Akinyi Lester
Grade 11 C2
History – NOTES T3
CIVIL SOCIETY AND PROTEST
KEY CONCEPTS
SCLC NAACP
Southern Christian Leadership Conference The NAACP or National Association for
(SCLC), non-sectarian American agency with the Advancement of Coloured People was
headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, established in 1909 and is America’s
established by the Reverend Martin Luther oldest and largest civil rights organization.
King, Jr., and other civil rights activists in It was formed in New York City by white
1957 to coordinate and assist local and black activists, partially in response to
organizations working for the full equality the ongoing violence against African
of African Americans in all aspects of Americans around the country. In the
American life. The organization operated NAACP’s early decades, its anti-lynching
primarily in the South and some border campaign was central to its agenda.
states, conducting leadership-training During the civil rights era in the 1950s and
programs, citizen-education projects, and 1960s, the group won major legal victories
voter-registration drives. The SCLC played a
major part in the civil rights march on Pioneering civil-rights attorney Thurgood
Washington, D.C., in 1963 and in notable Marshall, the head of the NAACP,
antidiscrimination and voter-registration successfully argued the case before the
efforts in Albany, Georgia, court. Marshall, who founded the LDF in
and Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, in the 1940, won a number of other important
early 1960s—campaigns that spurred civil rights cases involving issues such as
passage of the federal Civil Rights voting rights and discriminatory housing
Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of practices. In 1967, he became the first
1965. African American to serve as a Supreme
Court justice.
CORE SNNC
CORE was founded by a group of white and grew out of student sit-ins at lunch counters
black students on the campus of the that had begun in February 1960 in
University of Chicago in 1942. Its founders Greensboro, North Carolina.
drew inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s
practice of nonviolent civil the SNCC, or Student Non-Violent Coordinating
disobedience. CORE sent some of its Committee, was a civil-rights group formed to
members to help in the Montgomery Bus give younger blacks more of a voice in the civil
Boycott, and supported student sit-ins at rights movement. held concerns that SCLC, led
lunch counters across the South. by Martin Luther King Jr., was out of touch with
younger blacks who wanted the movement to
make faster progress
MILITANT ACTIVISTS
vigorously active and aggressive, especially civil rights activist. A leader of the political
in support of a cause: militant reformers. movement dedicated to securing equal
engaged in warfare; fighting. opportunity for members of minority groups.
, DISCRIMINATION
treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favour of or against, a person or thing
based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on
individual merit: racial and religious intolerance and discrimination.
NONVIOLENT PROTEST MARTIN LUTHER KING
Nonviolent protest and Martin Luther King, Jr. was a social activist and
persuasion are “symbolic acts Baptist minister who played a key role in the
of peaceful opposition” often used to American civil rights movement from the mid-
denounce or show dissent toward a specific 1950s
issue or policy
IDEOLOGY ROSA PARKS
An ideology is a set of opinions or beliefs of Rosa Parks invigorated the struggle for racial
a group or an individual. Very equality when she refused to give up her bus
often ideology refers to a set of political seat to a white man in Montgomery,
beliefs or a set of ideas that characterize a Alabama. Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955
particular culture. Capitalism, communism, launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott by
socialism, and Marxism are ideologies. 17,000 black citizens.
RADICAL WHITE SUPREMACY
Radical politics denotes the intent to the belief that white people constitute a
transform or replace the fundamental superior race and should therefore dominate
principles of a society or political system, society, typically to the exclusion or detriment
often through social change, structural of other racial and ethnic groups
change, revolution or radical reform.
JIM CROW
Jim Crow law, in U.S. history, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the South until
the civil rights movement in the 1950s. Jim Crow was the name of a minstrel routine. In
its Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal”
facilities for African Americans did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, ignoring evidence
that the facilities for Black people were inferior to those intended for whites.
From the late 1870s Southern U.S. state legislatures passed laws requiring the separation of
whites from “persons of colour” in public transportation and schools. Segregation was
extended to parks, cemeteries, theatres, and restaurants in an attempt to prevent any contact
between Blacks and whites as equals.
Although the U.S. Constitution forbade outright racial discrimination, every state of the former
Confederacy moved to disfranchise African Americans by imposing biased reading
requirements, stringent property qualifications, or complex poll taxes.
