1960s for African American Civil Rights (with a link to 1970s and 90s)
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 03-06-17 12:29
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- 1960s for African American Civil Rights (with a link to 1970s)
- Why were there sudden advancements in the 1960s?
- Continuing violence and discrimination of South had given ammunition to Communist bloc in Cold War who saw USA as merely defending rotten capitalist system
- Better communications, especially spread of television sets, brought racial violence home to Americans nationally
- Emmet Till
- 14 yr-old AA
- From Chicago
- Two male killers
- Killed in Mississippi in August 1955
- Acquittal of his killers by all-white jury after hour's deliberation, shocked USA
- Till's crime according to murderers was that he talked 'fresh' to a white woman
- Pictures of Southern mobs abusing black schoolgirl at Little Rock in 1957 were dangerously bad for USA
- Also, by 1960, AAs were better organised and more skillful in making demands
- By 1963
- civil rights had been forced to forefront of national politics by two key elements
- Ongoing violence
- e.g. murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers on 12 June 1962
- Increasingly effective campaign by various civil rights organisations
- e.g. March on Washington
- 28 August
- 250,000 people demanding civil rights
- Largest public demonstration seen in capital
- also led to one of most effective speeches by civil rights leader, when Martin Luther King Jr. said 'I have a dream...'
- e.g. March on Washington
- Ongoing violence
- civil rights had been forced to forefront of national politics by two key elements
- Kennedy's assassination on 22 November 1963
- Made change possible
- Under new vigorous leadership of Southern Democratic President, Lyndon Baines Johnson
- More emotional rallying cry Kennedy's vision had to be fulfilled
- Civil rights legislation became more extensive and effective than any time since Reconstruction
- Johnson's administration
- Federal government dismantled restrictive laws passed in period after 1877
- Supreme Court declared bans on parades, processions and public demonstrations (Jim Crow Law) in Birmingham, Alabama to be unconstitutional
- Restrictions on voting ended and discrimination in public areas and housing was no longer permissible
- However, despite changes in political status of AAs, it was was more difficult to affect economic equality, which might ensure more stable race relations.
- Harder for federal authorities to deal with deep-seated economic equality
- Nixon's Executive Order 11578
- Required all employers with federal contracts to draft affirmative action policies to actively promote AAs
- Act of 1972
- Extended equal employment legislation to all federal, state and local governments
- Civil Rights Act of 1991 (Employment)
- Put burden on businesses to show any discrimination in employment did not spring from racial discrimination but based on genuine requirements of company
- Why were there sudden advancements in the 1960s?
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