Civil Rights and Reform 1960s

Civil Rights and Reform 1960s

Lesson Slides

Freedom Summer

•  June 1964, the first three hundred volunteers arrived in Mississippi. Mississippi Project Director Robert “Bob” Moses pledged his staff and volunteers to “nonviolence in all situations.”

• approximately 1,000 volunteers, the majority were white northern college students from middle and upper class backgrounds. The training sessions were to prepare volunteers to register black voters, teach literacy and civics at Freedom Schools, and promote the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s (MFDP) challenge to the all-white Democratic delegation at that summer’s Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Freedom Summer

• Voter registration was the cornerstone of the summer project. Of approximately 17,000 black residents of Mississippi who attempted to register to vote, only 1,600 of the applications were accepted by local registrars.

• This brought national attention to the need for federal voting rights legislation, these efforts created political momentum for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Multiple Choice

Organizers of the Freedom Summer campaign hoped to achieve

• the right to nonviolent protest in Mississippi.

• the elimination of Jim Crow laws in the South.

• the desegregation of public schools in Arkansas.

• the registration of African Americans to vote in Mississippi.

Kerner Commission

The findings shocked the nation.

Multiple Choice

Why were the Kerner Commission's findings so controversial?

• It blamed all racial groups for the problems of the urban poor.

• It argued against expanding federal spending to solve problems.

• It proposed using some of the funds being spent on the Vietnam War

• It recommended funding federal programs to solve problems.

Stokely Carmichael

• Trinidadian American civil rights activist known for leading the SNCC and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s.

• Nineteen years old when he participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides; he became the youngest person imprisoned for his participation after he was arrested while attempting to integrate a "whites only" cafeteria in Jackson, MI.

• Became a leader of Black nationalism in the United States for the Black Panthers and marching with MLK in the 1960s and originator of its rallying slogan, “Black power.”

Multiple Choice

According to Stokely Carmichael, black power meant that African Americans should

• pursue racial separation in order to gain independence.

• use their economic and political strength to gain equality.

• pressure the government to pass affirmative action laws.

• only follow the path of nonviolent protest to gain power.

The Poor People's Campaign

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/poor-peoples-campaign

Multiple Choice

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign was an attempt to

• persuade militants that nonviolence was the best tactic.

• address economic injustice.

• focus the nation’s attention on voting rights laws.

• call for laws banning segregation in private businesses.

Multiple Choice

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized the federal government to

• transfer oversight of voting registration to the states.

• share oversight of voting registration with the states.

• oversee voting registration and elections in certain states.

• supervise elections in all states.

From the National Archives

https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/voting-rights-1965