A New Generation

In the fall of 1960, four blacks students from North Carolina A&T went to downtown Greensboro and sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth's.  In doing so, they violated the city's segregation ordinance.  They waited calmly to be served, but the wait staff refused to serve them.  Soon, whites began heckling them and physically harassing the students, creating a disturbance.  The police soon arrived and arrested the students for "disturbing the peace."  The next day, more students replaced them at the "all-white" counter.

Soon, black students in other Southern cities also began "sit ins" at local all-white establishments.  The center of protest soon moved to Nashville, where students led a boycott of downtown establishments that accepted blacks' money but refused to treat them equally.  After three weeks, the business establishment of Nashville gave in and allowed desegregation in public places.

Emboldened by their success with the sit ins, the student leaders formed a new civil rights group, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  They remained pledged to follow Dr. King's principles of non-violence, but they shared the impatience of their generation with the slow pace of change.  The dedicated themselves to using non-violent methods in a proactive manner to help force an end to segregation.

Freedom Rides

In 1955, the Interstate Commerce Commission banned racial discrimination on interstate carriers.  However, in 1961 the South continued to enforce segregation in bus terminals serving interstate travelers.  One civil rights group, CORE (The Congress on Racial Equality) decided to test the Kennedy administration's commitment to civil rights by organizing a ride by black and white civil rights workers from Washington, D. C., to New Orleans, La.  At each bus stop, the activists would all sit in the whites-only waiting rooms. On May 4, 1961, the first bus left the nation's capital.  Outside Anniston, Alabama, the Freedom Riders' bus was firebombed.  Another bus arrived in Birmingham, only to be attacked by a white mob.  The FBI provided no protection.  The Freedom Rides almost ended there in Birmingham, but a group of SNCC activists arrived from Nashville to continue the rides.  This second wave of riders was attacked in Montgomery, Alabama, and Jackson, Mississippi.  In Jackson, the police arrested the Riders and put them in jail.  At that point, the Rides ended.  However, the ICC once again issued rulings in September 1961 reaffirming its stance that segregation in facilities serving interstate commerce was illegal.  Eventually, the rides resumed and they made it to New Orleans.

The Freedom Rides radicalized the young students of SNCC.  They saw the reluctance of the federal government to intervene on behalf of civil rights, suffered physical violence at the hands of Southern mobs, and injustice at the hands of Southern lawmen.  They continued to practice non-violence, but their trust in authority--even the authorities within their movement, such as Dr. King--was quickly eroding as the changes they desired remained far from hand.

James Meredith, and the March on Washington

James Meredith, a native of Attala County, Mississippi, unintentionally placed the Kennedy administration's record on civil rights on the spot when he attempted to enter the University of Mississippi in 1962.  Meredith had earleir filled out an application to the all-white university, leaving the "race" question blank, and was accepted.  However, before he could attend, word got out that Meredith was black, leading the university to withdraw its acceptance.  Meredith appealed the decision, and emerged victorious when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Meredith's favor.  When Meredith arrived on the campus that fall to enroll, however, he found his way blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett.  He again attempted to register at a satellite campus, but was blocked again by the state's lieutenant governor.  Word of the state's actions sparked protest and demonstrations erupted.  President Kennedy ordered Federal Marshals to escort Meredith to the Ole Miss campus so that he could attend.  A riot broke out and before the National Guard could arrive, two students were killed.  Network TV cameras showed the unrest to a national audience.

With civil rights once again on the national agenda, Kennedy, who had been reluctant to take a public stand in favor of civil rights because he wanted to keep the support of Southern Democrats, at last took a step to advance civil rights.  Addressing a national audience, Kennedy announced he would submit a Civil Rights Bill to Congress that would lend federal enforcement powers to ending segregation.

Dr. King organized a March on Washington in 1963 to support the Bill.  Kennedy at first opposed the March, but later supported it,  200,000 people gathered in Washington in the largest civil rights demonstration to date.  The culmination came when Dr. King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Death of Kennedy

An assassin killed John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.  The task of passing his Civil Rights Bill now fell to his successor,  Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ).  In some ways, the terrible tragedy in Dallas helped the chances for the Bill's passage--first, by increasing support for the Bill on sympathetic grounds for the dead president, and second, because LBJ was a much more seasoned political operator than Kennedy.  In his State of the Union address in January 1964, Johnson asked Americans to support the Bill as a testament to Kennedy.  Then, he set out to deliver the "Johnson Treatment" on the Bill's behalf.  Johnson, who had served in Congress since 1938, knew the political score and where every political skeleton was buried.  He called in markers, put pressure on reluctant congressmen, and generally laid down a "full court press" in an effort to get the Bill passed.  He succeeded.  Johnson, flanked by congressmen and civil rights leaders, signed the bill on July 2, 1964.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a

comprehensive U.S. law intended to end discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin. It is generally considered the most important U.S. law on civil rights since Reconstruction (1865-77). It guarantees equal voting rights (Title I); prohibits segregation or discrimination in places of public accommodation (Title II); bans discrimination, including sex-based discrimination, by trade unions, schools, or employers that are involved in interstate commerce or do business with the federal government (Title VII); calls for the desegregation of public schools (Title IV); and assures nondiscrimination in the distribution of funds under federally assisted programs (Title VI). A 1972 amendment, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, extended Title VII coverage to employees of state and local governments and increased the authority of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was created in 1964 to enforce Title VII provisions. The act was proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and strengthened and passed into law under President Lyndon Johnson.  (Source:   Yahoo! Reference )

