The Civil Rights Movement

1954 to 1968

The law said we were equal. We had to walk, sit, ride and bleed to make it true.

In 1955, Emmett Till, fourteen, was tortured and killed in Mississippi. His mother opened the casket so the world could see, and an all-white jury freed the killers in 67 minutes.

That December, Black Montgomery stayed off the buses for 381 days. In 1963, a Klan bomb in a Birmingham church killed four girls.

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed to end segregation in public and private places. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act became law, and in two years Black registration in Mississippi rose from 6.7 percent to 59.8 percent.

Tap Next to read each record. Every fact in them carries a small [Source] mark. Tap it to see where the fact comes from.

We don't need to raise our voice. The truth, told exactly, is enough.

1955 Proven

Emmett Till

A Chicago boy's killing in Mississippi, and his mother's open casket, woke a nation.

He was fourteen. His mother made the whole world look at what they did to him.

Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old from Chicago, was visiting family in Mississippi in August 1955. Eyewitnesses said he whistled at Carolyn Bryant while buying candy at her store. [Source 1]

At about 2 a.m. on Sunday, 28 August 1955, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam came to the home of Mose Wright and took Emmett. They tortured him through the night, killed him, and dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. [Source 1]

His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, held a public viewing and an open-casket funeral in Chicago. Jet magazine published pictures of his body. She would not let the country look away. [Source 1]

On 23 September 1955, an all-white, all-male jury acquitted Bryant and Milam after 67 minutes. One juror said they "wouldn't have taken so long if they hadn't stopped to drink a Coke." Months later, the two men admitted to Look magazine that they had killed him. They could not be tried again. [Source 2] [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Emmett Till (National Park Service).
  2. 2.News report. Sept. 23, 1955: Emmett Till's killers acquitted (Mississippi Today, 2024). “wouldn't have taken so long if they hadn't stopped to drink a Coke”

1955 to 1956 Proven

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

One woman's arrest started a year-long refusal to ride that ended segregation on the city's buses.

We walked for 381 days. We did not ride until we could sit where we pleased.

On 1 December 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, and was charged with breaking the city's segregation law. [Source 1]

The Women's Political Council, led by Jo Ann Robinson, called a one-day boycott for 5 December, the day of her trial. It worked, and it became a boycott of 381 days. Ministers formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, with a young pastor, Martin Luther King Jr., as its president. [Source 1]

On 30 January 1956, white supremacists bombed King's house. Four women, Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith, sued the city. [Source 2]

On 5 June 1956 a federal court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional, and on 13 November the Supreme Court let the ruling stand. The boycott ended on 20 December 1956. Women started it, and four women won it in court. [Source 1] [Source 2]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. 60th Anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (National Archives, Rediscovering Black History, 2015).
  2. 2.Scholarly. Matthew Roberts, Browder v. Gayle (Encyclopedia of Alabama, Alabama Humanities Alliance).

1957 to 1958 Proven

The Little Rock Nine

In September 1957, Arkansas's governor sent the National Guard to keep nine Black students out of Little Rock's Central High. The President sent the 101st Airborne to walk them in.

Nine teenagers. It took the United States Army to walk them into school.

In September 1957, nine Black students were set to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, three years after Brown v. Board. [Source 1]

On 2 September, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the National Guard to keep them out. On 4 September, a mob and the Guard turned them away again. On 23 September, an angry crowd tried to rush the school, and the students were sent home. [Source 1]

On the night of 24 September, President Dwight Eisenhower spoke to the nation. He had ordered troops to Little Rock. "Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts." [Source 2]

On 25 September, soldiers of the 101st Airborne walked the nine students into class. [Source 1]

Every day after that they were harassed, jeered and threatened. They kept going. On 27 May 1958, Ernest Green became the first Black graduate of Central High. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. The Little Rock Nine (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture).
  2. 2.Primary record. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Radio and Television Address to the American People on the Situation in Little Rock (24 September 1957) (The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1957), Address. “Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.”

1960 Proven

The Greensboro Sit-In

On 1 February 1960, four Black college students sat down at the whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina. By summer's end, the city's lunch counters were open.

