Kriss-Ann Gayle

1st Period
10/4/14
The Civil Rights Movement
The 1950s to 1970s was the peak of the Civil Rights movement. By 1950s African
Americans began to come together to fight against discrimination and segregation. They
struggled to gain equality in education, housing, employment opportunities, and to attain
acceptance into society. They strived to make a change so that one day African Americans
would be expected to have the same rights as whites.They used various methods to stimulate
change. These methods included violent, non-violent, and legal and overall had an immense
impact on the movement despite some drawbacks.
The first course, violence, was very defective but was not completely ineffective. The
civil rights activists that used violence thought that non-violence didnt really make difference so
they needed to do more. The prime example of violent acts promoted by black activist was the
Black Panther Party founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. While they did things like
institute social programs to end poverty and improve health among inner city blacks, these acts
were overshadowed by their violent and militant acts. The Black Panther Party platform included
ending the atrocities the police have committed against blacks by organizing black defense
groups (Doc I), employment for blacks, the right to manage black affairs, etc. They advocated
Black Power (support of rights and political power for black people) and Black Nationalist
(advocacy of separate national status for blacks).The Black Panther Party originally were for
non-violence even though they supported self defense. They became more and more violent
because they felt the need to use arms to protect themselves from corrupt cops . They believed
that they had to defend themselves and that taking up arms was the answer (Doc J). The Black
Panther Partys reputation was tarnished by shootouts involving the cops between 1967-1968,
most notably the shootout on April 6, 1968 that left ninety civilians and four cops dead.
Numerous members of the party were arrested. Several other instances occurred that
blackened the partys name. Despite a tarnished reputation the Black Panther Party did make

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advances such as the Free Breakfast for Children Program, clothing distribution, classes on
politics and economics, free medical clinics, lessons on self-defense and first aid, transportation
to upstate prisons for family members of inmates, an emergency-response ambulance program,
drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease. The Black Panther Party was
deeply influenced by Malcolm X. X taught Blacks that they were better than whites and they
should separate themselves from whites in the separatist movement. He frowned upon Martin
Luther King Jr.s teachings as nothing but a dream. Malcolm X stated, I am for violence if nonviolence means we continue postponing to the American black mans problem just to avoid
violence. He led various violent protests that actually set back the Civil Rights movement, as
this only made made people discriminate against blacks more. He encouraged blacks to
exercise their right to vote in his The Ballot or the Bullet speech but also said if they were
continually denied this right by the government it would be necessary for them to take up arms.
He told blacks that violent acts and harmful crimes would lead them to freedom from the whites.
Despite this interfering with the progress of the Civil Right movement, Xs teachings did
influence the movement to some extent. He raised the self esteem of blacks and reconnected
them to their roots. His teachings also helped to form all new movements such as the Black
Panther Party. Malcolm X was originally a member of the Nation of Islam before he broke away.
The Nation of Islam, founded by Elijah Muhammad, had similar beliefs to Malcolm X. They
defended violent protesting in order for blacks to achieve their goals.Though this method in
some ways had the opposite effect, they clearly made some advances as well such as boosting
black morale, establishing local temples, and black businesses and schools. The Nation of
Islams name was ashened after they later assassinated Malcolm X after he relinquished his
membership, went to Mecca and joined Islam. Markedly, using violence was a faulty method but
it obviously did have some effects.
On the contrary, non-violence conspicuously boosted the Civil Rights movement . The

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advocators of non-violence believed that if they protested peacefully and campaigned for
change in a civil manner, their cause would reach more people. For Example, Martin Luther
King Jr. a clergyman and noteworthy activist, was inspired to use nonviolence by Henry David
Thoreau, the father of non-violence, and Gandhi. He used persuasion, sit-ins, marches,
boycotts, non-cooperation, nonviolent intervention, and numerous other forms of nonviolence.
He hoped to use nonviolence to make everyone more aware of the problem at hand and unable
to sit back and do nothing (Doc D). Even though some disagreed with his methods and didnt
believe he was making any headway (Malcolm X), this was obviously not the case. This is
established by the Rosa Parks Incident. Rosa Parks, another civil rights activist who also
promoted non-violence, refused to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery bus and
was arrested. This was followed by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by Edgar Nixon,
yet another civil rights leader using nonviolence, and led by Martin Luther King Jr. The boycott
resulted in the desegregation of all Montgomery public buses. Another of Martin Luther King
Jr.s many achievements included the establishment of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) along with other nonviolent advocates such as Ralph Abernathy, Fred
Shuttlesworth, Bayard Rustin, and Joseph Lowery. They organized black churches in order to
conduct non-violent protest in the service of Civil Rights reform. These protests helped to free
blacks of constraints and rise up from their oppressed disposition (Doc G). King and the SCLC
also got involved in the Albany Movement in Albany, Georgia. This movement mobilized
thousands of citizens to take a stance against segregation, though the movement eventually
deteriorated because of lack of change, it provided a lesson in tactics for the national Civil
Rights movement. King also got involved with the Birmingham Campaign, along with Rev Wyatt
T. Walker, to end the citys segregated civil and discriminatory economic policies. This protest
ended with Jim Crow signs coming down in Birmingham and public places becoming more open
to blacks. Additionally, proceeded to joined forces with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

