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San Jacinto College Govt 2305 – Class Notes 3: Civil Rights

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3 Civil Rights

Civil Liberties: limitations on government. Specifies what the government can not do.

Civil Rights: specifies what the government MUST do to ensure equal protection and freedom.

3.1 Dred Scott v. Sandford

Dred Scott v. Sandford was an 1857 case was based on the fact that Dred Scott and his wife Harriet Scott were

slaves, but were taken by theri to live in states and territories where slavery was illegal. The United States

Supreme Court ruled seven to two against Scott, finding that neither he, nor any person of African ancestry,

could claim citizenship in the United States, and that therefore Scott could not bring suit in federal court under

diversity of citizenship rules.

3.2 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments: 1865-1877

13th: Abolished slavery (1865)

14th: All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens. Further, no state shall make or enforce

any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state

deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny any citizen in its jurisdiction

the equal protection of the laws. (1868)

15th: The right of citizens to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States nor any state on account

of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

3.3 Civil Rights Acts from 1865 to 1875

The Civil Rights Act of 1866 extended citizenship to anyone born in the U.S., and gave African American's full

equality before the law.

The Civil Rights Act of 1872 (anti KKK act) made it a federal crime to use law or custom to deprive an individual or

rights, privileges and immunities secured by the constitution.

The origin of the group's name became the subject of speculation by the media and opponents in their early

years, with theories ranging from Mexican mythology to one popularly held idea - still circulated - that the words

"ku" and "klux" were onomatopoetic words for the sounds of loading and locking a bolt-action rifle. In truth, the

name was formed by combining the Greek word Kyklos with clan. Indeed, the group was known for a very short

time as the "Kuklux Clan."

Kyklos is a term used by some classical Greek authors to describe what they saw as the political cycle of

governments in a society. It was roughly based on the history of Greek city-states in the same period. The

concept of "The Kyklos" is first elaborated in Plato's Republic. In the most fully developed version of the cycle, it

supposedly rotates through the three basic forms of government: democracy, aristocracy and monarchy and the

three degenerate forms of each of these governments anarchy, oligarchy, and tyranny. Originally society is in

anarchy but the strongest figure emerges and sets up a monarchy. The monarch's descendants, who because of

their family's power lack virtue, become despots and the monarchy degenerates into a tyranny. Because of the

excesses of the ruler the tyranny is overthrown by the leading citizens of the state who set up an aristocracy.

They too quickly forget about virtue and the state becomes an oligarchy. These oligarchs are overthrown by the


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people who set up a democracy. Democracy soon becomes corrupt and degenerates into mob rule, beginning

the cycle anew.

The Civil Rights Act of 1875 delcared that everyone is entitled to full and equal enjoyment of public

accomodations.

3.4 Civil Rights Cases of 1883

S.Ct. decided that 14th Amendment only applied to official actions taken by states, no discriminatory acts of

private citizens.

The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), were a group of five similar cases consolidated into one issue for the

United States Supreme Court to review. The Court held that Congress lacked the constitutional authority

under the enforcement provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to outlaw racial discrimination by private

individuals and organizations, rather than state and local governments.

More particularly, the Court held that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which provided that "all persons within the

jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations,

advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places

of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike

to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude" was unconstitutional.

3.5 Plessy v. Ferguson

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy boarded a car of the East Louisiana Railroad that was designated for use by white

patrons only. Although Plessy was born a free person and was one-eighth black and seven-eighths white, under a

Louisiana law enacted in 1890, he was classified as Black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car. When, in

an act of planned disobedience, Plessy refused to leave the white car and move to the colored car, he was

arrested and jailed.

This was an act of civil disobedience carried out by the Comité des Citoyens (Committee of Citizens) made up of

the educated Free People of Color in New Orleans. Committee members were Arthur Esteves, C.C. Antoine,

Firmin Chrisophe, C.G. Johnston, Paul Bonseigneur, Laurent Auguste, Rudolph B. Baquie, Rudolphe L. Desdunes,

Louis A. Martinet, Numa E. Mansion, L.J. Joubert, Frank Hall, Noel Bachus, George Geddes and A.E. P. Albert

In his case, Homer Adolph Plessy v. The State of Louisiana, Plessy argued that the East Louisiana Railroad had

denied him his rights under the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

However, the judge presiding over his case, John Howard Ferguson, ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate

railroad companies as long as they operated within state boundaries. Plessy sought a writ of prohibition.

The Committee of Citizens took Plessy's appeal to the Supreme Court of Louisiana where he again found an

unreceptive ear, as the state Supreme Court upheld Judge Ferguson's ruling. Undaunted, the Committee

appealed to the United States Supreme Court in 1896. Two legal briefs were submitted on Plessy's behalf. One

was signed by Albion W. Tourgée and James C. Walker and the other by Samuel F. Phillips and his legal partner F.

D. McKenney. Oral arguments were held before the Supreme Court on April 13, 1896. Tourgée and Phillips

appeared in the courtroom to speak on behalf of Plessy. It would become one of the most famous decisions in

American history because, for the first time, it established that racial segregation was protected by federal law.


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In a 7 to 1 decision S.Ct. rejected Plessy's arguments based on the Fourteenth Amendment, seeing no way in

which the Louisiana statute violated it. In addition, the majority of the Court rejected the view that the Louisiana

law implied any inferiority of blacks, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Instead, it contended that the

law separated the two races as a matter of public policy.

When summarizing, Justice Brown declared, "We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to

consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of

inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race

chooses to put that construction upon it."

3.6 1939

Easter Sunday - Marian Anderson performs on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. at the instigation of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall and the District of Columbia Board of Education declined a request to use the auditorium of a white public high school.

Billie Holiday first performs Strange Fruit in New York City. The song, a protest against lynching written by Abel Meeropol under the pen name Lewis Allan, became a signature song for Holiday.

3.7 1940s to 1970

Second Great Migration - In multiple acts of resistance, more than 5 million African Americans left the violence and segregation of the South for jobs, education, and the chance to vote in northern, Midwestern and California cities.

3.8 Brown v. Board of Education

1954 May 17

The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the United States

Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students,

denying black children equal educational opportunities unconstitutional. The decision overturned earlier rulings

going back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9–0)

decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation

was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States

Constitution. This victory paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement.

In 1951, a class action suit was filed against the Board of Education of the City of Topeka, Kansas in the United

States District Court for the District of Kansas. The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their

twenty children.

The suit called for the school district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. Separate elementary schools were

operated by the Topeka Board of Education under an 1879 Kansas law, which permitted (but did not require)

districts to maintain separate elementary school facilities for black and white students in twelve communities


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with populations over 15,000. The plaintiffs had been recruited by the leadership of the Topeka NAACP. Notable

among the Topeka NAACP leaders were the chairman McKinley Burnett; Charles Scott, one of three serving as

legal counsel for the chapter; and Lucinda Todd.

The named plaintiff, Oliver L. Brown, was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad, an assistant

pastor at his local church, and an African American He was convinced to join the lawsuit by Scott, a childhood

friend. Brown's daughter Linda, a third grader, had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe

Elementary, her segregated black school one mile (1.6 km) away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was

seven blocks from her house.

As directed by the NAACP leadership, the parents each attempted to enroll their children in the closest

neighborhood school in the fall of 1951. They were each refused enrollment and directed to the segregated

schools. Linda Brown Thompson later recalled the experience in a 2004 PBS documentary:

. . . well. like I say, we lived in an integrated neighborhood and I had all of these playmates of

different nationalities. And so when I found out that day that I might be able to go to their

school, I was just thrilled, you know. And I remember walking over to Sumner school with my dad

that day and going up the steps of the school and the school looked so big to a smaller child. And

I remember going inside and my dad spoke with someone and then he went into the inner office

with the principal and they left me out . . . to sit outside with the secretary. And while he was in

the inner office, I could hear voices and hear his voice raised, you know, as the conversation

went on. And then he immediately came out of the office, took me by the hand and we walked

home from the school. I just couldn't understand what was happening because I was so sure that

I was going to go to school with Mona and Guinevere, Wanda, and all of my playmates.

The Kansas case, "Oliver Brown et al. v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas," was named after Oliver

Brown as a legal strategy to have a man at the head of the roster. Also, it was felt by lawyers with the National

Chapter of the NAACP, that having Mr. Brown at the head of the roster would be better received by the U.S.

Supreme Court Justices because Mr. Brown had an intact, complete family, as opposed to someone who was a

single parent head of household. The thirteen plaintiffs were: Oliver Brown, Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie

Emmanuel, Marguerite Emerson, Shirley Fleming, Zelma Henderson, Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma

Lewis, Iona Richardson, and Lucinda Todd. The last surviving plaintiff, Zelma Henderson, died in Topeka, on May

20, 2008, at the age of 88.

In 1955, the Supreme Court considered arguments by the schools requesting relief concerning the task of

desegregation. In their decision which became known as "Brown II" the court delegated the task of carrying out

school desegregation to district courts with orders that desegregation occur "with all deliberate speed," a phrase

traceable to Francis Thompson's poem, The Hound of Heaven.

Supporters of the earlier decision were displeased with this decision. The language “all deliberate speed” was

seen by critics as too ambiguous to ensure reasonable haste for compliance with the court's instruction. Many

Southern states and school districts interpreted "Brown II" as legal justification for resisting, delaying, and

avoiding significant integration for years—and in some cases for a decade or more—using such tactics as closing

down school systems, using state money to finance segregated "private" schools, and "token" integration where

a few carefully selected black children were admitted to former white-only schools but the vast majority

remained in underfunded, unequal black schools.


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For example, based on "Brown II," the U.S. District Court ruled that Prince Edward County, Virginia did not have

to desegregate immediately. When another court case in 1959 ruled that the county's schools finally had to

desegregate, the county board of supervisors stopped appropriating money for public schools which remained

closed for five years, from 1959 to 1964. White students in the county were given assistance to attend white-only

"private academies" that were taught by teachers formerly employed by the public school system, while black

students had no education at all unless they moved out of the county.

De Jure segregaton: the result of law or administrative decisions

De Facto segregation: segregation in fact, even if not by law.

3.9 De-segregation of Little Rock High School

Spring, 1957. There were 517 black students who lived in the Central High district and were eligible to attend Central in the fall. Eighty expressed an interest in doing so. Following interviews with the Superintendent and staff, 17 are selected for the first year of integration at Central. Eight of those later decide to remain at all-black Horace Mann High School.

Summer, 1957 With desegregation scheduled for September, opponents organize the Capital Citizens Council and the Mother's League of Central High School.

August 27, 1957 A member of the Mother's League files a motion seeking a temporary injunction against school integration. Pulaski County Chancellor Murray Reed grants the injunction "on the grounds that integration could lead to violence."

August 30, 1957 Federal District Judge Ronald Davies nullifies the injunction.

September 2, 1957 Governor Orval Faubus calls out the Arkansas National Guard to surround Little Rock Central High School to preserve the peace and avert violence that may be caused by extremists who came to Little Rock "in caravans."

September 3, 1957 Judge Davies orders desegregation to start the next day.

