• Civil Rights Era
  • WW2 Challenging Segregation
    • During war, there were segregated troops
      • White’s perceived as elite troops
    • 99th Pursuit Squadron / Tuskegee Airmen
      • “Science” said black people had smaller blood vessels that could not allow them to fly
      • There was a pilot program to test aircraft
        • Southern politicians prohibited blacks piloting aircraft in war
          • Feared what that would mean if they were successful
        • Eleanor Roosevelt
          • Major proponent of civil rights
          • Saw airmen go through training but were not deployed
          • Decided
    • Eleanor and “Chief” Anderson
      • She went on test flight with black pilot
      • Assigned North Africa dive Bombing job
        • Not a major dogfighting, no opportunity to prove themselves
        • Media narrative that said airmen weren’t “effective”
    • Europe were bombing Germany
      • Every bombing mission lost 1/3rd of their aircraft
      • 332nd air group figured
        • White pilots were told to follow German planes, and would get blindsided by other following German planes during retreat
        • Black pilots would not lose one bomber during their runs
          • Did not chase German planes as their white counterparts
    • George Patton
      • Effective Tank commander
      • Battle of Bulge
      • Over a million fought in this battle
      • Took army through 48 hours of battle in blizzard
      • 761st Tank Battalion “Black Panthers”
        • Patton loved Black soldiers
        • Black Panthers kill more and lose less than ANY OTHER tank Battalion
        • John “Jackie” Robinson
      • 442nd Infantry Regiment Japanese-Americans
        • Most decorated Unit
    • Japanese broke American communications; knew what Americans would do
      • Navajo Code-Talkers would be response to Japanese breaking the code; create new code
      • Navajo-Code talker with every marine unit; at-first they were discriminated against
      • Japanese never broke Navajo code
    • Desegregated Units were most effective
      • Proving minorities were not inferior, but also at times were superior to white units
      • As minority groups went across Europe, all minorities were treated as simply Americans, not African-Americans / Japanese-Americans etc.
      • Minority Veterans would come back from war with new perspective of race dynamics
  • Segregation Case in California
    • California segregated students based on language spoke
      • Used to segregate mexican-american students
    • Mendez v. Westminster 1947
      • Mexican students who did not speak english
      • Went up to circuit court, West Coast Circuit
    • Earl Warren, Gov. of California
      • Did not like segregation
      • Instantly de-segregates California based on circuit case ruling
  • W.E.B Dubios
    • Sees California desegregation and Jackie Robinson; thinks we should keep this momentum
      • Finds Thurgood Marshall
        • Marshall argued more court cases in front of supreme court than anyone in history
        • Won more cases than anyone in history 29/32 cases
        • Would sit on supreme court in 1967
        • Looks at Mendez case, thinks educational cases
  • Sweatt v Painter
    • Herman Merriam Sweatt applied to University of Texas Law
      • Initially Rejected based on color;
        • Violated separate but equal Plessy v Ferguson
        • Accepted Sweatt after realizing mistake
        • Very difficult to have separate but equal law schools
        • Rankings of tier of law schools based on
          • Faculty and Law Library
    • Sweatt must sit outside class;
    • could not talk to faculty
    • Prohibited from Law library; was told to use the public law library
    • Eventually Supreme Court Agreed, but said Texas failed to adhere to Plessy v Ferguson
  • Brown v Board of Education 1953/1954
    • Marshall, Dubois NAACP decide to go public school route rather elite school
    • Public school case; At first 5-4 against Brown
    • However, a Chief Justice dies; Earl Warren becomes Chief Justice
    • Re-hear case; separate is inherently unequal
    • Separation from young age gives stigma that follows children for rest of lives; therefore inherently unequal
    • People, especially the south, ask “Does this apply only to education?”
  • Big Southern Conference - Southern Manifesto
    • Every level of politician is there
    • Creation of Southern Manifesto - commitment to fight desegregation
  • George Wallace
    • Two black students accepted to Alabama, James Hood, Vivian Mallone
    • Wallace does performative gesture, “blocks” entrance to stop them from registering
    • Wallace would go on to presidential campaign, would get shot on campaign
      • Shirley Chism, black congresswoman, would go to visit him in hospital
      • They would become friends, would help him change his minds on segregation
  • 1955; year after Brown v Board of Education
    • Rosa Parks
    • Bus Boycott
      • Local preacher, Martin Luther King Jr. rallies churches of Montgomery, AL
      • African-Americans are 80% of bus-goers
        • Still needed to go to work, organized vanpools
      • Police try to stop vanpools
        • 50-100 tickets per day for drivers
        • Report to insurance companies
        • Off-duty cops directly attack drivers
      • MLK says stay the course, this is revealing true colors
  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference
    • MLK is looked upon for leadership among many congregations in south
    • Central group of civil rights movement
    • Looked for inspiration from other resistance leaders
      • India gaining independence, Gandhi
      • Non-violent breaking of injustice laws
        • Ex. March to sea for salt
  • College students dining sit ins at Woolworth’s
    • 4 students, 3 white one black
    • Inspired sit ins across country, 40 cities across America
    • Black Woman, Ella Baker, would become big civil rights leader
    • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC
    • Sit ins are met with
      • Firehouses, tear gas, pepper spray
  • MLK “I have a dream speech” 1963 March on washington
    • Encouraged voting
    • Speech same year as Kennedy assassination
      • He were putting some civil rights legislation forward
      • Big Democrat;
      • Republican flip
    • 1964 summer known as freedom summer; campaign to register black people to vote
      • 3 college students were killed and dumped in swamp
        • Led to Mississippi riots
      • Selma march to Montgomery
      • Johnson would get elected
    • MLK would go on to be youngest recipient of Nobel Peace Prize
  • 1960 JFK
    • Bobby Kennedy (brother) would tell JFK to campaign on civil rights; JFK was not sure timing was right
    • 1960 MLK illegally imprisoned in Atlanta
      • Bobby implores JFK, says this is good timing, JFK still unsure, but says they should get him out
      • Bobby uses connection to get MLK out of jail
      • JFK did not campaign on civil rights, people find out that he got MLK out of jail, realize he did it without political reasons, gets black vote
  • Congress of Racial Equality, CORE James Farmer
    • Freedom Rides
      • Bus rides through North Carolina, upper south, all the way through deep south, to New Orleans
    • People would get assaulted
    • Robert Kennedy (Attorney General) would give protection
    • People imprisoned for harassment of freedom rides
  • Johnson pushes through Civil Rights Act of 1965
    • Kennedy set up this act, Johnson comes through
  • Rise of Black Power Movement
    • College students not satisfied with change not happening fast enough
    • Riots in Watts 1965
      • Unemployment in South Central L.A was 25%
      • Police brutality / unjust arrest / abuse of power on rise
      • Drunk driver getting pulled over; word of mouth escalates situation; reputation of LAPD embellishes story / makes it worse
      • Riots ensues
      • Lieutenant gov. Slow to respond and call national guard
      • 34 died, over 900 injured, billions of property damage

