Chapter 21: Civil Rights Section 1: Taking on Segregation

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Chapter 21Civil RightsSection 1Taking on
Segregation
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• California Academic Standards 11.10.2 11.10.3
  11.10.4 11.10. 5
• 11.10 Students analyze the development of federal
  civil rights and voting rights.
• .2 Examine and analyze the key events, policies,
  and court cases in the evolution of civil rights,
  including Dred Scott v. Sandford, Plessy v.
  Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, Regents of
  the University of California v. Bakke, and
  California Proposition 209.

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• .3 Describe the collaboration on legal strategy
  between African American and white civil rights
  lawyers to end racial segregation in higher
  education.
• .4 Examine the roles of civil rights advocates
  (e.g., A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King,
  Jr., Malcom X, Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer,
  Rosa Parks), including the significance of Martin
  Luther King, Jr. 's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
  and "I Have a Dream" speech.

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• .5 Discuss the diffusion of the civil rights
  movement of African Americans from the churches
  of the rural South and the urban North, including
  the resistance to racial desegregation in Little
  Rock and Birmingham, and how the advances
  influenced the agendas, strategies, and
  effectiveness of the quests of American Indians,
  Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans for civil
  rights and equal opportunities.

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• Objectives
• Following lecture and reading of this section,
  students will be able to
• Explain how Plessy v. Ferguson legalized
  segregation
• Describe NAACPs legal challenges to the Plessy
  decision
• Describe the divided reaction to the Brown
  decision
• Trace the development of the Montgomery Bus
  Boycott

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• Explain the Philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King
  Jr., and his role with the SCLC
• Summarize the role young people played in the
  civil rights movement
• Overview
• African Americans use strong organization and
  nonviolent tactics to confront the Souths
  policies of segregation and racial inequality

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• How did Plessy v. Ferguson legalize segregation?
• In 1875, the Civil Rights Act was passed
  decreeing non-discrimination based on race in
  public places, but it was overturned in 1883
• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) legalizes segregation,
  in terms of separate but equal facilities
• Jim Crow laws laws aimed at separating the
  races were passed throughout the nation,
  especially in the south

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• Forbade marriage and restricted social and
  religious contact between the races
• Even though separate but equal was the law,
  African American facilities were far inferior
• World War II inspires African Americans to fight
  for their rights, figuring if they were good
  enough to fight the fascists they could fight for
  their own freedoms
• African Americans were only allowed to fight in
  World War II because of the shortage of soldiers

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• What were the NAACPs legal challenges to the
  Plessy decision?
• The NAACP exposes the unequal state of
  educational funding under segregation to
  challenge the Supreme Court precedent in Plessy
  v. Ferguson
• White schools received ten times the amount of
  funding
• Charles Hamilton Houston, president of NAACP,
  recruited his best law students, from Maryland
  Law School,

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• and placed them under Thurgood Marshalls
  direction
• Next 23 years Marshall and his team won 29 of 32
  cases chipping away at Plessy
• The Brown decision overturns separate but equal
  and signals the end of legal segregation
• May 17, 1954 Linda Brown, 9 year old, and her
  dad Oliver Brown, won case ending segregation as
  she was denied admission to an all white school 4
  blocks from her house and forced to go to school
  21 blocks away to an all black school.

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• Warren court declared it unconstitutional and
  schools were desegregated
• What was the reaction to the Brown decision?
• The decision affected 12 million school children
  in 21 states
• Some state and local governments balk (laugh) at
  the Brown decision, while others vow to follow
• Within 1 year 500 school districts in the nation
  desegregated

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• It was the schools in areas with majority of
  blacks that desegregation faced tough opposition
  because whites were afraid of losing control of
  the schools
• In 1955, the Supreme Court orders district courts
  to enforce the Brown decision, because it was not
  being enforced by congress or President
  Eisenhower
• 90 Southern Congressmen issued the Southern
  Manifesto, denouncing Brown and calling on
  states to resist lawfully

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• Resistance to desegregation in Little Rock, AK,
  in 1948 forces President Eisenhower to send in
  the National Guard
• The Little Rock Nine (nine black students who
  volunteered to integrate Little Rocks Central
  High School) were escorted into the school by the
  national guard under Eisenhowers order
• The school was shut down at the end of the year
  by Governor Oliver Faubus, who was in opposition
  to desegregation and would rather shut down a
  school than allow desegregation to continue

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• The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed, 1st
  since reconstruction, gave attorney general more
  power over desegregation and authority over
  voting rights of African Americans
• How did the Montgomery Bus Boycott develop?
• African Americans in Montgomery, AL, organize a
  boycott to protest discrimination on city buses
  after Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955
  for not moving to the colored section of the bus
  so a white man could sit down without having to
  sit next to any African Americans

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• News of Parkss arrest spread quickly and the
  NAACP organized the boycott of the buses with the
  Montgomery Improvement Association, a group
  composed of leaders of the African-American
  community, they chose Martin Luther King Jr. to
  lead the group
• The boycott thrusts MLK Jr. into the national
  spotlight, he is great speaker who rallies those
  that follow him
• For 381days, the boycott lasted non-violently too
• Many African Americans rode to work in carpools
  or walked
• In a lawsuit filed by the boycotters, in late
  1956, the Supreme Court outlaws segregation on
  buses

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• What was the Philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King
  Jr., and what was his role with the SCLC?
• MLK Jr. seeks to promote civil rights through
  nonviolent resistance soul force
• MLK Jr. draws his ideas from the teachings of
  Thoreau (the idea of civil disobedience the
  right to refuse to obey unjust laws), Gandhi
  (helped India throw off British rule through
  non-violent resistance), Jesus (who learned to
  love his enemies),

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• and A. Philip Randolph (learning how to organize
  the masses)
• After the bus boycott ended, King joined more
  than 100 ministers and civil rights leaders in
  1957 to found the SCLC (Southern Christian
  Leadership Conference) to carry on non-violent
  crusades against evils of second-class
  citizenship
• Young activists, impatient with the slow pace of
  change from the Brown decision, organize the
  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
  established by Ella Baker and vow to challenge
  the system

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• What role did young people play in the civil
  rights movement?
• Members of the SNCC build on methods of protest
  used earlier by the Congress of Racial Equality
  (CORE), and wanted a more confrontational
  strategy to reshape civil rights
• Sit-ins, a CORE strategy in which African
  Americans sat down at segregated lunch counters
  and refused to leave until they were served,
  attract national media

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• attention to the civil rights movement, showing
  the ugliness of racism as whites humiliated
  blacks that refused to strike back, even though
  being beaten, cursed at, and having food poured
  on them
• Close
• By the end of the 1950s, civil rights movements
  in the South had focused the nations attention.
• Yet, when African Americans pressed for equality,
  they met massive resistance by many conservative
  whites
• Page 721 Review Taking on Segregation