The March on Washington
On August 28, 1963, civil rights groups organized the March on Washington to promote four objectives: passage of a civil rights bill, the promotion of integrated schools, an end to job discrimination, and creation of a job training program. Roy Wilkins, one of the organizers of the march told the crowd “My friends, we are […]
The Bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham
Less than three weeks after the Washington March, on September 15, 1963, members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama killing four young black girls who were participating in church choir activities. Their names were Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, all 14 years […]
Freedom Summer and the Deaths of Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Mickey Schwerner
Civil Rights leaders considered Mississippi to be “the heart of the [Jim Crow] beast.” (Seeger and Reiser, p. 141.) It was far more dangerous than any of the other Southern states. (Id.) There were four primary pieces of federal civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s: The Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and […]
The Marches from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama
Selma is an old cotton mill town on the Alabama River. In 1964 more than half of Selma’s residents were black, and the city was a hotbed of racial unrest. (Hakim, p. 351.) On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, prohibiting segregation of public facilities. This motivated […]
Northern Urban Riots
Segregation and racial prejudice in the South were part of the actual legal system. They were part of the law: “de jure” segregation. But, although they were not enacted into laws, segregation and racial discrimination existed in other parts of the country as a matter of fact and practice: “de facto” discrimination. “…[I]n one of […]
Black Nationalism and Militancy
The race riots reflected the increasing anger and hostility of the black community. To many at the time, the personification of black militancy was Malcolm X. Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His family moved from Nebraska to Michigan during his youth to escape harassment from local Ku […]
The Black Panther Party
In October 1966, in Oakland, California, following what they believed to be the teachings of Malcolm X with some militant socialism thrown-in, Huey Newton (Defense Minister) and Bobby Seale (Chairman), among others, founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers preached black liberation and militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government. They […]
The Assassination of Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated at age 39, in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968 by James Earl Ray. He had been in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, which was part of his planned “Poor Peoples” campaign. (Hakim, p. 364.) Ray’s motivation for the killing has never been determined. The killing resulted in […]
Inter-war Isolationism
Disillusion with the country’s involvement in World War I characterized the national mood in the years between the wars. “World War I left a determination in millions of Americans never to fight again; at no time in our history has the hold of pacifism been stronger than the interlude between the first and second world […]
The World Marches toward Armageddon: Europe and the Coming to Power of the Nazis
Against Woodrow Wilson’s advice, Germany was severely punished by the Allies after World War I, creating great German resentment over the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Germans suffered depressed economic conditions as a result of reparation payments imposed on them by the Treaty. For example, during the 1920s, inflation in Germany was astronomical. There […]