Transcription¶

And the rule that they came up with was what? what did that court case establish as a rule good separate so how does but equal okay the legitimization of segregation for roughly half a century and actually even after the Supreme Court decision that comes along the Benz it segregation will still continue for quite a while before the Civil Rights era really starts breaking it apart segregation start falling what is the reason for the rise of the Civil Rights Movement answer: World War 2. That segregation starts being challenged as an idea part of it was that during World War II we had segregated troops and the idea there was that well the soldiers will feel better being with their own kind but the implication was the white units or the elite ones in the color units are the ones that are sort of the B team compared and that was kind of the unspoken perception within the military however some groups are going to come along that really challenge those ideas and bring the Forefront the way many of the different segregated units are truly excelling and becoming the class of the military one group that was formed during the war that wanted to challenge some of the assumptions and norms was a group called the 99% Squadron more commonly they are known as the 

Tuskegee Airmen¶

African Americans were banned from flying war planes. And the reason that they gave was the scientific studies and that's in quotes of many universities suggested that blacks had smaller blood vessels in their brains which meant that in the High aerial maneuvers that planes go through they would be likely to pass out and lose control of the plane and crashes die and of course we know today that that's complete bs but that was largely believed by many people. to combat this, they created a pilot program pilot not as in flying the plane but that's exactly what they'll do but pilot program is in a test set and that program was to test the feasibility of African Americans flying warplanes so they created a squad and the 99% Squadron went through all the training and we're waiting to be deployed but Southern politicians had blocked their entrance into the war fearing that they might just well succeed and what will that mean to the future of the military so they had managed to block it up to a point however civil rights had a champion in the White House and it was not the president Eleanor Roosevelt was a major proponent of civil rights she hated segregation she did not like the policies of the New Deal during the 1930s excluding blacks from a lot of them and because of her activism with her husband got him to realize oh yeah they need to be taken care of too let's close some of those gaps and open up programs to people of other races not just White and so she was instrumental in that 

Eleanor Roosevelt and "Chief" Anderson¶

and then once the war starts she's the one saying this kind of discrimination needs to come to an end and she wanted to combat it she saw the Tuskegee Airmen having gone through their training we're ready to be deployed but we're not being deployed and so she decided to pay an official visit up around the field with one of the air and here you see her in the backseat at the Airman up front that was the guy who flew her around this photo ran in Life Magazine which of the time was the biggest publication in the US shortly after this this photo went public the 99% Squadron was deployed now they were deployed to North Africa and they were assigned behind the line missions largely involving dive bombing runs and the politicians back in the States commented on how ineffective the 99% Squadron was because they didn't shoot any enemies down. While they're being used for dive bomb. How many air enemies are they getting countering in North Africa? Not many. So basically the leaders of not just the 99 but the growing group of aviators being trained starts protesting hey give us a real job you want to see how we fight in combat don't keep us behind the lines hitting ground targets give us something real and so they did. In Europe, the Air corps has been bombing Germany and they had been doing so a great expense on avg most of the bomb runs resulted in a 30% loss of airships in other words one out of three does not come home every time they go up those are ugly numbers and you know it's bad enough having one mission where you lose a third of your bombers but every time they go up and they said what's going on well the commander of the new Air Group which combines several squadrons they became the 332nd Air Group figured it out he said the white Pilots have been told when you encountered German planes go after him and shoot him down but what's happening is the Germans are pulling them off and then another group of Germans will come in from the other side and attack the planes without opposition and that's how they were losing their planes so he said the whites won't change the way they're fighting we will we stick with the bombers and if the Germans want to turn tail and run let them if they come back hit him again. Stick with the bombers like you're tied with the string. And they start doing this and lo and behold once the tusky year men take over bomber defence they don't lose a single bomber to enemy action not one the white units were losing 1/3 they didn't lose any. Their approach affected the rest of the airport and how the rest of the pilots will defend the bombers because of their overwhelming success there are other groups who are distinguishing themselves as well. Arguably the greatest tank commander to come out of World War II and probably the greatest in history with the possible exception of Rommel was George Patton. General Patton was famous especially for a tank maneuver that he did during the Battle of the Bulge which is really the largest battle in the history of the world. Huge numbers of people over a million people were engaged in that battle it was big. And ultimately he ended up taking his Armored Division through a raging blizzard the worst one they had seen in years. 24 straight hours for the first pet everybody thought that they'd stop after that he doesn't he keeps them going for 48 straight hours constantly in combat in the middle of this blizzard any stages of breakthrough in the German lines in doing so one particular tank group within his division a tank Battalion called the 761st tank Battalion otherwise known as the Black Panthers was it the spearhead of this. And he says hey people can complain all they want give me all the color boys you can I love them. These guys know how to fight. And they are excelling the Black Panthers kill more and lose less than any other tank Battalion under any Commander's command at that point. That's how effective they were. These guys were great. Now another interesting thing is a side note that comes out of that. one of the officers within the 761st tank battalion was a man named John Robinson otherwise known as Jackie Robinson

John "Jackie" Robinson¶

after the war is over he goes back to his original career baseball and he is so good that he becomes the first African American signed to a major league baseball team to play in a game he signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers and he basically was the best player in baseball or it certainly top three Jackie Robinson will break the color line in Major League Baseball others are breaking the color line in other ways but one thing is constant throughout this: segregation is starting to Chip Away. Another group that was significant was the 442 regimental combat team who were they? Japanese Americans. While their families were being interned in camps back in the United States they were saying hey America's my country too and I'm wanting to fight for it and a whole bunch of other Japanese with them for saying we do too and so they formed a Japanese group and they sent them to Germany that group was the most heavily decorated group in the entire us command more Medals of Honor were given to the Japanese 442nd than any other unit in the United States. That's how good they were. And then there comes the first real desegregation that you see and it was out of necessity. the Marines down in the South Pacific, as they were fighting the Japanese, had a problem and the problem was the Japanese had broken all of their Battlefield codes which meant they didn't have secure Communications on the battlefield. As a result as soon as the Americans send out a message oh we're going to do this the Japanese are listening to it knowing exactly what they're going to do and they are able to shift their fire. The Marines were taking huge losses because of this. and so they say well we need to come up with a better code so who did they turn to? Native Americans.