September 4, 1957 The nine black students attempt to enter Central High but are turned away by the National Guard.

September 9, 1957 The Council of Church Women issues a statement opposing segregation and deploring the Governor's calling out the guard. It calls for a citywide prayer service for September 12.

September 20, 1957 Judge Davies rules that Faubus had used the troops to prevent integration, not to preserve law and order as he claimed. The Governor removes the Guardsmen and the Little Rock Police Department takes over.

September 23, 1957 As a crowd of 1,000 mills around in front of the school, the nine black students go inside through a side door. A white student takes them to the principal's office where they are to receive their class assignments. When the mob learns the students are inside, it becomes unruly and the police fear they will be unable to maintain control. The black students are taken out of the school through a side door.

September 24, 1957 Little Rock Mayor Woodrow Mann sends President Eisenhower a telegram asking for federal troops to maintain order and complete the integration process. The President announces he is sending 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. He federalizes the 10,000-man Arkansas National Guard.

September 25, 1957 Under escort by the Army troops, the nine black students are escorted back into Central High.

October 3, 1957 Georgia Dortch and Jane Emery, editors of Central High's student newspaper The Tiger, editorialize: "Looking back on this year will probably be with regret that integration could not have been


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accomplished peacefully, without incident, without publicity." The editors encourage "each individual to maintain a sensible, peaceful neutrality; to accept the situation without demonstration, no matter what personal views are entertained; and to make these, your years in Little Rock Central High School, the happiest and most fruitful of your academic education."

October 17, 1957 A Mother's League petition to remove the federal troops who are there in violation of state and federal constitutions is dismissed by Judge Davies.

December, 1957 Taunted by white male students, Minnijean Brown, one of the black students, dumps a bowl of chili on her antagonists in the cafeteria. She is suspended for six days.

February 6, 1958 Following additional altercations with white students, Minnijean Brown is suspended by the Board of Education for the remainder of the school year. She transferred to New Lincoln High School in New York City.

February 20, 1958 The Little Rock School Board files a request for permission to delay integration until the concept of "all deliberate speed" is defined and until effective legal means exists for integrating the schools without impairing the quality of the educational programs.

May 1, 1958 Central Principal Jess W. Matthews writes to the Seniors of 1958 in the school yearbook, "The graduating Class of 1958 will always stand out in my memory because...the class as a whole reacted so admirably to the shock of having the eyes of the world focused on the school...and the class united in a very cooperative way to leave a fine record of achievement in Central in a year that will no doubt be mentioned in history books for a long time to come."

May 27, 1958 Ernest Green becomes the first black student to graduate from Central High as he joins 600 senior classmates in commencement ceremonies at Quigley Stadium. Federal troops and city police are on hand but the event goes perfectly.

June 21, 1957 Federal District Judge Harry Lemley grants the delay of integration until January, 1961, stating that while black students have a constitutional right to attend white schools, the "time has not come for them to enjoy that right." The NAACP appeals.

August 18, 1958 The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis reverses the Lemley delay order.

August 21, 1958 The School Board requests the Appeals Court to stay the order overturning Judge Lemley's decision for 30 days to allow the board time to appeal to the Supreme Court.

August 25, 1958 The U.S. Supreme Court announces a special session to discuss the Little Rock school desegregation issue.

August, 1958 Governor Faubus calls a special session of the state legislature to pass a law allowing him to close public schools to avoid integration and to lease the closed schools to private school corporations.

September 12, 1958 The Supreme Court rules that Little Rock must continue with its integration plan. The School Board announces the opening of the city's high schools on September 15. Governor Faubus orders Little Rock's three high schools closed.

September 16, 1958 The Women's Emergency Committee to Open Our Schools is formed and asks for a special election as a way to keep the schools open.

September 27, 1958 Voters overwhelmingly oppose integration by a vote of 7,561 for and 129,470 against.

September, 1958 Public high schools in Little Rock close for the year, sending the city's 3,698 high school students to seek alternatives. More than 750 whites enroll in newly established private T.J. Raney High School. Others leave town or the state to live with friends or relatives to continue their education.

November 12, 1958 Five of the six members of the Little Rock School Board resign in frustration, having been ordered by a federal appeals court to proceed with integration of the high schools, even though it had no high schools to integrate.


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December 6, 1958 A new school board was elected with its membership evenly divided between those favoring compliance and those favoring resistance to the court's orders.

March, 1959 Little Rock Chamber of Commerce votes 819 to 245 in favor of reopening the schools on a controlled minimum plan of integration acceptable to the federal courts.

May 5, 1959 Segregationist members of the School Board attempt to fire 44 teachers and administrators suspected of integrationist sympathies. The three moderates on the board walked out, refusing to participate.

May 8, 1959 Stop This Outrageous Purge, or STOP, and the Women's Emergency Committee are formed to recall the segregationist members of the board. On the other side, segregationists form Committee to Retain Our Segregated Schools (CROSS).

May 25, 1959 STOP wins the recall election by a narrow margin and the three segregationists are replaced by moderates on the School Board.

June 18, 1959 Federal court declared the state's school-closing law unconstitutional. The new school board announced it would reopen the high schools in the fall.

August 12, 1959 School board opens public high schools a month early. Three black girls quietly attend the new Hall High School in the upper income all-white area of west Little Rock with no fanfare. Governor Faubus addresses a segregationist rally at the state Capitol and guardedly advised them against any "rambunctious protest." Carrying American flags, about 250 people then marched to Central High to protest. This time Little Rock police take the offensive, quickly arresting 21 and calling in fire hoses to be turned on the remaining crowd, which dispersed. Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls, two of the original Little Rock Nine, return to Central for their senior year.

Fall, 1972 All grades in Little Rock public schools are finally integrated.

September 28, 1977 At the 20th anniversary of the desegregation crisis, Ralph G. Brodie, the '57-58 student body president, spoke a special occasion at Central where he paid tribute to the "moderate, quiet voices" who urged compliance with the law and an end to the crisis that eventually closed the four high schools at Little Rock for a year. He said only a small group of Little Rock residents were responsible for the city's bigoted, violent and prejudiced image, adding, "But for most of us, that image remains entirely undeserved." He addressed three of the Little Rock Nine who were present: "You've done much to assure the rights of others. Yours were acts of courage, and I salute you."

October 24, 1987 Thirty years after first entering Central High, the Little Rock Nine returned as a group for the first time. They were met by Lottie Shackelford, Little Rock's second black mayor. Central High cheerleaders and other students-black and white-broke into applause. Melba Pattillo Beals said, "What we feel this morning is joyous that we made it, and sad that we had to make it." Benjamin L. Hooks, NAACP executive director, said, "We don't come to open old wounds, but rather to celebrate and commemorate the great moment in history that changed the course of this nation and changed it for the better."

3.10 Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine were a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High

School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the

racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of

President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights

Movement.

Supreme Court decision


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The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. The

decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and it called for the

desegregation of all schools throughout the nation.

After the decision the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to

register black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, the capital city

of Arkansas, the Little Rock School Board agreed to comply with the high court's ruling. Virgil Blossom, the

Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955, which

the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the 1958 school year, which would

begin in September 1957. By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to attend the previously all-

white Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance. The nicknamed "Little

Rock Nine" consisted of Ernest Green (b. 1941), Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941), Jefferson Thomas (b. 1942), Terrence

Roberts (b. 1941), Carlotta Walls LaNier (b. 1942), Minnijean Brown (b. 1941), Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942),

Thelma Mothershed (b. 1940), and Melba Beals (b. 1941). Ernest Green was the first African American to

graduate from Central High School.

National Guard blockade

Several segregationist councils threatened to hold protests at Central High and physically block the black

students from entering the school. Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to support the

segregationists on September 4, 1957. The sight of a line of soldiers blocking nine black students from attending

high school made national headlines and polarized the city. Regarding the accompanying crowd, one of the nine

black students, Elizabeth Eckford, recalled "they moved closer and closer". "Somebody started yelling, 'Lynch her!

Lynch her!' I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd — someone who maybe could help. I looked

into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me." On

September 9, "The Council of Church Women" issued a statement condemning the governor's deployment of

soldiers to the high school and called for a citywide prayer service on September 12. Even President Dwight

Eisenhower attempted to de-escalate the situation and summoned Governor Faubus to meet him. The President

warned the governor not to interfere with the Supreme Court's ruling.

Armed escort

The next day, Woodrow Mann, the Mayor of Little Rock, asked President Eisenhower to send federal troops to

enforce integration and protect the nine students. On September 24, the President ordered the 101st Airborne

Division of the United States Army to Little Rock and federalized the entire 10,000 member Arkansas National

Guard, taking it out of the hands of Governor Faubus. The 101st took positions immediately, and the nine

students successfully entered the school on the next day, Wednesday, September 25, 1957.

A tense year

By the end of September 1957, the nine were admitted to Little Rock Central High under the protection of the

U.S. Army (and later the Arkansas National Guard), but they were still subjected to a year of physical and verbal

abuse (spitting on them, calling them names) by many of the white students. Melba Pattillo had acid thrown into

her eyes. Another one of the students, Minnijean Brown, was verbally confronted and abused. She said "I was

one of the kids 'approved' by the school officials. We were told we would have to take a lot and were warned not

to fight back if anything happened. One girl ran up to me and said, 'I'm so glad you’re here. Won’t you go to lunch

with me today?' I never saw her again." Minnijean Brown was also taunted by members of a group of white, male


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students in December 1957 in the school cafeteria during lunch. She dropped her lunch – a bowl of chili – onto

the boys and was suspended for six days. Two months later, after more confrontation, Brown was suspended for

the rest of the school year. She transferred to New Lincoln High School in New York City. As depicted in the 1981

made-for-TV docudrama Crisis at Central High, white students were only punished when their offense was "both

egregious and witnessed by an adult".

Remembering the Little Rock Nine

Ernest Green

In 1958, he became the first black student to graduate from Central High School. He graduated from Michigan State University and served as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs under President Jimmy Carter. He became a managing partner and vice president of Lehman Brothers in Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Eckford

The only one of the nine still living in Little Rock, Elizabeth made a career of the U.S. Army that included work as a journalist. In 1974, she returned to the home in which she grew up and is now a part-time social worker and mother of two sons.

Jefferson Thomas

He graduated from Central in 1960, following a year in which Little Rock's public high schools were ordered closed by the legislature to prevent desegregation. Today, he is an accountant with the U.S. Department of Defense and lives in Anaheim, Calif.

Dr. Terrence Roberts

Following the historic year at Central, his family moved to Los Angeles where he completed high school. He earned a doctorate degree and teaches at the University of California at Los Angeles and Antioc College. He also is a clinical psychologist.

Carlotta Walls Lanier

One of only three of the nine who eventually graduated from Central, she and Jefferson Thomas returned for their senior year in 1959. She graduated from Michigan State University and presently lives in Englewood, Colorado, where she is in real estate.

Minnijean Brown Trickey

She was expelled from Central High in February, 1958, after several incidents, including her dumping a bowl of chili on one of her antagonists in the school cafeteria. She moved with her husband to Canada during the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and today is a writer and social worker in Ontario. Winterstar Productions is presently filming a documentary on her life.