Four college students sat down. A movement stood up.

At the Woolworth store on Elm Street in Greensboro, North Carolina, Black customers could buy food, but could eat only standing up. [Source 1]

Late in the afternoon of 1 February 1960, four students from North Carolina A&T, Ezell Blair, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond, sat down at the lunch counter, and stayed. [Source 1]

The next day, more came, and the numbers grew fast. The sit-ins spread to other lunch counters downtown. [Source 1]

Two weeks later, The New York Times told the country: "The spark that touched off the protests was provided by four freshmen." [Source 2]

By the end of that summer, Greensboro agreed to end segregation at its eating places. The sit-ins also led to the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Greensboro Sit-Ins (NCpedia, State Library of North Carolina).
  2. 2.Primary record. Claude Sitton, The New York Times, New York Times sit-in stories of February 1960 (Claude Sitton, 15 February 1960), as reprinted by CORE (Civil Rights Movement Archive, 1960), Claude Sitton, 15 February 1960. “The spark that touched off the protests was provided by four freshmen”

1961 Proven

The Freedom Rides

In May 1961, riders boarded buses to test the law against segregated bus stations. In Alabama their bus was burned and they were beaten while police stayed away.

The Court said the buses were desegregated. They rode to prove it, and nearly died.

On 5 December 1960, in Boynton v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that a bus terminal and its restaurant serving interstate passengers "must perform these services without discriminations prohibited by the Act." [Source 1] [Source 2]

On 4 May 1961, riders organized by the Congress of Racial Equality left Washington on two buses bound for New Orleans, to test it. [Source 2]

On 14 May, near Anniston, Alabama, a white mob slashed the Greyhound's tires and threw a firebomb through a window, and the bus burned. In Birmingham, a mob full of Klansmen beat the Trailways riders at the station. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor had promised the Klan fifteen minutes before the police arrived. [Source 2]

The rides went on all summer. In Jackson, Mississippi, riders were arrested and sent to Parchman Penitentiary. On 22 September 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission banned separate facilities in bus and train stations. They rode, and they won. [Source 2]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Supreme Court of the United States, Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (5 December 1960) (ChanRobles Virtual Law Library, 1960), Syllabus. “the terminal and restaurant must perform these services without discriminations prohibited by the Act”
  2. 2.Scholarly. Susan Eckelmann, Freedom Rides (Encyclopedia of Alabama, Alabama Humanities Alliance).

1963 Proven

The Children's Crusade

In May 1963, Birmingham's Black children marched against segregation, filled the city's jails, and helped win the city's promise to open its public places.

Our children marched. They faced the dogs and the hoses.

On 2 May 1963, around noon, Black children marched out of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, to protest segregation. Most were between seven and eighteen years old. [Source 1]

The jails were soon filled past capacity, holding more than 2,000 protesters at a time. [Source 1]

On 3 May, Eugene "Bull" Connor ordered high-pressure water cannons and attack dogs turned on them. Photographers for Life magazine and The New York Times took pictures the whole world saw. [Source 1]

Within days, the federal government sent a negotiator, and the city agreed to open its public places and businesses. The children won it. [Source 1]

On 11 June 1963, President Kennedy told the nation: "The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them." [Source 2]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Grace London, Children's Crusade (Encyclopedia of Alabama, Alabama Humanities Alliance, 2017).
  2. 2.Primary record. John F. Kennedy, Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights (11 June 1963) (Teaching American History, 1963), Address, 11 June 1963. “The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.”

1963 Proven

Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers fought for civil rights in Mississippi until he was assassinated in 1963.

Shot outside his own home, for asking that we be free.

Medgar Evers was the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi. [Source 1]

In 1963 he was killed by an assassin's bullet outside his home in Jackson. [Source 1]

His wife, Myrlie Evers, fought for decades for justice. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument (National Park Service).

1963 Proven

The March on Washington

A quarter of a million people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial for jobs and freedom, and heard a dream.

Twenty-two years after he first threatened it, A. Philip Randolph brought the march to Washington.

