Opposition to Civil Rights: KKK and Violence

?
  • Created by: April15
  • Created on: 07-05-19 18:28
View mindmap
  • Opposition to Civil Rights :KKK and Violence
    • KKK
      • Set up in 1865 after black slaves won their freedom
        • Also attacked Jews, Catholics and Liberals but their most extreme hate was for black Americans
      • Wanted to stop black Americans from gaining equality
        • Terrorised black American families with intimidation and extreme violence
          • They used lynching: Illegal execution by which a black person was hung and beaten, usually carried out by mobs
      • Operated in the southern states mostly
        • Only White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) could join
      • Membership was secret so they wore hoods
        • Many law enforcement officers were members or sympathetic to the Klan's aims
    • Emmett Till
      • 14, year old boy for Chicago visits his cousins in Mississippi in 1955
        • After the trail black people continued to be murdered in Mississippi and the killers were rarely convicted
      • Carolyn Bryant claimed that Till made sexual advances went he went into her store
        • Till's cousins who were waiting outside said that Till only wolf whistled
        • The following night Till was abducted and beaten severely by Bryant's husband and his half-brother
          • The two men shot Till and threw him into a river with a weight around his neck
          • Till's body was found three days later
      • Till's mother had his body flown back to Chicago where she held an open casket funeral
        • This led to extensive media coverage, fuelling widespread shock and outrage, whilst shedding light on the mistreatment of black Americans in the South
          • The murder trail was reported worldwide
          • The defendants were acquitted by an all white jury
            • They later sold the story of how they murdered Till to a magazine
    • Media coverage of theses injustices led to public outcry and support and growth for the civil rights movement, spurring the federal government to come up with solutions
    • NAACP leader, George W. Lee was murdered in 1955; his murder remains unsolved

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar History resources:

See all History resources »See all The USA - twentieth century change resources »