Gloria Ray Karlmark

She graduated from Illinois Technical College and received a post-graduate degree in Stockholm, Sweden. She was a prolific computer science writer and at one time successfully published magazines in 39 countries. Now retired, she divides her time between homes in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Stockholm, where her husband's family lives.

Thelma Mothershed-Wair

She graduated from college, then made a career of teaching. She lives in Belleville, Illinois, where she is a volunteer in a program for abused women.

Melba Pattillo Beals

She is an author and former journalist for People magazine and NBC and lives in San Francisco.


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3.11 Civil Rights Timeline

1955

August. Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.

Dec. 1 (Montgomery, Ala.) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott.


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3.11.1 Article: The Killing of Emmett Till

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfeature/sf_look_confession.html

The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi By William Bradford Huie From the January 24, 1956 edition of Look Magazine

Editors Note: In the long history of man's inhumanity to man, racial conflict has produced some of the most horrible

examples of brutality. The recent slaying of Emmett Till in Mississippi is a case in point. The editors of Look are

convinced that they are presenting here, for the first time, the real story of that killing -- the story no jury heard and no

newspaper reader saw.

Disclosed here is the true account of the slaying in Mississippi of a Negro youth named Emmett Till.

Last September in Sumner, Miss., a petit jury found the youth's admitted abductors not guilty of murder. In November,

in Greenwood, a grand jury declined to indict them for kidnapping.

Of the murder trial, the Memphis Commercial Appeal said: "Evidence necessary for convicting on a murder charge

was lacking." But with truth absent, hypocrisy and myth have flourished. Now, hypocrisy can be exposed; myth

dispelled. Here are the facts.

Carolyn Holloway Bryant is 21, five feet tall, weighs 103 pounds. An Irish girl, with black hair and black eyes, she is a

small farmer's daughter who, at 17, quit high school at Indianola, Miss., to marry a soldier, Roy Bryant, then 20, now

24. The couple have two boys, three and two; and they operate a store at a dusty crossroads called Money: post office,

filling station and three stores clustered around a school and a gin, and set in the vast, lonely cotton patch that is the

Mississippi Delta.

Carolyn and Roy Bryant are poor: no car, no TV. They live in the back of the store which Roy's brothers helped set up

when he got out of the 82nd Airborne in 1953. They sell "snuff-and-fatback" to Negro field hands on credit: and they

earn little because, for one reason, the government has been giving the Negroes food they formerly bought.

Carolyn and Roy Bryant's social life is visits to their families, to the Baptist church, and, whenever they can borrow a

car, to a drive-in, with the kids sleeping in the back seat. They call Shane the best picture they ever saw.

For extra money, Carolyn tends store when Roy works outside -- like truck driving for a brother. And he has many

brothers. His mother had two husbands, 11 children. The first five -- all boys -- were "Milam children"; the next six --

three boys, three girls -- were "Bryant children."

This is a lusty and devoted clan. They work, fight, vote and play as a family. The "half" in their fraternity is forgotten.

For years, they have operated a chain of cottonfield stores, as well as trucks and mechanical cotton pickers. In relation

to the Negroes, they are somewhat like white traders in portions of Africa today; and they are determined to resist the

revolt of colored men against white rule.

On Wednesday evening, August 24, 1955, Roy was in Texas, on a brother's truck. He had carted shrimp from New

Orleans to San Antonio, proceeded to Brownsville. Carolyn was alone in the store. But back in the living quarters was

her sister-in-law Juanita Milam, 27, with her two small sons and Carolyn's two. The store was kept open till 9 on week

nights, 11 on Saturday.


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When her husband was away, Carolyn Bryant never slept in the store, never stayed there alone after dark. Moreover, in

the Delta, no white woman ever travels country roads after dark unattended by a man.

This meant that during Roy's absences -- particularly since he had no car -- there was family inconvenience. Each

afternoon, a sister-in-law arrived to stay with Carolyn until closing time. Then, the two women, with their children,

waited for a brother-in-law to convoy them to his home. Next morning, the sister-in-law drove Carolyn back.

Juanita Milam had driven from her home in Glendora. She had parked in front of the store to the left; and under the

front seat of this car was Roy Bryant's pistol, a .38 Colt automatic. Carolyn knew it was there. After 9, Juanita's

husband, J. W. Milam, would arrive in his pickup to shepherd them to his home for the night.

About 7:30 pm, eight young Negroes -- seven boys and a girl -- in a '46 Ford had stopped outside. They included sons,

grandsons and a nephew of Moses (Preacher) Wright, 64, a 'cropper. They were between 13 and 19 years old. Four

were natives of the Delta and others, including the nephew, Emmett (Bobo) Till, were visiting from the Chicago area.

Bobo Till was 14 years old: born on July 25, 1941. He was stocky, muscular, weighing about 160, five feet four or

five. Preacher later testified: "He looked like a man."

Bobo's party joined a dozen other young Negroes, including two other girls, in front of the store. Bryant had built

checkerboards there. Some were playing checkers, others were wrestling and "kiddin' about girls."

Bobo bragged about his white girl. He showed the boys a picture of a white girl in his wallet; and to their jeers of

disbelief, he boasted of success with her.

"You talkin' mighty big, Bo," one youth said. "There's a pretty little white woman in the store. Since you know how to

handle white girls, let's see you go in and get a date with her?"

"You ain't chicken, are yuh, Bo?" another youth taunted him.

Bobo had to fire or fall back. He entered the store, alone, stopped at the candy case. Carolyn was behind the counter;

Bobo in front. He asked for two cents' worth of bubble gum. She handed it to him. He squeezed her hand and said:

"How about a date, baby?"

She jerked away and started for Juanita Milam. At the break between counters, Bobo jumped in front of her, perhaps

caught her at the waist, and said: "You needn't be afraid o' me, Baby. I been with white girls before."

At this point, a cousin ran in, grabbed Bobo and began pulling him out of the store. Carolyn now ran, not for Juanita,

but out the front, and got the pistol from the Milam car.

Outside, with Bobo being ushered off by his cousins, and with Carolyn getting the gun, Bobo executed the "wolf

whistle" which gave the case its name: THE WOLF-WHISTLE MURDER: A NEGRO "CHILD" OR "BOY"

WHISTLED AT HER AND THEY KILLED HIM.

That was the sum of the facts on which most newspaper readers based an opinion.

The Negroes drove away; and Carolyn, shaken, told Juanita. The two women determined to keep the incident from

their "Men-folks." They didn't tell J. W. Milam when he came to escort them home.

By Thursday afternoon, Carolyn Bryant could see the story was getting around. She spent Thursday night at the

Milams, where at 4 a.m. (Friday) Roy got back from Texas. Since he had slept little for five nights, he went to bed at

the Milams' while Carolyn returned to the store.


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During Friday afternoon, Roy reached the store, and shortly thereafter a Negro told him what "the talk" was, and told

him that the "Chicago boy" was "visitin' Preacher." Carolyn then told Roy what had happened.

Once Roy Bryant knew, in his environment, in the opinion of most white people around him, for him to have done

nothing would have marked him for a coward and a fool.

On Friday night, he couldn't do anything. He and Carolyn were alone, and he had no car. Saturday was collection day,

their busy day in the store. About 10:30 Saturday night, J. W. Milam drove by. Roy took him aside.

"I want you to come over early in the morning," he said. "I need a little transportation."

J.W. protested: "Sunday's the only morning I can sleep. Can't we make it around noon?"

Roy then told him.

"I'll be there," he said. "Early."

J. W. drove to another brother's store at Minter City, where he was working. He closed that store about 12:30 a.m.,

drove home to Glendora. Juanita was away, visiting her folks at Greenville. J. W. had been thinking. He decided not to

go to bed. He pumped the pickup -- a half-ton '55 Chevrolet -- full of gas and headed for Money.

J. W. "Big Milam" is 36: six feet two, 235 pounds; an extrovert. Short boots accentuate his height; khaki trousers; red

sports shirt; sun helmet. Dark-visaged; his lower lip curls when he chuckles; and though bald, his remaining hair is jet-

black.

He is slavery's plantation overseer. Today, he rents Negro-driven mechanical cotton pickers to plantation owners.

Those who know him say that he can handle Negroes better than anybody in the country.

Big Milam soldiered in the Patton manner. With a ninth-grade education, he was commissioned in battle by the 75th

Division. He was an expert platoon leader, expert street fighter, expert in night patrol, expert with the "grease gun,"

with every device for close range killing. A German bullet tore clear through his chest; his body bears "multiple

shrapnel wounds." Of his medals, he cherishes one: combat infantryman's badge.

Big Milam, like many soldiers, brought home his favorite gun: the .45 Colt automatic pistol.

"Best weapon the Army's got," he says. "Either for shootin' or sluggin'."

Two hours after Big Milam got the word -- the instant minute he could close the store -- he was looking for the

Chicago Negro.

Big Milam reached Money a few minutes shy of 2 a.m., Sunday, August 28. The Bryants were asleep; the store was

dark but for the all-night light. He rapped at the back door, and when Roy came, he said: "Let's go. Let's make that trip

now."

Roy dressed, brought a gun: this one was a .45 Colt. Both men were and remained -- cold sober. Big Milam had drunk

a beer at Minter City around 9; Roy had had nothing.

There was no moon as they drove to Preacher's house: 2.8 miles east of Money.

Preacher's house stands 50 feet right of the gravel road, with cedar and persimmon trees in the yard. Big Milam drove

the pickup in under the trees. He was bareheaded, carrying a five-cell flashlight in his left hand, the .45 in the right.

Roy Bryant pounded on the door.


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Preacher: "Who's that?"

Bryant: "Mr. Bryant from Money, Preacher."

Preacher: "All right, sir. Just a minute."

Preacher came out of the screened-in porch.

Bryant: "Preacher, you got a boy from Chicago here?"

Preacher: "Yessir."

Bryant: "I want to talk to him."

Preacher: "Yessir. I'll get him."

Preacher led them to a back bedroom where four youths were sleeping in two beds. In one was Bobo Till and Simeon

Wright, Preacher's youngest son. Bryant had told Preacher to turn on the lights; Preacher had said they were out of

order. So only the flashlight was used.

The visit was not a complete surprise. Preacher testified that he had heard of the "trouble," that he "sho' had" talked to

his nephew about it. Bobo himself had been afraid; he had wanted to go home the day after the incident. The Negro

girl in the party urged that he leave. "They'll kill him," she had warned. But Preacher's wife, Elizabeth Wright, had

decided that the danger was being magnified; she had urged Bobo to "finish yo' visit."

"I thought they might say something to him, but I didn't think they'd kill a boy," Preacher said.

Big Milam shined the light in Bobo's face, said: "You the nigger who did the talking?"

"Yeah," Bobo replied.

Milam: "Don't say, 'Yeah' to me: I'll blow your head off. Get your clothes on."

Bobo had been sleeping in his shorts. He pulled on a shirt and trousers, then reached for his socks.

"Just the shoes," Milam hurried him.

"I don't wear shoes without socks," Bobo said: and he kept the gun-bearers waiting while he put on his socks, then a

pair of canvas shoes with thick crepe soles.

