Important Acts of the Civil Rights Movement

     The Jim Crow system of racial discrimination had been present in the South since the end of slavery, and remained intact until the early 1950s.  Racial segregation was enforced by law, which means that public facilities and government services like education were divided into separate “white” and “colored” sections.  Those that were “colored” were of inferior quality.  Disenfranchisement was present for blacks.  When the white Democrats had power, they passed lpaws that kept voting inaccessible for blacks.  Blacks were unable to vote for people who would represent their interests.  In the years of 1890 to 1908, Southern states created constitutions that kept most African Americans and many poor white Americans from having any say in government.  Exploitation was a problem due to increased economic exploitation of blacks, Latinos, and Asians, with widespread discrimination in employment.  There was plenty of violence present, with massive racial violence against blacks.  African Americans were tired of the unfair laws and discrimination.  It was time to fight back.  They formed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. 

Brown vs. Board of Education

      On May 17, 1954, the United States Supreme Court determined that school segregation was unconstitutional.  The case had been one of the most important Supreme Court decisions every made.  This case was originally handled by Charles H. Houston, but was then taken over by Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African American Supreme Court Justice.  In 1951, the class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas in the U.S. District Court in Kansas.  The plaintiffs in this case were thirteen Topeka parents representing their twenty children.  The suit intended for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation.  The named plaintiff was Oliver Brown, parent of third grader Linda Brown.  The NAACP advised each parent to attempt to enroll their child in the closest neighborhood school in 1951.  Each child was refused enrollment and redirected to the segregated schools.  The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard Brown’s case.  During the trial, the NAACP argued that segregated schools sent the message to black children that they were inferior to whites, which made them inherently unequal.  The defense of the Board of Education was that because segregation was prevalent in all areas of life, segregated schools prepared children for the segregation they would face in adulthood.  The Board also stated that segregated schools weren’t necessarily harmful to black children and sited African Americans such as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and George Washington Carver, who had to overcome more than just segregated schools to achieve greatness. 

    Brown and the NAACP appealed their case to the Supreme Court on October 1, 1951, and the Brown case was combined with other cases from other states that also were challenging school segregation.  The case was not decided until 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine from Plessy vs. Ferguson and ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.  This required desegregation of schools across America.  This case did not abolish segregation in other public areas, like restaurants and restrooms.  It also did not require desegregation of public schools to be completed within a certain time frame.  Many states, particularly in the deep south, were resistant to this change. 

      Are you aware of the story of Ruby Bridges?  Ruby was one of the first children to integrate a white elementary school.  Ruby was only in the first grade when she was chosen to integrate William Frantz Elementary School.  Her parents were divided on the subject.  Her father did not want his daughter to be the one to represent all blacks because he feared repercussions, and he was right about the repercussions.  His family dealt with many death threats and he was fired from his job.  Ruby's mother knew the long term importance of Ruby's involvement in this event.  Ruby’s parents had been told that she would not be the only black child integrating the white school, but on the first day, Ruby was escorted into school past a mob of angry white people by U.S. Marshalls.  The first day of school was a day of sitting in the office with her mother watching the clock.  Most of the parents of the white children were upset when they saw Ruby come to school, so they began withdrawing their children from school.  On the second day, Ruby met her teacher, Mrs. Henry.  Ruby was the only student in Mrs. Henry’s class, as none of the white parents wanted their child with Ruby, a black child.  Each day when entering and leaving school, Ruby was confronted with angry and screaming adults and children alike.  There was one particular woman who kept yelling that she would find a way to poison Ruby.  Ruby was seen talking when she was walking through the crowd, and when asked what she was doing, she stated that she was praying for the people in the crowd.  Ruby ate lunch all by herself in the classroom since she could not go to recess or eat with the other children.  Later on in the year, two white boys joined with Ruby at the school.  She spent her entire first year with her teacher, Mrs. Henry, whom Ruby began to love.  Mrs. Henry, a white lady, became ostracized too because she was teaching a black child.  She was not asked back at the school the following year and so she went back home to the North where she felt people were much more rational.  Ruby became upset when she got to second grade and realized that Mrs. Henry was not at the school any longer to be her teacher.  Mrs. Henry never forgot Ruby.  In fact she kept her picture on her bureau in her bedroom.  Ruby and Mrs. Henry were reunited on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  With the courage of this little girl and her family, as well as the courage of her teacher, a first step was taken in the step towards school integration. 

