The passage and signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act
marked a, sort of, watershed. Certainly, it's an important
piece of legislation, in regard to
what tack the federal government would take in regard to Civil Rights.
Remember the last time we really had the federal government
seeking to pass legislation to protect the civil rights of African-Americans
or other
groups or ethnicities within the United States had come
during Reconstruction. We'd seen, sort of, toothless legislation, Civil Rights
legislation,
in 1957. And then the Kennedy administration had posited and sort of
floated legislation, but it had not been passed by the time John F. Kennedy
was assassinated in late 1963.
If we think about why, in '64,
this legislation's passed, then
we really have to think about a few different factors. One, of course,
is the Civil Rights Movement itself.
The fact that so many protests are going on,
that the public relations
points, if you will, are beginning to stack up by the time you have the 16th
Street Baptist church bombing, by the time you have
the events unfolding on America's TV screens in Birmingham.
But on a more practical, political level
in Washington, in some ways, it's the death of John F. Kennedy
and the emergence of Lyndon Johnson as president
that will get this legislation passed.
Remember that Johnson had risen through the ranks in Congress,
and along the way he had really developed a sense
of the legislative machinations, the machinery,
that was necessary to
getting legislation, getting laws pushed through Congress.
And he used that knowledge very effectively as president
to get a host of legislation passed, including the Civil Rights Act.
But it's interesting that Kennedy had put it forward. John F, Kennedy's
administration had put this legislation forward, more or less,
but had failed to act, or failed to bring it to fruition.
Because Johnson, among other things, to get the legislation through
will call up
the spirit, the memory of John F. Kennedy, the slain president, the assassinated
President.
He will play upon the goodwill
and the sorrow of the United States
following Kennedy's death to get Civil Rights legislation through. And even then
it wasn't
a done deal. It wasn't an easy thing, that's how I should put it.
But,
for all that the Civil Rights Act did, and remember, it's geared toward public
accommodation
and non-discrimination in public accommodation, it doesn't
end the Civil Rights Movement, just as
Reconstruction, and the legislation of Reconstruction didn't end
the issues surrounding civil rights.
Already, by the early 1960s, in fact,
there's a sort of shift going on where more and more attention is being paid,
particularly by SNCC
and the younger generation, to the issue of voting rights.
And it makes a lot of sense, because
how can you defend, how can you secure
these rights that you now have access to--
they've always been yours, but now have access to them--how can you secure them if you
don't have access to the ballot.
If you're not a voter and, you know,
therefore your vote is not going to count, your voice doesn't count politically.
How can you get people in office, ultimately, who will look out for your interests?
And so, especially SNCC begins to focus in on the politics,
and the political issues. By 1962,
SNCC workers are already active in Mississippi
trying to register Mississippians to vote.
They're offering legal assistance for those willing to give it a shot,
and they are operating as activists
seeking to organize communities to actually demand
and seek the ballot, seek registration so that they can
be in a position to vote.
In 1960, just to give you some numbers, in 1960, less than
30% of
African-Americans in the South
were registered, less than 30 percent.
And, you already know where that comes from, you know why that is, because
we've talked about
disfranchisement, everything from the poll tax,
to literacy tests, which were very popular in the South,
grandfather clauses, things of that nature. Any tool, any
mechanism that would make it difficult, that would create
obstacles to African-American voting.
Those had been largely successful, and the numbers were even lower,
in terms of blacks registered to vote, African-Americans registered to vote,
in the deep South.
So,
you've got this huge number of people in the South
who simply are not represented politically
in our republic. One of my favorite quotes comes from
a very, a relatively well-known figure that emerges
by 1964. Her name was Fannie Lou Hamer.
And she says, and I quote, "I had never heard,
until 1962, that black people could register to vote.
I didn't know we had the right." And there may be a little hyperbole in that, but I think
it sums up quite nicely the situation in the early 1960s
in Mississippi, certainly, but, more broadly, in large chunks of the southern
United States.
Disfranchisement had been so successful that I think many
African-Americans
never associated themselves with having this right to vote.
And if they did, not because, you know, they clearly knew they could, many of them,
but
even if they tried the consequences could be
extraordinarily dangerous. You certainly would be putting your life in jeopardy
to go into a courthouse time and time again and really push the issue
of registration,
you and your family. Remember, its violence, ultimately, that holds of all this control
and the system of segregation and disfranchisement in place.
It has since reconstruction, just as violence held slavery
in place. A good example of this violence playing out,
in terms of reaction to efforts by SNCC workers to organize
organize voters in Mississippi, plays out in the summer of 1964, the so
called freedom summer.
That was a huge push, that summer of 64 was a huge push
to send SNCC workers, young African-Americans and
young whites, into Mississippi
to push registration in advance of the 1964 presidential election.
This would have been the election when Johnson stood to become president
in his own right, not from vice-presidency.
They go into Mississippi in '64,
and it's tough, it's tough sledding. They're there to educate.
They're there to collectively organize. They're there to assist black voters,
demand
that they be registered, and to check the legal processes.