Preacher and his wife tried two arguments in the boy's behalf.

"He ain't got good sense," Preacher begged. "He didn't know what he was doing. Don't take him."

"I'll pay you gentlemen for the damages," Elizabeth Wright said.

"You niggers go back to sleep," Milam replied.

They marched him into the yard, told him to get in the back of the pickup and lie down. He obeyed. They drove toward

Money.

Elizabeth Wright rushed to the home of a white neighbor, who got up, looked around, but decided he could do nothing.

Then, she and Preacher drove to the home of her brother, Crosby Smith, at Sumner; and Crosby Smith, on Sunday

morning, went to the sheriff's office at Greenwood.


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The other young Negroes stayed at Preacher's house until daylight, when Wheeler Parker telephoned his mother in

Chicago, who in turn notified Bobo's mother, Mamie Bradley, 33, 6427 S. St. Lawrence.

Had there been any doubt as to the identity of the "Chicago boy who done the talking," Milam and Bryant would have

stopped at the store for Carolyn to identify him. But there had been no denial. So they didn't stop at the store. At

Money, they crossed the Tallahatchie River and drove west.

Their intention was to "just whip him... and scare some sense into him." And for this chore, Big Milam knew "the

scariest place in the Delta." He had come upon it last year hunting wild geese. Over close to Rosedale, the Big River

bends around under a bluff. "Brother, she's a 100-foot sheer drop, and she's a 100 feet deep after you hit."

Big Milam's idea was to stand him up there on that bluff, "whip" him with the .45, and then shine the light on down

there toward that water and make him think you're gonna knock him in.

"Brother, if that won't scare the Chicago -------, hell won't."

Searching for this bluff, they drove close to 75 miles. Through Shellmound, Schlater, Doddsville, Ruleville, Cleveland

to the intersection south of Rosedale. There they turned south on Mississippi No. 1, toward the entrance to Beulah

Lake. They tried several dirt and gravel roads, drove along the levee. Finally, they gave up: in the darkness, Big Milam

couldn't find his bluff.

They drove back to Milam's house at Glendora, and by now it was 5 a.m.. They had been driving nearly three hours,

with Milam and Bryant in the cab and Bobo lying in the back.

At some point when the truck slowed down, why hadn't Bobo jumped and run? He wasn't tied; nobody was holding

him. A partial answer is that those Chevrolet pickups have a wraparound rear window the size of a windshield. Bryant

could watch him. But the real answer is the remarkable part of the story.

Bobo wasn't afraid of them! He was tough as they were. He didn't think they had the guts to kill him.

Milam: "We were never able to scare him. They had just filled him so full of that poison that he was hopeless."

Back of Milam's home is a tool house, with two rooms each about 12 feet square. They took him in there and began

"whipping" him, first Milam then Bryant smashing him across the head with those .45's. Pistol-whipping: a court-

martial offense in the Army... but MP's have been known to do it.... And Milam got information out of German

prisoners this way.

But under these blows Bobo never hollered -- and he kept making the perfect speeches to insure martyrdom.

Bobo: "You bastards, I'm not afraid of you. I'm as good as you are. I've 'had' white women. My grandmother was a

white woman."

Milam: "Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers --

in their place -- I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live

and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did,

they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to

mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country,

and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made

up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm

going to make an example of you -- just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.'"


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So Big Milam decided to act. He needed a weight. He tried to think of where he could get an anvil. Then he

remembered a gin which had installed new equipment. He had seen two men lifting a discarded fan, a metal fan three

feet high and circular, used in ginning cotton.

Bobo wasn't bleeding much. Pistol-whipping bruises more than it cuts. They ordered him back in the truck and headed

west again. They passed through Doddsville, went into the Progressive Ginning Company. This gin is 3.4 miles east of

Boyle: Boyle is two miles south of Cleveland. The road to this gin turns left off U.S. 61, after you cross the bayou

bridge south of Boyle.

Milam: "When we got to that gin, it was daylight, and I was worried for the first time. Somebody might see us and

accuse us of stealing the fan."

Bryant and Big Milam stood aside while Bobo loaded the fan. Weight: 74 pounds. The youth still thought they were

bluffing.

They drove back to Glendora, then north toward Swan Lake and crossed the "new bridge" over the Tallahatchie. At the

east end of this bridge, they turned right, along a dirt road which parallels the river. After about two miles, they crossed

the property of L.W. Boyce, passing near his house.

About 1.5 miles southeast of the Boyce home is a lonely spot where Big Milam has hunted squirrels. The river bank is

steep. The truck stopped 30 yards from the water.

Big Milam ordered Bobo to pick up the fan.

He staggered under its weight... carried it to the river bank. They stood silently... just hating one another.

Milam: "Take off your clothes."

Slowly, Bobo pulled off his shoes, his socks. He stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, dropped his pants, his shorts.

He stood there naked.

It was Sunday morning, a little before 7.

Milam: "You still as good as I am?"

Bobo: "Yeah."

Milam: "You still 'had' white women?"

Bobo: "Yeah."

That big .45 jumped in Big Milam's hand. The youth turned to catch that big, expanding bullet at his right ear. He

dropped.

They barb-wired the gin fan to his neck, rolled him into 20 feet of water.

For three hours that morning, there was a fire in Big Milam's back yard: Bobo's crepe soled shoes were hard to burn.

Seventy-two hours later -- eight miles downstream -- boys were fishing. They saw feet sticking out of the water. Bobo.

The majority -- by no means all, but the majority -- of the white people in Mississippi 1) either approve Big Milam's

action or else 2) they don't disapprove enough to risk giving their "enemies" the satisfaction of a conviction.


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1957

Jan.–Feb. Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.

Sept. (Little Rock, Ark.) Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine."

1960

Feb. 1 (Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter. Student sit-ins would be effective throughout the Deep South in integrating parks, swimming pools, theaters, libraries, and other public facilities.

1961

May 4. Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.

1962

Oct. 1 James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.

1963

April 16. Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.

May. During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.

June 12. (Jackson, Miss.) Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later he is convicted for murdering Evers.

Aug. 28. (Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Sept. 15. (Birmingham, Ala.) Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black youths.Top

1964

Jan. 23. The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.


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Summer. The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a network of civil rights groups that includes CORE and SNCC, launches a massive effort to register black voters during what becomes known as the Freedom Summer. It also sends delegates to the Democratic National Convention to protest—and attempt to unseat—the official all-white Mississippi contingent.

July 2. President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.

Aug. 4. (Neshoba Country, Miss.) The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in an earthen dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.

1965 March 7 (Selma, Ala.) Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later.

Aug. 10. Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.

Aug. 11–17, 1965 (Watts, Calif.) Race riots erupt in a black section of Los Angeles.

Sept. 24, 1965 Asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination, President Johnson issues Executive Order 11246, which enforces affirmative action for the first time. It requires government contractors to "take affirmative action" toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.

1967

June 12. In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their laws.

July. Major race riots take place in Newark (July 12–16) and Detroit (July 23–30).

1968

April 4. (Memphis, Tenn.) Martin Luther King, at age 39, is shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room. Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray is convicted of the crime.

April 11. President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing

3.12 Civil Rights Legislation

Civil Rights Act of 1964

1. Outlawed voter registration discrimination.

2. Barred discrimination in public accommodations.

3. Authorized Federal government to sue to desegregate public school and facilities.

4. Expanded the power of the Civil Rights Commission, previously created in 1957


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5. Provided for the with-holding of federal funds from programs administered in a discriminatory manner.

6. Established the right to equality of opportunity in Employment.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

1. Outlawed discriminatory voter registration tests.

2. Authorized federal administration of voter registration and elections where discrimination occurred.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 and Other Housing Reform

Forbade discrimination in housing.


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3.13 Busing

Prior to World War II, most public schools in the country were de jure or de facto segregated. All Southern states

had Jim Crow laws mandating racial segregation of schools. Northern states were primarily white (as of 1940,

populations of Detroit and Chicago were more than 90% white) and, furthermore, existing black populations

were confined to ghettos by various restrictive covenants.

Starting in 1941, the so-called Second Great Migration brought large numbers of African Americans into Northern

cities. Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) allowed them to settle in formerly white neighborhoods, contributing to racial

tension. Meanwhile, the post-war housing boom and the rise of suburbia allowed whites to migrate into the

suburbs. By 1960, all major Northern cities had sizable African American populations (23% in Chicago, 29% in

Detroit). Blacks tended to be concentrated in inner cities, whereas newer suburbs of most cities were almost

exclusively white.

At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs Board of Education (1954) overturned racial

segregation laws for public schools that had been in place in a number of states since the late 19th century, and

ruled that separate but equal schools were "inherently unequal". However, the impact of the ruling in the South

was limited because Southern whites and blacks tended to live in all-white or all-black communities. Initial

integration in the South tended to be symbolic: for example, the integration of Clinton High School, the first

public school in Tennessee to be integrated, amounted to admission of twelve black students to a formerly all-

white school.

Consequently, despite being found "inherently unequal" in Brown vs Board of Education, by the late 1960s public

schools remained de facto segregated in many cities - because of demographic patterns, school district lines

being intentionally drawn to segregate the schools racially, and, in some cases, due to conscious efforts to send

black children to inferior schools. Thus, for example, by 1969, more than nine of every ten black students in

Nashville still attended all-black schools. Evidence of such de facto segregation motivated early proponents of

plans to engage in conscious "integration" of public schools, by busing schoolchildren to schools other than their

neighborhood schools, with an objective to equalize racial imbalances. Proponents of such plans argued that with

the schools integrated, minority students would have equal access to equipment, facilities and resources that the

cities' white students had, thus giving all students in the city equal educational opportunities.

One of the most "damaging" arguments by the opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was that once passed,

the bill would require forced busing to achieve certain racial quotas in schools. Proponents of the bill, such as

Emanuel Celler and Jacob Javits, said that the bill would not authorize such measures. Leading sponsor Sen.

Hubert Humphrey wrote two amendments specifically designed to outlaw busing. Humphrey said "if the bill were

to compel it, it would be a violation [of the Constitution], because it would be handling the matter on the basis of

race and we would be transporting children because of race." While Javits said any government official who

sought to use the bill for busing purposes "would be making a fool of himself," two years later the Department of

Health, Education and Welfare said that Southern school districts would be required to meet mathematical ratios

of students by busing.

A federal court found that in Boston, schools were constructed and school district lines drawn intentionally to

segregate the schools racially. In the early 1970s, a series of court decisions found that the racially imbalanced

schools trampled the rights of minority students. As a remedy, courts ordered the racial integration of school

districts within individual cities, sometimes requiring the racial composition of each individual school in the


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district to reflect the composition of the district as a whole. This was generally achieved by transporting children

by school bus to a school in a different area of the district.

"Forced busing" was a term used by many to describe the mandates that generally came from the courts. Court-

ordered busing to achieve school desegregation was used mainly in large, ethnically segregated school systems,

including Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Pasadena, California;

Richmond, Virginia; San Francisco, California; Detroit, Michigan; and Wilmington, Delaware. From 1972 to 1980,

despite busing, the percentage of blacks attending mostly-black schools barely changed, moving from 63.6% to

63.3%.

