold the court order. Kennedy sent federal marshals with
Meredith when he attempted to enroll. During his first night on campus, a riot
broke out when whites began to harass the federal marshals. In the end, 2 people
were killed, and about 375 people were wounded. When the governor of Alabama,
George C. Wallace, threatened a similar stand, trying to block the desegregation
of the University of Alabama in 1963, the Kennedy Administration responded with
the full power of the federal government, including the U.S. Army, to prevent
violence and enforce desegregation. The showdowns with Barnett and Wallace
pushed Kennedy, whose support for civil rights up to that time had been
tentative, into a full commitment to end segregation.
The March on Washington
The national civil rights leadership decided to keep pressure on both the
Kennedy administration and the Congress to pass civil rights legislation by
planning a March on Washington for August 1963. It was a conscious revival of A.
Philip Randolph’s planned 1941 march, which had yielded a commitment to fair
employment during World War II. Randolph was there in 1963, along with the
leaders of the NAACP, CORE, SCLC, the Urban League, and SNCC. Martin Luther King,
Jr., delivered the keynote address to an audience of more than 200,000 civil
rights supporters. His “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the giant sculpture
of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, became famous for how it expressed
the ideals of the civil rights movement. Partly as a result of the March on
Washington, President Kennedy proposed a new civil rights law. After Kennedy was
assassinated in November 1963, the new president, Lyndon Johnson, strongly urged
its passage as a tribute to Kennedy’s memory. Over fierce opposition from
Southern legislators, Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through
Congress. It prohibited segregation in public accommodations and discrimination
in education and employment. It also gave the executive branch of government the
power to enforce the act’s provisions.
Voter Registration
The year 1964 was the culmination of SNCC’s commitment to civil rights activism
at the community level. Starting in 1961 SNCC and CORE organized voter
registration campaigns in heavily black, rural counties of Mississippi, Alabama,
and Georgia. SNCC concentrated on voter registration, believing that voting was
a way to empower blacks so that they could change racist policies in the South.
SNCC worked to register blacks to vote by teaching them the necessary skills-
such as reading and writing-and the correct answers to the voter registration
application. SNCC worker Robert Moses led a voter registration effort in McComb,
Mississippi, in 1961, and in 1962 and 1963 SNCC worked to register voters in the
Mississippi Delta, where it found local supporters like the farm-worker and
activist Fannie Lou Hamer. These civil rights activities caused violent
reactions from Mississippi’s white supremacists. Moses faced constant terrorism
that included threats, arrests, and beatings. In June 1963 Medgar Evers, NAACP
field secretary in Mississippi, was shot and killed in front of his home.
In 1964 SNCC workers organized the Mississippi Summer Project to register blacks
to vote in that state. SNCC leaders also hoped to focus national attention on
Mississippi’s racism. They recruited Northern college students, teachers,
artists, and clergy-both black and white-to work on the project, because they
believed that the participation of these people would make the country more
concerned about discrimination and violence in Mississippi. The project did
receive national attention, especially after three participants, two of whom
were white, disappeared in June and were later found murdered and buried near
Philadelphia, Mississippi. By the end of the summer, the project had helped
thousands of blacks attempt to register, and about 1000 had actually become
registered voters.
The Summer Project increased the number of blacks who were politically active
and led to the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). When
white Democrats in Mississippi refused to accept black members in their
delegation to the Democratic National Convention of 1964, Hamer and others went
to the convention to challenge the white Democrats’ right to represent
Mississippi. In a televised interview, Hamer detailed the harassment and abuse
experienced by black Mississippians when they tried to register to vote. Her
testimony attracted much media attention, and President Johnson was upset by the
disturbance at the convention where he expected to be nominated for president.
National Democratic Party officials offered the black Mississippians two
convention seats, but the MFDP rejected the compromise offer and went home.
Later, however, the MFDP challenge did result in more support for blacks and
other minorities in the Democratic Party.
In early 1965 SCLC employed its direct-action techniques in a voting-rights
protest initiated by SNCC in Selma, Alabama. When protests at the local
courthouse were unsuccessful, protesters began a march to Montgomery, the state
capital. As the marchers were leaving Selma, mounted police beat and tear-gassed
them. Televised scenes of that violence, called Bloody Sunday, s