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Introduction The successes of the civil rights movement in the 1960s actually derive at least in part from developments that began during World War II. Black and Latino soldiers who fought for the freedom of the United States and other Allied nations overseas became disgruntled when they did not receive the same basic liberties when they returned home. Minority workers who had gained some economic success as workers during the war were the first to lose their jobs when whites returned home. The economic prosperity of the 1950s exacerbated the situation, as these veterans and workers felt they did not share the prosperity of the nation. Ordinary people such as Oliver Brown and Rosa Parks took actions that sparked a crusade. The first changes occurred in education. Latinos had moved to force integration of schools in 1947, but the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Supreme Court unanimously voted for integration, brought the issue into the national consciousness. The next year, Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on the bus sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted over a year and introduced Martin Luther King as a national civil rights leader. After these beginnings, events from Little Rock, Arkansas and Oxford, Mississippi to Selma, Alabama and Washington, D.C. brought the civil rights cause to the nation through the medium of television. After the assassination of President Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson took the movement to Capitol Hill along with his vision of the Great Society, which included reform of education, housing, the environment, and many other aspects of the American domestic agenda. The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, also furthered this liberal agenda. As the 1960s progressed, the civil rights movement developed into a struggle for black power while many young, college-educated whites joined the counterculture in search of a more meaningful alternative to the sterile suburban life of middle-class America.
The Web activities for this chapter examine the development of the civil rights movement and the liberal political and cultural agendas in the 1960s. The additional research links further this investigation while also exploring the opposition to this liberal hegemony. Web Activities 1. Read the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. To get there, click on 347 U.S. 483, then click on full decision. Why does the first line of the case says the cases come from several states? On what legal arguments does the court base its decision? Do they base their decision on any non-legal factors? Why is it important that the decision was unanimous? Now go to Brown II, decided the next year. To get there, click on 349 U.S. 294, then click on full decision. Why did the court need to return to the case the year after its original decision? What issues did the court decide in Brown II? How did it decide them? 2. To understand the escalation of the civil rights movement, examine the beginning in 1960 with the sit-ins at a lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina. Read the article and listen to the recollections of the leaders. Who were these men? What kind of response did they get? How reliable do you think their remembrances are thirty years later? Now read about the Freedom Rides (and look at map above). When and why were they started? What happened to the group that took the ride in 1961? What happened when James Meredith tried to enroll as the first black student at the University of Mississippi in 1962? When and why did Martin Luther King write his Letter from a Birmingham Jail? Why did King and his fellow leaders decide to march on Washington in 1963? Why did President Kennedy object to the march? 3. Listen to the speeches of Malcolm X. How did he respond to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call for nonviolent protest? How did his philosophy differ from King's? Why does he talk so much about field and house Negroes? How does he feel about whites? Now read a brief history of the Black Panthers. How did their philosophy agree with and differ from those of Malcolm X and King? 4. Under the leadership of Chief Justice Earl Warren, the Supreme Court played an active role in the liberal reforms of the 1960s. Read the Court's decisions in Gideon v Wainwright, Miranda v. Arizona, Engel v. Vitale, Griswold v. Connecticut, and Baker v. Carr. What do these decisions have in common? How did they transform the American political and legal landscape? 5. Tour the photographic exhibition A Visual Journey. How do the site and the photographer characterize the counterculture? What made a person countercultural during the 1960s? What legacy did the movement leave in American culture? Now go to The Sixties.com). Explore this site, which chronicles the Haight Ashbury scene in San Francisco in the 1960s. What made this community distinctive? Why did San Francisco become such a center for the counterculture? Additional Research Links The Civil Rights Movement
A Movement Becomes a Crusade
Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society
The Counterculture
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