How did the civil rights movement evolve in the 1960s?

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AS MUCH AS SUPREME COURT DECISIONS, the black freedom struggle distinguished the liberalism of the 1960s from that of the New Deal. Before the Great Society reforms — and, in fact, contributing to them — African Americans had mobilized a movement that struck down legal separation and discrimination in the South and secured their voting rights. Whereas the first Reconstruction reflected the power of northern Republicans in the aftermath of the Civil War, the second Reconstruction depended heavily on the courage and determination of black people themselves to stand up to racist violence.

Civil rights activism that focused on the South and on legal rights won widespread acceptance. But when African Americans stepped up protest against racial injustice in the rest of the country and challenged the economic deprivation that equal rights left untouched, a strong backlash developed as the movement itself lost cohesion.

image
Figure false: Lunch Counter Sit-in
Figure false: John Salter Jr., a professor at Tougaloo College, and students Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody take part in a 1963 sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Mississippi. Shortly before this photograph was taken, whites had thrown two students to the floor, and police had arrested one student. Salter was spattered with mustard and ketchup. In 1968, Moody published Coming of Age in Mississippi, a popular book about her experiences in the black freedom struggle. State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
Figure false: VISUAL ACTIVITY
Figure false: READING THE IMAGE: What does the photograph tell you about black civil rights activity of the early 1960s?
Figure false: CONNECTIONS: How would you describe the changes in race relations between African Americans and whites in the United States in the first half of the 1960s?

CHRONOLOGY

1960

  • – Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded.

1961

  • – Freedom Rides.

1963

  • – March on Washington.

1964

  • – Civil Rights Act.
  • – Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.

1965

  • – Voting Rights Act.

1965–1968

  • – Riots in major cities.

1966

  • – Black Panther Party for Self-Defense is founded.

1968

  • – Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated.