hist.g8.s.civ.civil_rights_movement_1954_1968_multi_leader
Analyze Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968 as multi-leader Black Freedom Struggle: Brown 1954 + Emmett Till 1955 + Montgomery 1955-56 + Little Rock 1957 + sit-ins + Freedom Rides + March on Washington 1963 + Birmingham + Selma + Voting Rights Act 1965 + MLK assassination — centering Ella Baker + Bayard Rustin + Fannie Lou Hamer + Bob Moses + Diane Nash + Septima Clark per Hall 2005
Trace Brown v. Board May 17 1954 + Brown II 1955 'all deliberate speed'; Emmett Till Aug 28 1955 (TRAUMA-INFORMED MG-15); Rosa Parks + Montgomery Bus Boycott Dec 1 1955 – Dec 20 1956 (Parks 12-year NAACP activist per Theoharis 2013); Little Rock Nine Sept 1957 Daisy Bates + Ernest Green + Elizabeth Eckford; Greensboro Sit-Ins Feb 1 1960 + SNCC founding April 15-17 1960 Shaw University Ella Baker 'More Than a Hamburger'; Freedom Rides May 4 1961 Diane Nash + James Farmer + John Lewis; March on Washington Aug 28 1963 organized by Bayard Rustin (refuses MLK-as-organizer hagiography) + MLK 'I Have a Dream' + Mahalia Jackson 'tell them about the dream'; Birmingham Children's Crusade May 2-10 1963 Bull Connor + Letter from Birmingham Jail April 16 1963; Sept 15 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing (Addie Mae Collins + Cynthia Wesley + Carole Robertson + Carol Denise McNair); Civil Rights Act July 2 1964 LBJ; Freedom Summer 1964 (Chaney + Goodman + Schwerner murdered June 21 1964); MFDP Fannie Lou Hamer DNC testimony Aug 22 1964; Selma March 7-25 1965 ('Bloody Sunday' Edmund Pettus Bridge + John Lewis + Hosea Williams); Voting Rights Act Aug 6 1965; Watts Aug 11-16 1965; Stokely Carmichael 'Black Power' speech June 16 1966 Greenwood MS + Kwame Ture; Black Panther Party Oct 15 1966 Seale + Newton 10-Point Program; MLK 'Beyond Vietnam' April 4 1967; MLK assassinated April 4 1968 Memphis; Poor People's Campaign May-June 1968 Ralph Abernathy.
- Analyze the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments as the SECOND FOUNDING (Foner 2019) — abolishing slavery + establishing birthright citizenship + equal protection + due process + prohibiting racial discrimination in voting
- Analyze the Compromise of 1877 as federal abandonment that allowed Reconstruction's violent overthrow — NOT natural collapse; document KKK + White Leagues + Red Shirts + Colfax 1873 + Hamburg 1876 + Mississippi Plan 1875 + Enforcement Acts 1870-1871 + Slaughter-House 1873 + Cruikshank 1876 + Civil Rights Cases 1883 + Compromise of 1877 per Foner 1988 + Du Bois 1935 + Gates 2019
No declared successors.
- Treating MLK as sole or primary leader — refuses MG-14f LONG-CIVIL-RIGHTS-MULTI-MOVEMENT PROMISE; Ella Baker + Bayard Rustin + Fannie Lou Hamer + Bob Moses + Diane Nash + Septima Clark + Daisy Bates + Pauli Murray are co-leaders
- Treating Rosa Parks as 'tired seamstress' — per Theoharis 2013 Parks was 12-year NAACP activist trained at Highlander Folk School; refused-seat was strategic
- Treating Civil Rights Act 1964 + Voting Rights Act 1965 as ending struggle — VRA's Section 5 preclearance gutted by Shelby County v. Holder 2013; ongoing voter-access struggles
- Treating MLK and Malcolm X as opposites — by 1965 both had moved toward economic + global solidarity framing; Malcolm X assassinated Feb 21 1965, MLK assassinated April 4 1968