The judge who instituted the Detroit busing plan said that busing "is a considerably safer, more reliable, healthful

and efficient means of getting children to school than either car pools or walking, and this is especially true for

younger children." He therefore included kindergarten children in the busing scheme: "Transportation of

kindergarten children for upwards of forty-five minutes, one-way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or

unsafe in any way." The resultant Supreme Court case, Milliken v. Bradley, imposed limits on busing: children

could only be bused within Detroit's city limits, not between Detroit and its suburbs. This case led to the "white

flight" issue, which some believe results from busing: parents of white children moved to suburbs to avoid

busing.

Among the most radical busing plans took place in Charlotte, North Carolina (from 1969) and Savannah, Georgia

(from 1970). In both plans, students were often transported many miles from their homes, passing one or more

schools before arriving at their assigned campus. The Charlotte and Savannah plans are noteworthy in that most

students were affected, and that a majority of blacks as well as whites would not attend their neighborhood

school for two decades. The two plans ended in the 1990s.

For the 1975-76 school year, the Louisville, Kentucky school district, which was not integrated due to whites

largely moving to the suburbs, was forced to start a busing program. The first day, 1,000 protestors rallied against

the busing, and a few days into the process, 8,000 to 10,000 whites from Jefferson County, Kentucky, many

teenagers, rallied at the district's high schools and fought with police trying to break up the crowds. Police cars

were vandalized, 200 were arrested, and people were hurt in the melee, but despite further rallies being banned

the next day by Louisville's mayor, demonstrators showed up to the schools the following day. Kentucky

Governor Julian Carroll sent 1,800 members of the Kentucky National Guard and stationed them on every bus.

On September 26, 1975, 400 protestors held a rally at Southern High School, which was broken up by police tear

gas, followed by a rally of 8,000 the next day, who marched led by a woman in a wheelchair to prevent police

reprisals while cameras were running. Despite the protests, Louisville's busing program continued.

Criticism of Busing

In a Gallup poll taken in the early 1970s, very low percentages of whites (4%) and blacks (9%) supported busing

outside of local neighborhoods. A 1978 study by the RAND Corporation set out to find why whites were opposed

to busing and concluded that it was not because they held racist attitudes, but because they believed it

destroyed neighborhood schools and camaraderie and increased discipline problems. It is said that busing eroded

the community pride and support that neighborhoods had for their local schools. After busing, 60% of Boston

parents, both black and white, reported more discipline problems in schools. In the 1968, 1972, and 1976

presidential elections, candidates opposed to busing were elected each time, and Congress voted repeatedly to

end court-mandated busing.


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Opponents of desegregation busing claim that children were being bused to schools in dangerous

neighborhoods, compromising their education and personal safety. Critics point out that children in the

Northeast were often bused from integrated schools to less integrated schools. The percentage of Northeastern

black children who attended a predominantly black school increased from 67% in 1968 to 80% in 1980 (a higher

percentage than in 1954). After more than 20 years of desegregation busing, from the fall of 1970 through 1992,

Georgia's Savannah-Chatham public school system is now close to 80% minority, and most white students now

attend private schools.

Busing is claimed to have accelerated a trend of middle-class relocation to the suburbs of metropolitan areas.

Many opponents of busing claimed the existence of "white flight" based on the court decisions to integrate

schools. Many believe that this white flight has increased cost of travel time, and increased many other costs

related to suburban sprawl.

Some opponents of busing also claim that busing exacerbated both economic and racial segregation, forcing

cities to divide themselves along explicitly racial lines. They contend that the "white flight" to the suburbs

exacerbated by busing has permanently eroded the tax base of major metropolitan areas, impairing the

metropolitan areas' abilities to offer programs aimed at improving the plight of the ethnic minorities whom

busing was allegedly supposed to benefit and that a better way of tackling racial segregation within schools

would be to find ways of tackling racial segregation within cities and neighborhoods.

The increased average distance of students from their schools also contributed to the reduced ability of students

to participate in extracurricular activities and parents to volunteer for school functions, although parent

volunteering percentages were historically low in city schools. The increased journey times to and from school -

sometimes hours a day on buses - results in less time for recreation, study and (in the case of older students)

employment and operating the busses costs a lot of money that would be better spent elsewhere in the

education system.

Radical busing plans could place enormous stresses on students and their parents—i.e., the transporting of

children to very distant neighborhoods, the last-minute transfer of high school seniors who would not be able to

graduate with their class, and the sometimes annual redrawing of school district lines to attain racial balance.

Such stresses led white middle-class families in many communities to desert the public schools and create a

network of private schools.

Ultimately, even many black leaders, from Wisconsin State Rep. Annette Polly Williams, a Milwaukee Democrat,

to Cleveland Mayor Michael White have come to the conclusion that it is patronizing to think that minority

students need to sit next to a white student to learn, and as such led efforts to end busing.

In 1978, a proponent of busing, Nancy St. John, studied 100 cases of urban busing from the North and did not

find what she had been looking for: she found no cases in which significant black academic improvement

occurred, but many cases where race relations suffered due to busing, as those in forced-integrated schools had

worse relations with those of the opposite race than those in non-integrated schools. Researcher David Armour,

also looking for hopeful signs, found that busing "heightens racial identity" and "reduces opportunities for actual

contact between the races." A 1992 study led by Harvard University Professor Gary Orfield, who supports busing,

found black and Hispanic students lacked "even modest overall improvement" as a result of court-ordered

busing. Likewise, a National Institute of Education report could not even find a single study showing black kids

fared appreciably better following a switch to integrated schools.


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Another mystery was why Asian students, segregated in some school systems, nevertheless thrived academically.

During the 1970s, 60 Minutes reported that some members of Congress, government, and the press who

supported busing most vociferously sent their own children to private schools, including Senator Edward

Kennedy, George McGovern, Thurgood Marshall, Phil Hart, Ben Bradlee, Senator Birch Bayh, Tom Wicker, Philip

Geyelin, and Donald Fraser. Many of the judges who ordered busing also sent their children to private schools.


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3.14 Affirmative Action

1965, President Johnson order that policies be undertaken to remedy the effects of past discrimination. All

government agencies, including state and local, were required to implement such policies. Additionally, policies

were imposed on companies that did business with the federal government, or institutions that receive federal

funding. Also, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission could order such plans because of evidence of

past discrimination.

In July 1970, a federal district court enjoined the State of Alabama from continuing to discriminate against blacks

in the hiring of state troopers. The court found that "in the thirty-seven year history of the patrol there has never

been a black trooper." The order included detailed, non-numerical provisions for assuring an end to

discrimination, such as stringent controls on the civil service certification procedure and an extensive program of

recruitment of minority job applicants. Eighteen months later, not a single black had been hired as a state

trooper or into a civilian position connected with the troopers. The district court then entered a further order

requiring the hiring of one qualified black trooper or support person applicant for each white hired until 25

percent of the force was comprised of blacks. By the time the case reached the Court of Appeals in 1974, 25 black

troopers and 80 black support personnel had been hired. (4) The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately affirmed the

orders.

On March 23, 1973, the Nixon administration's Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission and the Civil Service Commission issued a joint memorandum titled "State and Local

Employment Practices Guide." The guide points out that the Nixon Administration... since September of 1969,

recognized that goals and timetables... are a proper means for helping to implement the nation's commitment to

equal employment opportunity." The memorandum stressed that strict quotas are unacceptable but that goals

and timetables' are entirely different and reasonable tools. (Attorney General John Mitchell led the legal defense

of the distinction between goals and quotas.)In July of 1986, Justice O'Connor referred to this document, and the

merits of fair and effective affirmative action goals, in the concurring portion of her opinion in Local 28, Sheet

Metal Workers v. EEOC. In doing so, she joined the Court majority's support for numerical guidelines in

affirmative action programs.

Prior to 1974, Kaiser Aluminum hired only persons with prior craft experience as craft workers at its Gramercy,

Louisiana plant. Because blacks traditionally had been excluded from the craft unions, only 5 of 273 skilled craft

workers at the plant were black. In response, Kaiser together with the union, established its own training

program to fill craft jobs with the proviso that 50 percent of new trainees were to be black until the percentage

of black craft workers in the plant matched the percentage of blacks in the local labor pool. The Supreme Court

held this program to be lawful.

In 1975, a federal district court found that Local 28 of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association had

discriminated against non-white workers in recruitment, training and admission to the union. The court found

that the union had (1) adopted discriminatory admission criteria, (2) restricted the size of its membership to deny

access to minorities, (3) selectively organized shops with few minority workers and (4) discriminated in favor of

white applicants seeking to transfer from sister locals. The court found that the record was replete with instances

of bad faith efforts to prevent or delay the admission of minorities. The court established a 29 percent

membership goal, reflecting the percentage of minorities in the relevant labor pool. The Supreme Court affirmed

the relief.


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In 1979, women represented only 4 percent of the entry-level officers in the San Francisco police department. By

1985, under an affirmative action plan ordered in a case in which the DOJ sued the City for discrimination, the

number of women in the entry class had risen to 175, or 14.5 percent.

In 1987, a federal district court review of the San Francisco Fire Department led to a consent decree which

increased the number of blacks in officer positions from 7 to 31, Hispanics from 12 to 55, and Asians from 0 to

10; women were admitted as firefighters for the very first time.


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3.14.1 James Meredith

James H. Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an

American civil rights movement figure. He was the

first African American student at the University of

Mississippi, an event that was a flash point in the

American civil rights movement. Motivated by the

broadcast of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural

address (which did not mention civil rights per se)

Meredith decided to apply his democratic rights and

then made the ultimate decision to apply to the

University of Mississippi. Meredith's goal was to put

pressure on the Kennedy administration.

He enlisted in the United States Air Force

immediately after high school and served from 1951

to 1960. He then attended Jackson State College for

two years. He then applied to the University of

Mississippi, saying that he wanted to make this move

in the interest of his country, race, family, and

himself. Meredith stated, "Nobody handpicked me...I

believed, and believe now, that I have a Divine

Responsibility... I am familiar with the probable

difficulties involved in such a move as I am

undertaking and I am fully prepared to pursue it all

the way to a degree from the University of Mississippi." However, even after all the trouble he went through he

was denied twice. On May 31, 1961, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a suit in the U.S.

District Court alleging that the color of his skin was the only reason for Meredith not being accepted into the

university. The case went through many hearings and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that he had

the right to be admitted. Though Meredith was now allowed to register to the school, the Governor of

Mississippi, Ross Barnett, attempted to block his entrance, passing a law that “prohibited any person who was

convicted of a state crime from admission to a state school.” This law was directed at Meredith, who had been

convicted of “false voter registration.”

A deal was finally made between the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Governor Ross Barnett and

Meredith was allowed to attend Ole Miss. On October 1, 1962, he became the first black student at the

University of Mississippi, after being barred from entering on September 20. His enrollment, firmly opposed by

segregationist Governor Ross Barnett, sparked riots on the Oxford campus, and required enforcement by U.S.

Marshals, and later by (federal) U.S. Army military police, the Mississippi Army National Guard and the U.S.

