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played for the Brooklyn dodgers (a white team), but still face discrimination.

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Jackie Robinson: The First African American to Play in the MLB | Mini Bio | BIO

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/Executive-Order-9981
abolishing segregation in armed forces, allowed the Korean war to be the first integrated war.

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Executive Order 9981, executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman that abolished racial segregation in the U.S. military.

Beginning with the initial skirmishes of the American Revolution, African Americans had played an important role in the armed forces of the United States. A slave identified as Prince Easterbrooks was one of the first casualties at the Battle of Concord, and thousands of African Americans, both free and enslaved, fought with distinction alongside their white counterparts throughout that war. The level of integration in the Continental Army, however, would not be duplicated in the U.S. military until the 1950s.

The path to official integration began with the signing of Executive Order 8802 by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in June 1941. It signaled the end of racial discrimination in the U.S. defense industry, but the armed forces generally hewed to a policy of segregation throughout the duration of World War II. The efforts of the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph spurred President Truman to extend the protections afforded to African Americans in the civilian Department of Defense to the uniformed military. In April 1946 a review board chaired by Gen. Alvan Gillem, Jr., advised that the U.S. Army's policy should be to "eliminate, at the earliest practicable moment, any special consideration based on race." While the Gillem Board did not specifically endorse integration, it did note that the army had already desegregated its hospitals because of the unnecessary cost and inefficiency created by the maintenance of separate facilities for white and black patients.

Later in 1946 Truman convened the President's Committee on Civil Rights. That group's landmark report, To Secure These Rights, was published in October 1947. It proposed "to end immediately all discrimination and segregation based on race, color, creed, or national origin, in the organization and activities of all branches of the Armed Services." Facing resistance from Southern senators, Truman circumvented a threatened Senate filibuster by issuing Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, integrating the armed forces and establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, an advisory body tasked with determining the best possible way to implement the new policy.

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The initial response to the order was mixed. The U.S. Navy, which had maintained some degree of integration throughout its history, was the most accommodating branch of service-although African Americans remained primarily concentrated in the separate Steward's Branch in the short term. The Marine Corps (the smallest of the armed services) and the Air Force (the youngest) responded to integration as a matter of efficiency. The U.S. Army flatly opposed the change, with Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall going so far as to state in 1949 that the army "was not an instrument for social evolution." Nevertheless, the President's Committee pressed the army to accept integration. Ultimately, losses in the Korean War rendered the discussion moot, as under-strength white units were forced to accept black recruits to maintain combat effectiveness. In October 1953 the army announced that it had integrated more than 90 percent of black troops in its ranks.

Michael Ray

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

Truman's Executive Order 9981, which abolished racial segregation in the U.S. military; and Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower's Executive Order 10730, which dispatched federal troops to protect the civil rights of the Little Rock Nine during the integration of Little Rock's Central High School....

Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States (1945-53), who led his country through the final stages of World War II and through the early years of the Cold War, vigorously opposing Soviet expansionism in Europe...

Racial segregation, the practice of restricting people to certain circumscribed areas of residence or to separate institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, restaurants, restrooms) on the basis of race or alleged race. Racial segregation provides a means of maintaining the economic advantages and superior social status of the...

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Executive Order 9981 | United States history

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Executive Order 9981, executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman that abolished racial segregation in the U.S. military. Beginning with the initial skirmishes of the American Revolution, African Americans had played an important role in the armed forces of the United

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Brown v Board of Education of Topeka👨🏻‍⚖️ (1954)

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Brown v Board of Education of Topeka👨🏻‍⚖️ (1954)

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https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/educational-video/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka
the browns and several other families sent out a lawsuit over the segregation in the school, but rejected because 1896 decision quote "separate but equal".

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A deep dive into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a Supreme Court case decided in 1954. It ended the doctrine of "separate but equal" and brought an end to racial segregation in schools. In this video, Khan Academy host Kim Kutz Elliott discusses the case with scholars Michael McConnell and Theodore Shaw.

