brown v board of education of
TRANSCRIPT
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka Kansas
The Brown children had to walk through dangerous areas to get to the “colored” school. Their father sued to end school segregation.
Brown: The Supreme Court
►Case went to Supreme Court in 1952
►Chief Justice Fred Vinson died in 1953
►Replaced by Earl Warren
►Warren guided Court to its 9 - 0 decision.
► “de jure” or legal segregation is proscribed (outlawed)Chief Justice Earl Warren
In 1955, 14 year old
Emmett Till went from Chicago, where he lived, to visit family in Mississippi. Not understanding the Jim Crow rules of the South, he “insulted” the wrong white woman and was murdered.
His murderers were acquitted by an all white jury in Mississippi.
The "smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs”.Left to right: Roy Bryant, Carolyn Bryant, Juanita Milam, J. W. Milam (UPI).
Montgomery Bus Boycott
In December of 1955 Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins.
Martin Luther King Jr speaks to the press regarding the
Montgomery bus boycott
20 May 1956The boycott lasts for more than a year, and the black citizens of Montgomery finally win, when the Supreme Court rules against segregation on public transportation.
1957
Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth
establish the Southern
Christian Leadership
Conference, of which
King is made the first president.
The Supreme Court decision did not mean that things were going to be easy for those first students who integrated white schools.
Little Rock1957
Even with the court ruling, it takes President Eisenhower sending federal troops to Little Rock to force school integration there.
1960Four black college students in Greensboro, N.C. begin a new form of protest, called a sit-in. They are refused service at a lunch counter, so they refuse to leave until they are served.
This triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. This form of protest becomes effective in integrating swimming pools, theaters, libraries and other southern public facilities.
1960
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at Shaw University, providing young blacks with a place in the civil rights movement.
1961The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) begins sending student volunteers on bus trips to test the implementation of new laws prohibiting segregation in interstate travel facilities.
One of the first two groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, encounters its first problem two weeks later, when a mob in Alabama sets the riders' bus on fire.
1961 James Meredith pushes to become 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.
Court ordered enrollment in 1962 – graduates 1963.
1963During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators.
“Letter From Birmingham Jail”
• Response to white clergy who call for legal action, not protests
• Advocates direct action to force negotiation
• People have a “moral responsibility” to disobey unjust laws
“You may well ask: ‘Why direct
action? Why sit ins, marches and so
forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?’
You are quite right in calling for
negotiation. Indeed, this is the very
purpose of direct action. Nonviolent
direct action seeks to create such a
crisis and foster such a tension that a
community which has constantly
refused to negotiate is forced to
confront the issue. It seeks so to
dramatize the issue that it can no longer
be ignored.”
An excerpt from King’s letter
Integrating the University of
Alabama
►Hood and Malone sought admission
►Governor George Wallace made a “stand in the schoolhouse door” to block their enrollment
►Justice Dept. officials and federal troops forced Wallace to relent
Governor George Wallace attempting to block
integration at the University of Alabama
JFK’s Civil Rights Bill
►Kennedy decided to act after the Birmingham campaign
►Introduced comprehensive civil rights bill in June 1963
►Bill finally passed during Johnson presidency President John F. Kennedy
announces his proposed federal
civil rights legislation
Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home.
“It may sound funny, but I love
the South. I don’t choose to
live anywhere else. There’s
land here, where a man can
raise cattle, and I’m going to do
it some day. There are lakes
where a man can sink a hook
and fight the bass. There is
room here for my children to
play and grow, and become
good citizens — if the white man
will let them....” — Medgar
Evers, “Why I Live in Mississippi”
1963
Over 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.
September 15, 1963
Four young girls in Birmingham, Alabama are killed when a bomb goes off in their church. The church had been the site of civil rights meetings.
CRA ‘64The Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, sex (gender), or national origin.
The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.
President Johnson giving signing pen to MLK.
“Freedom Summer”►Designed to register
blacks in Mississippi to vote
►Also set up voluntary schools
►Over 1000 enlisted, mostly white Northern college students
Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman
►Three civil rights workers killed by Ku Klux Klan members
►Disappeared in June; bodies found in August
► Perpetrators tried for civil rights violations; received light sentences
►One not convicted until 2005
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party►Alternative to
segregationist Democratic Party
► LBJ concerned about losing Southern support
►Fannie Lou Hameraddressed Credentials Committee
► Failed to seat delegates
►Brought attention to blacks’ lack of political representation
►White Democrats walk out.
Aaron Henry, chair of the Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party delegation, speaks
before the Credentials Committee at the
Democratic National Convention in 1964
1964The 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.
African-Americans begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Edmund Pettus Bridge by a police blockade.
►Marches for voting
rights in 1965►First march known as
“Bloody Sunday”
►MLK led a second, symbolic march
►Third march reached Montgomery
“Bloody Sunday”: Alabama state police attack
marchers with tear gas and batons at the Edmund
Pettus Bridge
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.
1965
Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death.
The Watts Riots►Los Angeles, August
1965►A white police officer
stopped a black motorist; driver, passenger, and driver’s mother arrested
►Crowd assembled, began throwing rocks
►Riots resulted in 34 deaths and $35 million in damages
A building burns during the riots
1966Militant Black Panthers.
Young African Americans think the older protesters are too slow and these young people are willing to use violence.
The Black Panthers
►Founded in 1966 by Huey
Newton, Bobby Seale, and others…
►A means of armed resistance against oppression of blacks
►Developed “Ten Point Plan” of goals including self-determination, full employment, adequate housing and education
►Party disintegrated in 1970s
Black Panthers gather at the
Lincoln Memorial, 1970
The “Black Power” Movement
►A more militant philosophy than MLK’s
► Stokely Carmichael advocated racial separation, black nationalism, violence in certain situations
► Important to blacks’ self-worth to make gains without whites’ assistance.
“One of the tragedies of the
struggle against racism is that up
to this point there has been no
national organization which could
speak to the growing militancy of
young black people in the urban
ghettos and the black-belt South.
There has been only a ‘civil
rights’ movement, whose tone of
voice was adapted to an audience
of middle-class whites. It served
as a sort of buffer zone between
that audience and angry young
blacks.”
Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton,
Black Power
1968Martin 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.
- Effect of MLK assassination?
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968; prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
- Also called the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
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. Required in Oklahoma until the 1980s.
Those who lived through the Finger plan - court ordered
busing in Oklahoma City Public Schools - describe it as a
tumultuous time for children and adults. This photo was taken
in Sept. 1972 at Capitol Hill High School. Photo by Bob
Albright. BOB ALBRIGHT 1972