CONGRESS ON RACIAL EQUALITY

The Congress On Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942 as the Committee of Racial Equality by an interracial group of students in Chicago-Bernice Fisher, James Robinson, James Farmer, Joe Guinn, George Houser, and Homer Jack. Many of these students were members of the Chicago branch of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a pacifist organization seeking to change racist attitudes. The founders of CORE were deeply influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's teachings of nonviolent resistance.
CORE provided guidance for action in the aftermath of the 1960 sit-in of four college students at a Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter, and subsequently became a nationally recognized civil rights organization. As pioneers of the sit-in tactic, the organization offered support in Greensboro and organized sit-ins throughout the South. CORE members then developed the strategy of the jail-in, serving out their sentences for sit-ins rather than paying bail. In May of 1961, CORE organized the freedom rides, modeled after their earlier Journey of Reconciliation. Near Birmingham, Alabama, a bus was firebombed and riders were beaten by a white mob. Despite this violent event, CORE continued to locate field secretaries in key areas of the South to provide support for the riders. By the end of 1961, CORE had 53 affiliated chapters, and they remained active in southern civil rights activities for the next several years. CORE participated heavily in President Kennedy's Voter Education Project (VEP) and co-sponsored the 1963 March on Washington. In 1964, CORE participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer project; three activists killed that summer in an infamous case, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, were members of CORE. By 1963, CORE had already shifted attention to segregation in the North and West where two thirds of the organization's chapters were located. In an effort to build CORE's credibility as a black-protest organization, leadership in these northern chapters had become almost entirely black. CORE's ideology and strategies increasingly were challenged by its changing membership. Many new members advocated militancy and believed nonviolent methods of protest were to be used only if they proved successful. As the tactics were being questioned, so was the leadership. In 1966, under mounting pressure and with the organization losing members influence and financial support, James Farmer stepped down as National Director and was replaced by the more militant Floyd McKissick. McKissick endorsed the term Black Power and was a much more acceptable leader to the Black community than Farmer was. When McKissick took over, the organization was badly disorganized and deep in debt. Although McKissick was a charismatic and respected leader, he was unable to turn the organization's finances around. In 1968, he announced his retirement to pursue his dream of building a "Soul City" in North Carolina and Roy Innis who was Chairman of the Harlem Chapter of CORE, replaced him as the National Director. Innis inherited the organization with a completely de-centralized structure, with more than a million dollars in debt and no fundraising mechanism. The organization's fundraising arm--CORE Health, Education & Welfare Fund--had deserted the organization when Farmer left. Innis quickly declared the first order of business was restructuring so that Chapters and field operatives were responsible back to the National Headquarters. Innis also developed a new fundraising arm--CORE Special Purpose Fund--and began to chip away at the organization's debt. Under Innis's leadership, CORE embraced an ideology of pragmatic nationalism and lent its support to black economic development and community self-determination.

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NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE
Civil Rights Era

By the 1950s, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, headed by Marshall, secured the last of these goals through Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in public schools. The NAACP's Washington, D.C., bureau, led by lobbyist Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., helped advance not only integration of the armed forces in 1948 but also passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Despite such dramatic courtroom and congressional victories, the implementation of civil rights was a slow, painful, and oft times violent. The unsolved 1951 murder of Harry T. Moore, an NAACP field secretary in Florida whose home was bombed on Christmas night, and his wife was just one of many crimes of retribution against the NAACP and its staff and members.
NAACP Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar Evers and his wife Myrlie also became high-profile targets for pro-segregationist violence and terrorism. In 1962, their home was firebombed and later Medgar was assassinated by a sniper in front of their residence following years of investigations into hostility against blacks and participation in non-violent demonstrations such as sit-ins to protest the persistence of Jim Crow segregation throughout the south.

Violence also met black children attempting to enter previously segregated schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, and other southern cities. Throughout the south, many African Americans were still denied the right to register and vote.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s echoed the NAACP's goals, but leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, felt that direct action was needed to obtain them.

Although it was criticized for working exclusively within the system by pursuing legislative and judicial solutions, the NAACP did provide legal representation and aid to members of other protest groups over a sustained period. The NAACP even posted bail for hundreds of Freedom Riders in the ‘60s who had traveled to Mississippi to register black voters and challenge Jim Crow policies.

Led by Roy Wilkins, who succeeded Walter White as secretary in 1955, the NAACP, along with A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and other national organizations began to plan the 1963 March on Washington.

With the passage of major civil rights legislation the following year, the Association accomplished what seemed an insurmountable task. In the following years, the NAACP began to diversify its goals.

