Thesis: Because they focused on correcting legal discrimination instead of social discrimination, African Americans gained greater equality during the 1960s through the efforts of the NAACP and civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
- Introduction—discuss the history of segregation and discrimination before the Modern Civil Rights Movement.
- Define terms—Modern Civil Rights Movement, legal segregation and discrimination, social segregation and discrimination, and
- Jim Crow laws and other ways that segregation and discrimination were written into laws
- Discuss previous efforts by early civil rights leaders including Booker T. Washington, Fredrick Douglass, and W.E.B. Dubois
- Draw comparison between Douglass and King and Washington and Malcolm X
- Use Alexander’s An Army of Lions.
- NAACP—discuss how the NAACP’s main mission was to fight for legal equality for African Americans and chose to support cases that furthered that goal.
- Founding of NAACP and its mission and goals
- Discuss NAACP’s focus on legal not social equality
- Use “NAACP: Our Mission,” Ware’s “Civil Rights and the 1960s” and Estes’ I Am Man
- Martin Luther King Jr. and the non-violent approach to civil rights
- Discuss how King and his supporters approached civil rights through non-violent means like boycotts and sit-ins and how this advanced legal equality.
- Give example of Montgomery Bus Boycott—history and how it worked to change the laws in Montgomery
- Use “Letters from Birmingham Jail,” Nelson-Waldschmidt, and Kirk
- Malcolm X and the radical approach to civil rights
- Discuss how Malcolm X and mostly northern civil rights’ leaders took a more radical approach and how their efforts helped advanced legal equality
- Explain why they felt the need to abandon the non-violent approach
- Alabama church bombings, continued assassination of civil rights leaders like Medgar Evers
- Use Nelson-Waldschmidt’s Dreams and Nightmares, Kirk’s “Long Road to Equality,” and Estes’ I Am Man
- Important outcomes of the efforts of the NAACP, King and Malcolm X
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and other important court cases
- Discuss the impact of Brown v. Board of Education and how it overturned Plessy v. Ferguson; explain that overturning a previous Supreme Court Case by a unanimous vote was a huge victory for civil rights
- Use “Transcript of Brown v. Board of Education (1954),” Graham’s Civil Rights and the Presidency, and Ware’s “Civil Rights and the 1960s”
- Presidential politics and the Civil Rights Movement
- Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson’s contributions to the Modern Civil Rights Movement and how they affected change at the highest levels of government
- Discuss Kennedy’s desegregation of Ole Miss and University of Alabama and support for 1962 March on Washington
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Explain that these were the culmination of legal equality for African Americans
- Use Graham’s Civil Rights and the Presidency, Kirk’s “The Long Road to Equality,” and Milkis’ “Reform’s Mating Dance”
- Conclusion—discuss legal equality in today’s society
- Explain the controversies surrounding voter ID laws and the recent deaths of young black men with no repercussions for the white men who killed them
- Contrast that with the election of President Obama and statistics about the number of African Americans represented in Congress and the Senate
- John Lewis
- Use Milkis’ “Reform’s Mating Dance” and Ware’s “Civil Rights and the 1960s”
Bibliography
Alexander, Shawn Leigh. An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
Estes, Steve. I Am Man: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
Graham, Hugh Davis. Civil Rights and the Presidency. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The King Center. Accessed October 10, 2014, http://www.thekingcenter.org/archive/document/letter-birmingham-city-jail-0#
Kirk, John. “The Long Road to Equality.” History Today 59, no. 2 (2009): 52-58.
Milkis, Sidney M. and Daniel Tichenor. “Reform’s Mating Dance: Presidents, Social Movements, and Racial Realignments.” Journal of Policy History 23, no. 4 (2011): 451-490.
“NAACP: Our Mission.” Accessed October 10, 2014, http://naacp.3cdn.net/1746740dc694a593ba_u3m62w9bw.pdf
Nelson-Waldschmidt, Britta. Dreams and Nightmares: Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcom X, and the Struggle for Black Equality in America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012.
“Transcript of Brown v. Board of Education (1954).” Accessed October 10, 2014, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=87&page=transcript
Ware, Leland. “Civil Rights and the 1960s: A Decade of Unparalleled Progress.” Maryland Law Review 72, no. 4 (2013): 1087-1095.
