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Terry T. NAACP Media coverage Milwaukee and the Civil Rights Movement

Research:

The NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) is the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States, with a national membership of more than 500,000 people distributed among more than 2,000 local chapters. The NAACP was founded in 1909. The NAACP has worked toward racial equality in the areas of housing, employment, voting, schools, transportation, and recreation. The NAACP played a huge part in the March on Washington in 1963. The NAACP is active in influencing national civil rights doctrine through Supreme Court decisions. The NAACP is still around today and has become more significant as a local-level watchdog of civil rights.

Media Coverage:

The media was a very prominent part of the civil rights movement. Many riots were covered and people in the North could see the brutality of the police men. The men would use dogs, fire hoses, and clubs. Many were outraged and were shocked. During this time the amount of people who owned TVs jumped from around 50% to 92%! Also because there was no fancy television, people only had a few channels to watch so it was likely that all the stations at one point or another covered a lot of the civil rights movement.

Milwaukee and the Civil Rights Movement:

After WW2 there was a large scale migration of African Americans to Wisconsin. At the time, Milwaukee was one of the most segregated cities in the nation. The civil rights movement spread northward in the 1960s, where racial segregation was a matter of historical custom based on popular prejudice rather than on laws and statutes. In 1967, the NAACP Youth Council marched to Kosciuszko Park (in a predominantly white neighborhood) to protest the Common Council's refusal to pass an open housing ordinance but thousands of whites got angry at this. From this point daily demonstrations continued in 67-68. In late April 1968, the federal open housing law was passed, this prevented racial discrimination in about 80% of the nation. The Milwaukee Common Council finally approved a desegregation law.

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Videos:

[|The Media Coverage]

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