Randolph, the labor leader who had threatened a march in 1941, came up with the idea and led it. Bayard Rustin planned it day by day, with a staff of more than 200. [Source 1] [Source 2]

On 28 August 1963, an estimated 250,000 people came by plane, train, car and bus from all over the country. [Source 1]

It was a march for jobs and freedom both. Its demands included a fair living wage, fair hiring, and the desegregation of the schools. [Source 1]

John Lewis told the crowd: "we do not want our freedom gradually but we want to be free now." At the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (National Park Service). “we do not want our freedom gradually but we want to be free now”
  2. 2.Primary record. Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry (1941) (National Archives, Milestone Documents). “ten, twenty, fifty thousand Negroes on the White House lawn”

1963 Proven

Four Girls in Birmingham

On 15 September 1963, Klansmen bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and killed four girls.

Sunday morning, in church. Four little girls.

Birmingham, Alabama, was a center of the movement's marches and sit-ins, and of police brutality and white violence against them. [Source 1]

Around 10:24 on the morning of Sunday, 15 September 1963, local members of the Ku Klux Klan set off a dynamite bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church. [Source 2] [Source 1]

Four girls were killed: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, all fourteen, and Denise McNair, eleven. More than twenty people inside were hurt. Another girl, Sarah Collins, lost her right eye. [Source 1] [Source 2]

Thirty-nine years, before the last of them answered for it.

Sources

  1. 1.Reference. 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
  2. 2.Primary record. A Byte Out of History: '63 Baptist Church Bombing (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2007). “around 10:24 on September 15, 1963”

1964 Proven

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

After sixty days of Senate debate and a filibuster, the Civil Rights Act was signed on 2 July 1964, to end segregation in public and private places.

Ninety-nine years after slavery ended, the nation outlawed segregation.

Southern senators fought the bill for 60 days of debate. One senator, Robert Byrd, spoke against it for 14 hours and 13 minutes. [Source 1]

On 10 June 1964, for the first time in its history, the Senate voted to end a filibuster on a civil rights bill, 71 to 29. [Source 1]

On 2 July 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. [Source 1]

Its aim was to end segregation in public and private places. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Civil Rights (United States Senate).

1964 Proven

Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner

Three young men working for the vote in Mississippi disappeared one June night and were found under an earthen dam.

The deputy who arrested them handed them to the Klan. One Black man and two white men, killed for helping us vote.

On 21 June 1964, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price of Neshoba County arrested three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, supposedly for speeding. [Source 1]

At about 10:30 that night he let them go. Klansmen followed them, as planned. They were never heard from again. [Source 1]

On 4 August 1964, after a tip, investigators dug their bodies out from fourteen feet below an earthen dam on a farm. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Mississippi Burning (Federal Bureau of Investigation, Famous Cases).

1964 Proven

Fannie Lou Hamer

For trying to vote she lost her job, her home and nearly her life, and she told the nation all of it.

A sharecropper from Mississippi stood before the nation and asked the question for all of us.

On 31 August 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer and seventeen others traveled 26 miles to the courthouse in Indianola, Mississippi, to register to vote. Only two of them were let in to take the literacy test. [Source 1]

She had worked on a plantation for 18 years as a timekeeper and sharecropper. The owner told her to take back her registration or leave. She left that same night. [Source 1]

On 9 June 1963, after she was arrested in Winona, Mississippi, highway patrolmen ordered two Black prisoners to beat her with a blackjack. In her own words: "I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted." [Source 1]

On 22 August 1964, she told the Democratic National Convention what had been done to her, and asked: "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?" [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Fannie Lou Hamer, Testimony Before the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention, 22 August 1964 (Civil Rights Movement Archive, 1964). “Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

1965 Proven

Bloody Sunday

Marchers for the vote were beaten and gassed on a bridge in Selma in March 1965, and the nation watched it on television.

They walked across a bridge for the right to vote. The state of Alabama met them with clubs and gas.