In the U.S. South, Jim Crow laws and legal racial segregation in public facilities existed from the
late 19th century into the 1950s. The civil rights movement was initiated by Black Southerners
in the 1950s and ’60s to break the prevailing pattern of segregation
, WHAT IS CIVIL SOCIETY?
A group of individuals working together, unforced working towards a common goal of interest.
non-governmental organizations that enable the expression of the interests and values of the
public as well as their members for cultural, ethical, political, philanthropic, scientific, and
religious considerations.
Choose to work together towards solving an issue that their collectively care about.
The structure of the Body or an organization is different from the
o the government (state)
o The family (family structures)
o The market (the economy)
METHODS USED BY CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS GAINING POPOULARITY
Not all are equally powerful Civil Society Protest became a major global
Not all are equally free to work on their own trend between 1960 and 1990 as ordinary
Not all last equally well members of the public began to express their
• Strikes opinions through these organizations
• Marches .
• Petitions WHY?
• Sit-ins This was as a result of the inter war period in
• Stay-a ways America were for the first time in almost
• Boycotts 100years the youth of the country were not
sent to fight in wars. This opened the door for
these groups often resort to protest to get political unrest and unsettlement.
their message across as they were Young people rejected the values and social
protesting against an established system norms of their parents’ generation and began
to fight for change.
THE POST WAR SOCIETY
The end of the war period brought about greater need to reconstruct American society’s, this
manifested as a need to return to the prewar normal and a deep phycological need to return
to what they had known. This resulted in the 1950s being more conservative than ever before,
this changed rapidly during the 1960
1. The West had become prosperous as 2. Social Welfare systems had been
economies recovered after the war introduced to address poverty.
3. As a result of both of these factors there 4. The Rock and Roll Revolution which led to
were increasing levels of education. the establishment of a youth sub-culture to
challenge the orthodoxy of their parents
5. New ideas were spread more rapidly in 6. Cold War tension also contributed to these
1950s and 1960s by developments in changes.
media technology – e.g. TV in every
home in USA from the 1950s
, CHAPTER 2 – CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (1955–1968)
THE ORIGINS OF SEGRIGATION IN THE CHALLENGES FACED BY BLACK PEOPLE IN THE
SOUTH SOUTH
In 1863 the federal government outlawed 1. Blacks were given full civil rights including the
slavery in all of the states in America. It right to vote in America
changed the constitution and introduced This didn’t ring true as many African
the practice of racial desegregation. Americans still remained away from the polls
for a variety of reasons.
White state governments in the south 2. governments in the south refused to
refused to desegregate their community’s desegregate their community’s and carry
and carry out the federal law, that required out the federal law
the desegregation of all states. black were still segregated by Jim crow laws
and used separate facilities to their white
They instead in acted their own Jim Crow counterparts
Laws to enforce segregation in their states. “separate but equal “
The KKK was a white supremacist militant 3. There were violently opposed to racial
group that fought the desegregation of the equality and carried out attacks, lynching’s
southern states. There are violently and violently harassed African Americans
opposed to racial equality and carried out Black were killed in the south by anti-
attacks and violently harassed African equality individuals = the civil rights
Americans movement began.
The civil rights movement was mainly a 4. black people did not have equality despite
southern American. Movement. black the federal law the supposable afforded
people did not have equality despite the them this.
federal law the supposable afforded them The reality of black lives in the south was far
this. from the equality promised and this was
challenged during the civil right movement.
LITTLE ROCK ALABAMA + THE LITTLE ROCK NINE
DESEGREGATION CRISIS IN LITTLE ROCK
WHO? WHY ?
Governor Orval (Alabama) Segregationists did not want schools to be
Faubus, President Eisenhower,NAACP, desegregated and they did not want the
Nine African American students government to interfere in Arkansas politics
WHEN + WHERE ? WHAT ?
1945 – federal ruling for the desegregation of Governor Faubus and segregationists tried to
all American public schools stop the desegregation of Central High, Little
1957 – the little rock education department Rock. The Alabama state troopers were called in
admitted 9 black students to their central to prevent the students from attending school
high school, Little rock high school Alabama Pres Kennedy sent in federal troops to assure
the safety of the nine students
Eisenhower enforces desegregation
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus removed the National Guard from the school only after a
federal district court ordered him to do so on September 20. On September 24, President
Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and ordered more than a thousand
federal troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock. It was the first time that federal troops
had been deployed in a southern state since the end of Reconstruction in 1877
