• integrated prom• How is it that Wilcox High has been having

segregated proms all this time?• Who in Wilcox county is organizing to have an

integrated prom?• Do you think our civil rights are secure now,

after the civil rights movement and all that happened in the 1960s and before?

Civil Rights

To understand the people’s struggle for civil rights during the 50s and the

60s

Section 1:Taking on Segregation

Main Idea: Activism and a series of Supreme Court decisions advanced equal rights for African American in the 1950s and 1960s

The Supreme Court decisions beginning in 1954 have guaranteed civil rights for Americans today

The Segregation System

• The 14th amendment was passed in 1868. It guarantees all Americans equal treatment under the law

• However, in the landmark case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal was equal, and therefore not a violation of the 14th amendment. – States throughout the nation, especially in the South,

passed Jim Crow laws: laws aimed at separating the races.• Separate facilities for each race• Forbade interracial marriage

What were the effects of the Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson?

What happened after the Court decided that separate but equal WAS

equal?

A Developing Civil Rights Movement

• In many ways, the events of WWII set the stage for the civil rights movement

• With a shortage of white male workers during the war, African-Americans saw increased job opportunities and experienced better jobs and better salaries

• Nearly one million African Americans served in the armed forces during WWII; many returned determined to fight for their own freedom now that they had fought for freedom overseas

• During the war, civil rights campaign and protests led to some gains, such as president FDR prohibiting racial discrimination by federal agencies and defense industries.

Challenging Segregation in Court

• The desegregation campaign was led largely by the NAACP, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

• One of the NAACP’s strategy was to fight the racial injustice through the Court. The NAACP focused on the inequality in education

• The NAACP’s leading lawyer was Thurgood Marshall; he and his team won several cases including the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education

• In the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Supreme Court declared that separate but equal was inherently unequal, and hence a violation of the 14th Amendment: segregation in school was illegal

• Resistance to desegregation: some states refused to accept desegregation; others dragged their feet in implementing it. In some places, violence was committed against those who supported desegregation

Why weren’t schools in all regions desegregated immediately after the Brown

Court decision?

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Impatient with slow pace of change in the courts, some African-American activists began to take direct action to win their rights

• On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress and NAACP officer refused to give up her seat on the segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

• NAACP leaders as well as other leaders of the African-American community heard of the arrest and suggested a bus boycott– They elected pastor Martin Luther King, Jr., to lead the boycott– Boycott lasted 381 days. In 1956, the Supreme Court outlawed bus

segregation

Why was Rosa Parks’ action on December 1, 1955 significant?

Martin Luther King and the SCLC

• The bus boycott proved the power of nonviolent resistance• King called his brand of nonviolent resistance “soul force”

– Love one’s enemy (Jesus)– Civil disobedience (Thoreau)– Massive demonstrations (Randolph)– Resist oppression without violence (Ghandi)

• King joined ministers and civil rights leaders to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); its purpose was “to carry on nonviolent crusades against the evils of second-class citizenship”

What were the central points of Dr. King’s philosophy?

The Movement Spreads

• Students at an African-American university in North Carolina organized a national protest group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (“snick”)– Organized protests to challenge the system

• SNCC was inspired by the sit-ins carried out by CORE. In a sit-in, African-American protesters sat down at segregated lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served

• students and sit ins• How did students train for nonviolence?• How did the community react to the sit ins?