Blistering Civil Rights Decade
As the movement for African American equality and freedom unfolded from the mid-1950s into the tumultuous ‘60s, the civil rights movement became unstoppable. From school desegregation to public accommodations to voting rights, Black-led organizations mobilized Americans of all races by the millions to their cause. To a large degree, the crusade succeeded. Here is a brief recollection of that momentous period.
1954
The Supreme Court’s majestic ruling in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education heralded a tectonic shift in the United States. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” thundered the Court in May. Those six words were the pinnacle of Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall’s lifetime legal battles for racial equality and inclusion. From this moment on, every American knew — to our bones — that racial segregation was dead. The only questions were how long Jim Crow’s funeral would last and how much would it cost.
1955
In August, Emmett Till was murdered in Money, Miss., after the 14-year-old Black youngster from Chicago allegedly whistled at a White woman. Days later, he was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, unrecognizable, bloated, and bound in barbed wire. For his funeral, Till’s mother, Mamie, insisted on an open coffin. Jet magazine published the hideous photos. Till’s two killers were quickly acquitted and written up in Look. Mamie Till said, “Two months ago, I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South, I said, ‘that’s their business, not mine.’ Now I know how wrong I was. The murder of my son has shown me what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.”
In December, Black seamstress Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala. She later reflected, “The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a Black world and a White world.” She was arrested; the Montgomery Improvement Association was quickly founded; it declared a boycott against the segregated city buses; and at 26, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., found himself its leader. Solidarity seized the Black community; everyone walked or car-pooled for the next 13 months. The boycott ended when the Supreme Court overruled the bus company’s segregation policy.
1957
After Brown v. Board, President Eisenhower said, “The Supreme Court has spoken, and I am sworn to uphold the constitutional process in the country. And I will obey.” His commitment was tested that September as he found himself compelled to order 101st Airborne troops into Little Rock, Ark., to protect nine Black seniors integrating Central High. The inexorable process of integrating schools across the South was underway.
1960
Demanding equal access to public accommodations and using a labor union tactic, the sit-in movement began quietly on February 1 at the Woolworth’s department store in downtown Greensboro, N.C. Four Black freshmen at North Carolina A&T State University — Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond — had a simple plan: Ask to be served at the lunch counter and when refused, instead of leaving, just remain sitting. In the next few weeks, the sit-in movement exploded across the South, involving mostly college and high school students. The Greensboro Woolworth’s is now a civil rights museum.
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was formed by Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Young, brash SNCC militants prodded not only King’s group, but the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality as well. The nation was hearing daily about the “big four” civil rights leaders, Roy Wilkins (NAACP), James Farmer (CORE), Dr. King (SCLC), and John Lewis (SNCC).
1961
Segregation on interstate buses in the upper South had been challenged by freedom rides during the 1940s, but on May 4, CORE launched freedom rides into the Deep South. The goal was clear: eliminate racial segregation on interstate buses. A Greyhound with Farmer and Lewis on board departed Washington D.C., bound for New Orleans. Freedom rides quickly involved hundreds of riders. Serious violence erupted in several states, notably in Alabama and Mississippi. After 50-some rides and painful stretches in prison for protesters in Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Farm, the Interstate Commerce Commission ordered that all interstate buses be desegregated. By year’s end, the rides ended.
1962
James H. Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi in the fall and violence erupted on the Ole Miss campus. White students battled federal marshals and National Guard and federal troops. Two civilians were killed. Meredith graduated in 1963 with a degree in political science.
1963
In Birmingham, Ala., Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor’s police, dogs, and firehoses couldn’t suppress schoolchildren courageously filling the city’s jails. Dr. King wrote “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.” The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, attended by 250,000, was organized and orchestrated by Bayard Rustin and marked for the ages by Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Four schoolgirls — Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol McNair — were martyred when Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Miss. On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, after militant demonstrations shifted away from non-violence, Cambridge was under martial law and occupied by National Guard troops. Local leader Gloria Richardson’s tenacious refusal to compromise resulted in a signed agreement with Attorney General Robert Kennedy regarding schools, housing, and a human rights committee in Dorchester County.
1964
The Magnolia State took center stage as SNCC and CORE invited 800 volunteers — mostly college-age Whites — into Mississippi for “Freedom Summer.” They were there to help Black citizens register to vote and to set up schools for youngsters. Three rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County, and the hard-core state became the focus of national attention. In July, Congress passed, and President Johnson signed, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the first major civil rights legislation since the women’s suffrage amendment in 1920. At summer’s end, Black delegates to the Democratic Party’s national convention challenged Mississippi’s all-White delegation in Atlantic City. Sunflower County’s Fannie Lou Hamer announced, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
1965
It was Selma’s turn on “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, as Alabama state troopers savagely beat voting rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus bridge. A mass protest march from Selma to Montgomery was quickly organized, and when it ended a week later at the state capitol, President Johnson was ready to sign the Voting Rights Act, the decade’s book end to the Brown ruling.
So, segregation by law was eliminated in American public life. And so, African Americans could vote and hold elective offices. Waiting in the wings, however, were critical items of unfinished business: endemic economic inequality; pervasive, unremitting racism; red-lined and segregated communities; food deserts; mass incarcerations; police brutality; weakened labor unions; women’s rights; LGBTQ rights; the rights of the disabled; Native American, Latino, Asian rights — the list remains long.
Sections of the Voting Rights Act have been invalidated by Supreme Court conservatives. A woman’s right to choose has been rescinded. Minorities everywhere continue to struggle in a nation that seems to be less tolerant, less caring, less ready to help. If people of faith and conscience once fought to move forward, now it seems they’re being forced to fight against moving backward. And that funeral for Jim Crow? It’s still not over, and costs us dearly every day!
Bibliography:
SNCC: The New Abolitionists, by Howard Zinn
Walking With the Wind, by John Lewis
Why We Can’t Wait, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil War on Race Street, by Peter Levy
Freedom Summer, by Doug McAdam
Parting the Waters; Pillar of Fire; At Canaan’s Edge, by Taylor Branch
Waging A Good War, by Thomas E. Hicks
As a community organizer, journalist, administrator, project planner/manager, and consultant, Gren Whitman has led neighborhood, umbrella, public interest, and political committees and groups, and worked for civil rights and anti-war organizations.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