Early in 1965, Jimmie Lee Jackson, a voting rights activist, was shot by a state trooper in Marion, Alabama. He died eight days later. [Source 1]

On 7 March 1965, about 600 marchers, led by Hosea Williams and John Lewis, set out from Selma to protest his death. [Source 1]

At the bridge, state troopers, county deputies and a posse on horseback attacked them with clubs and gas: forty canisters of tear gas, twelve smoke cans and eight of nausea gas. Fifty-six people were treated at Selma's two Black hospitals. John Lewis's skull was fractured. [Source 1]

Days later, under oath in federal court, Lewis described the posse with their long whips, "beating people." The marchers, he testified, had committed "no act of violence." [Source 2] [Source 3]

Television showed it to the nation. On 21 March the marchers set out again, under guard, and reached Montgomery on 25 March. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Alston Fitts, Bloody Sunday (Encyclopedia of Alabama, Alabama Humanities Alliance, 2008).
  2. 2.Primary record. U.S. District Court, Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. presiding, Williams v. Wallace, trial transcript, volume II: testimony of John Lewis (U.S. District Court, Middle District of Alabama, March 1965) (Civil Rights Movement Archive, 1965), Volume II, Lewis testimony. “beating people”
  3. 3.Primary record. U.S. District Court, Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. presiding, Williams v. Wallace, trial transcript, volume II: testimony of John Lewis (U.S. District Court, Middle District of Alabama, March 1965) (Civil Rights Movement Archive, 1965), Volume II, Lewis testimony. “no act of violence”

1965 Proven

The Voting Rights Act

On 6 August 1965, the Voting Rights Act became law, ninety-five years after the 15th Amendment promised the vote.

Blood on a bridge in Selma, and five months later, the law.

On 6 August 1965, after the nation saw Bloody Sunday, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law. [Source 1]

Ninety-five years after the 15th Amendment promised the vote, the federal government moved to make the promise real. [Source 2]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Alston Fitts, Bloody Sunday (Encyclopedia of Alabama, Alabama Humanities Alliance, 2008).
  2. 2.Primary record. The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1870) (National Archives, Milestone Documents). “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”

1967 Proven

Operation Bedcheck

A California county sent its welfare workers on dawn raids, and the one who refused took the county to court.

They came into the homes of poor mothers at 6:30 on a Sunday morning, hunting for men. One social worker said no.

In January 1963, the Board of Supervisors of Alameda County, California, ordered early-morning searches of the homes of families on welfare, to find "unauthorized males." [Source 1]

The raids, named "Operation Bedcheck," began on Sunday, 13 January 1963, at 6:30 in the morning. They were modeled on an earlier project in Kern County called "Operation Weekend." The searchers went through 422 homes. [Source 1]

Benny Parrish, a county social worker, wrote to his superior that he could not take part, because he believed the searches were illegal. He was fired for "insubordination." [Source 1]

In 1967, the Supreme Court of California ruled the mass raids unconstitutional: a county could not make families give up their rights in order to receive aid. Benny Parrish was right. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Supreme Court of California, Parrish v. Civil Service Commission of Alameda County, 66 Cal.2d 260 (1967) (Justia, 1967). “unauthorized males”

1967 Proven

Loving v. Virginia

In 1958, police burst into the bedroom of Richard and Mildred Loving in Virginia and arrested them for their marriage. On 12 June 1967, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia's law, and the laws of fifteen other states.

The police came into their bedroom in the early morning, because of who they married.

On 2 June 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter married in Washington, D.C. They went home to Virginia. [Source 1]

In July 1958, police entered their bedroom in Central Point, Virginia, in the early morning and arrested them, under laws that came from Virginia's 1924 "Act to Preserve Racial Integrity." [Source 1]

The judge suspended their sentence on condition that they leave Virginia and not come back together for 25 years. He wrote: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents." [Source 2]

On 12 June 1967, the Supreme Court ruled for them, nine to nothing. "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." The laws against such marriages in Virginia and fifteen other states fell with it. [Source 2] [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Reference. Loving v. Virginia (Encyclopaedia Britannica).
  2. 2.Primary record. Supreme Court of the United States (Chief Justice Earl Warren), Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), opinion of the Court (United States Reports, via GovInfo, U.S. Government Publishing Office, 1967), pp. 3, 12. “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

1967 Proven

The FBI Against the Movement

The FBI director put the destruction of Black organizations on paper and sent it to his field offices.