Freedom Summer

Johnson's success in obtaining passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came too late for some civil rights workers, who were in Mississippi that summer working on a voter registration project.  Student activists had targeted Mississippi, which they regarded as the worst offender in oppressing blacks, for "Freedom Summer."  College students, recruited by the civil rights activists, traveled to Mississippi to live and work to register black citizens to vote in the Democratic party caucuses that would elect delegates to that summer's Democratc National Convention.  On June 21, three of these civil rights activists--James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael "Mickey" Schwerner--disappeared after being released from a Philadelphia, Mississippi, jail.  Their colleagues suspected the Klan had harmed them, but the Mississippi authorities downplayed the disappearance, saying the young men had probably just gone home, or else staged the disappearence to gain publicity.  Five weeks after the young men had disappeared, the FBI, acting on a tip from an informant inside the Klan, found the three bodies buried in a half-finished dam.  The two white men had been shot; the black man had been beaten savagely before he was shot.

   

The deaths of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner outraged the Freedom Summer workers.  They had been frustrated in their efforts to register black voters and vote in the regular Democratic elections.  Their pleas to the federal government for more protection against the Klan and others had been ignored, and now three men were dead.

The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

Unable to vote in the Democratic caucus for the National Convention, leaders of Freedom Summer elected their own slate of delegates to the Convention in Atlantic City.  Calling themselves the "Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party," the delegates traveled to the Democratic National Convention to challenge the moral and legal rights of the state's all-white delegation of Regualr Democrats to the state's seats.  The leaders of the Party did not want to alienate the Southern delegates, who might bolt as they had in 1948 if the MFDP was awarded Mississippi's seats at the Convention.  Lyndon Johnson refused to meet with members of the MFDP.  Instead, he sent his vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, to tell the MFDP they would not be seated.  However, they would be allowed to seat two non-voting members with the Mississippi delegation.  After long consultation, the group rejected the Party's offer.  They were there to obtain voting seats, and failing that, they had no purpose in remaining at the Convention.  Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the three MFDP delegates, put it succinctly:  "We didn't come all this way for no two seats when all of us is tired."

Despite the Party's rejection of the MFDP, the all-white Mississippi delegation walked out of the Convention anyway, angry at the attention paid to the MFDP.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

In spite of the divisions in Atlantic City and a significant challenge from Republican Barry Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson swept to a landslide victory in November.  Once inaugurated, he determined to continue his course of expanding civil rights for African-Americans.  

Johnson introduced the idea of a Voting Rights Act  to Congress in what is considered to be one of his best speeches:

Rarely are we met with a challenge…..to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such as an issue…..the command of the Constitution is plain. It is wrong - deadly wrong - to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to  vote in this country.

With his commitment to the cause, Congress realized that Johnson would not back down on this issue and if they hindered or failed to back it, Americans would view the failure to be one by Congress alone.

The Act was passed. It outlawed literacy tests and poll taxes as a way of assessing whether anyone was fit or unfit to vote. As far as Johnson was concerned, all you needed to vote was American citizenship and the registration of your name on an electoral list. No form of hindrance to this would be tolerated by the law courts.

The impact of this act was dramatic. By the end of 1966, only 4 out of the traditional 13 Southern states, had less than 50% of African Americans registered to vote. By 1968, even hard-line Mississippi had 59% of African Americans registered. In the longer term, far more African Americans were elected into public office. The Act was the boost that the civil rights cause needed to move it swiftly along and Johnson has to take full credit for this. As Martin Luther King had predicted in earlier years, demonstrations served a good purpose but real change would only come through the power of Federal government. Johnson proved this. _____ V Sanders has called what he did a "legislative revolution". Johnson had one break in that he worked with a Congress that had a majority of Democrats serving in it and as a Democrat president both could work well together.  (Source:   The 1965 Voting Rights Act )

Conclusions

The passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented the culmination of the movement to end de jure segregation.  However, it did not mark the end of the civil rights movement itself.  Many blacks continued to suffer racial discrimination and remained mired in poverty. Moreover, this kind of discrimination was more prevalent outside the South--in the cities of the North and West where blacks had migrated to find economic opportunity during and after World War I. These problems were complicated and could not be solved by the passage of sweeping legislation.  The frustrations of those left behind in the inner cities would boil over that same summer of 1965, leaving large areas of U. S. cities smoldering, both literally and figuratively, and place civil rights leaders at yet another crossroads on the course towards the future of a raically equal society.


Sources:

African-American Odyssey:  The Civil Rights Era

Greensboro Sit-Ins: Launch of a Civil Rights Movement

Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner

CNN Interactive

Mississippi & Freedom Summer

SNCC: 1960-1966

The 1965 Voting Rights Act