Desegregation of Little Rock in 1957

      In 1957, the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, called for the National Guard to deny entry to nine African American students who would be integrating Little Rock Central High School.  These students were chosen to integrate due to their excellent grades.  Only one of the students showed up on the first day since she did not get the phone call stating the danger of going to school.  She was harassed by white protesters outside of the school, and the police had to take her in a patrol car from the location in order to protect her.  When the nine students began to attend school, they needed to carpool and be escorted in jeeps.  The students were able to attend school, but daily had to pass through a tunnel of jeering whites who were spitting and yelling at them.  One of the students, Minnijean Brown, was expelled from the school for spilling a bowl of chili on the head of a white student who was harassing her.  Only one of the Little Rock Nine students, Ernest Green, was able to graduate.  After the 1957-1958 school year, the Little Rock School District decided to shut down their entire school system instead of integrating.  Many other schools and district around the South did the same thing. 

The Greensboro Sit-Ins

     On February 1, 1960, four students,  David Richmond, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, and Ezell A. Blair from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College sat down at the segregated lunch counters in Woolworth’s to protest the policy of excluding African Americans.  They sat quietly and occupied every other seat, hoping that perhaps white supporters would join them.  This was not the first time that sit-ins were used to protest segregation.  These other incidents had not received much media attention, so they did not get very far.  This time would be different.  On the first day, the students received only silence from the employees of Woolworth’s.  On the following day, two more students joined them.  The media picked up the story at this point, and more protestors began to join.  Part of the effectiveness of this nonviolent protest was due to the behavior of the sit-in participants.  They were directed to wear their Sunday best, be respectful, and sit quietly.  Many of the students sat and studied their school textbooks.  The sit-ins spread around the country.  It took five months for Woolworth’s to give in and integrate their lunch counters. 

Freedom Rides

      The Freedom Rides were meant to end segregation of buses traveling between states.  Activists who were white and black traveled together through the Deep South in order to integrate seating patterns as well as desegregate bus terminals, which included the restrooms and water fountains.  This was dangerous.  In Anniston, Alabama, one of the Freedom Rider's buses was firebombed, and the passengers had to run for their lives.  In Birmingham, Alabama, an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner “Bull” Connor gave the Ku Klux Klan fifteen minutes to attack a group of freedom riders coming in before having the police protect them.  The riders were severely beaten.  In Montgomery, Alabama, a mob charged another bus of freedom riders, and knocked John Lewis unconscious using a crate.  They also smashed photographer Don Urbrock in the face with his own camera.  Jim Zwerg, a white student who attended Fisk University, was surrounded by a dozen men and beaten in the face with a suitcase, knocking his teeth out.  The freedom riders were arrested for breaching the peace when they used “white only” facilities.  Many freedom riders were arrested, and were often jailed in tiny, filthy cells where they were sometimes beaten.  Some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in extreme heat.  The Kennedy administration ordered a new desegregation order which stated that passengers could sit wherever they wanted on the bus.  Additionally, the colored and white signs came down in the terminals, and separate toilets, waiting rooms, and fountains no longer existed.  Some of the student heroes included John Lewis, James Lawson, Diane Nash, Bob Moses, James Bevel, Charles McDew, Bernard Lafayette, Charles Jones, Lonnie King, Julian Bond, Hosea Williams, and Stokely Carmichael. 

Voter Registration Movements

      There were a number of laws and regulations in the South that made it nearly impossible for blacks to obtain the right to vote.  There were provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests.  Whites wanted to continue to keep blacks from voting so they could retain supremacy in the South.  Local black leaders like Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and Medgar Evers asked the SNCC to help register black voters.  This was resisted by violent oppression from the Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens’ Council.  Leaders knew that in Mississippi they would need to pool all of their resources in order to have any chance of success here.  Representatives of SNCC, CORE, and NAACP all formed the Council of Federated Organizations.  They began Voter Registration organizing in the spring of 1962.  Their efforts were met with beatings, arrests, shootings, and murder.  Employers also began firing blacks who tried to register, and even landlords evicted blacks from their homes if they tried to register.  The National Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting practices such as the literacy tests that blacks needed to pass in order to be registered to vote.  This act established the federal oversight of the administration of elections.  States could not implement changes affecting voting without first getting the approval of the Department of Justice.  This act has been extended, most recently by George W. Bush with a 25 year extension. 

The March on Washington

      The March on Washington was a large political rally that happened on August 28, 1963 in Washington D.C.  This is the event in which Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech, which was was in favor of advocating racial harmony.  The theme of the march was “Jobs and Freedom.”  There were an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 people present at the march.  There were over 2,000 buses, 21 trains, 10 chartered airliners, and uncounted cars that delivered people to Washington.  It is estimated that about 80% of the marchers were African American, and about 20% were White or of other ethnic groups.  The 1963 march was organized by A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young.  The march was condemned by Malcolm X, who called it a “farce on Washington.”  The march began at the Washington Monument and ended at the Lincoln Memorial.  There was a full program of music and speakers.  The march was given media coverage which gave it national exposure.  It carried the organizers’ speeches live and offered commentary. 

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