Border Patrol. The riots led to a violent clash which left two people dead, including French journalist Paul

Guihard, on assignment for the London Daily Sketch, who was found behind the Lyceum building with a gunshot

wound to the back. 160 soldiers were injured, and 26 U.S. Marshals were wounded by gunfire. Barnett was fined

$10,000 and sentenced to jail for contempt, but the charges were later dismissed by the 5th Circuit Court of

Appeals. Meredith graduated on August 18, 1963 with a degree in political science.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/James_Meredith.jpg


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Many students harassed Meredith during

his two semesters on campus. Though the

majority of students accepted Meredith's

presence, according to first person

accounts chronicled in Nadine Cohodas's

book The Band Played Dixie, students

living in Meredith's dorm bounced

basketballs on the floor just above his

room through all hours of the night. When

Meredith walked into the cafeteria for

meals, the students eating would all turn

their backs. If Meredith sat at a table with

other students, all of whom were white,

the students would immediately get up

and go to another table.

After Oxford

Meredith continued his education at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He received an LL.B (law degree) from

Columbia University in 1968. Meredith ceased being a civil rights activist in the late 1960s and found employment

as a stockbroker.

However, he organized and led a civil rights march, the

March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee to

Jackson, Mississippi on June 6, 1966. This was

Meredith's attempt to draw people's attention to black

voting rights in the South and to help blacks overcome

fear of violence. During this march he was shot by

Aubrey James Norvell, who attempted to assassinate

Meredith. The photograph of Meredith after being shot

won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1967.

As an author Meredith wrote a memoir of his days at

the University of Mississippi entitled Three Years in

Mississippi, published by the Indiana University Press in

1966, and also self-published several books. He was an

active Republican and served for several years as a

domestic advisor on the staff of United States Senator

Jesse Helms. Faced with harsh criticism from the civil

rights community, Meredith said that he wrote every

member of the Senate and House offering his services

to them in order to gain access to the Library of

Congress, and that only Helms replied.

In 2002, James Meredith's son, Joseph Meredith,

graduated from the University of Mississippi as the

most outstanding doctoral student in the School of Business Administration. Joseph had previously earned

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/James_Meredith_Portrait.png


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degrees from Harvard University and Millsaps College. James Meredith said of the occasion, "I think there's no

better proof that White supremacy was wrong than not only to have my son graduate, but to graduate as the

most outstanding graduate of the school...That, I think, vindicates my whole life." Joseph Meredith died in 2008

at age 39 of complications from lupus. At the time of his death, he was an assistant professor of finance at Texas

A&M International University.


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3.14.2 Allan Bakke

Allan Bakke was from Minnesota went the

University of Minnesota on a Marine Corps

ROTC scholarship where he studied

engineering. After graduation Bakke went

to Vietnam as a platoon leader -- fulfilling

his military service obligation. Bakke

became interested in medicine due to his

experience with MASH units in Vietnam,

which saved the lives of several of his

platoon. After his service obligation, Bakke

began was working as an engineer at NASA

in Northern California, but arranged his

schedule so that he could take coursework

in preparation for Medical School part-time.

As a result, by the time he first applied to

medical school in 1973, Bakke was thirty-

two years old.

Although Bakke's college grades and

performance on the MCAT were quite good,

they were far from exceptional, and his

application to medical schools was not well

received. Over the course of two years

following his original application in 1973,

Bakke applied to twelve medical schools,

and was admitted to none. After his initial round of applications, two schools told Bakke his age was a factor

working against him, and other schools suggested as much. Bakke, however, remained intent on attending

medical school, and when he decided to apply again in 1974, he concentrated his efforts on the medical school at

the University of California at Davis ("the University" or "Davis"). In some ways, Davis was an unusual choice

because it was a relatively new medical school near Sacramento, an area with which Bakke had no apparent

connection. Yet given that Davis was also the least prestigious of the schools to which he had originally applied, it

represented the school at which his chances for admission were likely the highest. Perhaps more significant to his

decision, Bakke was befriended by an admissions officer at the Davis medical school who was sympathetic to his

complaint that he was being kept out of the school by the special admissions procedure that specifically

considered disadvantaged candidates for admission.

In 1974, Bakke re-applied. Having discovered that had he applied earlier the previous year, he would have stood

a greater chance for acceptance -- in 1974 applied early, but was again rejected. The admissions officer who had

befriended Bakke told him that "special applicants" had been admitted with scores lower than his, and advised

Bakke to sue. At trial, the court found that the special program operated as a racial quota, because minority

applicants in that program were rated only against one another, and 16 places in the class of 100 were reserved

for them. Declaring that UC Davis Medical School could not take race into account in making admissions

decisions, the court declared the program violated the Federal and State Constitutions and Title VI. The court did

not order Bakke's admission, however, because there was no proof at trial that he would have been admitted but


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for the special program. The California

Supreme Court, applying a strict scrutiny

standard, concluded that the special

admissions program was not the least

intrusive means of achieving the goals of

the admittedly compelling state interests of

integrating the medical facility, and

increasing the number of doctors willing to

serve minority patients. Because the

Medical School could not satisfy its burden

of demonstrating that, absent the special

program, Bakke would not have been

admitted, the court ordered his admission

to the Medical School.

The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Bakke's

favor on June 23, 1978. Justice Lewis Powell

delivered the opinion of the court that race

could be only one of numerous factors used by discriminatory boards, such as those of college admissions. Powell

found that quotas insulated minority applicants from competition with the regular applicants and were thus

unconstitutional because they discriminated against non-minority applicants. Powell however stated that

universities could use race as a plus factor.

Bakke began his studies at the University of California Medical School at Davis in fall of 1978. Significantly older

than other students (he was by now 36, with a growing family), and quiet and shy by nature, he kept mostly to

himself. Faith Fitzgerald, who came to UC Davis as a medical student in 1980 and later became a professor of

internal medicine at UC Davis School of Medicine and assistant dean of admissions recalls of Bakke that,

He was a man who wanted to be a doctor. He wasn't seeking publicity. At first, many of his

classmates shunned him. But he eventually gained their respect and admiration because he fully

immersed himself in the program and did not look for media attention or anything. In the end,

his classmates came to protect him from the media onslaught."

Bakke graduated in 1982, and returned to his native Minnesota where he was a resident at Mayo Clinic in

Rochester, Minnesota.

Bakke is still living and in his early 70's.


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3.14.3 After Bakke

1995, Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena

S.Ct held that any federal, state or local affirmative action program that uses racial or ethnic classifications

for making decisions is subject to “strict scrutiny.”

"Strict scrutiny" means that an affirmative action program fulfills a "compelling governmental

interest," and is"narrowly tailored" to fit the particular situation. Although two of the judges

(Scalia and Thomas) felt that there should be a complete ban on affirmative action, the majority

of judges asserted that "the unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of

racial discrimination against minority groups in this country" justified the use of race-based

remedial measures in certain circumstances.”

1996, Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School

Cheryl Hopwood and three other white law-school applicants at the University of Texas challenged the

school's affirmative action program, asserting that they were rejected because of unfair preferences toward

less qualified minority applicants. As a result, the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals suspended the university's

affirmative action admissions program and ruled that the 1978 Bakke decision was invalid—while Bakke

rejected racial quotas it maintained that race could serve as a factor in admissions. In addition to remedying

past discrimination, Bakke maintained that the inclusion of minority students would create a diverse student

body, and that was beneficial to the educational environment as a whole. Hopwood, however, rejected the

legitimacy of diversity as a goal, asserting that "educational diversity is not recognized as a compelling state

interest." The Supreme Court allowed the ruling to stand. In 1997, the Texas Attorney General announced

that all "Texas public universities [should] employ race-neutral criteria.”

1997, Proposition 209 enacted in California

A state ban on all forms of affirmative action was passed in California: "The state shall not discriminate

against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity,

or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." Proposed

in 1996, the controversial ban had been delayed in the courts for almost a year before it went into effect.

2000, University of Michigan’s undergrad affirmative action policy

In Gratz v. Bollinger, a federal judge ruled that the use of race as a factor in admissions at the University of

Michigan was constitutional. The gist of the university's argument was as follows: just as preference is granted to

children of alumni, scholarship athletes, and others groups for reasons deemed beneficial to the university, so

too does the affirmative action program serve "a compelling interest" by providing educational benefits derived

from a diverse student body.

2001, Univ. of Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy

In Grutter v. Bollinger, a case similar to the University of Michigan undergraduate lawsuit, a different judge drew

an opposite conclusion, invalidating the law school's policy and ruling that "intellectual diversity bears no obvious

or necessary relationship to racial diversity." But on May 14, 2002, the decision was reversed on appeal, ruling

that the admissions policy was, in fact, constitutional.

2003 University of Michigan Law School - Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action in University Admissions


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In the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5–4)

upholds the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors

considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining

the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." The Supreme Court, however, ruled (6-3)

that the more formulaic approach of the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions program, which

uses a point system that rates students and awards additional points to minorities, had to be modified. The

undergraduate program, unlike the law school's, does not provide the "individualized consideration" of

applicants deemed necessary in previous Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action.

2006, Supreme Court Rules Against Considering Race to Integrate Schools

In Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson, affirmative action suffers a setback when a bitterly divided

court rules, 5–4, that programs in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., which tried to maintain diversity in schools by

considering race when assigning students to schools, are unconstitutional.

2009, Ricci v. DeStefano, Firefighters Go to Court

In a lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, 18 plaintiffs—17 white and 1 Hispanic—argued that

results of the 2003 lieutenant and captain exams were thrown out when it was determined that few minority

firefighters qualified for advancement. The city claimed they threw out the results because they feared

liability under a disparate-impact statute for issuing tests that discriminated against minority firefighters. The

plaintiffs claimed that they were victims of reverse discrimination under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of

1964. The Supreme Court ruled (5–4) in favor of the firefighters, saying New Haven's "action in discarding the

tests was a violation of Title VII."


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Table 1. Civil Rights Timeline

1948 26-Jul Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, 'It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.'

1954 17-May The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned 'separate but equal' segregation of the races, ruling that 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.' It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.

1954 17-May The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned 'separate but equal' segregation of the races, ruling that 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.' It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.

1955 Aug. Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.

Dec. 1 (Montgomery, AL) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the 'colored section' of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott.

1957 Jan.–Feb. Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: 'We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline,' he urges.

Sept. (Little Rock, Ark) Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the 'Little Rock Nine.'

1960 Feb. 1 (Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter. Student sit-ins would be effective throughout the Deep South in integrating parks, swimming pools, theaters, libraries, and other public facilities.

April (Raleigh, N.C.) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at Shaw University, providing young blacks with a place in the civil rights movement. The SNCC later grows into a more radical organization, especially under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael (1966–1967).

1961 4-May Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of 'freedom riders,' as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.

1962 Oct. 1 James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.

1963 16-Apr Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal 'Letter from Birmingham Jail,' arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.


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May During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene 'Bull' Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.

12-Jun (Jackson, Miss.) Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later he is convicted for murdering Evers.

Aug. 28 (Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech.

Sept. 15 (Birmingham, Ala.) Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black youths.