The National Constitution Center and Khan Academy partnered to create a series of nonpartisan videos explaining the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and major Supreme Court cases, enlisting the expertise of Interactive Constitution scholars.

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A deep dive into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, a Supreme Court case decided in 1954. It ended the doctrine of "separate but equal" and brought an end to racial segregation in schools. In this video, Khan Academy host Kim Kutz Elliott discusses the case with scholars Michael McConnell and Theodore Shaw.

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https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till
A white women claimed that a 14 year old boy  grabbed her and wolf-whistled at her as he sauntered out. women husband then came home from a business trip and heard what happen'd, and he kidnapped Emmett and drives him around town, and later beat him to death.

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Emmett Till is murdered | August 28, 1955 | HISTORY

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Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.

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Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

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Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)

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In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city's racial segregation laws... The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr., followed Park's historic act of civil disobedience... According to a Montgomery city ordinance in 1955, African Americans were required to sit at the back of public buses and were also obligated to give up there seats to white riders if the front of the bus is filled up...

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In Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city's racial segregation laws. The successful Montgomery Bus Boycott, organized by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., followed Park's historic act of civil disobedience.
Watch Rosa Parks: Mother of a Movement on HISTORY Vault
"The mother of the civil rights movement," as Rosa Parks is known, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 1913. She worked as a seamstress and in 1943 joined the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP).

According to a Montgomery city ordinance in 1955, African Americans were required to sit at the back of public buses and were also obligated to give up those seats to white riders if the front of the bus filled up. Parks was in the first row of the Black section when the white driver demanded that she give up her seat to a white man. Parks' refusal was spontaneous but was not merely brought on by her tired feet, as is the popular legend. In fact, local civil rights leaders had been planning a challenge to Montgomery's racist bus laws for several months, and Parks had been privy to this discussion.

Learning of Parks' arrest, the NAACP and other African American activists immediately called for a bus boycott to be held by Black citizens on Monday, December 5. Word was spread by fliers, and activists formed the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the protest. The first day of the bus boycott was a great success, and that night the 26-year-old Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., told a large crowd gathered at a church, "The great glory of American democracy is the right to protest for right." King emerged as the leader of the bus boycott and received numerous death threats from opponents of integration. At one point, his home was bombed, but he and his family escaped bodily harm.

The boycott stretched on for more than a year, and participants carpooled or walked miles to work and school when no other means were possible. As African Americans previously constituted 70 percent of the Montgomery bus ridership, the municipal transit system suffered gravely during the boycott. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Alabama state and Montgomery city bus segregation laws as being in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On December 20, King issued the following statement: "The year old protest against city buses is officially called off, and the Negro citizens of Montgomery are urged to return to the buses tomorrow morning on a non-segregated basis." The boycott ended the next day. Rosa Parks was among the first to ride the newly desegregated buses.

Martin Luther King, Jr., and his nonviolent civil rights movement had won its first great victory. There would be many more to come.

Rosa Parks died on October 24, 2005. Three days later the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to honor Parks by allowing her body to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
READ MORE: Milestones in the Civil Rights Movement

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, a violation of the city's racial segregation laws.

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https://www.facingsouth.org/tags/second-reconstruction
marked by the most diversity in activism and famous activist
period of great advancement for African Americans in the US after Reconstrution

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- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's remarks at a town hall this week seemed to revive the old, discredited idea that post-Civil War Reconstruction was a mistake. Her campaign has since issued a clarification, but the controversy shows that the debate over Reconstruction is far from over.

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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's remarks at a town hall this week seemed to revive the old, discredited idea that post-Civil War Reconstruction was a mistake. Her campaign has since issued a clarification, but the controversy shows that the debate over Reconstruction is far from over.

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1961 sit in movement begins, SNCC, Freedom Rides 👀

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1961 sit in movement begins, SNCC, Freedom Rides 👀

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https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/the-greensboro-sit-in
sit ins involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest often to promote political, social, or economic change.
challenge segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals.
students from Nc A&T arranged a sit in

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The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. Though many of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, their actions made an immediate and lasting impact, forcing Woolworth's and other establishments to change their segregationist policies.

