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● Why
Did the Social Movements Begin?
● Who
Worked in the Social Movements?
● What
Is a Social Movement?
● The
Civil Rights Movement
● Organizations
● Direct Action Tactics
● Changes
● The Youth Movement
/Anti-War Movement
● The Women's Movement
● Conclusion
Direct Action Tactics
 Civil
rights activists first used "sit-in" tactics to fight
segregation and later, "freedom rides". Black and white
CORE members traveling together on buses to challenge segregation
laws were badly beaten by white mobs in South Carolina and Alabama.
When CORE decided to end the freedom rides, SNCC workers decided
to continue. SNCC Freedom Riders rode buses into Mississippi, where
they were beaten and arrested. An increasing number of students
joined the freedom rides until the Mississippi jails had no more
places for prisoners. In September 1961, the federal government
declared segregation illegal in all interstate bus stations which
served buses traveling to another state.
The
next important direct
action of the three civil rights organizations was voter
registration. Voting laws in southern states tried to prevent Negroes
from voting. As anti-segregation and voting registration work continued
in 1962 and 1963, civil rights workers were beaten, jailed and murdered
in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
In
the summer of 1963, hundreds of thousands of peaceful demonstrators
went to Washington, D.C., where Martin Luther King gave the famous
speech "I have a dream." That same year, 4 black girls
were killed when whites bombed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama.
Northern white students began to go to the South to work with SNCC
and other civil rights groups. While
civil rights workers were beaten and murdered in the South, news
of the assassination
of
President Kennedy in Texas shocked the country. Americans
were further shocked when the man charged with President Kennedy's
assassination was murdered in front of TV cameras.
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Black Soldiers
Fighting during WWII
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In
1964, hundreds of volunteers from all over the country came to Mississippi
to register Negroes to vote. Violence against civil rights workers
increased. One white and two black workers were murdered. To improve
the racial relations, the Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress
and signed into law by President Johnson in the summer of 1964.
In December 1964, Martin Luther King was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
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