Navajo Code-Talker¶

Specifically the DNA people otherwise known as the Navajo they turn to people who could speak native Navajo language as well as English both fluently that was key you had to be able to speak both of them and they used the language to create a code and in order for it to work there had to be a Navajo code talker put with every single unit so that they can communicate securely now when these guys first show up the white units are going oh man you got to be kidding. We're the ones who get the racial policies we're the ones are getting desegregated. And they resented them. That ended after the very first battle. The first battle they saw just how many people these guys were saving. And as a result not only will they not protest them anymore they will fight to protect them. They will do everything in their power to protect them because they know that these guys are keeping them alive. Overwhelmingly successful the Japanese never broke that code they said it's kind of like listening to someone speak in a foreign language backwards underwater. They could not make sense of it it was bizarre to them they couldn't they spent tons of time trying to break that communication they couldn't do it. When the war ends the success of a desegregated unit,... Is used for the war effort something they take pride in and other place you know other groups within World War II are being overwhelmingly successful proving that minorities not only are not inferior but in some cases they're actually performing at far better levels than any of the white units were so this is starting to change people's mindset "oh they're not as good they're not the B Team" they're the 18 and that's the realization a lot of people are coming to. also,  the African American units especially but really all people who were non-white in uniform, when they went over to Europe the people in Europe did not treat them as black Americans Japanese Americans, they treated them as Americans. everybody was treated the same based on the uniform this is something they had in common with World War I but the numbers were vastly bigger in this war than they were World War I. World War I had a relatively smaller amount of people involved but World War II was very different. We had huge numbers of people in that war and when they come back they come back with pride charity and a little bit more of a global perspective on race and so all of this is setting the stage for a challenge of segregation. They don't have to wait long. 1947 two years after the end of World War II an interesting case Rises up in the federal court system in California specifically. A segregation case. Remember that California segregated People based on language but really this was a smokescreen they really were segregating people of Mexican ancestry away from white students and keeping that that separation and they said it was based on the language they spoke but in this case the court case Mendez V Westminster the Mendez family sent their kids to school but they don't speak Spanish they speak English and they're being excluded from English speaking schools and that was the basis of their fight said hey they're saying we're being segregated based on our language. Doesn't apply here. And yet our kids are still being forced to go to the Spanish-speaking schools. At which point it goes up through the courts up to the Appellate level. now for those of you not familiar with the federal courts and I'm assuming most of you probably aren't the federal court system is on three levels the district level these are the local courts above them is the Appellate level otherwise known as the circuit courts and then at the top the Supreme Court. Now here's how Federal jurisprudence Works in other words court cases that go through the system if a court case is decided at the district level that ruling only applies to the district that they're in. now that doesn't mean other districts can't look at that and use it as a reason for deciding things the same way. often they do but it's only binding in the district that that opinion is given however it gets appealed and it goes up to the Circuit level and once up to the Circuit level, there are three circuits in the United States. Okay? The circuit opinion applies to all the districts within their circuit but it doesn't apply to the other two. In order for it to apply to everyone it goes up to the Supreme Court. This case only went up to the Circuit Court. And the people who did not like the ruling nonetheless were afraid of trying to appeal up to the Supreme Court. And the reason they were afraid is it was a segregation case. They didn't want to automatically have it apply to other circuits and here's the problem. This circuit was West Coast. It was not the same circuit as the Deep South. if it went up to the supreme court, it could be spread out to everyone. It was done in California. And in California the governor of California his name was Earl Warren, he did not like segregation. he didn't like the segregated schools but he didn't have the political clout and the people on his side in order to get rid of it. So, when Mendez is handed down and the court case Appeals and doesn't make Supreme Court it applies to the Circuit he says well it's clear that it's gone through the circuit it's not going up to the Supreme Court so this is law California is desegregating nothing I can do about it bye and he instantly he desegregates no resistance at all he wanted that case to stand. I mentioned him because he becomes important very soon. So this case came down in 47. Around this time Jackie Robinson also joins the Dodgers in 47. The cracks in the dams are starting and it's getting ready to break. And we being the voice the head of the end of the ACT smells blood in the water he says now's our time. We've got to go after segregation hard now we're primed and ready for it. But in order to do that effectively he needed the right guy at the helm. He needed a shark of a lawyer he needed somebody who is brilliant somebody who is gifted and he found it. The man's name was Thurgood Marshall. T. Marshall is very significant in a lot of ways one thing he's significant in he has argued more court cases in front of the Supreme Court than any other lawyer in history: 32. And he's won more than anybody else has 29. 