Civil Rights Movement 1965-73

The Civil Rights Movement II: 1965-73

If you did Question 2 on the previous webpage you will have realised that, although the Civil Rights Movement and the US government had given Black Americans their rights, they had done nothing to address their poverty, economic and social disparity.

You cannot eat 'rights', and in 1965 the Civil Rights Movement flared into violence. Where the previous webpage was about justice, this webpage is about Equality. The heroes of this page are perhaps not as attractive as the previous webpage, but they arguably achieved more.

Source A

White racism is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II...

What white Americans have never fully understood – but what the Black can never forget – is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.

Conclusion of the Kerner Report (1968).

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

BBC Bitesize: Black Power

The Contribution of Martin Luther King: Assessment.

The 1960s report that warned the USA was racist - BBC Witness History

Free breakfasts with the Black Panthers - BBC Witness History

Essay: How far were the lives of African Americans changed by the civil rights advances of the 1960s?

YouTube

Speeches of Malcolm X

The Fight for Equality, 1965-75

The key events, which are moret than you need to know for GCSE, are listed below (green for legal achievements/ red for opposition, black for actions).
If you click on the on the orange arrows (u) I have provided explanatory accounts of what happened.

1959: Malcolm X: The Hate that Hate Produced
- Malcolm X was a member of the Black nationalist group Nation of Islam, which demanded a separate Black American state in the southern USA. He branded Martin Luther King a ‘fool’, and argued that white policies left Black Americans with no alternative but violence – "any means necessary". Most of all, he forced America’s Black leaders to turn their attention away from civil rights and to seek instead social and economic improvements.
- After a 1959 TV documentary – The Hate that Hate Produced – Malcolm X became famous, and a role model for angry young Black people. In 1964, he was suspended from NoI after appearing to welcome the assassination of President Kennedy, and in 1965 he was assassinated by a NoI gunman.
1962: Black is Beautiful
- The ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement can trace roots back to the Harlem Renaissance. Its initial intention was to counter the prejudice that only European women are beautiful. In 1962, the African Jazz-Art Society & Studios group put on a fashion show of ‘Grandassa Models’ – Black women who had chosen to move away from Western beauty standards
- Until the mid-1960s, most Blacks dressed like whites, even straightening their hair; now they started to wear their hair in an ‘afro’ or in dreadlocks, and wore dashikis, African textiles and bright colours
- In the late 1960s the movement widened into an empowering of Black Identity. They abandoned the term 'Negro' for 'Afro-American'. In 1968, Black musician James Brown sang: Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud. Poet Maya Angelou’s autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) explored her journey of self-discovery as a Black woman.
1964: CORE ‘freedom houses’
- For Blacks living in the cities of the north, poverty, unemployment, deprivation and poor housing were rife. In Chicago’s ghettos, some 70% of Black youths were unemployed. Only 32% of ghetto children finished high school.
- After 1964, CORE workers rented ‘freedom houses’ in the northern ghettos, from which they distributed information on education, employment, health and housing. In 1966 the SNCC mounted the Atlanta Project, which cleared waste areas, and persuaded local African Americans to vote in elections.
1965: Watts Riots and more...
- In 1965, the arrest by police of a Black drunk-driver sparked riots in the Los Angeles Watts area. Between 1964 and 1968 there were 238 riots in more than 200 US cities. They resulted in 250 deaths (many from police shootings), and billions of dollars-worth of damage.
1965: Deacons of Defense
- The first Deacons Chapter was founded in Bogalusa, Louisiana, on the day of Malcolm X’s assassination. Deacons protected civil rights groups with armed force against KKK violence, and threatened to kill any white who burned a cross.
1966: Black Power
- In 1966 SNCC chose Stokely Carmichael as their leader, and expelled all their white members. Carmichael rejected non-violence and advocated ‘Black Power’. Next year, his successor H. ‘Rap’ Brown encouraged poor Black people to seize white shops – directly causing a number of ghetto riots later that year.
- Also in 1966, the radical Floyd McKissick took over CORE, which expelled its white members in 1968. McKissick too rejected non-violence.
1966: Black Panthers
- Huey Newton formed the Black Panther Party in 1966 as a response to police brutality in the Watts Riots. At its height it had 5,000 members.
- The Party had a Ten-Point Program, including ‘Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice and Peace’. In Los Angeles, it set up health clinics, an ambulance and gave free breakfasts to ghetto children.