Greensboro Four

The Greensboro Four were four young Black men who staged the first sit-in at Greensboro: Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil. All four were students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College.

They were influenced by the nonviolent protest techniques practiced by Mohandas Gandhi, as well as the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress for Racial Equality ( CORE) in 1947, in which interracial activists rode across the South in buses to test a recent Supreme Court decision banning segregation in interstate bus travel.

The Greensboro Four, as they became known, had also been spurred to action by the brutal murder in 1955 of a young Black boy, Emmett Till, who had allegedly whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi store.

Did you know? The former Woolworth's in Greensboro now houses the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which features a restored version of the lunch counter where the Greensboro Four sat. Part of the original counter is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Sit-In Begins

Blair, Richmond, McCain and McNeil planned their protest carefully, and enlisted the help of a local white businessman, Ralph Johns, to put their plan into action.

On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats.

Police arrived on the scene but were unable to take action due to the lack of provocation. By that time, Johns had already alerted the local media, who had arrived in full force to cover the events on television. The Greensboro Four stayed put until the store closed, then returned the next day with more students from local colleges.

Sit-Ins Spread Nationwide

By February 5, some 300 students had joined the protest at Woolworth's, paralyzing the lunch counter and other local businesses. Heavy television coverage of the Greensboro sit-ins sparked a sit-in movement that quickly spread to college towns throughout the South and into the North, as young Black and white people joined in various forms of peaceful protest against segregation in libraries, beaches, hotels and other establishments.

Some of the first sit-ins during the civil rights movement were organized by history teacher Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council in Oklahoma City in 1958. By the end of March 1960, the movement had spread to 55 cities in 13 states. Though many were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, national media coverage of the sit-ins brought increasing attention to the civil rights movement.

In response to the success of the sit-in movement, dining facilities across the South were being integrated by the summer of 1960. At the end of July, when many local college students were on summer vacation, the Greensboro Woolworth's quietly integrated its lunch counter. Four Black Woolworth's employees-Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones and Charles Best-were the first to be served.

SNCC

To capitalize on the momentum of the sit-in movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960.

Over the next few years, SNCC served as one of the leading forces in the civil rights movement, organizing Freedom Rides through the South in 1961 and the historic March on Washington in 1963, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his seminal " I Have a Dream " speech.

SNCC worked alongside the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) to push passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and would later mount an organized resistance to the Vietnam War.

As its members faced increased violence, however, SNCC became more militant, and by the late 1960s it was advocating the "Black Power" philosophy of Stokely Carmichael (SNCC's chairman from 1966-67) and his successor, H. Rap Brown. By the early 1970s, SNCC had lost much of its mainstream support and was effectively disbanded.

Greensboro Sit-In Impact

The Greensboro Sit-In was a critical turning point in Black history and American history, bringing the fight for civil rights to the national stage. Its use of nonviolence inspired the Freedom Riders and others to take up the cause of integration in the South, furthering the cause of equal rights in the United States.

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Greensboro Sit-In - Facts, Date & Definition | HISTORY

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The Greensboro Sit-in was a major civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young Black students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service.

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1962 James Meredith Enters University of Mississippi 🏫

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1962 James Meredith Enters University of Mississippi 🏫

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvEN8sQ4Bmw

applied to the University of Mississippi and his admission was denied, and he sued.
after admission, the governor took over the role as the register of the university to prevent his enrollment in classes. he was the first African American to attend and graduate from the university.

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James Meredith Enrolls at Univ. of Mississippi

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https://nmaahc.si.edu/march-on-washington in the wake of violent attacks on civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, built for another mass protest on the nation's capital.
ended up reluctantly endorsing the march on Washington.
make members of congress feel as if they were under siege, 250,000 people gathered.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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In 1963, civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin began plans for a march on Washington to protest segregation, the lack of voting rights, and unemployment among African Americans. Randolph and Rustin enlisted the support of all the major civil rights organizations, and the march-on August 28- was a resounding success.