29 out of 32 cases that he argued he won that is one amazing success rate and it's testimony just how good he was also he will go on to become the first African American to sit on the Supreme Court he will be appointed in 1967 so clearly he is destined for big things. now when Thurgood Marshall is brought in, he looks at things and how they're going down he says okay. This Mendez case that was argued out there in the West Coast. This is given us a road map. Education is the key we need to focus on education that's how we beat segregation and he says let's hit the Supreme Court where it hurts. Where every one of them can relate. A law school case. That's what they're looking for and they find it. In 1950 a case Rises up to the Supreme Court that Marshall champions: sweatt bee painter sweaters s w e a t t sweat. Herman was a very gifted student who applied to law school at the University of Texas and the University of Texas law school sent him a reply saying  "sorry we don't accept colored students at the University of Texas law school" this was a law school you think they'd be smarter than that. A lot of the lawyers in the school suddenly said you said what to him no no send back a letter change that you got it you got to fix this this is violation of blessing we will get hammered for this send back another letter correcting it and so the University of Texas sends out a new list saying sorry the previous letter that you received was an error congratulations you are now admitted to the University of Texas School of Law. And now they're going okay great now we have one black student how are we going to come up with a separate but equal program to educate him? Okay now at this point, I want to clarify something. All law schools are not created equal. and all lawyers know this. Define them by tier Tier 1 schools are the ones at the top tier 2 very good schools. So tier one is like the top 25 tier two 26 to 50 and they continue down here three to four to five to six and the higher rank you have the better job you are going to get when you get out so ranking matters. And what are the two factors that law schools look at for ranking? Faculty +  Law Library. Those are the two big factors in what go into the rank. If you have a good faculty and a good Law Library it produces good lawyers that's the idea. That's why the oldest of the law schools are the ones that typically still are the highest ranked. Harvard, Yale, etc. they've been around a very long time okay. Sweattshows up and he's told well when you go to class you actually have to sit in the desk outside the class. Listen through the door you have access to the class but you're out here and they're in there so he does and he tries to engage the professors after the class of before class they won't even talk to him they walled him off.  He wants to go and study in the library and he's told no you can't go in there that's a segregated Library. So you have to go use the library downtown. They have a law library downtown you have access to it so go use that one. well, what are the two things that determine the rank? Faculty he has no access to his faculty there's stonewalling him. My library? he's banned from his he has to go use the one downtown which is nowhere near as good as the University of Texas law life. and they're able to make a point hey he's clearly being separated but he's not being treated equal. And ultimately the Supreme Court agrees with sweatt but this is a sort of a mixed victory. All they really say is yes sweat has a case he's absolutely right but the problem isn't the Plessy ruling the problem is the Texas University was not adhering to the Plessy rule they did not give him equal facility the way they were supposed to and that was the problem. So mixed bag they kind of went well we expected more from that. How do we attack this now? And there was a case coming out of Kansas. It was an elementary school case and this one intrigued Marshall he said "you know what let's change tactics rather than going after the higher ed stuff let's go after kids when they're in their formative years and try to argue that these kids are being screwed up by segregation that is damaging to them and it's causing a permanent problem for the rest of their life of an inferiority complex. let's argue that instead." so they took this case Brown be Board of Education until Topeka Kansas all the way up to the Supreme Court the Supreme Court hurt the case in 1953. The problem is shortly after the case was heard, not just any justice, the Chief Justice died. Which means they had to come up with a new chief justice and the president gets to select who they are in this particular case. A new Justice was selected and his name was Earl Warren. Now, Warren what is his belief about segregation? Does he like it? no.  Now before the death of the Chief Justice the Supreme Court had been close on the vote but 54 in favor of segregation and maintaining Plessy. but now with Earl Warren replacing one of those boats it swings to fight for the other direction so now the court is poised to overturn Plessy for the first time. When Earl Warren comes in and takes over.  And then he's looking through and he pulls out this Brown B.  Board of Education case he says Brown B.  Board of Education call him back in I want to hear this one argued in person the other justices are going oh no. And so they call him back in Marshall's the case in front of the Supreme Court. And this time, a 54 decision is handed down and it's in favor of brown. The words they use are "separate is inherently unequal". They overturn Plessy. What they say is they make a good case that kids are being stigmatized from a young age that they are different therefore lesser than white kids. And that is damaging them for the rest of their lives that is not equal. Now people are saying, well okay does this only apply to education or is this all segregations being struck down I mean did they just up and plus he completely or is it just related to education people are asking that question they don't know and throughout the South they are in a panic. Their entire way of life for the last half of century is being uprooted all over again just like the Civil War uprooted their culture before now it's doing it again. And politicians across the South come together in a big conference all levels of government are in there Senators Congressman, governors, School Board commissioner, mayors, County Supervisors you name it every level of politician is there and they all say okay we have to commit to the people of the South that we are going to fight any effort to desegregate anything. We have to make a pledge and they do they call it the southern Manifesto and all of them put their signature on. They all sign it committing that they will fight desegregation George Wallace mayors Alabama was ordered by the courts to desegregate and two African Americans were admitted to the University of Alabama and we're showing up the register God by the name of James hood and a woman named by Vivian Malone and George Wallace is symbolically standing in the doorway now this is just a symbolic history. He's being seen doing something the only thing he can do but the fact is the FBI and National Guard are already out in force and they know he's going to be moved to side he knows this and he does not resist but he's doing everything he can he's fulfilling his promise. He tries to keep Alabama from being desegregated and he fails and so the first two African Americans are enrolled in the University of Alabama. He stood up to him but he lost. Now George Wallace will later run for president he gets shot when he is in the hospital he receives a very interesting visitor her name is Shirley Chisholm she is the first African American woman ever elected to congress she's also in your readings. And George Wallace actually formed a friendship that lasts the rest of their lives. Largely because of his relationship and probably also by the fact that he got shot he comes to revise his thinking seeing that maybe, his ideas on segregation were bad that he was in the wrong and He suggests that he seen the light send to prevent desegregation efforts from that point on. So he apparently switched sides now whether he did it just as a political maneuver or if he meant it I personally think he meant it because and that friendship that he makes with Shirley Chisholm certainly had a big impact with it so however you come down on it he did publicly come out against segregation by the end. 

