Civil Rights, 1954-1963

The Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1963

May 1954
Supreme Court decides Brown v. Board
(David Halberstam, The Fifties, Chapter 28)

The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, announced its decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas on May 17, 1954. The decision declared that the system of segregated public schools in the United States was unconstitutional. A unanimous Court ruled that "separate" was inherently unequal. The majority opinion cited sociological evidence to argue that the separation itself --- regardless of whether facilities were equal --- cultivated a sense of inferiority in black children. In handing down this ruling, the Court overturned the 1896 precedent in Plessy v. Ferguson, the case which established the "separate but equal" doctrine. It was replaced with a legal apparatus whereby separate school systems could be challenged by obtaining a federal court order directing school districts to desegregate.

August 1955
The Murder of Emmet Till
(David Halberstam, The Fifties, Chapter 29)

In August of 1955, Emmet Till, a fourteen year old from Chicago, was sent to visit relatives near Money, Mississippi in Tallahatchie County. The young man, in part to show off to his relatives, allegedly "flirted" and used sexual language in speaking to a 21 year-old white woman working in a country store owned by her husband Roy Bryant. A few days later (on Saturday, August 27th), Till disappeared. His body was eventually found, wired to an old factory fan, on the bottom of a river. Till had been severely beaten and shot in the head. Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, were arrested and tried for murder. The trial was the first of many such violent incidents to draw substantial coverage in the national media. Bryant and Milan were acquitted by an all-white jury although they later "sold their story" of murdering Till to Look magazine for $4,000.

J.W. Milam & Roy Bryant

December 1955 - December 1956
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
(David Halberstam, The Fifties, Chapter 36)

The Rosa Parks story has become legendary in the annals of civil rights history. On December 1, 1955, she boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. During her ride, she was told to move out of her seat and to the "colored section" in the back. She refused and was arrested. Her arrest triggered a systematic response among the civil rights community in Montgomery --- a boycott of public transportation. Leading the boycott effort was a young Reverend Martin Luther King, pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery. The boycott lasted over a year and ended on November 13, 1956 when the U.S. Supreme court ruled that the Montgomery segregation law was unconstitutional.

October 1957
Central High School
Little Rock, Arkansas
(David Halberstam, The Fifties, Chapter 44)

To comply with the Brown v. Board decision, plans were made to integrate Central High School in September of 1957. When nine black high school students arrived to attend Central High, they were met by an angry crowd. Despite his pledges of cooperation, the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, in fact, ordered the Arkansas National Guard to keep the black students, known as the "Little Rock Nine," out of the school. Faced with this defiance of a federal court order, President Dwight Eisenhower responded by sending troops from the 101st Airborne to Little Rock with orders to protect the nine students. Eisenhower also federalized the Arkansas National Guard. This marked the first time since Reconstruction that federal troops were sent to the South. This incident was the first of several in which the governor of a state refused to ensure a peaceful process of integration and thereby forced the President of the United States to act (see the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama incidents below).

May 1961
The "Freedom Riders"

In May of 1961, a group of civil rights activists sought to "test" enforcement of a recent Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in bus terminals. The group consisted of black and white, male and female. They boarded two busses in Washington, D.C. and were bound to New Orleans where they would celebrate the 7th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Their route would take them through South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. At various bus terminals, the black "Freedom Riders" would go to the white dining areas and waiting rooms while the white "Freedom Riders" would go to the area reserved for blacks. Over the course of the journey, the Freedom Riders and sympathizers (including a representative of the Justice Department dispatched by Attorney General Robert Kennedy) were beaten at an Alabama bus terminal. One of their buses was firebombed as well.

September 1962
James Meredith and the University of Mississippi

In September of 1962, James Meredith sought to enroll as the first black student in the history of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). His enrollment triggered substantial resistance from the University, the community of Oxford Mississippi, and the Governor of the state, Ross Barnett. As a result, President John F. Kennedy ordered federal marshals to ensure Meredith's right to enroll and to protect him as he moved to the campus. On the evening of the Meredith's enrollment, President John F. Kennedy spoke to the American people in a live television address.