The March on Washington sought to pressure Congress to pass civil rights legislation. Many public officials feared that the march would result in violence and proposed a bill in Congress to prevent it. Despite predictions of trouble, an interracial crowd of 250,000 gathered and listened to speakers without any violence.

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Samuel Y. Edgerton

We're going to march. We're going to walk together. We're going to stand together. We're going to sing together. We're going to stay together. We're going to moan together. We're going to groan together and after a while, we will have freedom, freedom, and freedom now.
REVEREND FRED SHUTTLESWORTH

Historical Significance

Hopeful progress and moments of tragedy marked the Civil Rights Movement during the course of 1963. Thousands of people across the nation demonstrated their commitment to freedom and equality, sometimes in the face of violence and intimidation. In 1963, more clearly than in any other year, media images offered the nation a definitive picture of the forces supporting segregation and their resolve to maintain it. The inspirational nonviolent commitment of civil rights activists encouraged many Americans, including the president, to support changes in the law.

A Revolutionary Messenger

John Lewis, president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington. He was asked to tone down his speech to avoid offending Congress and the president. Lewis was one of the original thirteen Congress of Racial Equity (CORE) Freedom Riders and helped lead the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. He was elected to Congress in 1986.

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Samuel Y. Edgerton

Listen to the
Music of the March

Marian Anderson sings "He's Got the Whole World in his Hands" at the March on Washington. She is most often recalled for her brave and stirring performance in 1939 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing from the stage of their Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin.

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The Historical Legacy of the March on Washington

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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom sought to pressure Congress to pass civil rights legislation. Many public officials feared the march would result in violence and proposed a bill in Congress to prevent it. Despite predictions of trouble, an interracial crowd of 250,000 gathered and listened to speakers without any violence.

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Civil Rights Act, Freedom Summer, 24th Amendment (1964)

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Civil Rights Act, Freedom Summer, 24th Amendment (1964)

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Freedom summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive aimed at increasing the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi...Over 700 mostly white volunteers joined African Americans in Mississippi to fight against voter intimidation and discrimination at the polls... The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement... The 24th Amendment,amendment to the Constitution of the United States that prohibited the federal and state governments from imposing poll taxes before a citizen could participate in a federal election...

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Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive aimed at increasing the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. Over 700 mostly white volunteers joined African Americans in Mississippi to fight against voter intimidation and discrimination at the polls.

The movement was organized by civil rights organizations like the Congress on Racial Equality ( CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC) and run by the local Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). Freedom Summer volunteers were met with violent resistance from the Ku Klux Klan and members of state and local law enforcement. News coverage of beatings, false arrests and even murder drew international attention to the civil rights movement. The increased awareness it brought to voter discrimination helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What Was The Cause of the Freedom Summer?

By 1964, the civil rights movement was in full swing. The Freedom Riders had spent 1961 riding buses throughout the segregated South, fighting Jim Crow laws that dictated where Black riders could sit, eat, and drink. Martin Luther King, Jr. had given his famous " I Have a Dream" speech at the August 1963 March on Washington as 250,000 people gathered before him at the Lincoln Memorial.

Despite all of this progress, the South remained segregated, especially when it came to the polls, where African Americans faced violence and intimidation when they attempted to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Poll taxes and literacy tests designed to silence Black voters were common. Without access to the polls, political change in favor of civil rights was slow-to-non-existent. Mississippi was chosen as the site of the Freedom Summer project due to its historically low levels of African American voter registration; in 1962 less than 7 percent of the state's eligible Black voters were registered to vote.

Freedom Summer Begins

On June 15, 1964, the first three hundred volunteers arrived in Mississippi. Mississippi Project Director Robert "Bob" Moses had pledged his staff and volunteers to "nonviolence in all situations." Few could have foreseen how dire the situation would become.