George Wallace¶

okay now do you guys recognize this scene. from Forrest Gump. Okay this was the scene where he was kind of looking over his shoulder and then the the black woman dropped the book and he ran over and said you drop this man.and give it back to her well that was supposed to be Vivian Malone enrolling okay so this was part of the scenes that they altered a little bit so nobody really knows where plus he stops and brown starts they don't know if it's just education or if it's everything. And the Very year after that decision came down Brown be Board of Education was 54 in 1955 there's a nurse who just got done with the 12-hour shift she's tired she wants to go home get something to eat go to bed and she sits down in the very front seat of a bus and the bus was them couple stops later a white man gets on and sees her sitting in the white section that says you need to move to the back of the bus I want your seat she says there's tons of seats just sit somewhere else he complains to the bus driver bus driver keeps going couple blocks later he sees a cop on the side of the road the bus driver pulls over gets off talks to the cop the cops and she refuses. Her name is

Rosa Parks¶

doesn't she look like just a dangerous person?/s Rosa Parks and the interesting thing is she hadn't even violated the law as it was written so they weren't even enforcing the law correctly the bus boycott that Rose was at the direction of her preacher her local preacher of her church hears that Rosa has been put in jail for violating this because she sat in the wrong seat on a bus and he rallies not just the support of his own church but all the churches in that town Montgomery Alabama. And so they agreed to put together a bus boycott. After all they said " African Americans are 80% of the passengers on the buses in Montgomery 80%! If we stop writing the bus look at all the money they don't get they can only let that go on so long before it hurts too much" let's send him a message so a lot of people said but I got to get to work so they or they organize instead vanpools we're vanpool drivers will volunteer their time to drive people to work. So they do that instead of the buses. The name of her preacher by the way? Martin Luther King Jr. This is where he becomes famous not just locally but nationally. The bus boycott draws big news. Not just for the boycott but for the response against it the bus drivers start going around on their route nobody black is getting on the bus. And they take a look at the end tallies for the day and say whoa. The money we took in went down that much we can't even pay for the gas much less the salary of the people driving. This has to stop and so the police go out and force trying to stop to pull them over every block play long it is not uncommon for vanpool drivers to get 50 to 100 tickets a day nights. But more than that then they report these people to their insurance companies are you aware that this person has just gotten 500 tickets in the last week? You really should cancel their insurance wow thanks for letting us know you're absolutely right that's they don't know what's going on they don't know they're being used. But that's what ends up starting to happen and then off duty the policeman directly attacked the vanpool drivers as well. they will carve up their cars scratch them crack open eggs on the paint all kinds of stuff. And ultimately Martin Luther King says " this is just showing them for what they are stay the course." we're making inroads here because now it's national news they're getting a spotlight they never had counted on but it also propelled him into the national Limelight where suddenly people across the South are turning to him said hey I have a congregation down in Atlanta I have a congregation down in Birmingham I have a congregation in New Orleans how do you think we should be taking these on Martin Luther King is a relatively young preacher he's only in his mid 30s. He's not an old man. And he suddenly has people who are 20 and 30 years and senior in some cases asking him for his guidance how should we do this. And he is stunned he suddenly comes to a realization that he now has to organize all of these different people and teach them how to properly resist segregation. he says okay let's hold a convention and so they do. It becomes known as the southern Christian leadership conference. In fact he will use that name as his organization's name from that point on Martin Luther King will head the Seven Christian leadership conference which will be the central group of civil rights movement. it will be the biggest most prominent one and they have this big convention where people all over the South are coming to hear his ideas but in order to do that he had to figure out what those ideas were. He had to figure out how to properly approach things. And he said "hmm, look at resistance leaders barely recently who have been successful have there been any? He says you know what there have been. India." India has fought against British colonization for years and only now are they getting their independence right after World War II 1947 Britain pulls out and India receives its independence from the British Empire. He says okay the guy who ran that was Gandhi. What did Gandhi do that was so successful? how did he make it work? he says okay he absorbed he embraced rather this policy of non-violence. Do not use violence. Stay passive stay peaceful and if violence is brought against you don't fight back you will reveal them to be the Thugs and the uncivilized people they accuse you of people. So it essentially turns the table on the aggressors. It shows them to be what they are: thugs. And break the laws that are unjust violate them but do so in a peaceful manner don't use violence. Gandhi was famous for the walk to the Sea where there was assault Monopoly and it was illegal to make salt unless you were licensed by the government and so Gandhi went out to the ocean got a bunch of sea water boil it down to salt. he just violated the law. No violence but that act was symbolic and it spread. He says this is what we need to do. And so he encourages a path of non-resistance. A path or rather resistance but non-violent.  So MLK's policy of non violence and others will be inspired to start their own organizations based off of his example. College students for young idealistic and wanted to make a difference themselves they wanted to get involved. They wanted to take on segregation themselves. To be Frontline resistors. he said Dr. King's got a good idea and so a group of four students will go down to a local Woolworths which is sort of like a scaled-down version of Walmart I guess and there was a lunch counter there they will go to the Lunch Counter which was segregated only whites were allowed to sit at the counter blacks can buy food from there but they had to take it as take out. And the four students three whites and one black sat down at the lunch table. The person there said sorry we can't serve you now if you want to buy food and take it to go we can do that. And they said no we we like it here. We want to order and he refuses to take their order we're pretty soon a crowd starts to form. And the crowd gets bigger and then they start abusing these people. 

Sit-In¶

Here's the sit-in at Woolworths this was really when the Civil Rights movement grew. it went beyond just the local church leaders into everyone this was seen photographed and it ran as national news and it inspired sit-ins to be spreading across the country and also this woman here Ella Baker becomes one of the big leaders of the civil rights movement because of this. She was one of the people who helped form a new student organization for the entire country it was called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee otherwise known as sncc. The student on violent Coordinating Committee is basically taking Martin Luther King's ideas of nonviolence and running with it. The sit-ins spread to over 140 cities across America. And almost all of them are met with some kind of violence. Now, when people stand up to it, they are met with tear gas, beatings, but they're really ugly one? Fire hoses. Yeah you don't really think of them as bad do you but, Riot 101 people. I'm going to give you certain rules that you follow in a riot okay? Number one if the government ever brings out the fire hoses? run. Don't stay there. The water is moving at 120 mph that's faster than a major league baseball and it hits with the same force that getting hit with a baseball would in fact worse it will pick you up and throw you. And then there's the impact what it hits you that hurts. And the pressure of the water is so abrasive it's scratching you up but then there's the impact to the ground when you fall but then it still doesn't stop they keep the fire hose on you and it's pushing you on the ground. Road rash. Not fun yeah. If they ever bring out the fire hoses and you're around go the other way okay rule number one fire hoses bad. Okay. We'll cover other what to do in a riot thing later.