- The organisation made links with Communist freedom fighters all over the world. It also attacked the police. Black Panther patrols would shadow police patrols, and – if they started harassing Black Americans – would help the Blacks. In response, California decided that it would recruit policemen in proportion to the size of the Black and white population in the state.
1966: Meredith March
- James Meredith was a civil rights activist. President Kennedy had sent soldiers to enforce his right to attend the racially segregated University of Mississippi.
- In 1966 he planned a ‘March Against Fear’ to highlight racism in the South. He had intended to do the march on his own, but had been shot and wounded on the second day, so other Black activists joined him. On the march, SNCC members sang: ‘Oh what fun it is to blast / a trooper man away’, and Stokely Carmichael used it as a platform to preach ‘Black Power’.
1967: Where Do We Go From Here?
- In 1966, Martin Luther King had gone to live in Chicago, but found that he was out-of-touch, rejected and unable to help. He had joined the Meredith march, but had argued with Carmichael and was concerned at his rejection of non-violence and white supporters.
- King withdrew for a time to reflect, and in 1967 published Where Do We Go From Here? He still opposed violence, arguing that it would damage the movement, not progress it. But he realised that legal reforms alone were not enough. The cause of Black anger and rioting was poverty, and the only solution was to “abolish it directly by a … 'guaranteed income'”. He also began to campaign against the Vietnam War.
1968: Kerner Report
- The official report into the riots of 1964-8 concluded that the cause of the Black riots was “white racism … pervasive discrimination and segregation" and named the police as an aggravating factor. It called for an end to de facto segregation, and for job-creation, better housing, better welfare, and the diversification of the police and media.
- After this, the US government realised that it had to take action, as well as just make statements.
1968: Fair Housing
- The 1968 Civil Rights Act banned discrimination in housing, and was designed to allow Black Americans, if they wished, to move into areas where white Americans lived.
1969: 'Black Capitalism'
- President Nixon set up the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) to fund and help minority-run businesses. Government assistance to Black-owned business enterprises more than doubled. Federal purchases increased from $13 million to $142 million from 1969 to 1971. By 1974, two-thirds of the 100 largest Black enterprises had been started during the Nixon administration.
1969: 'Affirmative Action'
- President Johnson had required government contractors to take 'affirmative action' to employ and treat ethnic minority workers fairly, but plans had stalled in the courts; the Nixon administration implemented the ‘Philadelphia Plan’, which set and applied guidelines and quotas.
1971: Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenberg
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had outlawed segregated schooling, but local Boards, especially in the South, dragged their feet to integrate schools. President Nixon set up a taskforce to enforce integration, and in 1971 the Supreme Court approved the controversial policies of bussing and compensatory education to achieve this.
- In 1968, only 70% of Black children attended desegregated schools; 1972, 92% did. A drawback to this was that the educational attainment of Black students was often worse in integrated than in all-Black schools.
1972: Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had set up the EEOC with the power to investigate workforce discrimination. Nixon gave it power to enforce the law , quadrupled its staff and doubled its funding to enable it to do so.

Source B

The most famous expression of Black power was when medal winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists to give a Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Smith wore a black scarf to symbolise Black pride; Carlos wore beads in memory of Black slaves and Black victims of lynchings.

The Impact of the Civil Rights Movement

The legislation of the 1960s was a radical programme which not only gave African Americans their civil rights, but included affirmative action to help them become equal.

Even at the time, Senator Daniel Moynihan called the programme a “calamity … giving the forms of legal equality, but withholding the economic and political resources which are the bases of social equality” (1967). And, by the mid-1980s, scholars were realising that the programme had failed. In a sea-change article in 1985, Professor of Political Economy Glenn Loury commented:

“Many, if not most, people now concede that not all problems of Blacks are due to discrimination, and that they cannot be remedied through civil rights strategies or racial politics. I would go even further – using civil rights strategies to address problems to which they are ill-suited thwarts more direct and effective action”.

