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The USA, 1954–75: Conflict at Home and Abroad

Opposition to the civil rights movement

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 3

Overview

The Ku Klux Klan, its methods and its growth in the mid-1950s, the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, the acquittal of his killers and the wider impact of the case, the Dixiecrats, the White Citizens' Councils and the legal tricks used to avoid desegregating schools.

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What were the White Citizens’ Councils?

Key term

What methods did the Klan use against Black Americans and their supporters?

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Why did Klan membership rise sharply in the mid-1950s?

Questions from this subtopic

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  1. 1

    What was the Ku Klux Klan?

    Model answer

    A white supremacist secret society that used terror to keep Black Americans in their place, its members hiding their faces under white robes and hoods.

  2. 2

    What methods did the Klan use against Black Americans and their supporters?

    Model answer

    Beatings and whippings, cross burnings outside homes, arson, bombings and lynching.

  3. 3

    Why did Klan membership rise sharply in the mid-1950s?

    Model answer

    White anger at the school desegregation ruling of 1954 and at the growth of protest drove thousands to join.

  4. 4

    Who was Emmett Till?

    Model answer

    A fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago who was kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi in 1955 while staying with relatives.

  5. 5

    Why was Emmett Till killed?

    Model answer

    He was accused of whistling at a white woman in a shop, breaking the unwritten Southern rules about how a Black person must behave towards white people.

  6. 6

    What was the outcome of the trial of Emmett Till’s killers?

    Model answer

    An all-white jury acquitted the two men after about an hour, and they later sold their confession to a magazine knowing they could not be tried again.

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