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.

Ike

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.

SNCC becomes much more radical under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael: “Black Power”.

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

►“I say segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

►Gov. George Wallace

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

►Wallace attempted to block the march from Selma to the capital at Montgomery.

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