Our own government set its police against our freedom movement. In writing.

On 25 August 1967, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, sent a memo to its field offices. [Source 1]

It announced a secret counterintelligence program against what it called "Black nationalist, hate-type organizations." [Source 1]

It told agents to disrupt these groups and to discredit their leaders. [Source 1]

Among them was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization of Martin Luther King Jr. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Memo Announcing COINTELPRO Counterintelligence Program Against Civil Rights Groups, 25 August 1967 (Learning for Justice, Southern Poverty Law Center, 1967). “Black nationalist, hate-type organizations”

1967 Proven

Thurgood Marshall

Thurgood Marshall argued Brown v. Board and won 29 of the 32 cases he brought to the Supreme Court. On 30 August 1967, he was confirmed as its first Black justice.

He beat segregation in the Supreme Court. Then he took a seat on it.

Thurgood Marshall was the leading lawyer of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He argued Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down separate but equal in the schools. [Source 1] [Source 2]

He argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court, and won 29. [Source 1]

On 13 June 1967, President Lyndon Johnson nominated him to the Court. On 30 August 1967, the Senate confirmed him, 69 to 11. He was the first Black justice. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Honoring Justice Thurgood Marshall: The Right Man and the Right Place (National Archives, Prologue: Pieces of History, 2017).
  2. 2.Primary record. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) (National Archives, Milestone Documents). “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

1967 Proven

The Vote, Counted

Two years after the Voting Rights Act, Black voter registration in Mississippi had risen from 6.7 to 59.8 percent.

Two years after the law, the count showed what it had opened.

In March 1965, Black voter registration in Mississippi stood at 6.7 percent. By September 1967, it was 59.8 percent. [Source 1]

In Alabama, registration rose from 19.3 to 51.6 percent. In Georgia, from 27.4 to 52.6 percent. [Source 1]

We had always wanted to vote. The numbers show how many had been stopped.

1968 Proven

The Kerner Report

After the riots of 1967, the official answer to the question of why put the blame on white racism.

The President asked why the cities burned. His own commission told him the truth.

On 28 July 1967, after uprisings in American cities, President Lyndon Johnson set up a commission to find out why. [Source 1]

Its report, in 1968, opened with a warning: "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." [Source 1]

It found that "White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture" in the cities. [Source 1]

Of the Black ghetto, it said: "White institutions created it, white institutions maintain, and white society condones it." [Source 1]

Not my words. The United States government's own.

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (summary, 1968) (History Matters, George Mason University, 1968). “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

1968 Proven

Dr. King Is Killed

Dr. King was murdered in Memphis in the spring of 1968, while standing with the city's sanitation workers.

He came to Memphis for garbage workers. That is where they killed him.

In the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis, Tennessee, to march with the city's striking sanitation workers. [Source 1]

At 6:05 in the evening on Thursday, 4 April 1968, he was shot as he stood on the balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel. [Source 2]

That night, President Lyndon Johnson said: "America is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King." He asked "every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence." [Source 3] [Source 4]

Violence broke out in more than 100 American cities, and more than 40 people died. [Source 2]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Emily Yellin, The Sanitation Strike, the Assassination and Memphis in 1968 (APM Reports, American Public Media, 1998). “I Am a Man”
  2. 2.Scholarly. Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University). “At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead.”
  3. 3.Primary record. Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President on the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (4 April 1968) (LBJ Presidential Library, 1968), Statement. “AMERICA is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King.”
  4. 4.Primary record. Lyndon B. Johnson, Statement by the President on the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (4 April 1968) (LBJ Presidential Library, 1968), Statement. “I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence.”

1968 Proven

The Fair Housing Act

One week after Dr. King was killed, on 11 April 1968, President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, banning discrimination in the sale and rental of homes.