Volunteers and staff had been warned about the high probability of being arrested and the need to have enough money for bail. They had also been encouraged to mentally prepare themselves for the experience by reading books like Dr. King's memoir, Stride Toward Freedom, and Lillian Smith's novel Killers of the Dream. No books could have prepared them for what happened next.

Among the first wave of volunteers to arrive on June 15 were two white students from New York, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, a local Black man. The three disappeared after visiting Philadelphia, Mississippi, where they were investigating the burning of a church. Their names became nationally-known as the hunt for their killers began. Spooked but still determined, the staff and volunteers of the Mississippi Project continued on with their mission to register voters and foster a grassroots freedom movement that would continue after their departure.

Six weeks later, the beaten bodies of the missing volunteers were recovered, killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob that had the protection and help of a local policeman. Public outcry over the killings mounted: Where was Federal protection? Why had the investigations been so slow? Distrust grew between white and Black volunteers and staff.

Was The Freedom Summer A Success?

Voter registration in Mississippi was not greatly impacted by the Freedom Summer. While 17,000 Black Mississippians attempted to register to vote that summer, only 1,200 were successful.

The Mississippi Project did establish more than 40 Freedom Schools serving a combined 3,000 students. The Freedom Summer also raised awareness for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, about which Dr. King said: "If you value your party, if you value your nation, if you value democratic government you have no alternative but to recognize, with full voice and vote, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party."

But at the August 1964 Democratic National Convention held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, MFDP delegates were refused seats, dealing another blow to organizers who had risked their lives to make a change.

Impact of The Freedom Summer

Some believe the national attention the Freedom Summer garnered for the civil rights movement helped convince President Lyndon B. Johnson and Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

After the violence of the Freedom Summer, divisions within the civil rights movement grew between those who continued to believe in non-violence and those who had begun to doubt whether equality could be reached through peaceful means. After 1964, more militant factions would rise as the struggle for equality continued.

Sources

Freedom Summer. King Institute of Stanford.
The 1964 Miss. Freedom Summer Protests Won Progress At a Bloody Price. The Daily Beast.
The Tragic Success of Freedom Summer. Politico.
Freedom Summer of 1964 was a mission in hostile territory. USA Today.

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Freedom Summer - Definition, Murders & Results

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Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations. The Ku Klux Klan, police and state and local authorities carried out a series of violent attacks against the activists, including arson, beatings, false arrest and the murders of at least three people.

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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Table of Contents

1. Selma to Montgomery March

2. Literacy Tests

3. Voting Rights Act Signed into Law

4. Voter Turnout Rises in the South

5. Changes to the Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.

Selma to Montgomery March

Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was officially elected in a landslide victory and used this mandate to push for legislation he believed would improve the American way of life, such as stronger voting-rights laws.

After the Civil War, the 15th Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited states from denying a male citizen the right to vote based on "race, color or previous condition of servitude." Nevertheless, in the ensuing decades, various discriminatory practices were used to prevent African Americans, particularly those in the South, from exercising their right to vote.

During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South were subjected to various forms of mistreatment and violence. One event that outraged many Americans occurred on March 7, 1965, when peaceful participants in a Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights were met by Alabama state troopers who attacked them with nightsticks, tear gas and whips after they refused to turn back.

Some protesters were severely beaten and bloodied, and others ran for their lives. The incident was captured on national television.

In the wake of the shocking incident, Johnson called for comprehensive voting rights legislation. In a speech to a joint session of Congress on March 15, 1965, the president outlined the devious ways in which election officials denied African American citizens the vote.

Literacy Tests

Black people attempting to vote often were told by election officials that they had gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that they possessed insufficient literacy skills or that they had filled out an application incorrectly. Black people, whose population suffered a high rate of illiteracy due to centuries of oppression and poverty, often would be forced to take literacy tests, which they sometimes failed.

Johnson also told Congress that voting officials, primarily in Southern states, had been known to force Black voters to "recite the entire Constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws," a task most white voters would have been hard-pressed to accomplish. In some cases, even Black people with college degrees were turned away from the polls.

Voting Rights Act Signed into Law

The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote on May 26, 1965. After debating the bill for more than a month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill by a vote of 333-85 on July 9.

Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders present at the ceremony.

The act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the non-white population had registered to vote, and authorized the U.S. attorney general to investigate the use of poll taxes in state and local elections.

In 1964, the 24th Amendment made poll taxes illegal in federal elections; poll taxes in state elections were banned in 1966 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Did you know? In 1965, at the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act, there were six African American members of the U.S. House of Representatives and no Black people in the U.S. Senate. By 1971, there were 13 members of the House and one Black member of the Senate.

Voter Turnout Rises in the South

Although the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak, and it often was ignored outright, mainly in the South and in areas where the proportion of Black people in the population was high and their vote threatened the political status quo.

Still, the Voting Rights Act gave African American voters the legal means to challenge voting restrictions and vastly improved voter turnout. In Mississippi alone, voter turnout among Black people increased from 6 percent in 1964 to 59 percent in 1969.

Changes to the Voting Rights Act

Since its passage, the Voting Rights Act has been amended to include such features as the protection of voting rights for non-English speaking American citizens. It has also been walked back. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated. In the wake of the Shelby County v. Holder decision, several states began enacting laws limiting voter access, including ID requirements, limits on early voting, mail-in voting and more.

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Voting Rights Act of 1965 - Definition, Summary & Significance

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The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

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By 1966, the civil rights movement had been gaining momentum for more than a decade, as thousands of African Americans embraced a strategy of nonviolent protest against racial segregation and demanded equal rights under the law... But for an increasing number of African Americans, particularly young black and men and women, that strategy did not go far enough...

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By 1966, the civil rights movement had been gaining momentum for more than a decade, as thousands of African Americans embraced a strategy of nonviolent protest against racial segregation and demanded equal rights under the law.

But for an increasing number of African Americans, particularly young Black men and women, that strategy did not go far enough. Protesting segregation, they believed, failed to adequately address the poverty and powerlessness that generations of systemic discrimination and racism had imposed on so many Black Americans.

Inspired by the principles of racial pride, autonomy and self-determination expressed by Malcolm X (whose assassination in 1965 had brought even more attention to his ideas), as well as liberation movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Black Power movement that flourished in the late 1960s and '70s argued that Black Americans should focus on creating economic, social and political power of their own, rather than seek integration into white-dominated society.

Crucially, Black Power advocates, particularly more militant groups like the Black Panther Party, did not discount the use of violence, but embraced Malcolm X's challenge to pursue freedom, equality and justice "by any means necessary."

The March Against Fear - June 1966

The emergence of Black Power as a parallel force alongside the mainstream civil rights movement occurred during the March Against Fear, a voting rights march in Mississippi in June 1966. The march originally began as a solo effort by James Meredith, who had become the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, a.k.a. Ole Miss, in 1962. He had set out in early June to walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, a distance of more than 200 miles, to promote Black voter registration and protest ongoing discrimination in his home state.

But after a white gunman shot and wounded Meredith on a rural road in Mississippi, three major civil rights leaders- Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to continue the March Against Fear in his name.

In the days to come, Carmichael, McKissick and fellow marchers were harassed by onlookers and arrested by local law enforcement while walking through Mississippi. Speaking at a rally of supporters in Greenwood, Mississippi, on June 16, Carmichael (who had been released from jail that day) began leading the crowd in a chant of "We want Black Power!" The refrain stood in sharp contrast to many civil rights protests, where demonstrators commonly chanted "We want freedom!"

Stokely Carmichael's Role in Black Power

Though the author Richard Wright had written a book titled Black Power in 1954, and the phrase had been used among other Black activists before, Stokely Carmichael was the first to use it as a political slogan in such a public way. As biographer Peniel E. Joseph writes in Stokely: A Life, the events in Mississippi "catapulted Stokely into the political space last occupied by Malcolm X," as he went on TV news shows, was profiled in Ebony and written up in the New York Times under the headline "Black Power Prophet."

