The Nonviolent Civil Rights Movement

• Overview• Origins• Main features• Organizations• Early Events

• Freedom Rides• Events• Aftermath• In what ways did the early movement succeed and fail? • Could the violent movements of the late 1960s-early 1970s be avoided?

Civil Rights > March on Washington Movement Flyer, ca. 1941 and a photograph of March on Washington, 1963

Civil Rights > Features of the early Civil Rigths movement

Nonviolent

Integrated

Focused on the South

Focused on legal rights rather than poverty issues

Important groups: students, African-American Church, grassroots movement

Civil Rights > Organizations

SCLC - Southern Christian Leadership Conference

CORE - Congress on Racial Equality

SNCC - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Civil Rights > Events

1954 Brown v. Board of Education

1955 Rosa Parks and Montgomery Bus Boycott

1960 Greensboro sit-ins

1961 Freedom Rides

1963 Birmingham protests

1964 Freedom Summer

1965 Selma marches - the last great integrated Civil Rights event

Civil Rights > Thurgood Marshall, who won the “whites-only” Democratic primaries case in 1944 and Brown v. Board of Education in 1954

Civil Rights > ML King speech in Montgomery, Alabama December 5, 1955

Just the other day, just last Thursday to be exact, one of the finest citizens in Montgomery (Amen)--not one of the finest Negro citizens (That's right) but one of the finest citizens in Montgomery--was taken from a bus (Yes) and carried to jail and arrested (Yes) because she refused to get up to give her seat to a white person. (Yes, That's right) Now the press would have us believe that she refused to leave a reserved section for Negroes, (Yes) but I want you to know this evening that there is no reserved section. (All right) The law has never been clarified at that point. (Hell no) Now I think I speak with, with legal authority--not that I have any legal authority, but I think I speak with legal authority behind me (All right)--that the law, the ordinance, the city ordinance has never been totally clarified. (That's right)

…

We are here, we are here this evening because we're tired now. (Yes) [Applause] And I want to say, that we are not here advocating violence. (No) We have never done that. (Repeat that, Repeat that) [Applause] I want it to be known throughout Montgomery and throughout this nation (Well) that we are Christian people. (Yes) [Applause] We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus. (Well) The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest. (Yes) [Applause] That's all.

Civil Rights > School Segregation protest

Civil Rights > Little Rock, Ark., 1957

Civil Rights > Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby Bridges, New Orleans, 1964

Civil Rights > Martin Luther King speaking at the March on Washington, August 28, 1963

Civil Rights > Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

Civil Rights > Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

Civil Rights > Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

Civil Rights > Freedom Summer, 1964

Civil Rights > Selma march, 1965