Postwar United States (1945-1970’s)

• Recognize examples of how the United States confronted Civil Rights issues (i.e., Brown vs. Board of Education, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Birmingham Civil Rights March, American Indian Movement [AIM], and the Civil Rights Act of 1964).

• Martin Luther King, Jr.

Brown vs. Board of Education

• important decision made by the United States Supreme Court - outlawed racial segregation of public education facilities

Montgomery Bus Boycott

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/index.htm

• Rosa Parks, a seamstress and also secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), refused to give her seat on a bus to a white man

• arrested in December 1955

• found guilty - she was fined $10 plus a court cost of $4

• led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses unconstitutional

Birmingham Civil Rights March

1963

• one of the most severely segregated cities in the 1960s

• sit-ins at lunch counters where they were refused service

• "kneel-ins” on church steps where they were denied entrance

• Hundreds of demonstrators were fined and imprisoned.

May 1963

• Dr. King, the Reverend Abernathy and the Reverend Shuttlesworth lead a protest march

• protestors were met with policemen and dogs

• three ministers were arrested and taken to Southside Jail

• Dr. King was held in solitary confinement for three days, wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

September 1963

•  Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church

• killing four little girls

•  riots and fires had broken out throughout Birmingham and another 2 teenagers were dead

August 28^th 

• two hundred thousand civil rights marchers in Washington

• Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/civilrights-55-65/birming.html

American Indian Movement [AIM]

• led protests advocating Indigenous American interests

• inspire cultural renewal

• monitor police activities

• coordinate employment programs in cities and in rural reservation communities across the United States

Civil Rights Act of 1964

• July 2, 1964 President signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964

• prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin

• law provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation
   

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• famous leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, a political activist, and a Baptist minister.

• awarded Nobel Peace Prize