But, again, the point here is violence.
And June 21st and 22nd, 1964,
three young men who were in Mississippi
to organize are killed, lynched,
effectively. They have been on business,
the business of registration, when they're pulled over.
They're riding together the car,
two young white fellows and an African-American. Their names, by the way,
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
They're riding together in a car. They're in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
They're pulled over. They're put in jail.
And then, when I say they are lynched, they are released from jail
really for the sole purpose of allowing
individuals to stop them and kill them.
And when I say individuals, I don't just mean private individuals, I mean
government employees.
Involved in this whole business, you have
State Troopers, but you really have the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office,
you have the
Police Officers from Philadelphia, Mississippi. But you also have
the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which has actually become
a much more prominent organization in Mississippi since this whole
Civil Rights movement has taken off.
And then, basically, these young men are stopped,
and--this is after they have already been arrested once--they're let go, they're stopped
again.
This time they're shot, cars burned out,
and the bodies are buried, essentially, in a damn that was
under construction later to be found by the FBI.
It's events like this that continue to propel
this push for Civil Rights. And it's, again,
it's in Mississippi in 1964, but it's also
on the March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965.
Three marches really. The first one ends in a
tear gas bath for marchers who want,
in essence, to demonstrate against
the inability to register and to vote
in Alabama. So, they're going to march to Governor George Wallace's
office, and present, you know,
him with their charges. But the first march
which takes place in early March of 1965
they're actually tear gassed and beaten.
And then there's a second effort in which the marchers were under an
injunction,
and it's called turnaround Tuesday, at which point the marchers go up to the
bridge,
but instead of trying to cross the bridge and get more tear gas,
they actually--oh, and also breaking this injunction keeping them from marching--
they actually kneel and pray,
and then turn around and head back to Selma.
It's not until March 25th of 1965 that they actually
arrive in Montgomery, Alabama to present
their petitions to the governor and
to the legislature of Alabama. And they do so
after several days of marching about 10 miles a day.
There's huge media coverage.
And another thing that makes this possible, this march possible,
is federal intervention, marshals,
you know, the whole nine yards called out to make sure there's
no more violence. It remains an embarrassment for national politicians
but it will lead to
kind of a second leg of this major legislative push
of the 1960s, and that's the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This act provided authority for the Attorney General of the United States, and the
Justice Department,
to supervise voter registration
and voting in areas where less than half
minorities eligible to vote were actually registered to vote.
By 1969,
the numbers had jumped from less than 30 percent of Southern African-Americans
registered
to approximately 2/3,
and that's just in matter about four years.
To suggest that African-Americans in the south didn't want to vote, as some
white reactionaries did, was proven to be quite
untrue. The numbers,
the voting percentages, would suggest otherwise once the door was open to
participation
by African-Americans. Now this ends this
specific lecture on Civil Rights, but it's going to continue to be a theme, and
it'll be in the
lectures to come. But I think the big thing to take away here is...
there are a few. One of them is how momentous
this Civil Rights movement the 20th Century was in terms of
what happened before, in terms of Reconstruction, in terms of the lynching
of the late 19th century, in terms of disfranchisement and Jim Crow.
But it hinges on a notion--and I want to come back to this theme very quickly--
it hinges on a notion that we human beings
often take for granted that things are the way they are
because that's how they are. Right? This assumption that culturally,
culturally it's the nature of things to be as they are.
And when we do that, when we do that, we forget
that our culture is something we're not only sprung from,
it's not just what informs who we are, but is also something that we create,
we have a hand in creating.
C. Vann Woodward, a well noted southern historian,
basically made this case writing
on Civil Rights and Jim Crow in arguing that
what human beings have created,
i.e., the system of Jim Crow, and the system of disfranchisement,
human beings could tear down,
undo. That's
one of those notions behind the Civil Rights Movement, and
a notion that goes to the heart of what this business of history is all about.
And understanding that part of knowing
what history is, what it's been,
contains that seed, that it can be changed, it's not set in stone, that it's still
something we
argue about in terms of its meaning, it's still...
I hesitate to say it's still living, but you know what I'm saying.
It still has...
it still has a fluidity about it. We're going to debate the meaning.
We're going to still argue about. It's still vibrant.
I think the other thing to take away from this, very simply, is
that, as is, again, often the case historically, you cannot simply talk about
any thing in a monolithic way.
Really, its not proper I think to talk about the Civil Rights Movement at
all,
but rather to understand that you have many individuals with
varying ideas of what Civil Rights ought to mean,
and that time changes things, that
the Civil Rights Movement itself is not one movement, but a constant evolution of
ideas,
as with passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
and the emphasis being on voting.
And the Civil Rights Movement will continue to evolve into the mid and late
1960s,
concurrent with other factors
that are influencing the thought not only African-Americans,
but whites and many other ethnicities
in the United States. So, I'm going to end there,
and we'll pick up with the next lecture focusing on 1968.
And we'll continue with some of these themes as we go. Thanks.