Carmichael's growing prominence put him at odds with King, who acknowledged the frustration among many African Americans with the slow pace of change but didn't see violence and separatism as a viable path forward. With the country mired in the Vietnam War, (a war both Carmichael and King spoke out against) and the civil rights movement King had championed losing momentum, the message of the Black Power movement caught on with an increasing number of Black Americans.

Black Power Movement Growth-and Backlash

King and Carmichael renewed their alliance in early 1968, as King was planning his Poor People's Campaign, which aimed to bring thousands of protesters to Washington, D.C., to call for an end to poverty. But in April 1968, King was assassinated in Memphis while in town to support a strike by the city's sanitation workers as part of that campaign.

In the aftermath of King's murder, a mass outpouring of grief and anger led to riots in more than 100 U.S. cities. Later that year, one of the most visible Black Power demonstrations took place at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, where Black athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith raised black-gloved fists in the air on the medal podium.

By 1970, Carmichael (who later changed his name to Kwame Ture) had moved to Africa, and SNCC had been supplanted at the forefront of the Black Power movement by more militant groups, such as the Black Panther Party, the US Organization, the Republic of New Africa and others, who saw themselves as the heirs to Malcolm X's revolutionary philosophy. Black Panther chapters began operating in a number of cities nationwide, where they advocated a 10-point program of socialist revolution (backed by armed self-defense). The group's more practical efforts focused on building up the Black community through social programs (including free breakfasts for school children).

Many in mainstream white society viewed the Black Panthers and other Black Power groups negatively, dismissing them as violent, anti-white and anti-law enforcement. Like King and other civil rights activists before them, the Black Panthers became targets of the FBI's counterintelligence program, or COINTELPRO, which weakened the group considerably by the mid-1970s through such tactics as spying, wiretapping, flimsy criminal charges and even assassination.

Legacy of Black Power

Even after the Black Power movement's decline in the late 1970s, its impact would continue to be felt for generations to come. With its emphasis on Black racial identity, pride and self-determination, Black Power influenced everything from popular culture to education to politics, while the movement's challenge to structural inequalities inspired other groups (such as Chicanos, Native Americans, Asian Americans and LGBTQ people) to pursue their own goals of overcoming discrimination to achieve equal rights.

The legacies of both the Black Power and civil rights movements live on in the Black Lives Matter movement. Though Black Lives Matter focuses more specifically on criminal justice reform, it channels the spirit of earlier movements in its efforts to combat systemic racism and the social, economic and political injustices that continue to affect Black Americans.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

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How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement | HISTORY

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With a focus on racial pride and self-determination, leaders of the Black Power movement argued that civil rights activism did not go far enough.

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Thurgood Marshall Appointed to the US Supreme Court (1967)

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Thurgood Marshall Appointed to the US Supreme Court (1967)

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President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark... On August 30th, after a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall's nomination by a vote 69 to 11....

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President Lyndon Johnson appoints U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. On August 30, after a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall's nomination by a vote of 69 to 11. Two days later, he was sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren, making him the first African American in history to sit on America's highest court.

The great-grandson of slaves, Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1908. In 1933, after studying under the tutelage of civil liberties lawyer Charles H. Houston, he received his law degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C. In 1936, he joined the legal division of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), of which Houston was director, and two years later succeeded his mentor in the organization's top legal post.

As the NAACP's chief counsel from 1938 to 1961, he argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, successfully challenging racial segregation, most notably in public education. He won 29 of these cases, including a groundbreaking victory in 1954's Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregation violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and was thus illegal. The decision served as a great impetus for the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and ultimately led to the abolishment of segregation in all public facilities and accommodations.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals, but his nomination was opposed by many Southern senators, and he was not confirmed until the next year. In June 1967, President Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court, and in late August he was confirmed. During his 24 years on the high court, Associate Justice Marshall consistently challenged discrimination based on race or sex, opposed the death penalty, and supported the rights of criminal defendants. He also defended affirmative action and women's right to abortion. As appointments by a largely Republican White House changed the politics of the Court, Marshall found his liberal opinions increasingly in the minority. He retired in 1991, and two years later passed away.

