HIS 221 - African-American History: African-American History Project

Recounts the murder of African American Emmett Louis Till on August 28, 1955 which led to the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Incident which led to Till's murder; Highlights of the murder trial; Chronology of Till before and after his death.

This essay presents the events surrounding the murder of Emmett Till, an African American youth who was killed in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. Various interpretations of events leading up to Till's murder are discussed, including interviews with Money's local law enforcement and Till's uncle, both of which occurred days after the murder.

Mose Wright testified against two white men accused of his nephew's murder. Emmett Till's family recalls his death in Mississippi.

Segregation may have been outlawed but that didn't stop its practice. Fourteen year-old Emmett Louis Till was brutally murdered in Mississippi for an interaction with a white woman.

In August 1955, a black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. Till's death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

Little Rock, Arkansas developed a plan to integrate students--they became known as the Little Rock Nine. Governor Orval Faubus rescinded his support of integration and mobilized the national guard to block black students from entering the school.

Nine black students are selected to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Orval Faubus calls in the militia to stop the integration. Citizens assemble outside the high school and the students are removed; President Eisenhower steps in.

Following the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, some school districts, particularly those in the Deep South, actively avoided desegregation. One of the most famous cases involved Little Rock's Central High School, where Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus joined local whites in resisting integration by dispatching the Arkansas National Guard.

Eyes on the Prize tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. The 14-part series recounts the fight to end decades of discrimination and segregation.

In 1961, student activists launched the Freedom Rides to challenge segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals. Riding from Washington, D.C. to Montgomery, Alabama, the rides met violent opposition in the Deep South, garnering extensive media attention and eventually forcing federal intervention from the Kennedy administration.

Volunteers rode buses into the deep South to test compliance with segregation laws. Eugene Conner gave the Klansmen 15 minutes to do their dirty work.

Black citizens were being intimidated, to prevent them from registering to vote. Three volunteers went missing and the FBI found their burned vehicle but no sign of them. Locals refused to cooperate with investigators.

On February 1st, 1960, four men dressed in their Sunday best sat down at a lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. but were refused service because of the color of their skin. In this inspiring documentary, the Greensboro Four themselves tell the story of the lunch counter sit-in that revitalized the civil rights movement and established a model of student activism for the coming decade.

In 1960, a group of black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, refused to leave a whites-only lunch counter that denied them service. Their demonstration began the sit-in movement, a series of peaceful protests that brought renewed national attention to the injustices of the segregated South and eventually forced the federal government to actively protect the rights of African-Americans

Black college students began a wave of peaceful protests by sitting at a restaurant counter reserved only for whites. Students were physically attacked but refused to fight back. The success of the sit-ins spawned a new group of nonviolent protesters.

The author reflects on the legacy and impact of the March on Washington, a civil rights demonstration held August 28, 1963 in Washington, D.C. He states that the event and speeches delivered empowered African Americans and helped lead to the civil-rights bill that ended discrimination in public accommodations as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Letter to Congress from Rep John Lewis.

Burns details how Martin Luther King Jr navigated the chaotic agendas of the civil rights and peace movements by moving America toward a human rights revolution that placed economic justice at the center. The aim of the human rights movement would be to achieve genuine integration-meaning shared power-and genuine equality, requiring a radical redistribution of economic and political power.

In 1963, more than 200,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

A. Philip Randolph first raised the idea of a mass march in 1941. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous speech at the march on August 23, 1963.

Chris and Maxine McNair remember the 1963 murder of their daughter Denise in Birmingham, Alabama. African Americans children in Alabama remember bombings as a way of life in the 1960s.

Courageous baby boomers marched for civil rights in Birmingham, Alabama and met with police brutality. Four African American girls were killed when the Klu klux Klan planted dynamite under their church. Desegregation did not eliminate hate.

Outrage over the killings of 4 black girls prompted President Johnson to lead the passage of the Civil Rights Act. The Civil Rights Act opened up opportunity for African Americans in business and politics.

Attorney Doug Jones led a team of prosecutors to bring justice in the case of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

A part of the series America in the 20th Century. Anyone who thinks the civil rights movement began and ended with Martin Luther King Jr. will discover a new, eye-opening view of history in this program. It reveals a long-running struggle for racial equality starting with Civil War– and Reconstruction-era events, moving through the blight of Jim Crow and the formation of the NAACP and other groups, and depicting the drama of King’s movement in varied, evolving phases.