Assisting the NAACP throughout the years were many celebrities and leaders, including Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, Ella Baker, an NAACP director of branches who stressed the importance of young people and women in the organization by recruiting members, raising money, and organizing local campaigns; Daisy Bates, NAACP national board member, Arkansas state conference president and advisor to the Little Rock Nine; and NAACP stalwarts like Kivie Kaplan, a businessman and philanthropist from Boston, who served as president of the NAACP from 1966 until 1975. He personally led nationwide NAACP Life Membership efforts and fought to keep African Americans away from illegal drugs.

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Southern Christian Leadership Conference

The very beginnings of the SCLC can be traced back to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Montgomery Bus Boycott began on December 5, 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on the bus. The boycott lasted for 381 days and ended on December 21, 1956, with the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system. The boycott was carried out by the newly established Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Martin Luther King, Jr. served as President and Ralph David Abernathy served as Program Director. It was one of history’s most dramatic and massive nonviolent protests, stunning the nation and the world.

The boycott was also a signal to Black America to begin a new phase of the long struggle, a phase that came to be known as the modern civil rights movement. As bus boycotts spread across the South, leaders of the MIA and other protest groups met in Atlanta on January 10 – 11, 1957, to form a regional organization and coordinate protest activities across the South.

Despite a bombing of the home and church of Ralph David Abernathy during the Atlanta meeting, 60 persons from 10 states assembled and announced the founding of the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration. They issued a document declaring that civil rights are essential to democracy, that segregation must end, and that all Black people should reject segregation absolutely and nonviolently.
Further organizing was done at a meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 14, 1957. The organization shortened its name to Southern Leadership Conference, established an Executive Board of Directors, and elected officers, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as President, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy as Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee, Florida as Vice President, Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Secretary, and Attorney I. M. Augustine of New Orleans, Louisiana as General Counsel.

At its first convention in Montgomery in August 1957, the Southern Leadership Conference adopted the current name, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Basic decisions made by the founders at these early meeting included the adoption of nonviolent mass action as the cornerstone of strategy, the affiliation of local community organizations with SCLC across the South, and a determination to make the SCLC movement open to all, regardless of race, religion, or background.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

SNCC's original statement of purpose established nonviolence as the driving philosophy behind the organization. However, things were never that simple. In the early days, during the period of the sit-in movement, nonviolent action was strictly enforced, particularly for public demonstrations, as it was key to the movement's success.

To rally support from whites and blacks outside the movement, the sit-ins needed to create a distinct impression of moral superiority. One of the best ways to do this was to meet the harsh violence of the white man with pacifism. Some members expanded this philosophy to their daily lives, believing that just carrying a gun for self-defense was hostile.

The philosophy of nonviolence hit shakier ground when SNCC began its period of community organization in the South, having to face continual threats of perhaps deadly violence from whites. On many occasions, SNCC offices were sprayed with bullets or torched by local white men. In 1963 Bob Moses and Jimmy Travis, SNCC workers trying to encourage black voters to register, were shot at while driving near Greenwood, Mississippi. Travis was hit and nearly died.

A majority of SNCC workers were beaten and thrown in prison at least once during their work with the organization. As a result, once strict guidelines of nonviolence were relaxed and members were unofficially permitted to carry guns for self-defense. However, the principle was still adhered to publicly, as it remained an effective means of protest. Eventually whites began to understand the tactic, and nonviolence became less powerful. Whites began to realize SNCC's peaceful responses to violent oppression were key to gaining support for their cause.

If there were no more public violence for SNCC to rise above, SNCC's message would be weakened. Thus, protesters were no longer beaten publicly. Instead, they were attacked and beaten behind closed doors where newspaper reporters and television cameras could not reach. As southern whites intended, discrete violent oppression began to destroy the image of martyr that SNCC had carefully constructed through nonviolent protest. During this time, SNCC stopped sponsoring regular seminars on nonviolence and continued them only infrequently until 1964.

Soon after, the Harlem Riots took place. It was the first urban race riot, and brought the topic of black-initiated violence into public debate. Such actions were no longer assumed counterproductive. This event, and eventually the rise of black power, led to the fall of nonviolence in SNCC.

Black Power was the guiding philosophy of SNCC in its later years. It began to develop and take hold sometime after 1964, and came to prominence in 1966 when Stokely Charmicael became head of the organization.

The goal of Black Power was to empower and create a strong racial identity for African-Americans. It glorified shared qualities such as dialect, physical attributes, and history. Black Power also encouraged a separation from white society, saying black people should write their own histories and form their own institutions, like credit unions and political parties. This empowered African-Americans by promoting feelings of beauty, self-worth, and showing that they were strong enough to thrive without the support of white institutions.

