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In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
From 1964 to 1968, both triumph and tragedy were part of the civil rights movement.
Andrew Goodman
James Chaney
Michael Schwerner
▲ When African Americans in the South tried to register to vote, they were often threatened by white officials. They had to take “citizenship tests,” but whites didn’t. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began helping black people register to vote in Mississippi. In 1964, it brought in students from the North to help. That summer, Andrew Goodman went South. He joined veteran civil rights workers Michael Schwerner and James Chaney. All three were beaten and shot to death by Ku Klux Klansmen. The state of Mississippi didn’t convict the ringleader until 2005. ▼
President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed hard to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He signed it into law on July 2 of that year. It outlawed segregation in public places like restaurants, hotels, and sports arenas. It also banned job discrimination due to sex, race, religion, or national origin. A year later, Johnson got the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed. It guaranteed African Americans the right to vote. ▶
▲ Early in 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference joined a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and 250 adults were arrested for marching. When 500 children protested the arrest, they were arrested, too. A group tried to march from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital, 54 miles away. State troopers on horseback broke up the march. They used billy clubs, bullwhips, tear gas, and cattle prods on the protesters. Photos of the attack were shown on television. And then people, both black and white, from all over the country flocked to Selma. On March 21, 4,000 protesters started a march to Montgomery. This time they were protected by the U.S. military. They reached the city five days later, on March 25. By then the number of marchers had grown to 25,000.
◀ By 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. (second from right) realized that true freedom could come only with economic equality. He began a Poor People’s Campaign. He went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support striking garbage collectors. While there, he was shot to death on the balcony of his motel.
In 2011, a 30-foot-tall stone sculpture was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The Stone of Hope honors Martin Luther King Jr. Its name comes from a line in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. King said, “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” It is unique in this way: it’s the only memorial on the Mall that doesn’t honor a war, a president, or a white person. ▶
◀ Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little. He was a member of the Nation of Islam. That group believed whites were racist “devils” who would never change. It saw no point in fighting for civil rights. Instead, it urged African Americans to keep to themselves and work for their own benefit. But then Malcolm went to the Muslim holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. He met Muslims of all races, and he changed his anti-white position. He even went to Selma to speak. Three weeks later, on February 14, 1965, he was assassinated, allegedly by a group that disagreed with him. Even after his death, Malcolm X inspired millions to think positively about their African background and African American culture.
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What were the long hot summers?
The civil rights movement gave many African Americans hope of finally being treated fairly in the United States. But some were very angry about the centuries of oppression. They couldn’t be nonviolent. From 1964 to 1968, riots broke out in black neighborhoods in many cities. These included Harlem in New York and Watts in Los Angeles. Those summers became known as the “long hot summers.”
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Who were the Black Panthers?
By the mid-1960s, some African Americans thought the civil rights movement had done all it could. They thought nonviolence could only go so far. They took up the slogan “Black Power.” That could mean economic or political power, or the power of weapons. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense believed African Americans had the right to bear arms against police brutality. They also did community organizing and ran a free breakfast program for poor children.
