1965 - Human Rights, Social Justice

Human Rights, Social Justice

Malcolm X is shot dead at age 39 February 21 at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom as he prepares to address a Sunday afternoon audience on the need for blacks and whites to coexist peacefully (see 1952). Three alleged assassins will be convicted next year of shooting the leader of the Organization of Afro-American Unity with a sawed-off shotgun, but it will never be established whether or not they were members of the Black Muslim sect with which Malcolm X broke last year.

Selma, Ala., is the focus of civil-rights demonstrations throughout February and March. Martin Luther King Jr. and 770 others are arrested February 1 at Selma during demonstrations against state regulations relating to voter registration, black marchers leave Selma March 7 for the state capital at Montgomery after 2,000 prospective voters have been arrested in registration lines or in demonstrations, the marchers are attacked by 200 Alabama state police using tear gas, whips, and night sticks. Gov. Wallace refuses police protection for a second march. President Johnson sends in 3,000 federalized National Guardsmen and military police, the marchers leave Selma March 21 and arrive at Montgomery March 25. Four Ku Klux Klansmen overtake Detroit civil-rights leader Viola Liuzzo (née Gregg), 38, after a high-speed chase outside Montgomery March 25 and shoot her dead, wounding the black passenger who has sat beside her in the front seat and pretends to be dead. Some 25,000 attend the rally at Montgomery that day. Klan members burn a cross on the front lawn of the Liuzzo home, and the FBI spreads false stories that Mrs. Liuzzo was a drug addict and having extra-marital sex with the black man, but President Johnson announces the next day that arrests have been made and appeals to Klansmen to quit the Klan and return to a decent life before it is too late. An FBI informant has fingered Liuzzo's killers, an all-white jury refuses to convict them, but an all-white federal jury at Montgomery returns a verdict of guilty December 3 against three of the Ku Klux Klan members who murdered her, and they receive 10-year prison sentences.

Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., gave the U.S. civil rights movement effective leadership that produced results. (© Flip Schulke/Corbis.)

North Carolina judge James B. McMillan, 49, orders busing of schoolchildren to achieve racial desegregation as required by the 1954 Supreme Court decision and last year's Civil Rights Act. Judge McMillan's order for crosstown busing in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County school system starts a pattern that will be followed in much of the country, but the use of busing creates a storm of controversy (see 1971).

Gunmen at Varnado, La., ambush the car of Washington Parish sheriff Oneal Moore, 34, June 2, kill him, and maim his deputy Creed Rogers. Moore has been the parish's first black sheriff; police arrest white supremacist Ernest Ray McElveen, but charges of murder against him will be dropped and no one will be prosecuted.

Chicago police arrest 526 antisegregation demonstrators from June 11 to 15 after the rehiring of a school superintendent. The demonstrations continue nevertheless and Martin Luther King Jr. leads a march of 20,000 to City Hall July 26. J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI claims that King is a communist agent.

A new Voting Rights Act signed into law by President Johnson August 10 abolishes literacy tests and other barriers used by many jurisdictions in the South to evade the provisions of last year's Civil Rights Act, authorizing federal intervention against discrimination at the polls; Sen. Everett M. Dirksen (R. Ill.) has played a key role in gaining congressional passage of the measure, and federal examiners begin registering black voters in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi despite violent demonstrations by Ku Klux Klan members and others who mount resistance to the new civil-rights laws.

Ruby Doris Smith Robinson (her married name) dies of lymphoma at Atlanta at age 25 (see 1960). She has been a leader in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), registering voters, being arrested for trying to use white-only toilets, and participating with Freedom Riders in challenging segregation of buses in interstate travel.

The Watts section of Los Angeles has violent race riots beginning August 12 after a white police officer arrests a black motorist; upwards of 10,000 blacks burn and loot an area of 500 square blocks and destroy an estimated $40 million worth of property in 5 days of disturbances. Some 15,000 police and National Guardsmen are called in, 34 persons killed (28 of them blacks), nearly 4,000 arrested, and more than 200 business establishments totally destroyed.

Amos 'n Andy is withdrawn from syndication following protests against its stereotyped images of blacks. Started as a radio show in 1928, Amos 'n Andy has been a leading television program since 1949, with blacks playing the roles originally created by whites.