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Committee (SNCC) in Selma, Alabama. The SNCC, along with Fannie Lou Hammer and the
support of King and the SCLC, then pushed to promote the right of blacks to be treated just like
any other first-class citizen of America (Doc E). This prompted a local judge to ban a gathering
of more than three people sponsored by SNCC, and SCLC. This was later defied by King when
he spoke at Brown Chapel in 1965. King then

lead the March on Washington where he

delivered his famous I have a dream speech, with the help of Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE), which electrified and inspired people to act against inequality. King also supported
Freedom rides conducted by CORE with participant Stokely Carmichael, another non-violent
activist. Kings non-violent methods reached President Lyndon B. Johnson and they
collaborated to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act (Doc H). It is apparent that non-violence was a
very successful method in governing the Civil Rights movement.
The final method was legal and this method was perhaps the most effective. It was also
probably the most difficult way to go about doing thing since legal change was met with such
heavy resistance. One of the most memorable legal measures taken to push the movement was
the the passing of Affirmative Action in President Kennedys Executive Order 10925. Affirmative
action refers to minorities, particularly blacks, being underrepresented in employment, schools,
etc. Affirmative Action sets a quota for minorities to have equal opportunities and rebuffs
segregation. This was a huge step that activists had been working towards for some time. Of
course it was met with a lot of blockades as people complained that it was reverse
discrimination. It was said that blacks were getting better treatment such as in Salem State
College where the Afro Am society received more money than everyone else and were
supposedly treated as superior (Doc K). Another case that greatly aided the Civil Rights
movement was Brown Vs. Board of Education case. The NAACP, an African American Civil
Rights Organization, named Oliver L. Brown as the plaintiff and proceeded to take the case to
the supreme court in hopes of reversing the Plessy Vs. Ferguson case which legalized

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segregation. Brown (along with twelve other parents in Topeka, Kansas) was very disgruntled
with segregation laws because he felt the education of whites was superior to that of a black
person. The supreme court unanimously decided to strike down segregation, essentially erasing
the Plessy Vs. Ferguson case. Many states were unhappy that schools were now integrated
and resisted this change. Some states still refused to allow blacks in their school. Virginia was a
key opponent to the Brown Vs. Board of Education decision and proposed the Massive
Resistance policy to prevent desegregation (Doc A). They were very defiant in integrating their
schools as dramatized by U.S senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. who controlled Virginias politics. He
promoted the southern manifesto opposing integrated schools and signed by more than one
hundred southern office holders. In Norfolk, Virginia, things got so bad that schools were closed
upon grounds that they would again reopen when they agreed to be integrated. The people of
Norfolk had to decide whether they wanted to petition the governor to return control schools to
the city or not. It was made clear that in event that these schools were returned to the cities,
parents of kids going to public school would have to pay heavy tuition to counter loss of funds
(Doc B). The ballot made clear that the commonwealth of Virginia would stop funding integrated
schools. The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals said this was in conflict with the state
constitution and ordered all state schools to be funded integrated or not. Several massive
resistance law were then abolished and Norfolks schools became desegregated. Even though it
was a difficult road, the legal way eventually came through. In other respects, Thurgood
Marshall also made major achievements legally. He believed promoting the rights of blacks the
legal way was the most logical way to go about things. He was recruited by the NAACP as a
legal counsel and continued to encouraged collaboration between the NAACP and FBI. His first
big victory was in the Murray Vs. Pearson case against the University of Marylands segregation
policy. He also won the case Chambers Vs. Florida stating that a confession obtained by police
coercion isnt evidence. This was a breakthrough in the civil rights movement as blacks (or

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10/4/14
anyone else) could no longer be forced to give a confession. President Lyndon B. Johnson was
also highly involved in the civil rights movement and appointed Marshall as Solicitor General
because he felt it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it. Thurgood Marshall was
key in Brown Vs. Board of education decision and so many other cases that boosted the Civil
Rights movement. Resistance grew with these breakthroughs, for example, the governor of
Alabama, George Wallace, made it clear in his inaugural speech that he believed segregation
was the right thing to do and the south should stick to such policies (Doc C). This reached many
whites and encouraged them to continue to support segregation. Still, the movement continued
to progress tremendously through law ie. the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Influenced by Martin
Luther King Jr., ending major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious
minorities, and women. Another headway activists achieved in the movement was the Rumford
Fair Housing Act passed by the state of California to prevent discrimination when selling
houses. Now blacks could buy houses in California without fear of being rejected because of
their race. This was halted by California Proposition 14 which said that the state nor anyone
else could prohibit people from selling their house to who they felt comfortable selling it to (Doc
F). This was an interruption to the progress of the Civil Rights movement through law, however,
it was later brought up to the supreme court and struck down as unconstitutional. It is evident
that legalities were very effective in urging on the Civil Rights movement.
In conclusion, the methods used by Civil Rights leaders to assist change were violent,
non-violent and legal. Violence was a bit inadequate but did cause some changes, non-violence
had major changes and legal proved to administer the most changes. These changes went
towards creating a brighter America where everyone would truly be equal. Had these changes
not occurred, where blacks of todays generation would be.