Martin Luther King Jr.¶

We've got some rights to talk about. Okay. So all of this is going on and I want to come back to this one here. Elevated even further with the I Have a Dream speech the March on Washington in 1963 what is he urging here now how many of you have seen this? Probably four or five times. Yeah okay. Do I Have a Dream speech is specifically calling for a type of action to be put in and that action is voting. He's encouraged blacks to get out and vote he knows that a lot of people aren't even enrolled to vote. They're not even on the voting rolls. So he wants to get people active he wants to get the vote out there and the one thing that Southerners have fought since the end of the Civil War Keith blacks away from the poles they come up with all sorts of ways to try to do it. Well, here he is advocating for this black activism get out and vote. And what's more, the following year 1964 is a presidential election year. Now this is the time of a lot of turmoil in America this speech was given the same year that Kennedy was killed. Kennedy was assassinated in 63 and he was starting to put out some civil rights legislation that Johnson will actually follow up and push through because of the increase of violence in '64. '64 the summer before that presidential election which is in November coming up was known as Freedom Summer where people went all over the South trying to get blacks registered to vote. It got ugly. in Mississippi three college students who were down there locally trying to get people enrolled wound up killed and dumped in a local swamp. That will set off race riots and Mississippi suddenly Goes Up in Flames even made a movie called Mississippi Burning based on this. The violence in Mississippi was only one instance of all of the resistance coming against them how many have you seen that movie Selma it's fairly recent so I figure some of you may have seen it, anyone, one? nobody. Well they actually did a pretty good job of this Freedom March that they took from Selma to Montgomery the King was leading and this was part of Freedom Summer. Ultimately they were successful in getting a lot more black voting in that election and Johnson was elected president. This was an interesting time Martin Luther King as a result of Freedom Summer and as I Have a Dream speech will be given the Nobel Peace Prize and he was the youngest recipient ever to receive the award in history. That was pretty significant. Now I want to come back to Kennedy here for a minute. Kennedy was a Democrat. What party was the big supporter of segregation? The Democrats were. This is when the roles switch. This is when the Republican Party becomes absorbed with the anticivil rights mentality and the Democratic party s*** this is when the switch happens and Kennedy is largely the reason for it in 1960 Kennedy's running for president. and his brother Bobby is saying hey Jack. Let's campaign on the Civil Rights thing we want to be on the right side of history. and JFK says "thats dangerous" a lot of our political support is coming from Southern Democrats and if we alienate him we're going to lose big. Nieces and Bobby says yeah but the times right. and Kennedy ultimately says if an opportunity presents itself maybe I'll intervene but otherwise let's play a safer route. let's not campaign on the issue. Well during the campaign in 1960 Martin Luther King was arrested at a rally in Atlanta. he was thrown in jail illegally. Bobby came in and said hey Jack did you hear about what they did the king down in Atlanta? This is we should get involved here you said you wanted an instance well this is a this is a good one. and JFK says okay use your contacts in the bureau and get them sprung. But we're not campaigning on it just do it because it's the right thing to do Bobby says I can live with that fine. Bobby comes up people in the bureau that he has worked with and he uses his influence to get Martin Luther King out of jail. And when that happens words starts to filter out hey did you hear that Kennedy actually used his contacts to get Martin Luther King free? Oh yeah I bet he's going to campaign on it now watch he's going to tell everybody that all the great big Democratic party is now in support of black right sure they are. And Kennedy doesn't say a word. And people are going wait he's not campaigning on me don't tell me he did it just because it was the right thing to do. And suddenly people say, wow. He got Martin Luther King out of jail and then didn't campaign on it he just did it because he wanted to. And all of a sudden blacks across the South are going wow this is a guy we can get behind and he pulls a massive amount of the black vote in the South and that was a big reason why he was elected he won that election to a certain extent based on the increase vote from the African-Americans in the South because of what he did to get King out of jail. They are cautious in the Kennedy administration about civil rights but they want to do something. The next one that I want to talk about involves a lot of political interactions and decisions that the Kennedys have to make and this group is called the Congress on Racial equality otherwise known as core.