Suggestions as to why the programme failed differed between those who argued that affirmative action had lessened incentives for the poor to take advantage of the opportunities now available, and had in fact made them dependent on government hand-outs … and those who argued that the legal and civil rights changes of the 1960s had not altered the underlying social and economic structures that kept Black Americans at a permanent disadvantage.

So what was the actual impact on Black Americans' lives of Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s? If you click on the on the orange arrows (u) below, I have provided some information which will help you come to a judgement.

The Civil Rights Act (1964) ended segregation in public places, and banned discrimination on the basis of race.
- Martin Luther King described it as a “second emancipation”. Celebrating the Act’s 60th anniversary Atlanta Magazine said that it caused “a fundamental shift in American society” … and a 2013 publication for the American Psychological Association claimed it had “shaped the understanding of equality” in America.
- It did not just killed segregation in swimming baths, diners etc., it changed attitudes. In 1958, 44% of whites said they would move if a Black family became their next-door neighbour; in 1998 the figure was 1%. In 1964, only 18% of whites had a friend who was Black; today 86% do.
The Voting Rights Act (1965) outlawed local rules which might restrict voting.
- A 2023 study found that “Black political participation soared” as a result of the Act (in the Southern 'covered' counties, Black voter registration increased from 27% to 59% – in Mississippi it rose from 7% in 1964 to 67% in 1969).
- By 1980 in the South there were four times as many Black elected officials in local government as in 1962. This effect was not just confined to Black politicians, as white politicians realised that they needed to win Black votes; local government spending in Black communities doubled 1962-80, and the number of Black employees in local government quadrupled 1960-2000.
- However, the 2023 study noted a “significant and long-lasting” white voter “counter-mobilisation”, which cancelled out some of the effect of more Black voters.
- After an initial surge, Black turnout only exceeded 60% in the elections for Obama, and turnout of young Black Americans fell below 30% in the 1970s.
- The increased Black vote has not led to more African Americans in Congress. There have only been ten Black Senators since 1965. Only five Black House representatives were elected 1965-71 and, although there have been 140 since 1971 … out of more than 11,000 Representatives elected in that period that is only about 1¼%.
Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital (1963) and the Civil Rights Act (1964) banned segregated health.
- In 1940 the mortality rate for African American males was 53% greater than that for white males; by 1984, it was still 46% greater.
- A 1985 Report found that African American children were twice as likely as white children to die before reaching one year of age, and the life span of Black Americans was about 7 years shorter than that of whites.
The Fair Housing Act (1968) banned discrimination and segregation in housing.
- Although no longer legally segregated, Reynolds Farley (1987) found that “Iin the nation's large metropolitan areas, Blacks are still as residentially segregated from whites as they were four decades ago … Not only poor Blacks but Blacks at all economic statuses are highly segregated from whites of the identical economic level”.
- This had changed to some extent by 1998, when almost a third of the black population lived in suburbia, but large mainly Black inner-city areas remained … this was because, as soon as they became wealthy enough, African Americans had moved out of the city and left the Black community behind.
- One positive, Farley found, was that “urban renewal projects, new federal housing programs, and improvements in the economic status of Blacks led to great changes in the quality of housing … for example, almost one-half of the housing units occupied by Blacks in 1950 lacked an indoor flush toilet…. By 1980, only 6 percent of the homes and apartments occupied by Blacks lacked complete plumbing facilities”.
Title IV of the Civil Rights Act (1964) enforced desegregation of public schools.
- Farley in 1987 found that “there is no evidence that Black children now attend public schools that are less-well-equipped or have less-well-paid teachers than white children in the same area”.
- However – despite policies such as bussing (1971) – schools remained segregated in practice because Black children living in Black areas attended their local school.
- Moreover – even after years of affirmative action in projects like Head Start (1965) – tests still showed differences in attainment. And, whilst the number of African-American students attending college increased 550% 1962-2019, that number still lagged ten percentage points behind that of white students
- It has become increasingly clear that educational attainment was being determined, not by race or school, but by the fact that so many Black American children were living in the inner cities.
- Affirmative action achieved some advances: the number of Black college and university professors more than doubled 1970-90; the number of physicians tripled; the number of engineers almost quadrupled; and the number of attorneys increased more than sixfold, reflecting changes in college recruitment.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) prohibited discrimination in employment.
- Black male hourly wages compared to white increased from 61% in 1960 to 74% in 1980 (women 61% to 98%) and, because Black woman generally worked longer hours than white women, Black women by 1985 were actually earning more per annum than their white co-workers.
- However, Farley found that, since the mid-1950s, the unemployment rate of Blacks had been steadily double that of whites. Worst of all, he found that, whilst 1 Black man out of 8 was neither working nor looking for work; among whites, it was only 1 in 20. One possible reason for this, it was suggested, was because many Black men lacked the skills (particularly reading skills) to be employed or had criminal records which made them unemployable.
- Although the proportion of non-white men in a managerial position improved from 4% to 18% 1950-80 (non-white women, from 7% to 19%) but both remained well-below their white co-workers, and non-whites remained as far behind in employment status as they had been in 1950.
- A 1998 Report suggested that the key advances in Black employment – the move off the land, and out of domestic service – had occurred in the period 1940-1960. It also found that affirmative action and Government assistance to Black-owned business enterprises had had limited impact.
- It has become increasingly clear that education attainment, not race or policies, is the key determinant of employment status and wage.
The Economic Opportunity Act (1964) and the Great Society programme were designed to end poverty,
- The percentage of Black families living below the poverty line fell dramatically in the 1960s, from 55% in 1960 to less than 35% in 1970. However, after that the decline stopped, even rose slightly after 1980 and did not begin to drop again until 1990 (2018 figure: 20%, still three times that of white families).
- Meanwhile, Black family wealth, which had risen slightly compared to white families during the 1960s, fell back after 1975 – in 2013, an average white family’s wealth was 7 times that of a Black family … almost exactly what it had been in 1963.
- It has become increasingly clear that poverty is related, not to race or affirmative action, but whether you live in the inner-city, and whether you come from a single-parent family (Black two-parent families earn only 13 percent less than those who are white).

