Civil Rights-Kennedy and Johnson-DBQ:

Modified from: www.cathedralcatholic.org/faculty.../94/.../Civil%20Rights%20DBQ.doc

Analyze the goals, strategies, and support of the movement for African American civil rights in the 1960’s.

Document A:
Source: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) statement of purpose, April 1960

We affirm the…ideal of nonviolence as the foundation of Through nonviolence, courage displaces fear; love
our purpose…and the manner of our action. Nonviolence transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hope
…from Judaic-Christian traditions seeks a social order of ends despair. Peace dominates war; faith reconciles doubt
justice permeated by love. Integration of human endeavor ….Justice for all overthrows injustice. The redemptive
represents the crucial first step towards such a society. community supersedes systems of gross social immorality.

Document B:
Source: Martin Luther King, Jr., letter from the Birmingham jail, 1963

My Dear Fellow Clergymen: beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the
Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the
I…indicate why I am here in Birmingham…I have the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-
honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Roman world, so I am compelled to carry the gospel of
Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must
southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.... constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Several months ago the affiliate…in Birmingham asked us Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all
to…engage in a non-violent…action program if…deemed communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and
necessary. We…consented, and when the hour came we not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.
lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We
of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in
because I…organizational ties here. a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live
But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea.
is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be
their villages and carried their "thus saith the Lord" far considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

Document C:
Police Response to Non-violent Civil Rights Demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963
Document D:
Source: President John F. Kennedy in a radio and television report to the American people, June 11, 1963

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as We face…a moral crisis as a country and a people. It
old as the scriptures and is as clear as the…Constitution.cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left
to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be
The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the
be afforded equal rights and…opportunities, whether we Congress, in your state and local legislative body and,
(will) treat…fellow Americans as we want to be treated… above all, in all of our daily lives. . . .

The fires of frustration…are burning in every city…where Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to
legal remedies are not at hand. Redress is sought in the act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this
streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which century to the proposition that race has no place in
create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives. American life or law.

Document E:
Source: Stokely Carmichael in "What We Want," 1966

…Our vision is not merely of a society in which all black men have enough to buy the good things of life. When we
urge that black money go into black pockets, we mean the communal pocket. We want to see money go back into the
community and used to benefit it. We want to see the…concept applied in business and banking. We want to see black
ghetto residents demand that an exploiting store keeper sell them, at minimal cost, a building or a shop that they will
own and improve…; they can back their demand with a rent strike, or a boycott, and a community so unified behind
them that no one else will move into the building or buy at the store. The society we seek to build among black people,
then, is not a capitalist one. It is a society in which the spirit of community and humanistic love prevail.

Document F:
Source: Statement by the minister of defense of the Black Panthers, May 2, 1967

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls upon the these efforts have been answered by more repression,
American people in general and the black people in deceit, and hypocrisy. As the aggression of the racist
particular to take careful note of the racist California American government escalates in Vietnam, the police
Legislature which is now considering legislation aimed at agencies of America escalate the repression of black
keeping the black people disarmed and powerless at the people throughout the ghettoes of America. Vicious police
very same time that racist police agencies throughout the dogs, cattle prods, and increased patrols have become
country are intensifying the terror, brutality, murder, and familiar sights in black communities. City Hall turns a
repression of black people. deaf ear to the pleas of black people for relief from this
increasing terror.
Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned,
demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense believes that the
structure of America to right the wrongs which have time has come for black people to arm themselves against
historically been perpetrated against black people. All of this terror before it is too late.

Document G:
Estimated Percentage of Voting-Age African-Americans Registered in 1960 and 1968

State 1960 1968 State 1960 1968

Alabama 13.7 56.7 N. Carolina 38.1 55.3
Arkansas 37.3 67.5 S. Carolina 15.6 50.8
Florida 38.9 62.1 Tennessee 58.9 72.8
Georgia 29.3 56.1 Texas 34.9 83.1
Louisiana 30.9 59.3 Virginia 22.8 58.4
Mississippi 5.2 59.4 TOTAL SOUTH 29.1 % 62.0%
Directions: Use the information above to fill in the following charts and answer the following questions.

1. Use the information from the DBQ to analyze the goals, strategies, and
supporters of the Civil Rights movement.
What were the goals of the Civil What were the strategies (plans, Who supported the Civil Rights
Rights movement? tactics) of the Civil Rights movement? movement?

2. Point-of-View Question: Pretend you are EACH of the following individuals.

How do they feel about the Civil Rights movement?
Police in Birmingham, AL President Kennedy MLK, Jr.
How does this person feel about the How does this person feel about the How does this person feel about the
Civil Rights movement? Civil Rights movement? Civil Rights movement?
Supporter Non-Supporter Supporter Non-Supporter Supporter Non-Supporter
What proof do you have? List three What proof do you have? List three What proof do you have? List three
pieces of evidence. pieces of evidence. pieces of evidence.

3. Our “Area of Interaction” focus for I.B. this quarter is “Community and
Service.” Fill in the following chart to indicate how the following groups
and/or individuals did or did not show Community and Service.
Student Nonviolent MLK Police in
Coordinating Committee Birmingham, AL
Did this group represent Community Did this person represent Community Did these individuals represent
and Service? and Service? Community and Service?
Yes No Yes No Yes No
How or how not? How or how not? How or how not?

Stokely Carmichael Black Panthers Voting Rights of African Americans

Did this person represent Community Did this group represent Community Did letting African Americans vote
and Service? and Service? represent the ideals of Community
Yes No Yes No and Service?
Yes No
How or how not? How or how not? How or how not?
4. An essential question for this unit is “What can we learn from different generations?” With that in mind, answer
the following questions:

A. What can we learn about making changes nonviolently from the Civil Rights movement?

B. What can we learn about fairness from the Civil Rights movement?

C. What is something else you can learn from the Civil Rights movement? Explain.

John F. Kennedy
On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first Responding to urgent demands, he took action in the cause
thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. His
killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound vision of America extended to the quality of the national
through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man culture and the central role of the arts in a vital society.
elected President; he was the youngest to die.
He wished America to resume its old mission as the first
Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, nation dedicated to the revolution of human rights. With
on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought
entered the Navy. In 1943, his PT boat was rammed and American idealism to the aid of developing nations. But
sunk by a Japanese destroyer. Kennedy, despite grave the hard reality of the Communist challenge remained.
injuries, led survivors through perilous waters to safety.
After his inauguration, Kennedy let some Cuban exiles,
Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman armed and trained, to invade their Cuba. The attempt to
from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He overthrow Fidel Castro failed. Soon after, the Soviet
married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In Union renewed its campaign against West Berlin. JFK
1955, while recovering from a back operation, he wrote replied by increasing the Nation's military strength,
Profiles in Courage. It won the Pulitzer Prize in history. including new efforts in outer space. Confronted by this
reaction, Moscow, after the erection of the Berlin Wall,
In 1956 Kennedy almost gained the Democratic relaxed its pressure in central Europe.
nomination for Vice President, and four years later was a
first-ballot nominee for President. Millions watched his Instead, Russians sought to install nuclear missiles in
television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard Cuba. This was discovered by air inspection in October
M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular 1962, so Kennedy forced a quarantine on all offensive
vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President. weapons bound for Cuba. The world was on the brink of
nuclear war, but Russians backed down and agreed to take
His Inaugural Address offered the memorable injunction: the missiles away. U.S. response to the crisis persuaded
"Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you Moscow of the uselessness of nuclear blackmail.
can do for your country." He set out to get America
moving again. His economic programs launched the Kennedy contended that both sides had an interest in
country on its longest sustained expansion since World stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the
War II; before his death, he laid plans for a massive arms race, which led to the test ban treaty of 1963. The
assault on persisting pockets of privation and poverty. months after the Cuban crisis showed progress toward his
goal of "a world of law and free choice, banishing the
world of war and coercion." His administration thus saw
the beginning of new hope for both the equal rights of Americans and the peace of the world.

The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey.
Copyright 2006 by the White House Historical Association.

Lyndon B. Johnson
"A Great Society" was the vision of Lyndon B. Johnson. The Great Society program became Johnson's agenda for
In his first years of office he obtained passage of one of Congress in January 1965: aid to education, attack on
the most extensive legislative programs in the Nation's disease, Medicare, urban renewal, beautification,
history. Maintaining collective security, he carried on the conservation, development of depressed regions, a fight
rapidly growing struggle to restrain Communist against poverty, control and prevention of crime and
encroachment in Viet Nam. delinquency, removal of obstacles to the right to vote.
Congress, at times augmenting or amending, rapidly
Johnson was born on August 27, 1908, in central Texas, enacted Johnson's recommendations. Millions of elderly
not far from Johnson City, which his family had helped people found succor through the 1965 Medicare
settle. He felt the pinch of rural poverty as he grew up, amendment to the Social Security Act.
working his way through Southwest Texas State Teachers
College (now known as Texas State University-San Under Johnson, the country made spectacular explorations
Marcos); he learned compassion for the poverty of others of space in a program he had championed since its start.
when he taught students of Mexican descent. When three astronauts successfully orbited the moon in
December 1968, Johnson congratulated them: "You've
In 1937 he campaigned successfully for the House of taken ... all of us, all over the world, into a new era. . . . "
Representatives on a New Deal platform, effectively aided
by his wife, Claudia Taylor, whom he married in 1934. Nevertheless, two crises had been gaining momentum
since 1965. Despite the beginning of new antipoverty and
During World War II he served in the Navy as a lieutenant anti-discrimination programs, unrest and rioting in black
commander, winning a Silver Star in the South Pacific. ghettos troubled the Nation. President Johnson steadily
After six terms in the House, Johnson was elected to the exerted his influence against segregation and on behalf of
Senate in 1948. In 1953, he became the youngest Minority law and order, but there was no early solution.
Leader in Senate history, and the following year, when the
Democrats won control, Majority Leader. With skill he The other crisis arose from Vietnam. Despite his efforts to
took passage of a number of key Eisenhower measures. end Communist aggression and achieve a settlement,
fighting continued. Controversy over the war was severe
In the 1960 campaign, Johnson, as John F. Kennedy's by the end of March 1968, when he limited the bombing
running mate, was elected Vice President. On November of North Vietnam in order to start negotiations. At the
22, 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was same time, he startled the world by withdrawing as a
sworn in as President. candidate for re-election so that he might devote his full
efforts, unimpeded by politics, to the quest for peace.
First he obtained enactment of the measures President
Kennedy had been urging at the time of his death--a new President Johnson signed Medicare law in 1965—giving
civil rights bill and a tax cut. Next he urged the Nation "to millions of elderly healthcare. Obama’s health care reform
build a great society, a place where the meaning of man's law, the Affordable Care Act, strengthens Medicare.
life matches the marvels of man's labor." In 1964, Johnson
won the Presidency with 61 percent of the vote and had When he left office, peace talks were under way; he did
the widest popular margin in American history--more than not live to see them successful, but died suddenly of a
15,000,000 votes. heart attack at his Texas ranch on January 22, 1973.

The Presidential biographies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The Presidents of the United States of America,” by Frank Freidel and Hugh Sidey. Copyright
2006 by the White House Historical Association.
Directions: Answer the questions below.

1. Fill in the chart below.

How did each President show service to their communities? List at least three items.
John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson

2. Fill in the chart below.

What life lessons can we learn from each president? Remember, our essential question is: What can we
learn from different generations?
John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson

3. Fill in the modified chart below then create a double bubble map on a separate sheet of paper

Compare and contrast the Presidencies of JFK and LBJ.

List three unique items about List three ways the presidencies of List three unique items about
JFK’s presidency LBJ and JFK were similar LBJ’s presidency