Freedom Ride¶

It is an organization that is led by a man named James Farmer and they like sncc, want to use Kings philosophy to force desegregation and they specifically Target buses. they call them Freedom ride. They have a plan. they want to get people paired up a black and a white Rider on a bus. The ride starts in North Carolina the upper South goes all the way down to Georgia and Florida and then all the way across the Deep South through Alabama through Mississippi into Louisiana ending in New Orleans. That is a dangerous route. They know that in life in all likelihood some or maybe even all of them will face physically abusive actions along the way. The president hears about it and specifically ask them not to do it. They advise them don't do this but they do it anyway. Eventually they will stand in front of the buses and stop them and demand that the people get out well they're sitting there holding baseball bats and chains do you think the people want to get off the bus oh no. So they stay on the Bus Say no no we're not getting out so they set the bus on fire and said okay don't get out. Stay there. Well of course they're going to get out at that point if they can't breathe they're coughing uncontrollably when they get off the bus from smoke inhalation and as soon as they get off the bus the people have in on them. Start hammering them and ultimately send a whole bunch of people into the hospitals some of them with very significant injuries. When word gets back to the Kennedys about what's going on. Robert Kennedy basically means the head federal law enforcement officer of the US government as attorney general he orders the federal law enforcement agencies to escort the Freedom Riders to ensure that they are no longer attacked for the remainder of their trip. Throughout Mississippi many of them were arrested and sentenced to the worst prison in Mississippi where they take the prisoners out and use them for heavy hard labor. And he's sending a message even 90 days of this is absolutely miserable. And that's what he wants to encourage saying hey that's fine you want to break the wall we'll send you to prison. And that's how Mississippi combats them. a lot of people end up getting arrested and put in prisons in Mississippi for this. So hostility is starting to rise and new organizations are coming to the Forefront by the mid-60s a lot of people are frustrated that change is not happening fast enough now actually it is it's happening pretty quick. when Johnson gets word of this as president he will take Kennedy's policies and push him through Kennedy it already proposed a civil rights act that would eliminate all the voting restrictions that the NAACP has been protesting for half a century. Johnson pushes that through and becomes known as the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that is the one that is the big law that levels the voting playing field same ballots same rules apply to everyone no more restricting anyone's right to vote. Take it on. Give them that protection. So this was the turning point this is when WB The Voice finally get to see the ultimate victory of all the things he's been fighting for since the NAACP was formed he lived to see all of that succeed. And yet people are still frustrating especially younger generation people. College students have not lived very long, and because of that when things take a little longer than they want them to, they lose their patience a whole lot quicker than people have been alive for 50 years or longer. You kind of get a slightly different sense of how long things take and when you're a kid they put you in a corner for misbehaving for 5 minutes it feels like you've been there for 5 hours doesn't it. Time feels different to different ages. And the college students especially are getting impatient. they're not seeing change happen fast enough they wanted to happen now. And they're not getting them now changes happening it's taking time it's going through a process but it is. But the frustration leads some people to say King's approach of non-violence is not working. Maybe we need to take the gloves off maybe we need to start fighting back when they bring violence to us we bring violence back to them. We don't initiate but we respond in kind. We stand up for ourselves. This is the rise of what becomes known as the black Power move. One reason things are starting to turn violent is because of a riot. In 1965 in Watts South Central Los Angeles spend it down by Compton. African Americans after World War II found some real problems in their employment a lot of them had moved out to California to work in the wartime factories but when the war time Factory started closing and they got laid off they start looking for other jobs but they're not getting hired. Before long the unemployment rate in South Central Los Angeles climbs to 25%, one in four people is out of work now to give you perspective on that the worst unemployment rate in US history as a nation was in 1932 and it was 25%. that was the worst year of the Great Depression.  This is what South Central is going through in the mid 60s that level of unemployment and rather than recognizing the hardships and helping them find jobs, the police instead start getting more and more heavy-handed with the people who are getting desperate in that town. Police brutality is on the rise. Unjust arrests are on the rise. All sorts of violations of people's rights LAPD has a really really poor history in dealing with that. Okay they've done some pretty ugly things over the years we're going to see some of them. Ultimately what strikes the match Sparks this whole thing was not actually any kind of a violation of a guy civil rights. It was a drunk driving stop. A police officer saw a car weaving all over the place pulled them over get a sobriety check the guy was drunk like crazy. So he handcuffs him sits him down on the curb and wait for a tow truck to tow his car away from a distance people see this. And they go what did he do wrong he didn't do anything why is he being cut? Well they don't realize that he's being arrested for drunk driving when she was guilty of and pretty soon the story grows as stories do. did you hear what the cops did to this guy they cut them and then started kicking him and then it grew even more did you hear about it they put them in the hospital he's in critical condition no reason at all they just killed the guy. They arrested him put them in lock up and then when he's sobered up they cited him and turned him loose. Just what you do with any other drunk driver. Okay so they handled it right. But because of the history of abuse people were willing to believe the worst about LAPD and had they done those things before? Absolutely. LAPD has done this before. more desperate they're having work rallies the Watts Riots start up and they are disastrous. Riot rule number two. If you're ever in a riot, don't tear up your own town. Go to another town. Yeah burning down your local businesses hurts your neighbors. People that are just as frustrated as you are. You want to do that go to another town where people aren't dealing with those same problems make those problems their problems okay so Riot number two don't write it in your own neighbor. Get out of town. 

Watts Riot (1965)¶

And there are more coming we've got another right okay but the police start moving out in force. the National Guard is slow to responding the reason is it the governor of California was actually out of the country in Greece on vacation. And the lieutenant governor was a little reluctant and slow to call in the National Guard and by the time the National Guard does get called in things are really out of control. so the what's right it's got a whole lot worse than they actually needed to be and so the property damage was the year and 34 people died in over 900 were were injured in the course of this Riot. billions of dollars of property damage happened. But the civil rights movement has just turned violent.