How different was MLK to the Black Power leaders?

VERY

They advocated violence (v. MLK was non-violent).
Black Power and expelled white members (v. MLK wanted ‘striped power’ and had white supporters).
They were nationalist (NoI) or wanted social action (v. MLK initially concentrated on civil rights).
CORE ‘freedom houses’/ SNCC Atlanta Project (v. King was not welcomed or successful in Chicago.
King clashed with Carmichael on the Meredith March.
Malcolm X called King a ‘fool’ (MLK called NoI a ‘hate group’).

NOT SO MUCH

MLK was horrified by the deprivation in Watts.
MLK went to live in Chicago in 1966.
Where do we go from here? advocated affirmative social action.
King opposed the Vietnam War.
King was non-retaliation, but he provoked violence (e.g. Birmingham/ Selma)

Consider:

1. Using this and the previous webpage, compile a table of all the Civil Rights legislation (i.e. events in green), detailing the Intention in one column, and the Impact in another:

Measure	Intention	Impact

Repeat for the different Civil Rights leaders, detailing the Achievements in one column, and the Impact in another:

	Achievements	Impact
Martin Luther King
Malcolm X
Stokesly Carmichael
Huey Newton

Finally, repeat for the five Presidents, detailing their Aspirations in one column, and the Impact in another:

	Aspirations	Impact
Truman
Eisenhower
Kennedy
Johnson
Nixon

2. Use the information from your answers to Question 1 to prepare plans for how you would write 'On-the-one-hand/ On-the-other-hand/ Assessment' esays which asked you to compare the importance of 'A' against 'B'.

3. Finally, debate: "The Civil Rights activists did not win civil rights for African Americans; the US government gave African Americans their civil rights".

AQA Exam-style Questions

OCR-style Questions

Edexcel Exam Questions