Help high school students explore the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the difference between the right to vote and the ability to vote, and think about some of the current threats to the right to vote and what can be done about them. Walter White: Mr. NAACP, by Kenneth Robert Janken, is a biography of one of the most famous civil rights figures of the first half of the twentieth century. White made a name for himself as an NAACP investigator who took risks for lynchings, riots, and other racist violence in the years following World War I. He was an impressive and influential persuader in the corridors of power, with Eleanor Roosevelt, senators, deputies, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, union leaders, Hollywood moguls, and diplomats among his circle of friends. His style of work depended on bringing together enlightened elites, and he favored the development of a civil rights bureaucracy over local and mass organizations. Walter White was an expert in the practice of “brokerage policy”: during the decades when the majority of African Americans were legally disenfranchised, White led the organization that gave them an effective voice, represented them, and interpreted their demands and desires (as he understood them) to those in power. Two examples of this were highlighted in the first part of this essay: the anti-lynching crusade and President Truman`s lobbying that led to To Guarantee These Rights. A third example is his pivotal role in the production of Marian Anderson`s iconic Easter Sunday 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which received enthusiastic support from President Roosevelt and members of his administration, Congress, and the Supreme Court. His leadership style was dominant in the civil rights movement before the advent of direct mass action in the years following White`s death in 1955. Martin Luther King, Jr., an experienced and charismatic speaker who gave numerous speeches in support of African-American civil rights, is perhaps best known for his remarks at the 1963 March on Washington. After reading a prepared text, he began to express with the words “I have a dream” and imagined a time when blacks and whites would work together, pray and fight, and when character would be most important instead of color. He quoted a phrase from “My country is from you” and urged the nation to “make freedom sound.” King`s oratorio electrified the diverse crowd of 250,000 and captivated a vast television audience.

King`s remarks received more attention than any other speaker. In the years that followed, King and the SCLC began to place greater emphasis on economic justice, particularly the end of segregated housing construction, which also affected northern cities. Meanwhile, SNCC and other elements of the movement are beginning to adopt a strong black nationalist orientation, and many have abandoned their commitment to nonviolence. Despite King`s assassination in 1968 and the increased fragmentation of the movement, important victories continued to be won over the next decade, including open housing legislation, increasing segregation of schools and workplaces, stronger affirmative action, more African-American elected officials, and advances in economic opportunity. Work for more racial equality continues to this day. Brown v. The Board of Education was a turning point for American civil rights. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Jim Crow laws separating students from public schools on the basis of race were unconstitutional and violated the equality clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Brown set aside the Court`s earlier decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, in which it ruled that separate public entities were constitutional, provided they were separate but essentially identical.

This event was the culmination of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund`s campaign against segregation in schools. Despite this historic decision, the abolition of racial segregation in public schools has often met with delays or open resistance. Section 5 of the Act requires “prior approval” from the federal government before covering jurisdictions (i.e., certain jurisdictions with a history of practices that restrict minority voting rights) may make changes to existing voting practices or procedures. The act also gives the Department of Justice the power to appoint federal observers and auditors to oversee elections to ensure they are conducted fairly. Early enforcement efforts included literacy testing, surveys and discriminatory registration practices. James Forman (1928-2005), executive director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), describes to interviewer Kenneth Clark the goals, tactics, and dangers of SNCC voter registration campaigns in the rural South in this excerpt from the television documentary We Shall Overcome, which aired on National Educational Television on August 14, 1963. Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973) grew up in Ranchland, Texas. After graduating from Southwest State Teachers College in 1930, he taught at the high school. His political career began in 1937 when he won a seat in Congress. In 1948, he was elected to the Senate. In 1960, he was elected vice president on the Democratic ticket with John F. Kennedy.

When Kennedy was assassinated, he was sworn in as president and was elected to a full term in 1964. The Great Society became his program for Congress in January 1965. The program included educational assistance, medicare, the expansion of the war on poverty, and the enforcement of civil rights. During his presidency, Johnson sent three landmark civil rights bills to Congress: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. “We insist! Max Roach`s Freedom Now Suite is a multi-part musical composition depicting African-American history from slavery to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The first took place on 15 January 1961 on the occasion of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The title is derived from a quote from civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph: “Youth and idealism unfold. Masses of blacks are marching on the stage of history and now demanding their freedom! James Forman (1928-2005) studied at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He holds a master`s degree from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from the Union Institute.

A Chicago Defender mission to report on desegregation at Little Rock Central High School sparked Forman`s interest in the nascent civil rights movement. He was involved with CORE and the NAACP and became Executive Secretary of SNCC in 1961. From 1967 to 1969, Forman was director of SNCC`s International Affairs Commission and played a crucial role in pooling SNCC`s activities with other civil rights organizations and in gaining the organization`s national and international notoriety. Forman continued to devote the rest of his life to human rights issues. In the summer of 1964, COFO brought a thousand activists to Mississippi to register, educate, and develop voters as an alternative to the segregated branch of the Democratic Party — the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Three student volunteers were murdered by local police. In Selma, Alabama, an attempt by SNCC to register voters was met with violence. A subsequent march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery was violently dispersed by police before additional federal marshals and volunteers arrived to end the initially aborted march. This gave new impetus to the adoption of a federal voting law that was enacted the following year and changed the politics of the South. Vernon Jordan, a lawyer and civil rights activist, served as field secretary of the NAACP in Georgia from 1961 to 1963.

This transcript offers an early history of the Albany movement, which was founded on November 17, 1961 by local activists, SNCC and the NAACP to challenge racial segregation in Albany, Georgia. Martin Luther King, Jr. and SCLC joined the movement when King and Ralph Abernathy arrived in Albany on December 15 after nearly 500 protesters were arrested. The mass protests in Albany lasted six years. Jazz artists responded to the power of the civil rights movement by recording and performing their music. The most ambitious response was Max Roach`s Freedom Now Suite, recorded in August and September 1960, which involved such important artists as Coleman Hawkins, Abbey Lincoln and Nigerian drummer Olatunji. The Freedom Now Suite was released on the small label Candid Records and not on Max Roach`s regular label, Mercury. Although Lincoln did not initially seek to abolish slavery, his determination to punish rebellious states and his growing reliance on black soldiers in the Union army led him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) to deprive the Confederacy of its enslaved property.