18.1: The Movement Begins

A. Origins of the Movement Challenging Segregation in Court

1. NAACPa. Goal: To fight and end

segregation through the Supreme Court; public education was the focus

b. Lead Attorney: Thurgood Marshall

c. First AA Supreme Court Justice; retired 1991; died 1993

2. Rosa Parks defended by E.D. Nixon;

boycott led by MLK

3. Plessy v. Ferguson; 1896a. Allowed for “separate but equal”

b. Jim Crow lawsi. Legally able to separate people based on race

ii. Facilities still had to be available for AA

iii. Compare/contrast conditions?

4. de facto segregation/de jure segregation

5. The African American vote?

6. The Push for Desegregation

a. CORE: Congress of Racial Equality

i. Sit-ins: protesters sat at segregated lunch counters until they were served

ii. Picket lines

b. Television caught “the ugly face of racism”

7. Brown v. B.O.E. (5/1954)

a. Four case re: segregation in education

b. Linda Brown c. Supreme Court ruled

segregation was unconstitutionali. Overturned “separate

but equal” doctrine                                    

Fallout to Brown v B.O.E. Decision; “separate is not equal”

8. Reaction to the Brown Decision

Resistance to School Integration

a. KKK reappears

b. Whites boycotted businesses that supported desegregation

c. States take time desegregating

B. The Civil Rights Movement Begins

Tonight's homework: pgs. 626-629

Rosa Parks & theMontgomery, Alabama Bus

Boycott

Taking a stand

1. The Montgomery Bus Boycott

a. Rosa Parks not willing to give up her seat for a white man

b. She’s arrested

c. Dr. Martin Luther King asked to lead the boycott

2. Walking for Justicea. Emphasis on peaceful

boycott

b. Changing the world with “soul force;” MLK’s influenced by:

a. Jesus, Thoreau, Philip Randolph, Gandhi

c. Boycott lasted > one year

d. Long term effects to bus company?

3. Grassroots campaigning to help the movement

a. Churches helped with support, meetings, and volunteers

b. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) 1957

i. Goal – nonviolent protests against second- class citizens status; voter registration

ii. Lead by MLK

C. Eisenhower Responds1. Disagreed that the

law should interfere with segregation issues

2. Racism will gradually end on it’s own

3. Understood he had to abide by the courts ruling

4. Crisis in Little Rocka. Governor Faubus refused the

“Little Rock Nine” to enter school; used segregation/white supremacy as election platform

b. Orders Ark Nat’l Guard to stop students from entering

c. Eisenhower placed Guard under federal control; students allowed in

d. Not protected within the school?

e. Televised…f. The following year, before

start of the school year, Faubus closed the three HS is Little Rock

5. New Civil Rights Legislation

Civil Rights Act of 1957 created the Civil rights division w/in the Dept of Justice; Authority to take anyone to court who interferes w/voting process

United States Commission on Civil Rights – investigate allegations of denial of voting rights