Social ChangeChange is happening in the Southeastern United States. Whites are loosing control and are loosing their hold on segregation, so they turn to violence.

Social Change

After the war, MS changed. A stronger middle class started forming with many soldiers coming back from war and going to college.

People began living in suburbs and subdivisions.

Vacuum cleaners and frozen foods made life easier and also replaced the black maids who had been used before.

The split between what had been sharecropper and land owner, disappeared.

Segregation and Integration

1896-Plessy vs Ferguson case legally established a “separate but equal concept.” The concept allowed for facilities to be separate, as long as they were equal.

During the 1940’s and 1950’s it became evident to southerners that soon, this concept was no longer going to be legal.

Governor Hugh White of MS decided he would improve black schools instead of “force” integration.

Gov. Hugh White’s Plan

Raise black teacher pay.

Build black schools to match white schools.

Asked for black teachers support, they refused.

He was shocked they wanted integration.

Brown vs Board of Education

1954 The Supreme Court ruled that the “separate

but equal concept” was unconstitutional. 1955-Government decided that all schools

must integrate with “all deliberate speed.” Immediately there was a white resistance

movement. White Citizens Council-formed to protect

segregation. (Delta)

Civil Rights Movement

During this time, many IGNORANT whites (not all whites) were very much aware that the segregation they wanted to keep, was not going to hold up.

What we know as the Civil Rights movement is a time period when African Americans used NON VIOLENCE resistance and ideas to gain equality in the South.

Many different things happened, whites became more violent, while blacks attempted to remain non violent.

These are some of those events that happened in MISSISSIPPI…

Emmett Till

1955 14 year old black boy from Chicago. In MS visiting his cousins and he was accused of

“wolf whistled” at a white woman in a store on a dare from his cousin.

Two men (the woman’s husband and brother) kidnapped him.

Beat him, killed him, and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River.

Emmett’s mother wanted an open casket, so the world could see what happened to her child.

Tallahatchie River

Killers

J. W. Milam Roy Bryant

Trial

Milam and Bryant spend about an hour in the court room before they were released on no charges by an all white jury.

They later bragged and admitted their guilt in a national magazine.

Made white Mississippians look terrible.

Hello Warning Slide

Emmett Till

Crisis at Ole Miss

1962 James Meredith, a black college student, was refused as he tried to enroll at Ole Miss.

President JFK sent federal Marshalls to MS to help Meredith register.

Later at an Ole Miss football game, the president of the college started a riot of whites demanding Meredith not be allowed in.

National Guard had to be sent in.

Crisis at Ole Miss

James MeredithCivil rights monument at

Ole Miss

Medgar Evers

1963 Medgar Evers was leader

of the MS NAACP branch.

He was shot and killed on his front porch by Byron de La Beckwith a white supremacist.

Beckwith was put on trial but released by a “hung jury.”

Medgar Evers widow took this as an improvement.

For some white men in an all white jury to be willing to put a white man behind bars, was an improvement in MS.

Medgar Evers

Medgar evers Medgar evers

Medgar Evers

Home Byron de la beckwith

Convicted 31 years later 1994

Trueknowledge.com

Trueknowledge.com

0 years old

2001 age 80

Organizations to end Segregation

NAACP SNCC

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Sit-Ins

Demonstrations where groups enter public places and refuse to leave.

These pictures would circulate the nation, making southern whites look moronic.

These pictures encouraged white college students to come and help blacks in the south!

Freedom Summer-1964

1,000 college students from up north boarded busses and road south to help African Americans get registered to vote.

These white students would live in black homes, go to black churches.

Their presence brought MUCH hostility from whites. They did not want interference.

By August-4 people had died, 80 beaten, thousands had been arrested.

67 homes, churches, buildings had been burned or bombed.

Neshoba CountyMichael Schwerner, James Chaney,

Andrew Goodman

Went to Neshoba County to investigate a burned church. They were arrested and let go only to be chased down and killed.

FBI later located the bodies after paying off an informant.

Neshoba County SheriffLaw2.umkc.edu

MIBURN (Mississippi Burning)

Edger Ray Killins 200580 yrs old sentenced to 60 yrs

video

Freedom Summer

AT THIS POINT..Most white Mississippians did not agree with this violence. They were actually getting tired of being the “bad guys” of the country.

Also remember, a lot of this violence is now happening in small, backwood towns in MS where the police and small town mayors were involved.

They did resent the Civil Rights workers coming and interfering with their state.

Freedom Summer

MCCOMB HATTIESBURG

Freedom Summer

Trying to register to vote Freedom schools

School Integration

Schools in MS did not integrate until the 1970’s.

This is 20 years after Brown vs Board of Education.

Private schools developed for people who would not allow their children to go to school with black students “white flight”.

People feared violence, but it was usually all talk.

Discrimination for black principals, almost always made vice principals.