Civil Rights for African-Americans, Women (Ch. 23.2) and Latin-Americans/Native Americans (Ch. 23.1)
- During the 1960s, the belief that women should have political, economic, and social equality with men was known as feminism. With the help of feminism, women were given the right to vote in 1920. However, there was still a ways to go with women's rights. About 1 in 3 women were paid wages when working during the year 1950. A lot of the jobs that women did were teaching, nurses, clerical work, etc. and these jobs didn't pay very well. They also weren't paid the same as men if they were in the same job field. In addition, despite their education, ability, and experience, women weren't able to be promoted to management positions. President Kennedy helped with women's rights when he ordered for the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women in 1961. This is when he found out about the unfairness in women's rights...
- Latin Americans endured discrimination and ethnic prejudice in jobs and housing. They wanted better treatment and greater representation. A majority of them lived in segregated spanish-speaking neighborhoods. Nearly half of all Latin Americans lived in poverty and were unemployed. They were denied various social services such as food stamps and unemployment insurance. Organizations such as the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) helped give Latin Americans some jobs with farming.
- Native Americans faced the most amount of discrimination, and they were also more prone to suffer from alcoholism and tuberculosis. But, by 1972, Congress passed the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act giving Native American tribes more control over their children's education as well as more control over their own affairs. Also, Native Americans were able to get more of the land that they had lost, back, by going to federal court and giving them copies of old land treaties.
- NAACP: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights organization for African Americans in the United States--was founded to secure civil justice, and to foster racial integration and fair treatment toward African Americans.
- Martin Luther King Jr.: Martin Luther King Jr. was a main leader in the African American civil rights movement. He used nonviolent methods of helping to fight for Native Americans' rights. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.
- Malcolm X: an African-American Muslim minister who was known as one of the most influential African Amercans in US history. He fought for equal African American rights pointing out just how Whites would treat them unfairly.
- Jackie Robinson: He "lit the torch for many African Americans" by being the first African American Major League Baseball player in the 1940s (that modern era). He helped to end racial segregation in the sport of baseball.
- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka: Oliver Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka--a US Supreme Court decision which declared state laws of making separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.
- De-segregating the US Military: During the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was in need of replacement troops for his military units—all of which were made up whites. He ended up making the decision of allowing African American soldiers to pick up a gun and join the white military units to fight in combat for the first time. In 1948, shortly after WWII, President Harry S. Truman's "Executive Order 9981's" ordered the integration of the armed forces.
- Little Rock 9: In 1957, this was a group of African American students who went to Little Rock Central High School. These nine African Americans helped with the desegregation of their school.
- Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott: Instead of making room for a white person, Rosa Parks (and African American) refused to give up her seat on a public bus on December 1, 1955. However, She ended up being arrested, tried, and convicted of disorderly conduct as well as violating a local ordinance.
- Greensboro sit-ins: They were a series of nonviolent protests which led to the Woolworth department store no longer using the racial segregation policy. Four African Americans went into the "white only" department store wanting to order coffee. The manager refused to serve them as long as there was the racial segregation policy.
- Freedom Rides: People (civil rights activitists) who rode interstate buses into the segregated South in order to test the US Supreme Court decision of the Boynton vs. Virginia.
- Birmingham, Alabama—1963: On September 15, 1963, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed with 19 sticks of dynamited by the Ku Klux Klan. It had served as a rallying place for blacks who protested against racism in Birmingham, Alabama.
- Mississippi Summer Project (Freedom Summer project): This project was a campaign in the US that started an attempt to try and register numerous African American voters in Mississippi. The project also helped to establish Freedom Houses and Freedom Schools in small towns to help the black population.
- Selma, Alabama—1965: There were three "Selma to Montgomery marches" that took place in Selma, Alabama during the civil rights movement. African Americans aimed toward having equal voting rights.
- Voting Rights Act of 1965: An act that banished discriminatory voting practices which was responsible for African Americans being unable to vote in the US. It also got rid of the requirement of having to pass literacy tests for voting.
- Civil Rights Act of 1964: An act that outlawed major forms of discrimination and racial segregation of and against African Americans and women. It ended the required applications of voting as well as racial segregation in schools.
- Stokely Carmichael: He was a Trinidadian-American black civil rights activist (he was from the Carribean). He was a leader of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)...He was also a integrationist--believed in equal opportunity of all races and desegregation).
- Black Panthers: This group was an African American revolutionary leftist (the political Left) organization. The Black Panthers were involved in the Black Power movement--goals of wanting better rights for blacks.
- Affirmative action: the promoting of increased representation of women, African Americans, and other minority groups.
- Jesse Jackson: He was a Baptist minister and was also a civil rights activist. He was tried to be a candidate for the 1984 presidential election as a Democrat.
Sources:
http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00016431.html
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