8 GROUNDCOVER NEWS HISTORY NOVEMBER 15, 2024 Civil Rights Act of 1964 turns 60! Remembering events, heroes and movements that shaped history On July 2, 2024, the White House released a statement on behalf of President Joe Biden to remind the American people of the historic significance of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was signed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. It was announced that President Biden would visit the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, to deliver some remarks to commemorate the 60th anniversary of this transformative legislation. As the Civil Rights Act of 1964 turns 60, the mass media and the American public have begun to discuss how far the nation has come in successfully implementing the goals and objectives of this momentous legislation. After the 1964 Act, Congress passed and the President signed the 1965 Civil Rights Act (Voting Rights Enforcement/Freedom to Vote law) and the 1968 Civil Rights Act (Non-Discrimination in Housing/Fair Housing/Creation of U.S. HUD). Although I have talked to several students and community members since the 50th anniversary of the legislation in 2014, I wanted to gauge how much progress we are making toward a full understanding of the history and the impacts. More recently, I talked to some University of Michigan students who volunteer to help poor and homeless people in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. They are members of student organizations interested in community engagement and service learning. Among the organizations are Michigan Movement, Redefined and Michigan Community Scholars Program. A college senior, Lauren, said that civil rights mean equality to her. Her colleague, Esther, said that she thinks of Title 9 when she thinks of civil rights. Other students mentioned words such as “discrimination,” “injustice” or “civility.” I believe some members of the older generation may be able to speak more passionately, having lived through the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. A Brief Overview of the Civil Rights Struggles award-winning book titled, Sociologist Aldon Morris wrote the “The Origin of the Civil Rights Movement.” He was a sociology professor at U-M, but is currently at Northwestern. Although his work was widely praised, a few historians and one law professor at the University of Minnesota wanted to see the book provide more WILL SHAKESPEARE Groundcover vendor No. 258 historical background. But even in the Library of Congress big poster displays, it’s suggested that the civil rights struggle started in 1950 and continued into the 1960s. Many people know the story about Linda Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. It was a case against segregation in public education and pernicious discrimination. NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall led the team that fought before the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 SCOTUS decision which ruled that “Separate But Equal” was the law of the land. Earl Warren’s Supreme Court deliberated and reached a unanimous landmark decision on May 17, 1954. The justices said the Court was wrong in 1896. The Warren Court decided that “Separate But Equal” was no longer the law of the land. In 1955, the Court met again to decide how their decision should be implemented. SCOTUS suggested that the government should use “all deliberate speed” to enforce it. The story of Emmett Till is a crushing tragedy in the struggle for civil rights in the southern region of the country. Emmett was a young, confident 14-year old boy from Chicago. His family left the south during the Great Black Migration because of Jim Crow laws, racism and KKK harassments. Emmett told his mom that he wanted to travel to Mississippi for a summer holiday. His mother was worried about his safety and gave him some tips on how to survive during his stay in Money, Mississippi. Emmett was targeted because of his character, his race and his Chicago confident gravitas. On a late summer afternoon, Emmett and his cousins went to a small neighborhood store to buy candies and soda pop. The cashier made what she later admitted to be false accusations. The woman’s husband and his bully cousin came into the house where Emmett was staying in the middle of the night. One person had a gun in one hand, and hurriedly took the boy away. They did not listen to the pleas from the homeowners. August 28, 1963, President John F. Kennedy met with civil rights leaders of the March on Washington at the White House. Emmett was beaten so badly with hard objects that his skull shattered, and bullets opened gaping holes across his head. His messed-up body was tied to a 70-pound abandoned industrial fan and dumped into the Tallahatchie river. Emmett Till was killed on August 28, 1955. Emmett’s mom, Mamie Till, fought to bring her son’s body to Chicago for burial. The body and the face were so brutalized that Mamie insisted on giving Emmett an open casket funeral. Mourners who came to the funeral in South-Side Chicago wept and demanded federal government laws to protect Black people in the southern regions. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act was finally signed into law in 2022. The Montgomery bus boycott started in December 1955 and lasted more than one year. Ms. Rosa Parks was asked by a bus driver to go to the back of the bus because only white people were allowed to sit near the front of the bus. She said she was tired and her feet were hurting, and she chose to sit in the front. She was kicked out of the bus. A young pastor who had just become the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, helped Rosa Parks and the local NAACP devise a plan on how to kick off the boycott, working with the Montgomery Improvement Union. The young Pastor’s name was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The strategy devised by Dr. King, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Improvement Union was successful. After more than 500 days of the boycott, the bus company said they lost a lot of money and wanted to end their segregation policy. It is obvious to many scholars that the Montgomery bus boycott was a planned social change. Dr. King’s 1957 book, “A Stride to Freedom,” shared a story about the successful social movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was signed by President Dwight Eisenhower. It called for dismantling the Jim Crow laws which put punitive restrictions on Black people in the south who wanted to register and vote. It also aimed at removing segregation and discrimination in public facilities, including public education. President Eisenhower had to empower the federal National Guard to go to Little Rock, Arkansas, in order to help nine Black teens attend classes at Little Rock High School. The nine kids were nicknamed, “The Little Rock 9.” One of them died recently at the age of 83. The SCOTUS recommendation in 1955 to use all deliberate speed to ensure integration of public schools and other public facilities was a major challenge in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond. Black pastors and business leaders helped to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in order to work with several faith organizations and wage successful human rights and civil rights campaigns. Dr. King was named the first president of SCLC. Dr. King worked with the NAACP and other community leaders to get the federal government involved in the struggles to end discrimination and ensure freedom, equality and justice.The southern states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida were “Ground Zero” for racial tensions related to actual and perceived racial injustice. Dr. King traveled across the nation, giving speeches in Ann Arbor (November 5, 1962), Detroit (June 1963) and other cities. see CIVIL RIGHTS page 11
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