It took Dr. King's death to open the door to a home.

After Dr. King was killed on 4 April 1968, President Lyndon Johnson asked the Speaker of the House to bring the fair housing bill to a vote as soon as possible. [Source 1]

On 10 April 1968, the House passed it, 250 to 172. [Source 1]

On 11 April, President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, also called the Civil Rights Act of 1968. [Source 1]

It banned discrimination in the sale and rental of housing across the nation. More than thirty years after the government drew red lines around us, the door to a home was opened by law. [Source 1] [Source 2]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 (History, Art and Archives, U.S. House of Representatives).
  2. 2.Scholarly. Mapping Inequality (Searchable Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture).

1968 Proven

"I Am a Man"

On 1 February 1968, two Black sanitation workers in Memphis were crushed to death in a garbage truck. Nearly 1,200 workers walked out, carrying signs that said "I Am a Man." Dr. King came to march with them.

Four words on a sign. Everything we had been fighting for since 1619.

On 1 February 1968, two Memphis sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were standing inside a garbage truck when it short-circuited and the packer started. Within seconds they were crushed to death. [Source 1]

Black workers had no sick leave and no vacation. On rainy days they could be sent home with part of a day's pay, while white supervisors stayed and were paid in full. [Source 1]

On 12 February, almost 1,200 of the city's 1,300 public works laborers walked off the job. Every day they marched downtown with signs that said "I Am a Man." Mayor Henry Loeb called the strike illegal and would not bargain. [Source 1]

On the night of 3 April, Dr. King stood with them at Mason Temple. "The issue is injustice," he said: "one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them." [Source 2] [Source 3]

The next day he was killed. On 16 April 1968, sixty-five days after the strike began, the city recognized the union and gave the workers raises. [Source 1] [Source 4]

Sources

  1. 1.Scholarly. Emily Yellin, The Sanitation Strike, the Assassination and Memphis in 1968 (APM Reports, American Public Media, 1998). “I Am a Man”
  2. 2.Primary record. Martin Luther King Jr., I've Been to the Mountaintop (Mason Temple, Memphis, 3 April 1968), transcript (AFSCME, 1968), Speech, 3 April 1968. “The issue is injustice.”
  3. 3.Primary record. Martin Luther King Jr., I've Been to the Mountaintop (Mason Temple, Memphis, 3 April 1968), transcript (AFSCME, 1968), Speech, 3 April 1968. “one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them”
  4. 4.Scholarly. Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University). “At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead.”

1968 Proven

No Man in the House

Alabama's "substitute father" rule cut thousands of children off welfare, until a mother in Dallas County took it to the Supreme Court.

Alabama punished the children for their mother's private life.

In June 1964, Alabama made a rule: if a mother on welfare had a relationship with any able-bodied man, in her home or out of it, he was counted as the children's "substitute father," and the family's aid was cut off. [Source 1]

It did not matter whether he was their father, whether he owed them anything, or whether he gave them a penny. [Source 1]

Mrs. Sylvester Smith of Dallas County earned $16 to $20 a week and had four children. On 11 October 1966 her family was cut off, because a man who was not their father, with nine children of his own, visited her on weekends. [Source 1]

From 1964 to 1967, about 16,000 children were dropped from aid in Alabama, more than one in five. On 17 June 1968, in King v. Smith, the Supreme Court struck the rule down. A mother earning $20 a week took Alabama to the Supreme Court, and won. [Source 1]

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. Earl Warren, King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 (1968) (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, 1968). “substitute father”

1970 Proven

The Great Migration

Two great waves carried millions of Black Southerners to the North and West in the sixty years after 1910.

Six million of us voted with our feet.

Between 1910 and 1970, an estimated six million Black Americans left the South. [Source 1]

They went in two waves: the first from 1910 to 1940, the second from 1940 to 1970. [Source 1]

They left behind the lynch mob, the Black Codes and the closed ballot box. Many of our families can name the grandparent who made that trip.

Sources

  1. 1.Primary record. The Great Migration, 1910 to 1970 (United States Census Bureau).