Transcript of President John F. Kennedy's address on the situation in Mississippi

As Kennedy was speaking, violence broke out on the campus and in Oxford. President Kennedy ultimately ordered federal troops to Oxford to quell the riots which injured over 300 and killed two.

April-May 1963
Birmingham, Alabama
"Project C"

"Project C" was the name given to the plan devised by Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to challenge the system of segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. The "C" in the project stood for confrontation, the strategy of nonviolent direct action designed to confront segregation through peaceful demonstrations, rallies, boycotts, and appeals to justice. This strategy actually hinged upon the anticipated reaction of Police Commissioner Bull Connor. Leaders reasoned that the response of Connor and the police would be to suppress the demonstrations, quite likely through violent means. If so, this response to peaceful protest would attract national attention and create public sympathy for the cause of desegregation.

The leaders reasoned correctly. The response of Bull Connor was as expected. Police dogs and fire hoses were used to disperse the demonstrators. Martin Luther King was arrested by Birmingham policy on Good Friday, April 12, 1963. During his stay in jail, the white ministers of Birmingham churches wrote and urged King to call off the demonstrations and boycotts. The following was King's response:

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

June 11, 1963
George Wallace Stands in the "School House Door"
Desegregating the University of Alabama

In 1963, the governor of Alabama was George Wallace. He had run for and won the office on the slogan of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." In June of 1963, a federal court barred any state government interference with the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, at the University of Alabama. Despite this order, Governor George Wallace appointed himself the temporary University registrar and stood in the doorway of the administration building to prevent the students from registering. In response, President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard. One hundred guardsman escorted the students to campus and their commander, General Henry Graham, ordered George Wallace to "step aside." Thus were the students registered.

June 11, 1963
John F. Kennedy Submits Civil Rights Legislation

On the same evening, President Kennedy addressed the public in a speech broadcast by all television networks. It was clear break with JFK's prior and lukewarm position on civil rights. The bill that he submitted to Congress was ultimately passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Transcript of JFK's Speech on Civil Rights
(Real Audio version of the speech also available)

June 12, 1963
The Assassination of Medgar Evers
Jackson, Mississippi

One day after Kennedy's landmark speech, violence struck again. The place was Jackson, Mississippi. The field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Medgar Evers, was leading a protest against Jackson's system of segregation. That evening, Evers arrived home, stepped out of his car, and was shot in the back. He died on his driveway with his wife and children looking on.

Medgar Evers Byron De La Beckwith (1963 & 1994) Bobby DeLaughter

The assassin was white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a man with an intimidating and violent personality. Beckwith was arrested, tried, and acquitted by an all white jury. Years later, in 1994, Assistant District Attorney, Bobby DeLaughter, reopened the case. This led to a retrial in which the jury convicted Beckwith, 31 years after the act, of assassinating Medgar Evers. The story of Beckwith's second trial is the subject of the 1996 film entitled Ghosts of Mississippi.

August 28, 1963
The March on Washington

To pressure the government and Congress to act more quickly on the civil rights agenda, a massive march on the nation's capital was planned, scheduled, and carried out on August 28th, 1963. According to estimates, over 250,000 participated in the peaceful demonstration which culminated in the speech given by Reverend Martin Luther King.

[Audio Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream"]
[Transcript: Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream"]

September 15, 1963
Birmingham Bombing

On Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama. The explosion killed four young girls who were in the church for Sunday school and injured another 20 people.

The FBI sent agents to investigate and four suspects were identified. The Birmingham office of the FBI recommended that the four be prosecuted. However, the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, refused and claimed that civil rights activists themselves bombed the church to gain public sympathy. The FBI initially closed the case in 1968.

The suspects were four members of the Ku Klux Klan. It took nearly 40 years for them to be brought to justice. Local prosecutors reopened the case and one suspect, Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, was convicted of murder in 1977. Herman Cash died in 1994 as charges against him were being prepared. On May 1, 2001, a Birmingham jury convicted Thomas Blanton (62 years old at the time of the trial) on four counts of murder. Finally, on May 22, 2002, a jury convicted Bobby Frank Cherry (now 71 years old) of the murders. Both Blanton and Cherry were sentenced to life in prison.

"Dynamite" Bob Chambliss Thomas Blanton Bobby Frank Cherry