Civil Rights

Name______________________________ Civil Rights Movement Highlight Answers “In 1890, Louisiana passed a law requiring railroads to provide ‘equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races.’ In the Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that this ‘separate but equal’ law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees all Americans equal treatment under the law. Armed with the Plessy decision, states throughout the nation, but especially in the South, passed what were known as Jim Crow laws, aimed at separating the races. After the Civil War, some African Americans tried to escape Southern racism by moving north. This migration of Southern African Americans speeded up greatly during World War I, as many African-American sharecroppers abandoned farms for the promise of industrial jobs in Northern cities. However, they discovered racial prejudice and segregation there, too. In many ways, the events of World War II set the stage for the civil rights movement. First, the demand for soldiers in the early 1940s created a shortage of white male laborers. That labor shortage opened up new job opportunities for African Americans, Latinos, and white women. Second, nearly one million African Americans served in the armed forces, which needed so many fighting men that they had to end their discriminatory policies. Many African-American soldiers returned from the war determined to fight for their own freedom now that they had helped defeat fascist regimes overseas. Third, during the war, civil rights organizations actively campaigned for African-American voting rights and challenged Jim Crow laws. The desegregation campaign was led largely by the NAACP, which had fought since 1909 to end segregation. One influential figure in this campaign was Charles Hamilton Houston, a brilliant Howard University law professor. In deciding the NAACP’s legal strategy, Houston focused on the inequality between the separate schools that many states provided. At that time, the nation spent ten times as much money educating a white child as an African-American child. Thus, Houston focused the organization’s limited resources on challenging the most glaring inequalities of segregated public education. In 1938, he placed a team of his best law students under the direction of Thurgood Marshall. Over the next 23 years, Marshall and his NAACP lawyers would win 29 out of 32 cases argued before the Supreme Court. Marshall’s most stunning victory came on May 17, 1954, in the case known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In this case, the father of eight-year-old Linda Brown had charged the board of education of Topeka, Kansas, with violating Linda’s rights by denying her admission to an all-white elementary school four blocks from her house. The nearest all-black elementary school was 21 blocks away. In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down segregation in schooling as an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that, ‘[I]n the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place.’ The Brown decision was relevant for some 12 million schoolchildren in 21 states.” ~ The Americans 1. This Supreme Court case ended segregation in public schools (1) Marbury v. Madison 2. The leading lawyer in the Brown v. Board of Education case was (1) Thurgood Marshall 1

Name______________________________ Civil Rights Movement (2) Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (2) Dwight D. Eisenhower Jackie Robinson and Crossing the ‘Color Line’: ● In 1947, Jackie Robinson became the first African-American baseball player to cross the ‘color line’ and join the major leagues ● In 1948, President Truman ordered the desegregation of the armed forces Brown v. Board of Education, 1954: ● Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the unanimous decision, ruling that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional ● ‘Separate-but-equal has no place in the field of public education. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.’ ● In Arkansas, the governor refused to provide special protection to nine black students attending an all-white high school in Little Rock ● President Eisenhower ordered federal troops to Little Rock to ensure that the students could attend the school Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: ● A Baptist minister, Dr. King emerged in the late 1950s as the main leader ● Like Gandhi before him, King believed in non-violence – that passive resistance to unjust laws could change the attitudes of oppressors. ● King carried out this resistance through civil disobedience – if the government passed an unjust law, people should break the law and face the consequences Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956: ● In the 1950s, old ‘Jim Crow’ laws in Southern states still prevented African Americans from sharing restaurants, water fountains, or public buses with whites. ● When Rosa Parks, a seamstress, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, local black leaders began a 13-month boycott of the city’s public buses. ● Dr. King emerged as the leader of the boycott. Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides in the South, 1960 – 1961: ● In 1960, African-American students held a ‘sit-in’ at a ‘Whites Only’ lunch counter in North Carolina ● In 1961, interracial groups rode buses in Freedom Rides throughout the South ● The Freedom Riders sought to create confrontations in hope that the federal government would intervene ~ The Key to Understanding U.S. History 1- Who was Jackie Robinson and why was he significant? Jackie robinsoln became the first africna american baseball player to cross the ‘color line’ and join the major leagues 2- What did President Truman order in 1948? the desegregation of the armed forces 3- Why was Brown v. the Board of Education a significant Supreme Court case? declared that segregation was unconstitional 4- What happened in Little Rock, Arkansas? the governor refused to provide special protection to nine black students attending an all-white high school in Little Rock 5- What did the governor of Little Rock fail to do? failed to uphold the integration 2