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Thurgood Marshall appointed to Supreme Court

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President Lyndon Johnson appoints U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. On August 30, after a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall's nomination by a vote of 69 to 11.

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The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financial of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex... Intended as a follow up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the bill was the subject of a contentious debate in the Senate, but was passed quickly by the House Of Representatives in the days after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

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The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex. Intended as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the bill was the subject of a contentious debate in the Senate, but was passed quickly by the House of Representatives in the days after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. The Fair Housing Act stands as the final great legislative achievement of the civil rights era.

Struggle for Fair Housing

Despite Supreme Court decisions such as Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) and Jones v. Mayer Co. (1968), which outlawed the exclusion of African Americans or other minorities from certain sections of cities, race-based housing patterns were still in force by the late 1960s. Those who challenged them often met with resistance, hostility and even violence.

Meanwhile, while a growing number of African American and Hispanic members of the armed forces fought and died in the Vietnam War, on the home front their families had trouble renting or purchasing homes in certain residential areas because of their race or national origin.
READ MORE: How a New Deal Housing Program Enforced Segregation
In this climate, organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), the G.I. Forum and the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing lobbied for new fair housing legislation to be passed.

The proposed civil rights legislation of 1968 expanded on and was intended as a follow-up to the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964. The bill's original goal was to extend federal protection to civil rights workers, but it was eventually expanded to address racial discrimination in housing.

Title VIII of the proposed Civil Rights Act was known as the Fair Housing Act, a term often used as a shorthand description for the entire bill. It prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin and sex.

Congressional Debate

In the U.S. Senate debate over the proposed legislation, Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts-the first African American ever to be elected to the Senate by popular vote-spoke personally of his return from World War II and his inability to provide a home of his choice for his new family because of his race.

In early April 1968, the bill passed the Senate, albeit by an exceedingly slim margin, thanks to the support of the Senate Republican leader, Everett Dirksen, which defeated a southern filibuster.

It then went to the House of Representatives, from which it was expected to emerge significantly weakened; the House had grown increasingly conservative as a result of urban unrest and the increasing strength and militancy of the Black Power movement.

On April 4-the day of the Senate vote-the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to aid striking sanitation workers. Amid a wave of emotion-including riots, burning and looting in more than 100 cities around the country-President Lyndon B. Johnson increased pressure on Congress to pass the new civil rights legislation.

Since the summer of 1966, when King had participated in marches in Chicago calling for open housing in that city, he had been associated with the fight for fair housing. Johnson argued that the bill would be a fitting testament to the man and his legacy, and he wanted it passed prior to King's funeral in Atlanta.

Did you know? A major force behind passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was the NAACP's Washington director, Clarence Mitchell Jr., who proved so effective in pushing through legislation aiding Black people that he was referred to as the "101st senator."

After a strictly limited debate, the House passed the Fair Housing Act on April 10, and President Johnson signed it into law the following day.

Impact of the Fair Housing Act

Despite the historic nature of the Fair Housing Act, and its stature as the last major act of legislation of the civil rights movement, in practice housing remained segregated in many areas of the United States in the years that followed.

From 1950 to 1980, the total Black population in America's urban centers increased from 6.1 million to 15.3 million. During this same time period, white Americans steadily moved out of the cities into the suburbs, taking many of the employment opportunities Black people needed into communities where they were not welcome to live.

This trend led to the growth in urban America of ghettoes, or inner city communities with high minority populations that were plagued by unemployment, crime and other social ills.

In 1988, Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act, which expanded the law to prohibit discrimination in housing based on disability or on family status (pregnant women or the presence of children under 18).
READ MORE: Civil Rights Movement Timeline
These amendments brought the enforcement of the Fair Housing Act even more squarely under the control of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which sends complaints regarding housing discrimination to be investigated by its Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO).

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Fair Housing Act - 1968, Federal & Definition | HISTORY

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The Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing, was the final legislative triumph of the civil rights era.