Black American Experience

and Civil Rights Movement

African American Abolitionists

• Frederick Douglass

– Narrative of the Life of

Frederick Douglass, an
American Slave

– The North Star

Slavery, Emancipation, End of

Slavery, Reconstruction and Civil

Rights

• Slavery issues in American history
• Emancipation Proclamation
• 13th Amendment
• 14th Amendment
• 15th Amendment
• RECONSTRUCTION

Civil Rights Act of 1875

• "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States

shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the
accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of
inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and
other places of public amusement; subject only to the
conditions and limitations established by law, and
applicable alike to citizens of every race and color,
regardless of any previous condition of servitude"

• Civil Rights Cases (1883)

– The 14th amendment applies to government, not to private

actions of individuals

– hence the the federal government does

not have authority to outlaw racial discrimination by individuals
and organizations

– Civil Rights Act of 1875 – unconstitutional
– segregation sanctioned

Plessy v. Fergusson (1896)

• New Orleans – a quite peculiar place…
• Lousiana Separate Car Act (1890)
• Citizens’ Committee to Test the Separate

Car Act

(Comité des Citoyens) (30’’)

• Homer Plessy
• racial segregation in public facilities

CONSTITUTIONAL under the doctrine of
"separate but equal."

Jim Crow and disfranchisement

• literacy clauses
• grandfather

clauses

• segregation

Booker T. Washington

• Tuskegee Machine –

Tuskagee Institute

• Integration and

assimilation

• vocational education

W. E. B. DuBois

• political representation
• pan-Africanism
• Niagara movement
• The Philadelphia

Negro (1899),

• The Souls of Black

Folk (1903),

• John Brown (1909),
• Black Reconstruction

(1935),

National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP) (1909)

Marcus Garvey

• UNIA – Universal Negro

Improvement
Association and African
Communities (Imperial)
League

• Back-to-Africa

movement

– Liberia

• Black nationalism
• Black Star Line

Brown vs. Board of Education of

Topeka (1954)

• racial segragation ruled to be a violation of

equal protection Clause of the 14th
Amendment

• Plessy v. Fergusson overturned

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

• Rosa Parks
• One year long boycott
• Result: Alabama

segregation laws ruled
unconstitutional

• Result: Martin Luther

King Jr. Steps into
national limelight

• Result: Civil Rights

Movement first major
victory

Martin Luther King

• I Have a Dream (August 28, 1963)

Malcolm X

• Elijah Mohhammed
• Nation of Islam
• (1h07m40s 1h52m40s)
• Ballot or the Bullet

(April 3, 1964) (1’38’’)
(4’48’’)

Black Panther Party

• First Black nationalist
• then socialist
• Huey Newton & Bobby Seale
• COINTELPRO

• Summer Olympic Games in Mexico 1968

– Black Power Salute (Silent Salute) (Tommie

Smith & John Carlos) (35m20s)

• Avery Brundage, IOC
• The Olympic Project for Human Rights

Legacy

• Jesse Jackson
• Louis Farrakhan
• Jeremiah Wright controversy

Civil Rights Legislation

• J.F. Kennedy
• Lyndon B. Johnson
• Affirmative action