1964 Jan. 23 The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.

Summer The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a network of civil rights groups that includes CORE and SNCC, launches a massive effort to register black voters during what becomes known as the Freedom Summer. It also sends delegates to the Democratic National Convention to protest—and attempt to unseat—the official all-white Mississippi contingent.

2-Jul President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.

Aug. 4 (Neshoba Country, Miss.) The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in an earthen dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. James E. Chaney, 21; Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.

1965 Feb. 21 (Harlem, N.Y.) Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. It is believed the assailants are members of the Black Muslim faith, which Malcolm had recently abandoned in favor of orthodox Islam.

7-Mar (Selma, Ala.) Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed 'Bloody Sunday' by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later.

Aug. 10 Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.

Aug. 11–17 (Watts, Calif.) Race riots erupt in a black section of Los Angeles.

Sept. 24 Asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination, President Johnson issues Executive Order 11246, which enforces affirmative action for the first time. It requires government contractors to 'take affirmative action' toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.

1966 Oct. (Oakland, Calif.) The militant Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

1967 19-Apr Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coins the phrase 'black power' in a speech in Seattle. He defines it as an assertion of black pride and 'the coming together of black people to fight for their liberation by any means necessary.' The term's radicalism alarms many who believe the civil rights movement's effectiveness and moral authority crucially depend on nonviolent civil disobedience.

12-Jun In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their laws.

July Major race riots take place in Newark (July 12–16) and Detroit (July 23–30).

1968 4-Apr (Memphis, Tenn.) Martin Luther King, at age 39, is shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room. Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray is convicted of the crime.


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11-Apr President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

1971 20-Apr The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upholds busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools. Although largely unwelcome (and sometimes violently opposed) in local school districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities such as Charlotte, Boston, and Denver continue until the late 1990s.


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Table 2. Affirmative Action Timeline

6-Mar-61 Executive Order 10925 makes the first reference to "affirmative action"

President John F. Kennedy issues Executive Order 10925, which creates the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and mandates that projects financed with federal funds "take affirmative action" to ensure that hiring and employment practices are free of racial bias.

2-Jul-64 Civil Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson

The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.

4-Jun-65 Speech defining concept of affirmative action

In an eloquent speech to the graduating class at Howard University, President Johnson frames the concept underlying affirmative action, asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination:

"You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: 'now, you are free to go where you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.' You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair . . . This is the next and more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity—not just legal equity but human ability—not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact and as a result."

Sept. 24, 1965 Executive Order 11246 enforces affirmative action for the first time

Issued by President Johnson, the executive order requires government contractors to "take affirmative action" toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment. Contractors must take specific measures to ensure equality in hiring and must document these efforts. On Oct. 13, 1967, the order was amended to cover discrimination on the basis of gender.

1969 The Philadelphia Order

Initiated by President Richard Nixon, the "Philadelphia Order" was the most forceful plan thus far to guarantee fair hiring practices in construction jobs. Philadelphia was selected as the test case because, as assistant secretary of labor Arthur Fletcher explained, "The craft unions and the construction industry are among the most egregious offenders against equal opportunity laws . . . openly hostile toward letting blacks into their closed circle." The order included definite "goals and timetables." As President Nixon asserted, "We would not impose quotas, but would require federal contractors to show 'affirmative action' to meet the goals of increasing minority employment."

28-Jun-78 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

This landmark Supreme Court case imposed limitations on affirmative action to ensure that providing greater opportunities for minorities did not come at the expense of the rights of the majority—affirmative action was unfair if it led to reverse discrimination. The case involved the Univ. of California, Davis, Medical School, which had two separate admissions pools, one for standard applicants, and another for minority and economically disadvantaged students. The school reserved 16 of its 100 places for this latter group.

Allan Bakke, a white applicant, was rejected twice even though there were minority applicants admitted with significantly lower scores than his. Bakke maintained that judging him on the basis of his race was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court ruled that while race was a legitimate factor in school admissions, the use of such inflexible quotas as the medical school had set aside was not. The Supreme Court, however, was split 5–4 in its decision on the Bakke case and addressed only a minimal number of the many complex issues that had sprung up about affirmative action.


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2-Jul-80 Fullilove v. Klutznick

While Bakke struck down strict quotas, in Fullilove the Supreme Court ruled that some modest quotas were perfectly constitutional. The Court upheld a federal law requiring that 15% of funds for public works be set aside for qualified minority contractors. The "narrowed focus and limited extent" of the affirmative action program did not violate the equal rights of non-minority contractors, according to the Court—there was no "allocation of federal funds according to inflexible percentages solely based on race or ethnicity."

19-May-86 Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education

This case challenged a school board's policy of protecting minority employees by laying off non-minority teachers first, even though the non-minority employees had seniority. The Supreme Court ruled against the school board, maintaining that the injury suffered by non-minorities affected could not justify the benefits to minorities: "We have previously expressed concern over the burden that a preferential-layoffs scheme imposes on innocent parties. In cases involving valid hiring goals, the burden to be borne by innocent individuals is diffused to a considerable extent among society generally. Though hiring goals may burden some innocent individuals, they simply do not impose the same kind of injury that layoffs impose. Denial of a future employment opportunity is not as intrusive as loss of an existing job."

Feb. 25, 1987 United States v. Paradise

In July 1970, a federal court found that the State of Alabama Department of Public Safety systematically discriminated against blacks in hiring: "in the thirty-seven-year history of the patrol there has never been a black trooper." The court ordered that the state reform its hiring practices to end "pervasive, systematic, and obstinate discriminatory exclusion of blacks." A full 12 years and several lawsuits later, the department still had not promoted any blacks above entry level nor had they implemented a racially fair hiring system. In response, the court ordered specific racial quotas to correct the situation. For every white hired or promoted, one black would also be hired or promoted until at least 25% of the upper ranks of the department were composed of blacks. This use of numerical quotas was challenged. The Supreme Court, however, upheld the use of strict quotas in this case as one of the only means of combating the department's overt and defiant racism.

Jan. 23, 1989 City of Richmond v. Croson

This case involved affirmative action programs at the state and local levels—a Richmond program setting aside 30% of city construction funds for black-owned firms was challenged. For the first time, affirmative action was judged as a "highly suspect tool." The Supreme Court ruled that an "amorphous claim that there has been past discrimination in a particular industry cannot justify the use of an unyielding racial quota." It maintained that affirmative action must be subject to "strict scrutiny" and is unconstitutional unless racial discrimination can be proven to be "widespread throughout a particular industry." The Court maintained that "the purpose of strict scrutiny is to `smoke out' illegitimate uses of race by assuring that the legislative body is pursuing a goal important enough to warrant use of a highly suspect tool. The test also ensures that the means chosen `fit' this compelling goal so closely that there is little or no possibility that the motive for the classification was illegitimate racial prejudice or stereotype."

12-Jun-95 Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña

What Croson was to state- and local-run affirmative action programs, Adarand was to federal programs. The Court again called for "strict scrutiny" in determining whether discrimination existed before implementing a federal affirmative action program. "Strict scrutiny" meant that affirmative action programs fulfilled a "compelling governmental interest," and were "narrowly tailored" to fit the particular situation. Although two of the judges (Scalia and Thomas) felt that there should be a complete ban on affirmative action, the majority of judges asserted that "the unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination against minority groups in this country" justified the use of race-based remedial measures in certain circumstances.


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19-Jul-95 White House guidelines on affirmative action

President Clinton asserted in a speech that while Adarand set "stricter standards to mandate reform of affirmative action, it actually reaffirmed the need for affirmative action and reaffirmed the continuing existence of systematic discrimination in the United States." In a White House memorandum on the same day, he called for the elimination of any program that "(a) creates a quota; (b) creates preferences for unqualified individuals; (c) creates reverse discrimination; or (d) continues even after its equal opportunity purposes have been achieved."

18-Mar-96 Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School

Cheryl Hopwood and three other white law-school applicants at the University of Texas challenged the school's affirmative action program, asserting that they were rejected because of unfair preferences toward less qualified minority applicants. As a result, the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals suspended the university's affirmative action admissions program and ruled that the 1978 Bakke decision was invalid—while Bakke rejected racial quotas it maintained that race could serve as a factor in admissions. In addition to remedying past discrimination, Bakke maintained that the inclusion of minority students would create a diverse student body, and that was beneficial to the educational environment as a whole. Hopwood, however, rejected the legitimacy of diversity as a goal, asserting that "educational diversity is not recognized as a compelling state interest." The Supreme Court allowed the ruling to stand. In 1997, the Texas Attorney General announced that all "Texas public universities [should] employ race-neutral criteria."

Nov. 3, 1997 Proposition 209 enacted in California

A state ban on all forms of affirmative action was passed in California: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." Proposed in 1996, the controversial ban had been delayed in the courts for almost a year before it went into effect.

Dec. 3, 1998 Initiative 200 enacted in Washington State

Washington becomes the second state to abolish state affirmative action measures when it passed "I 200," which is similar to California's Proposition 209.

Feb. 22, 2000 Florida bans race as factor in college admissions.

Florida legislature approves education component of Gov. Jeb Bush's "One Florida" initiative, aimed at ending affirmative action in the state.

Dec. 13, 2000 University of Michigan’s undergrad affirmative action policy

In Gratz v. Bollinger, a federal judge ruled that the use of race as a factor in admissions at the University of Michigan was constitutional. The gist of the university's argument was as follows: just as preference is granted to children of alumni, scholarship athletes, and others groups for reasons deemed beneficial to the university, so too does the affirmative action program serve "a compelling interest" by providing educational benefits derived from a diverse student body.

27-Mar-01 Univ. of Michigan Law School's affirmative action policy

In Grutter v. Bollinger, a case similar to the University of Michigan undergraduate lawsuit, a different judge drew an opposite conclusion, invalidating the law school's policy and ruling that "intellectual diversity bears no obvious or necessary relationship to racial diversity." But on May 14, 2002, the decision was reversed on appeal, ruling that the admissions policy was, in fact, constitutional.


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23-Jun-03 Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action in University Admissions

In the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5–4) upholds the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." The Supreme Court, however, ruled (6-3) that the more formulaic approach of the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions program, which uses a point system that rates students and awards additional points to minorities, had to be modified. The undergraduate program, unlike the law school's, does not provide the "individualized consideration" of applicants deemed necessary in previous Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action.

28-Jun-06 Supreme Court Rules Against Considering Race to Integrate Schools

In Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson, affirmative action suffers a setback when a bitterly divided court rules, 5–4, that programs in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., which tried to maintain diversity in schools by considering race when assigning students to schools, are unconstitutional.

4-Nov-08 Ballot Measure to Ban Affirmative Action Goes Before Voters

Ballot measures proposing to ban affirmative action — race and gender based preferences by public entities — goes before voters in two states, Nebraska and Colorado. The ban passes with more than 50% of the vote in Nebraska. Voters in Colorado, though, reject the proposed ban.

29-Jun-09 Ricci v. DeStefano, Firefighters Go to Court

In a lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, 18 plaintiffs—17 white and 1 Hispanic—argued that results of the 2003 lieutenant and captain exams were thrown out when it was determined that few minority firefighters qualified for advancement. The city claimed they threw out the results because they feared liability under a disparate-impact statute for issuing tests that discriminated against minority firefighters. The plaintiffs claimed that they were victims of reverse discrimination under the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court ruled (5–4) in favor of the firefighters, saying New Haven's "action in discarding the tests was a violation of Title VII."


