Civil rights movement

==Political responses==
=== Truman administration: 1945–1953 ===
Partly in response to the [[March on Washington Movement]] under Truman's predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the [[Fair Employment Practices Committee]] was created to address racial discrimination in employment,<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=Fair Employment Practices Committee |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |date=March 20, 2023 |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fair-Employment-Practices-Committee |language=en}}</ref> and in 1946, Truman created the [[President's Committee on Civil Rights]]. On June 29, 1947, Truman became the first president to address the demands of the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP). The speech took place at the [[Lincoln Memorial]] during the NAACP convention and was carried nationally on radio. In that speech, Truman laid out his agreement on the need to end discrimination, which would be advanced by the first comprehensive, presidentially proposed civil rights legislation. Truman on "civil rights and human freedom" declared:<ref>{{Cite news |last=Glass |first=Andrew |date=June 29, 2018 |title=Truman addresses NAACP, June 29, 1947 |language=en |work=Politico |url=https://politi.co/2Mz2C4K |access-date=July 27, 2021}}</ref>

{{blockquote|… Our immediate task is to remove the last remnants of the barriers which stand between millions of our citizens and their birthright. There is no justifiable reason for discrimination because of ancestry, or religion, or race, or color. We must not tolerate such limitations on the freedom of any of our people and on their enjoyment of basic rights which every citizen in a truly democratic society must possess.}}

In February 1948, Truman delivered a formal message to Congress requesting adoption of his 10-point program to secure civil rights, including anti-lynching, voter rights, and elimination of segregation. "No political act since the [[Compromise of 1877]]," argued biographer [[Taylor Branch]], "so profoundly influenced race relations; in a sense it was a repeal of 1877."<ref name=Mikas>{{Cite book |last1=Milkis |first1=Sidney M. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bW9KEAAAQBAJ&dq=en&pg=PA1946 |title=The American Presidency: Origins and Development, 1776–2021 |last2=Nelson |first2=Michael |date=2021 |publisher=CQ Press |isbn=978-1-0718-2463-4 |language=en |page=1946}}</ref>  Truman was opposed by the [[conservative coalition]] in congress, so instead issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981 ending discrimination in federal employment and in the armed forces.<ref name=Mikas/>

=== Eisenhower administration: 1953–1961 ===
While not a key focus of his administration, President Eisenhower made several conservative strides toward making America a racially integrated country. The year he was elected, Eisenhower desegregated Washington D.C. after hearing a story about an African American man who was unable to rent a hotel room, buy a meal, access drinking water, and attend a movie.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web|last=Nichols|first=David A.|date=June 8, 2020|title='Unless we progress, we regress': How Eisenhower Broke Ground on Desegregation|url=https://www.historynet.com/unless-we-progress-we-regress.htm|access-date=March 4, 2021|website=HistoryNet|language=en-US}}</ref> Shortly after this act, Eisenhower utilized Hollywood personalities to pressure movie theatres into desegregating as well.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Pipes|first=Kasey|date=April 4, 2016|title=Ike's Forgotten Legacy on Civil Rights: A Lesson in Leadership for Today|url=https://riponsociety.org/article/ikes-forgotten-legacy-a-lesson-in-leadership-for-today/|access-date=March 4, 2021|website=RiponSociety|language=en-US}}</ref>

Under the previous administration, President Truman signed [[Executive Order 9981|Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the military]]. However, Truman's executive order had hardly been enforced. President Eisenhower made it a point to enforce the executive order. By October 30, 1954, there were no segregated combat units in the United States.<ref name="auto"/> Not only this, but Eisenhower also desegregated the Veterans Administration and military bases in the South, including federal schools for military dependents. Expanding his work beyond the military, Eisenhower formed two non-discrimination committees, one to broker nondiscrimination agreements with government contractors, and a second to end discrimination within government departments and agencies.<ref name="auto"/>

The first major piece of civil rights legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was also passed under the Eisenhower administration. President Eisenhower proposed, championed, and signed the [[Civil Rights Act of 1957]]. The legislation established the Civil Rights Commission and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and banned intimidating, coercing, and other means of interfering with a citizen's right to vote. Eisenhower's work in desegregating the judicial system is also notable. The judges he appointed were liberal when it came to the subject of civil rights / desegregation, and he actively avoided placing segregationists in federal courts.<ref name="auto"/>

=== Kennedy administration: 1961–1963 ===
[[File:Robert Kennedy speaking before a crowd, June 14, 1963.jpg|thumb|[[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]] [[Robert F. Kennedy]] speaking before a hostile Civil Rights crowd protesting low [[Affirmative action in the United States|minority hiring]] in his [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] June 14, 1963<ref name="Risen 2014 76">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eOu1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA76 |title=The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act |last=Risen |first=Clay |date=2014 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-1-60819-824-5 |page=76 |language=en}}</ref>]]

For the first two years of the Kennedy administration, civil rights activists had mixed opinions of both the president and his younger brother, [[Robert F. Kennedy]], the [[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]]. Historian [[David Halberstam]] wrote that the race question was for a long time a minor ethnic political issue in [[Massachusetts]] where the Kennedy brothers came from, and had they been from another part of the country, "they might have been more immediately sensitive to the complexities and depth of black feelings."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Halberstam |first1=David |title=The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy |date=1968 |publisher=Random House |page=142}}</ref> A well of historical skepticism toward liberal politics had left African Americans with a sense of uneasy disdain for any white politician who claimed to share their concerns for freedom, particularly ones connected to the historically pro-segregationist Democratic Party. Still, many were encouraged by the discreet support Kennedy gave to King, and the administration's willingness, after dramatic pressure from civil disobedience, to bring forth racially egalitarian initiatives.

Many of the initiatives resulted from Robert Kennedy's passion. The younger Kennedy gained a rapid education in the realities of racism through events such as the [[Baldwin-Kennedy meeting]]. The president came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matter, resulting in the landmark [[Civil Rights Address]] of June 1963 and the introduction of the first major civil rights act of the decade.<ref>James Hilty, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Za8TAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA356 ''Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector''] (Temple University Press, 2000), p. 350-361.</ref><ref>Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002)</ref>

Robert Kennedy expressed the administration's commitment to civil rights during a May 6, 1961 [[Law Day Address|speech]] at the [[University of Georgia Law School]]:

{{blockquote|Our position is quite clear. We are upholding the law. The federal government would not be running the schools in [[Massive resistance|Prince Edward County]] any more than it is running the University of Georgia or the schools in my home state of [[Boston desegregation busing crisis#Racial Imbalance Act|Massachusetts]]. In this case, in all cases, I say to you today that if the orders of the court are circumvented, the Department of Justice will act. We will not stand by or be aloof—we will move. I happen to believe that [[Brown v. Board of Education|the 1954 decision]] was right. But my belief does not matter. It is now the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkgeorgialawschool.htm | title=Law Day Address at the University of Georgia Law School | publisher=American Rhetoric | access-date=23 August 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822211236/http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkgeorgialawschool.htm | archive-date=August 22, 2016}}</ref>}}

That same month, during the [[Freedom Rides]], Robert Kennedy became concerned with the issue when photographs of the burning bus and savage beatings in [[Anniston, Alabama|Anniston]] and Birmingham were broadcast around the world. They came at an especially embarrassing time, as President Kennedy was about to have a [[Vienna summit|summit with the Soviet premier]] in Vienna. The White House was concerned with its image among the populations of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, and Robert Kennedy responded with an address for [[Voice of America]] stating that great progress had been made on the issue of race relations. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the administration worked to resolve the crisis with a minimum of violence and prevent the Freedom Riders from generating a fresh crop of headlines that might divert attention from the President's international agenda. The [[Freedom Riders (film)|''Freedom Riders'']] documentary notes that, "The back burner issue of civil rights had collided with the urgent demands of Cold War [[realpolitik]]."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-cold-war/|title=The Cold War &#124; American Experience &#124; PBS|website=www.pbs.org}}</ref>

On May 21, when a white mob attacked and burned the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where King was holding out with protesters, Robert Kennedy telephoned King to ask him to stay in the building until the U.S. Marshals and National Guard could secure the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked Kennedy for deploying the force to break up an attack that might otherwise have ended King's life.

With a very small majority in Congress, the president's ability to press ahead with legislation relied considerably on a balancing game with the Senators and Congressmen of the South. Without the support of Vice-president Johnson, a former Senator who had years of experience in Congress and longstanding relations there, many of the Attorney-General's programs would not have progressed.

By late 1962, frustration at the slow pace of political change was balanced by the movement's strong support for legislative initiatives, including administrative representation across all U.S. Government departments and greater access to the ballot box. From squaring off against Governor [[George Wallace]], to "tearing into" Vice-president Johnson (for failing to desegregate areas of the administration), to threatening corrupt white Southern judges with disbarment, to desegregating interstate transport, Robert Kennedy came to be consumed by the civil rights movement. He continued to work on these social justice issues in his bid for the presidency in 1968.

On the night of Governor Wallace's capitulation to African-American enrollment at the [[University of Alabama]], President Kennedy gave an [[Civil Rights Address|address]] to the nation, which marked the changing tide, an address that was to become a landmark for the ensuing change in political policy as to civil rights. In 1966, Robert Kennedy visited South Africa and voiced his objections to [[apartheid]], the first time a major US politician had done so:

{{blockquote|quote=At the [[University of Natal]] in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence.|Robert Kennedy |''LOOK'' Magazine<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.rfksa.org/magazines/magazine.php?id=6|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050313181151/http://www.rfksa.org/magazines/magazine.php?id=6|title=Ripple of Hope in the Land of Apartheid: Robert Kennedy in South Africa, June 1966|archive-date=March 13, 2005}}</ref>}}

Robert Kennedy's relationship with the movement was not always positive. As attorney general, he was called to account by activists—who booed him at a June 1963 speech—for the Justice Department's own poor record of hiring blacks.<ref name="Risen 2014 76" /> He also presided over [[Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI Director]] [[J. Edgar Hoover]] and his [[COINTELPRO]] program. This program ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of Communist front groups, a category in which the paranoid Hoover included most civil rights organizations.<ref name="WRH">{{cite web |url=http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/COINTELPRO-FBI.docs.html |title=COINTELPRO Revisited – Spying & Disruption – In Black and White: The F.B.I. Papers |website=What Really Happened}}</ref><ref name="pbsco">{{cite web |title=A Huey P. Newton Story – Actions – COINTELPRO |url=https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html |website=[[PBS]] |access-date=June 23, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080420042603/http://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html |archive-date=April 20, 2008}}</ref> Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs.<ref>Weiner, Tim (2012). Enemies: A History of the FBI (1st ed.). New York: Random House. {{ISBN|978-1-4000-6748-0}}. OCLC 1001918388</ref> According to [[Tim Weiner]], "RFK knew much more about this surveillance than he ever admitted." Although Kennedy only gave approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so." Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of the black leader's life they deemed important; they then used this information to harass King.<ref>Hersh, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America''. Basic Books. {{ISBN|978-0-7867-1982-2}}. OCLC 493616276</ref> Kennedy directly ordered surveillance on [[James Baldwin]] after their antagonistic racial summit in 1963.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 4384813|title = James Baldwin and the FBI|journal = The Threepenny Review|issue = 77|page = 11|last1 = Campbell|first1 = James|year = 1999}}</ref><ref>Talia Whyte, "[http://www.baystate-banner.com/issues/2008/02/14/news/blackhistory02140890.htm Baldwin: A literary standard] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402133252/http://www.baystate-banner.com/issues/2008/02/14/news/blackhistory02140890.htm |date=April 2, 2015 }}", ''Black History'' 43 (27), February 14, 2009.</ref>

=== Johnson administration: 1963–1969 ===
{{Further|Civil Rights Act of 1964|War on Poverty|Lyndon B. Johnson}}

Lyndon Johnson made civil rights one of his highest priorities, coupling it with a "[[war on poverty]]." However, the increasing opposition to the Vietnam War, coupled with the cost of the war, undercut support for his domestic programs.<ref>[[David Zarefsky]], ''President Johnson's war on poverty: Rhetoric and history'' (2005).</ref>

Under Kennedy, major civil rights legislation had been stalled in Congress. His assassination changed everything. On one hand, President Lyndon Johnson was a much more skillful negotiator than Kennedy, but he had behind him a powerful national momentum demanding immediate action on moral and emotional grounds. Demands for immediate action originated from unexpected directions, especially white Protestant church groups. The Justice Department, led by Robert Kennedy, moved from a posture of defending Kennedy from the quagmire minefield of racial politics to acting to fulfill his legacy. The violent death and public reaction dramatically moved the conservative Republicans, led by Senator [[Everett McKinley Dirksen]], whose support was the margin of victory for the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]]. The act immediately ended de jure (legal) segregation and the era of Jim Crow.<ref>Peter J. Ling, "What a difference a death makes: JFK, LBJ, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964." ''The Sixties'' 8#2 (2015): 121–137.</ref>

With the civil rights movement at full blast, Lyndon Johnson coupled black entrepreneurship with his war on poverty, setting up special programs in the Small Business Administration, the Office of Economic Opportunity, and other agencies.<ref>Robert E. Weems Jr., ''Business in Black and White: American Presidents and Black Entrepreneurs'' (2009).</ref> This time there was money for loans designed to boost minority business ownership. Richard Nixon greatly expanded the program, setting up the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) in the expectation that black entrepreneurs would help defuse racial tensions and possibly support his reelection.<ref>{{cite book |author=Douglas Schoen |author-link=Douglas Schoen |title=The Nixon Effect: How His Presidency Has Changed American Politics |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cgRDCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT34 |year=2015 |publisher=Encounter Books |pages=34–35 |isbn=978-1-59403-800-6}}</ref>

=== Foreign reactions ===

==== China ====
In China, [[Mao Zedong]] in August 1963 expressed support for the U.S. civil rights movement, stating that the "fascist atrocities" committed against black people in the U.S. demonstrated the link between reactionary domestic U.S. policies and its policies of aggression abroad.<ref name=":Minami">{{Cite book |last=Minami |first=Kazushi |title=People's Diplomacy: How Americans and Chinese Transformed US-China Relations during the Cold War |date=2024 |publisher=[[Cornell University Press]] |isbn=9781501774157 |location=Ithaca, NY}}</ref>{{Rp|page=34}} Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Mao stated that racial discrimination in the U.S. resulted from its colonial system and that the struggle of Black people in the U.S. was an [[Anti-imperialism|anti-imperialist]] struggle.<ref name=":Minami" />{{Rp|page=34}} 

[[Maoism]] influenced some components of the Black liberation movement, including the Black Panther Party and black self-defense advocate [[Robert F. Williams]].<ref name=":Minami" />{{Rp|page=34}}