Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, a number of diverse tactics were used by the leaders and the masses

to achieve the goal of racial equality. Such tactics included those which were legal strategies as well as those which were primarily the direct action of the black populace. Both strategies exhibited their fair share of strengths and weaknesses during the movement. The biggest strength of the legal strategies was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) taking the charge on this front, mainly going through judicial and legislative avenues. The NAACP used the asset that was the U.S. Constitution and the Federal Courts to establish legal precedents which ultimately lead to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown vs. Board of Education. Despite evident progress made by the NAACP and similar organizations, it proved difficult to enforce the courts decisions in many Southern States. On the legislative front, civil rights bills were nearly impossible to pass before 1960 with the exception of the civil rights legislation passed in 1957. Intense pressure was applied by many Southern Congressmen and filibusters in the Senate killed nearly every proposed bill. The need for votes served as both a strength and a weakness for legal progress. Presidents kept black voters in mind and were careful not to ignore civil rights issues completely. However, on the state level,governors such as Orval Faubus of Arkansas promoted segregation to maintain popularity among racist white voters. When compared to direct action, legal strategies ultimately proved less effective in terms of moving toward racial equality in the years before 1960. The biggest strength of direct action was the inspiring nature of the movement that reached many blacks as well as a new generation of the media. Television brought the news of boycotts and protests to all corners of the country and inspired many blacks to join the effort. Despite many instances of success, direct action can be limited. Since blacks did not constitute a

large part of the population, direct action was not as successful in areas lacking a significant black population. The NAACP was the main force on the campaign for legal equality for blacks. They had the U.S. Constitution on their side, in particular the 14th amendment, while working through the court system establishing legal precedents to establish a legal foundation for the movement. Charles Houston and hisNAACP legal team quickly learned that the courts can be a great asset. Houston determined to use the courts first to attack segregation in the public school system which he thought to be the most symbolic of all1. The first case Houston took was Murray v. Maryland in 1935. Houston and Thurgood Marshall won the case and the University of Maryland Law School was ordered to admit Donald Murray who had been denied based on race. The NAACP legal team continued winning cases such as Gaines v. Missouri and Sweat v. Painter which both dealt with students from Missouri and Texas respectively being denied admission to the only law schools in the state based solely on race2. A few years after Houstons death, the strength of the legal precedents established along with the legal prowess of Thurgood Marshall, Houstons successor as the head of the NAACPs legal department, lead to the unanimous 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education which ended segregation in schools. With separate but equal declared unconstitutional, the civil rights movement made its first significant legal progress on the back of the NAACP legal team and the U.S. Constitution. According to former executive director of the NAACP, Roy Wilkins, the great legislative victories of the 1960s can be traced back to legal fights begun in the 1940s and

1 2

The Road to Brown, directed by WilliamElwood and Mykola Kulish (California Newsreal, 1989) DVD Eyes on the Prize

even earlier, a testament to how big of a strength the NAACP was in the fight for legal progress3. Despite the courts ruling, the NAACP saw in the decision a flaw that would be a setback for an otherwise powerful tool to move toward equality. The NAACP issued a statement after the Brown ruling saying we always realized that there are those who would defy the ruling and others who would drag their feet no matter what language the Supreme Court used.4 Although some border and Southern states such as Missouri, Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia saw immediate compliance with the law, many others looked to pursue a policy of wait and see that might better be described as look the other way5. These states, such as Arkansas and Virginia to name a few, did not comply and chose this policy of wait and see because the language used by the Supreme Court in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling did not state how and when such integration must be implemented. There was no way that the court could enforce their decision in those states which would not desegregate. It was not until the 1955 case nicknamed Brown II that the Supreme Court required good faith compliance at the earliest practicable date6. This still made it difficult to completely enforce its decision as the language was vague and many school districts moved towards integration at a snails pace. Arkansas and Virginia saw their public schools close during the late 1950sso integration would not have to proceed. Weaknesses with the interpretation of the courts language persisted beyond that.

Roy Wilkins, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), 195 Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins, Interpretation of Supreme Court Decision and The NAACP Program in Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, ed. Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis (Mason, OH: Thomson Learners), 226 5 Executive Committee of the Southern Regional Council SRC Reacts to the Brown Decision in Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, ed. Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis(Mason, OH: Thomson Learners), 216-217 6 Marshal and Wilkins, 227

According to James Foreman, one of the biggest problems in the courts decision was that blacks had to apply to desegregate each Southern school district, one by one.7 The civil rights movement did not see as many positive gains with Congress as were seen with the judicial system. Many civil rights bills, including the federal anti-lynching, bill championed by Roy Wilkins, never passed due to lack of support or filibusters by Southern Senators. In 1949, when the NAACP launched an effort to do away with the filibuster, the Senate responded with a new set of rules stipulating that only upon a vote of two-thirds of the entire body could a filibuster be stopped which kept meaningful civil rights legislation bottled up for years8. One exception came in 1957 when a civil rights bill was successfully passed by both houses of Congress. However, the final version did not contain Title III, the essential part. Title III allowed the Attorney General to bring suit on a wide variety of civil rights violations.9 With this, the Brown v. Board of Education decision would have been much easier to enforce. However, the bill would not have passed if it had included Title III due to the lack of support from Southern congressmen. Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 the Supreme Court was, according to Roy Wilkins, our only hope [for justice].10 The lack of support from Congress was very significant in impeding the civil rights movement during the early years. When civil rights emerged as a truly national issue, and the black vote became more important, politicians needed to do their best not to drive black voters away. In 1946, President Harry Truman passed executive order 9808 which established the Presidents Commission on

James Forman The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 84 Wilkins, 203 9 Wilkins, 244 10 Wilkins, 244
8

Civil Rights. By the next election year, Trumans Commission on Civil Rights did much to offset [Henry] Wallaces appeal among general Negro voters.11 Still, to take even more black votes from his opponent, Truman established his own ten-point civil rights program, which included everything from getting rid of the poll tax, setting up a permanent federal commission on civil rights, passing a federal anti-lynching law to turning the civil rights section of the Justice Department into a full division.12 Black voters showed that they can have significant sway in elections and President Truman aimed at capitalizing on this which in turn became a strength for civil rights progress. Within a few weeks of the 1948 Democratic National Convention Truman had passed two more executive orders banning segregation in the civil service and armed forces.13 Just as black votes were important to politicians during election years, so were those of white Southerners. In what eventually escalated to President Dwight Eisenhower calling in the army to enforce Brown v. Board of Education in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, then governor Orval Faubus refused to comply with the law by calling in the National Guard to keep Central High School segregated. Faubus was extremely popular among racist whites in Arkansas and used this non-compliance as a tactic to keep their votes. After the success the federal government had in enforcing integration in Central High School in 1957, Governor Faubus closed the schools the following fall to keep the white majority appeased in his state. His tactics worked as Faubus continued to be reelected as the Governor of Arkansas. A similar situation arose in Virginia,

11 12

Wilkins, 200 Wilkins, 200 13 Wilkins, 201-202

when Governor James Lindsay Almond also closed schools to maintain loyalties to the racist voters.14 The direct action strategy that was also implemented in the civil rights movement proved to be more effective in this time period than its legal counterpart. The Montgomery bus boycott, which began in December of 1955, was successful in not only ending discrimination on the citys busses but in changing the mass psychology of black people, showing them that [they] can do things as a group.15 The Montgomery bus boycott was covered by news outlets around the country and inspired other similar boycotts and protests in many cities. The media also had a profound effect on the events in Little Rock described above. The entire country witnessed the oppression of blacks in the south on their television screens. A number of reporters flocked to Arkansas, including James Foreman who was so inspired by the media coverage of the Little Rock Nine that he dropped everything to report for the Chicago Defender.16News coverage of the nine Little Rock black students reached millions and inspired hope in many like Forman. Another big asset of direct action was its proven track record that it can be extremely successful. There were models of direct action that the movement could emulate and adopt in its own fashion. Roy Wilkins, James Foreman, Martin Luther King Jr., and many other civil rights leaders have citing Gandhis nonviolent work in India as an important influence on their feelings towards the use of nonviolent direct action in the civil rights movement. It had been successful in India and by 1956 direct action had already seen a number of successes in America. In 1939, A. Philip Randolph, the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, organized a march
14 15