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3.15 Articles: College Football And Integration

The Game That Changed The World

The Orange County Register, Sept. 13, 2007 By BLYTHE BERNHARD http://www.ocregister.com/articles/danehe-62292-usc-alabama.html

Dick Danehe doesn't lack for good stories.

He talks about driving cross country with his dad in a Plymouth to accept a football scholarship to USC at the end of the Great Depression. He'll regale you with tales about the glory days of college, interrupted by his service in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Or living the high life, when he played professional football with the Los Angeles Dons. And the national fame he reached as a sportscaster and host of a weekly golf show.

As a radio and television personality in the 1950s, Danehe was so well-known that his name was a clue in a TV Guide crossword puzzle. The tall, strapping blond broadcaster was recognized on the street and received buckets of fan mail. President Eisenhower, a golf enthusiast, would request films of Danehe's show, "All Star Golf," before it aired Saturday nights.

Danehe's neighbors in Laguna Hills know him best for his devotion to Nayda, his wife of 62 years. The college sweethearts, now 87 and 86, write love poems to each other on birthdays and anniversaries. She bought him his first easel, and their home is decorated with his oil and watercolor landscapes. At twilight, the couple like to join the neighbors in singing "America the Beautiful" on the lawn.

There are so many stories left to tell. But this one is about the night Dick Danehe, in his last year as a college football announcer, called the game that changed the South.

THAT SEPTEMBER NIGHT

It was 1970, and Danehe was on the radio team broadcasting USC football games. The season-opening road game wasn't just a game - USC would be the first fully integrated team to play against Alabama at Legion Field in Birmingham.

Danehe remembers a feeling of trepidation on the flight to the Deep South. Nearly a third of USC's team was black, including quarterback Jimmy Jones.

Although it was seven years after the National Guard was called in to escort two black students to enroll at the University of Alabama, integration had yet to reach the football field.

"It seems late, doesn't it?" Danehe says. "But Alabama had no black players."

Before the game, Danehe remembers Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and his team marching around the stadium in their dark suits and crimson ties, Bryant wearing his trademark checkered cap. Each section of fans stood and applauded in turn.

But they wouldn't have much to cheer about after that.


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The Trojans ran "through 'em, over 'em, around 'em and everything else" on that muggy September night, Danehe recalls. The final score was USC 42, Alabama 21. The Trojans dominated on the ground - 485 rushing yards to Alabama's 32.

And no one ran the football better than Trojan sophomore fullback Sam "Bam" Cunningham - 135 yards in just 12 carries.

Every USC touchdown was scored by a black player. Cunningham had two.

THE TIDE TURNS

Professional baseball, basketball and football had long since been integrated. The University of Kentucky basketball team signed its first black player the year before the USC-Alabama matchup.

But until USC crushed the Crimson Tide in 1970, college football in the South, and particularly in Alabama, remained the last major stronghold of segregation in sport.

Some say Bryant, who died in 1983, knew his fans would be won over by the clearly superior, racially diverse USC team. That could be why he invited coach John McKay's Trojans to hand him a certain loss, as told in the recent book "Turning of the Tide: How One Game Changed the South."

Whatever Bryant's motivation, it worked.

At the postgame reception at the hotel, Danehe remembers the throngs of Alabama fans and the coaching staff buzzing about the Trojans' strength.

"I never heard a derogatory remark," he says. "I must say that compliments were advanced to the entire Trojan team."

The next year, when Alabama came to the Coliseum to play USC, John Mitchell became the first black player to start for the Crimson Tide. Integration helped bring a decade of dominance for Bryant's Alabama football teams in the 1970s. Mitchell went on to become an all-American and is now the assistant head coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Sometimes the most defining moments in history aren't realized until years or decades later. For the USC players, the September night in Alabama was just another season-opening victory. They'd been playing and winning together, black and white, for decades.

It was later, as the media accounts and speaking engagements piled up, that the players realized what they had done for football, for Alabama and for the country.

Cunningham spoke to the 2003 Trojan team before its season opener against Auburn University, as recounted in "Turning of the Tide." He told them how he felt before his debut in the same Southern state more than 30 years before.

"My motivation was to play well enough so that I could play the next week. That was it. It had nothing to do with changing color lines, doing anything like that.

"But you never know when you will get the chance to do something special."

TROJAN FOR LIFE

Growing up in Missouri in the 1930s, when schools were segregated, Danehe could always find the USC-Notre Dame game on the radio. Then as now, USC's championship lore attracted blue-chip athletes from across the country.

Danehe doesn't know how the coaches found him, a big center and linebacker from the Midwest, but their discovery set the course for his life.


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In those days, the shops on University Avenue put up posters of the players in the windows. University President Rufus B. von KleinSmid tipped his hat to Danehe every afternoon as the student-athlete raked leaves in front of Doheny Library.

It's a lofty privilege, being a Trojan football player, and one that never goes away, Danehe says.

"I could take everything but my experience at USC out of my life, and I'd still have a full life. I made the ball club and played first string, and that's all you can ask."

Today another group of talented young men - black, white, Asian and Hispanic - will take the field for both teams when USC plays at Nebraska as the top-ranked team in the country.

Danehe will be watching and listening for the fight song. It won't make a difference who scores the touchdowns.

In the Trojan family, the only colors that matter are Cardinal and Gold.

Contact the writer: To contact the writer, an 'SC fan, call 714-796-6880 or [email protected]


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ARREN EVERSON, The Wall Street Journal, December 4th 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574572340901355488.html

The Game That Changed Alabama Rout by USC in 1970 Sowed the Seeds for Crimson Tide's Rebirth; An Epic Showdown with

It was a hot and humid September evening in 1970 at Birmingham's Legion Field. The Alabama Crimson Tide, coached by the great Paul "Bear" Bryant, was in for a long night. Mr. Bryant had already led the Tide to three national titles. But he was coming off a 6-5 season, his worst yet. Southern California, Alabama's opponent, had lost just two games in three years. If past is prologue in sport, it is particularly so in college football, where there is continuity and depth of tradition. What happened that day nearly 40 years ago is arguably the seminal moment in Crimson Tide football—the one

that's most responsible for what the program is today: an immensely talented team preparing to play No. 1 Florida Saturday in a Southeastern Conference title-game showdown. The second-ranked Tide is a team that has attracted the best talent available and embraced it—a coach from West Virginia, a black kid from Michigan who may win the school's first Heisman Trophy. When he suited up that night, USC's Sam Cunningham didn't think he'd touch the ball at all against the Tide. As a fullback in coach John McKay's tailback-focused offense—and a sophomore backup at that—carrying the ball was neither his job nor his station. And he sure wasn't thinking about the historical significance of the day: This was the

first time a fully integrated team had come to play Alabama in the South. "It wasn't the first time I'd played an all-white football team, so that didn't bother me at all," says Mr. Cunningham, who is black. "It was my first road trip, first varsity game. I was more concerned about getting a chance to play and not making any mistakes." The game, a 42-21 Trojans rout, couldn't have left a stronger impression on the Alabama faithful. The Trojans gained 559 yards, nearly 300 more than the Tide. Mr. Cunningham rumbled for 135 yards and two touchdowns, and needed just 12 carries to do it. "They were good players,"

Mr. Cunningham says of the Tide. "By no means am I implying that they weren't. But we were bigger, stronger and faster."


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Alabama's football program first established itself more than 80 years ago, becoming the South's flagship team when it went west and won the 1926 Rose Bowl. The Tide excelled in the Depression years and won three national titles in the 1960s under Mr. Bryant. But the slowness of the South to accept integration started to hurt the Tide, culminating in that 1970 season opener against USC. The legend of that night, which has become known as the Cunningham game, has been exaggerated, misremembered, misunderstood and mythologized. Books overstate Mr. Cunningham's yards and touchdowns. Mr. Cunningham is famously said to have done more to integrate Alabama in 60 minutes than Martin Luther King Jr. did in 20 years. Aside from whether he did or not, the quote is alternately attributed to Mr. Bryant and two former assistants. "I've been here 20 years," says Taylor Watson, curator of the Paul W. Bryant Museum in Tuscaloosa, "and I've never been able to figure it out." According to myth, Mr. Bryant took Mr. Cunningham to the Tide locker room after the game to show his team what a football player looks like. Mr. Cunningham says Mr. Bryant did make the unusual gesture of speaking with him after the game but just to congratulate him. "It wasn't anything earth-shattering," he says. But the game did have dramatic effects. Historians say Mr. Bryant—who already had a black player on Alabama's freshman team—would have added more black players sooner if it had been socially acceptable; after that game, fans recognized the need. Great black players soon started coming to Alabama, including future pro Hall of Fame tight end Ozzie Newsome. The Tide rebounded to win three more national championships under Mr. Bryant, who died in 1983. And today, two black Alabama players are among the most adored Crimson Tide stars in recent memory. Sophomore running back Mark Ingram is in the running for the Heisman, and sophomore receiver Julio Jones was elected to a student-government seat after last season despite not even campaigning. (He initially planned to serve but later declined because of his full schedule.) "I'm just amazed how much the landscape has changed since the late '60s and early '70s," Mr. Cunningham says. "At the time, I didn't dwell upon how big a deal it was. If I'd thought any further out, I might not have played as well as I did. But seeing the results over the past 40 years, we left an impression on college football and Alabama." For this year's Tide (12-0), Saturday's SEC title game in Atlanta represents another potential turning point. Florida (12-0) has won 22 straight games, two of the past three national championships and eight of the past 18 SEC titles, including last year, when the Gators beat the Tide in the championship. Florida has become the team to beat in the SEC. "For older, lifelong Alabama fans, there's been this sense for the past 20 years that there's something slightly wrong about the cosmic order," says Alabama native Warren St. John, author of "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer," a book about college fandom. "There's definitely been a tilting of the power center of the SEC from Alabama in the '60s and '70s to Florida in the '90s and 2000s. Given all of Florida's advantages in recruiting, it's somewhat remarkable they don't dominate more." Vegas favors Florida by nearly a touchdown, but Alabama has reason for optimism. Mr. Ingram, the driving force behind the Alabama offense, says he expects to be fully healed from the hip injury he suffered last week against Auburn. Florida will play a key man down, having lost defensive end Carlos Dunlap to suspension because of a DUI arrest this week. And there's the fact that the Gators are less explosive offensively this season. "They aren't as deep at wide receiver this year as they were last year," says Alabama linebacker Rolando McClain.


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Should Alabama win and reach the national-title game in Pasadena, Calif.—site of that landmark Rose Bowl game nearly 84 years ago—it would mark one more momentous turn in Tide history. "When everything is right with Alabama, it's about winning championships," says Mr. Watson, of the Bryant Museum. "We won in the '30s and '40s, then took a nap in the '50s, then came the Bear. Now Alabama fans feel we're back to that."

3 civil rights - victorwelch.netvictorwelch.net/fednotes3_civilrights.pdf · sandford was an 1857...

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