The Black Power movement was controversial because it was considered anti-white. However, Black Power acknowledged that some white people had helped African-Americans to secure the right to vote, organize, protest and hand out leaflets. Conversely, Black Power said was now time for black people to fight for themselves. It was important to the African-American sense of self-worth at the time to see that justice could be sought and oppression fought without the assistance of whites.

African-Americans also needed an environment in which they could freely express their frustration with the current system of oppression. According to the philosophy of Black Power, this environment did not exist in the presence of whites partly due to a long and continuing history of oppression.

League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)

When the United States of North America annexed a third of Mexico’s territory following the Mexican War, nearly 77,000 Mexicans became U.S. citizens. For generations, these citizens were to be plagued by prejudice that would result in overt acts of discrimination and segregation. This prejudice led to the curtailment of many civil rights. The sign, “No Mexicans Allowed” was found everywhere.
In Texas, prejudice and acts of discrimination had reached such extreme proportions that Mexican Americans began organizing to defend themselves. There were three main organizations: The Order of the Sons of America with councils in Somerset, Pearsall, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio; The Knights of America in San Antonio; and The League of Latin American Citizens with councils in Harlingen, Brownsville, Laredo, Penitas, La Grulla, McAllen, and Gulf.

In 1945, a California LULAC Council successfully sued to integrate the Orange County School System, which had been segregated because Mexican children were “more poorly clothed and mentally inferior to white children.” Additionally, in 1954, LULAC brought another landmark case, Hernandez vs. the State of Texas, to protest the fact that a Mexican American had never been called to jury duty in the state of Texas. The Supreme Court ruled this exclusion unconstitutional.
Since then, LULAC has fought for full access to the political process and equal educational opportunity for all Hispanics. LULAC’s continues to play an active role in these efforts. LULAC councils across the United States hold voter registration drives, citizenship awareness sessions, sponsor health fairs and tutorial programs, and raise scholarship money for the LULAC National Scholarship Fund. This fund, in conjunction with LNESC (LULAC National Educational Service Centers), has assisted almost 10 percent of the 1.1 million Hispanic students who have gone to college.
LULAC Councils have also responded to an alarming increase in xenophobia and anti-Hispanic sentiment. They have held seminars and public symposiums on language and immigration issues. In addition, LULAC officers have used television and radio to protest against the “English Only” movement, which seeks to limit the public (and in some cases, private) use of minority languages.
Below is an account of the struggles that LULAC and its members have had to endure in order to improve the status of employment, housing, health care, and education for all Hispanics in the United States of America.

  • 1940 - Played a major role in filing discrimination cases for the Federal Employment Practices Commission, the first federal civil rights agency.
  • 1945 - Successfully sued to integrate the Orange County school system, which had been segregated because Mexican children were “more poorly clothed and mentally inferior to white children”.
  • 1946 - In Santa Ana, California, filed the "Mendez vs. Westminster Lawsuit" which ended 100 years of segregation in California's public schools and becomes a key precedent for Brown vs. Board of Education.
  • 1947 - Protested the non-burial of veteran Felix Longoria of Three Rivers, Texas, and assisted in his burial at the Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
  • 1947 - LULAC Council 1 in Corpus Christi, Texas, and its Veteran's Committee, facilitated the formation of the "American G.I. Forum" organization for Mexican American veterans.
  • 1948 - LULAC attorneys filed the "Delgado vs. Bastrop I.S.D. Lawsuit" which ended the segregation of Mexican American children in Texas.
  • 1950 - LULAC and the American G.I. Forum filed fifteen school desegregation lawsuits in Texas.
  • 1954 - LULAC attorneys took the "Hernandez vs. The State of Texas Lawsuit Case" to the Supreme Court, winning the right for Mexican Americans to serve on juries.
  • 1957 - Council 60 in Houston, Texas, piloted the "Little School of the 400" project, a pre-school program dedicated to teaching 400 basic English words to Spanish speaking pre-school children.
  • 1960 - LULAC Council 60 in Houston, Texas, worked to transform the Little School of the 400 to "Project Headstart" under the Lyndon B. Johnson administration.
  • 1965 - LULAC Council 60 in Houston, Texas, piloted a job placement center, which led to the federally funded of SER - Jobs for Progress.
  • 1966 - LULAC marched with and financially supported the United Farm Workers in their struggle for minimum wages and dignity.
  • 1966 - LULAC and the American G.I. Forum joined forces to organize SER - Jobs for Progress, now the largest and the most successful work power program in the nation.
  • 1968 - LULAC created the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF). The legal arm of the Latino community.
  • 1969 - LULAC reached the 2,000 household unit mark, which provides housing to low income persons.

United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC)