AIM / American Indian Movement

  

The button was used at the American Indian Movement pow-wow at the Minneapolis American Indian Center on December 29, 1990.

Vernon Bellecourt (WaBun-Inini), a leader in the American Indian Movement, was part of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. His name means "Man of Dawn.”

https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/the-american-indian-movement-1968-1978/sources/1330

In 1969, Activists Began a 19-month Occupation of Alcatraz Island

On Nov. 20, 1969, a fleet of wooden sailboats holding 90 Native Americans landed on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay. For the next 19 months, the group occupied the island, hoping to reclaim the rock “in the name of all American Indians.” 

A photograph taken during the AIM takeover and ultimate surrender at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, 1973.

American Indian Movement: negotiating session at Wounded Knee, South Dakota

Founded in 1968, the American Indian Movement (AIM) is an organization dedicated to the Native American civil rights movement. Its main objectives are the sovereignty of Native American lands and peoples; preservation of their culture and traditions; and enforcement of all treaties with the United States.

A lingering sign of the 1969–71 Native American Alcatraz Occupation in 2006. The "AN" is what remains of an alteration made to the sign, to make it read "United Indian Property".

The Occupation of Alcatraz was an occupation of Alcatraz Island by 89 American Indians who called themselves Indians of All Tribes.The Alcatraz Occupation lasted for nineteen months, from November 20, 1969, to June 11, 1971, and was forcibly ended by the U.S. government.

In 1973, Activists Occupy Wounded Knee

Image: “We Shall Remain,” PBS

In 1970, Activists Occupy Mount Rushmore

Occupiers on top of Mt. Rushmore. Images: Reclaiming Our Sacred Sites Flickr page

UFW -Cesar Chavez 1927- 1993- Chicano Civil Rights

  Union leader and labor organizer Cesar Chavez dedicated his life to improving treatment, pay and working conditions for farm workers.

Mendez v. Westminster: School Desegregation and Mexican-American Rights

While Brown v. Board of Education remains much more famous, Mendez v. Westminster School District (1947) was actually the first case in which segregation in education was successfully challenged in federal court. Finally giving Mendez its due, Philippa Strum provides a concise and compelling account of its legal issues and legacy, while retaining its essential human face: that of Mexican Americans unwilling to accept second-class citizenship.

https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/mendez-v-westminster

Ultimately, Mendez highlights how Mexican Americans took the lead to secure their civil rights and demonstrates how organization, courage, and persistence in the Mexican-American communities could overcome the racism of the school boards.

The Bracero Program
http://www.farmworkers.org/bracerop.html

An executive order called the Mexican Farm Labor Program established the Bracero Program in 1942. This series of diplomatic accords between Mexico and the United States permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts.

UFW co-founders Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez, 1968.

                   Student Movement Embraces ‘Aztlán’

The Aztec 'Codex Azcatitlan,' written between the mid-16th and 17th centuries, detailing the history of the Mexica from their migration from Aztlán to the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Christianization. 

Universal History Archive/Getty Images

https://ufw.org/about-us/our-vision/

http://www.ufw.org/_page.php?menu=research&inc=history/07.html

https://doloreshuerta.org/doloreshuerta/

 Dolores Huerta 

UFW Successes Through the Years

https://ufw.org/ufw-successes-years/

• The first genuine collective bargaining agreement between farm workers and growers in the history of the continental United States, beginning with the union contract signed with Schenley vineyards in 1966.
• The first union contracts requiring rest periods, toilets in the fields, clean drinking water, hand washing facilities, protective clothing against pesticide exposure, banning pesticide straying while workers are in the fields, outlawing DDT and other dangerous pesticides, lengthening pesticide re-entry periods beyond state and federal standards, and requiring the testing of farm workers on a regular basis to monitor for pesticide exposure.
• The first union contracts eliminating farm labor contractors and guaranteeing farm workers seniority rights and job security.
• Establishing the first comprehensive union health benefits for farm workers and their families through the UFW’s Robert F. Kennedy Medical Plan.
• The first and only functioning pension plan for retired farm workers, the Juan de la Cruz Pension Plan.
• The first functioning credit union for farm workers.
• The first union contracts regulating safety and sanitary conditions in farm labor camps, banning discrimination in employment and sexual harassment of women workers.
• The first union contracts providing for profit sharing and parental leave.
• Abolishing the infamous short¡©handled hoe that crippled generations of farm workers and extending to farm workers state coverage under unemployment, disability and workers’ compensation, as well as amnesty rights for immigrants and public assistance for farm workers.

https://www.history.com/news/chicano-movement

https://www.pbs.org/video/chicano-rights-movement-y13qkx/

The Chicano Civil Rights Movement

Here we explore the historical geography of many different organizations in 32 maps and charts, including United Farm Workers 1965-1975, MEChA and Chicano Student organizations 1967-2012; Spring 2006 Immigrant Rights protests; Raza Unida Party 1970-1974; Brown Berets 1967-1972; Chicano Newspapers 1966-1979. Other maps track the activism of earlier generations: LULAC 1929-1977; American GI Forum 1948-1974. This section has been researched and written by Josue Estrada and supported by the Digital History Initiative, History Department, University of Washington.

https://depts.washington.edu/moves/Chicano_intro.shtml

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200197398/

Civil Rights 1954-1968

  Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,

 

Doctors Kenneth and Mamie Clark and "The Doll Test"

  http://www.naacpldf.org/brown-at-60-the-doll-test

  http://www.nps.gov/brvb/index.htm

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/rights/landmark_brown.html 

Ruby Nell Bridges Hall (born September 8, 1954) is an American civil rights activist. She was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960.^[1][2][3] She is the subject of a 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With, by Norman Rockwell.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/07/15/president-obama-meets-civil-rights-icon-ruby-bridges

Little Rock Nine

 Collection: U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection

The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

http://www.littlerock9.com/

Emmet Till 1955

Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American teenager who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14, after reportedly flirting with a white woman.

http://www.watson.org/%7Elisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/emmett.html

Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955–1956

Civil rights leaders focused on Montgomery Alabama, highlight extreme forms of segregation there. Local black leader Rosa Parks on December 1, 1955, refused to give up her seat on a public bus to make room for a white passenger; she was arrested And received national publicity, hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement."

Seat layout on the bus where Parks sat, December 1, 1955.

 December 1, 1955—when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.

Sit-ins, 1958–1960

The protesters had been encouraged to dress professionally, to sit quietly, and to occupy every other stool so that potential white sympathizers could join in.

 

Freedom Rides, 1961

Freedom Rides were journeys by Civil Rights activists on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia, (1960) 364 U.S., which ruled that segregation was unconstitutional for passengers engaged in interstate travel. Organized by CORE, the first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.

 

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/

Voter registration organizing

Birmingham Campaign, 1963

The Letter from Birmingham Jail (also known as "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and "The Negro Is Your Brother") is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws, and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. Responding to being referred to as an "outsider", he wrote that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere“.

 

 Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy (background) leave Birmingham City Jail following their release on April 20, 1963, after eight days of imprisonment. (Associated Press)

March on Washington, 1963

 

Goals

• meaningful civil rights laws
• a massive federal works program
• full and fair employment
• decent housing
• the right to vote
• adequate integrated education.  
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  Malcolm X joins the movement, 1964–1965

• In March 1964, Malcolm X (Malik El-Shabazz), national representative of the Nation of Islam, formally broke with that organization, and made a public offer to collaborate with any civil rights organization that accepted the right to self-defense and the philosophy of Black nationalism (which Malcolm said no longer required Black separatism).

  

   
  

  

  
  

     The September 1964 issue of Ebony dramatized Malcolm X's defiance of these threats by publishing a photograph of him holding a rifle while peering out a window. ANY MEANS NECESSARY

  Malcolm X stands on guard, ready to protect his family, in this iconic photo. 

  Civil Rights Act of 1964

  On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations.  

  Memphis, King assassination and the Poor People's March 1968

  A day after delivering his stirring "I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon, which has become famous for his vision of American society, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. This is his last speech.

  
  
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  Civil Rights Act of 1968

  The House passed the legislation on April 10, and President Johnson signed it the next day. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin. It also made it a federal crime to "by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin."

  
   
• BLACK PANTHERS

  Black Panther Party, original name Black Panther Party for Self-Defense,  African American revolutionary party, founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The party’s original purpose was to patrol African American neighbourhoods to protect residents from police .

  
  Original six members of the Black Panther Party (1966)
  Top left to right: Elbert "Big Man" Howard, Huey P. Newton (Defense Minister), Sherwin Forte, Bobby Seale (Chairman)
  Bottom: Reggie Forte and Little Bobby Hutton
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• Black activists often cited the writings of China’s communist leader Mao Zedong. Also, a founding member of the Black Panther Party—Richard Aoki—was Japanese American. A military veteran who spent his early years in an internment camp, Aoki donated weapons to the Black Panthers and trained them in their use.

  http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/

  
  
  
  
  
     It was May 2, 1967, and the Black Panthers’ invasion of the California statehouse launched the modern gun-rights movement.   

   

  https://www.npr.org/2012/10/03/161408561/did-man-who-armed-black-panthers-lead-two-lives
  

  
  

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• On May 2, 1967, Black Panthers amassed at the Capitol in Sacramento brandishing guns to protest a bill before an Assembly committee restricting the carrying of arms in public. Self-defense was a key part of the Panthers' agenda. This was an early action, a year after their founding.
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