Eyes on the Prize Awakenings , directed by Henry Hampton (Blackside Inc., 1987) DVD Forman, 105 16 Forman, 110

on Washington because of discrimination in employment of workers in the defense industry. The march pressured President Roosevelt, who could not risk public demonstration during a time of depression and near the dawn of a war to give in to Randolphs demands. The threat of direct action had proved successful and was a tactic that had been used by blacks for nearly one hundred years in that a person in a low position of power was making high demands while using strong rhetoric and threatening the use of physical confrontation.17 Roosevelt issued executive order 8802 which essentially gave Randolph and black laborers exactly what they had wanted. As discussed above, the movement saw direct action in Montgomery work in the form of a bus boycott as well as in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Tallahassee, Florida. The [Montgomery] boycott had a particularly important effect on young blacks and helped to generate the student movement of the 1960s.18 The earliest event of the student movement was the sit-ins in 1960 Greensboro, North Carolina. Here, students from North Carolina A&T University sat in white lunch counters and refused to move when they were not served. Again, the media helped the sitins gain momentum and then Senator Lyndon B. Johnson returned the Senates focus back to civil rights19. Eventually, a small 1960s civil rights bill was passed which established a plan for overseeing voting rights challenges. According to Roy Wilkins, the exuberance and success of the sit-ins led some people to believe that direct action alone would quickly change injustices that had lasted for years, injustice that were reflected in the poor showing of Congress in civil rights.20 It is for this reason that direct action was more successful than legal strategies during the pre-1960s civil rights movement. Direct action in the form of marches, boycotts, protests,

Benjamin Quarles, A. Philip Randolp: Labor Leader At Large, in Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, ed. Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis (Mason, OH: Thomson Learners), 136 18 Forman, 85 19 Wilkins, 268 20 Wilkins, 269

17

etc. were able to advance the movement in many areas which had been stalled in Congress for years due to a disconnection between many Congressmen and the members of the movement. Despite numerous successes, there are some drawbacks of direct action. Roy Wilkins, felt that the tactics used in Montgomery would be effective only for certain kinds of local problems and could not be safely applied on a national scale.21 These tactics would only prove successful in cities like Montgomery where there are a sufficient number of blacks to apply pressure. For example, blacks in San Francisco boycotted the Yellow Cab Company for not hiring black workers. In the end the cab company did not take a big enough hit economically when it lost its black patrons for the boycott to be successful22. For this reason it is important to note that Gandhi was forging an independence movement in a country where the colonized formed a majority of the population, with only a small, though powerful, number of European colonists to be defeated. The United States presented a reversal of that situation.23 Althoughthis difference limited the role of direct action in the civil rights movement, these tactics saw enough successes applied pressure on Congress to finally pass civil rights legislation. As with any efforts to change society, all tactics will be come with strengths and weaknesses. In the case of the Civil Rights Movement, the legal strategy for advancing the movement had the Constitution and the powerful NAACP behind it the whole time. However, this strategys biggest weakness which was the lack of support from Congress outweighed the weaknesses of direct action such as the inability to be applied at the national level. For this reason, direct action was the more successful of the two strategies with strengths such as inspiring the black masses and having worked to achieve goals in the past and all over the globe.
21

22

Wilkins, 237 Wilkins, 237 23 Forman, 105

Works Cited Eyes on the Prize, Fighting Back. DVD. Directed by Henry Hampton. Blackside, Inc., 1987. Executive Committee of the Sourthern Regional Council. SRC Reacts to the Brown Decision, in Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, ed. Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis. Mason, OH: Thomson Learning, 2002 Forman, James. The Making of Black Revolutionaries. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. Marshall, Thurgood and Wilkins, Roy. Interpretation Of Supreme Court Decision And The NAACP Program, in Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, ed. Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis. Mason, OH: Thomson Learning, 2002. The Road to Brown,DVD. Directed by William Elwood and Mykola Kulish. California Newsreel, 1989 Wilkins, Roy. Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994. Quarles, Benjamin. A. Philip Randolph: Labor Leader At Large, in Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table, ed. Julian Bond and Andrew Lewis. Mason, OH: Thomson Learning, 2002.

Eric Cooper Thursday 8:30 AM