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