April 30, 2009

President Harry Truman Wipes Out Military Segregation:

On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman issued two executive

orders. One instituted fair employment practices in the civilian
agencies of the federal government; the other provided for
"equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces
without regard to race, color, religion,or national origin."
 April 30, 2009

Brown Vs. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

Thurgood Marshall on "Saving the Race"

Thurgood Marshall was the first African American to serve on the

U. S. Supreme Court. His legal career began with the NAACP.
Many of the NAACP's records reveal Marshall's grueling
traveling and meeting schedule, as well as his acute sense of
humor, even in the face of threats from whites and distrust by
African Americans.

Beginning in 1950, the NAACP and the

NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys
worked on a school desegregation case
originating in Charleston, S.C. In 1952
the case came before the U.S. Supreme
Court, whose members decided to hear
it with cases from Delaware, Virginia,
Kansas, and the District of Columbia
under the collective title Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka.
Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP
lawyers argued the case and won.
Brown marked a landmark victory in
the fight for full citizenship, offering
hope that the system of segregation was
notunassailable.

George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood

Marshall, and James Nabrit,
congratulating each other,
following Supreme Court
decision declaring segregation
unconstitutional,1954
 April 30, 2009

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person

in Montgomery, Alabama, and was arrested in December 1955,
she set off a train of events that generated a momentum the civil
rights movement had never before experienced.
Local civil rights leaders were hoping for such an opportunity
to test the city's segregation laws. Deciding to boycott the buses,
the African American community soon formed a new organization
to supervise the boycott, the Montgomery Improvement
Association (MIA). The young pastor of the Dexter Avenue
Baptist Church, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was chosen as
the first MIA leader.
The boycott, more successful than anyone hoped, led to a 1956
Supreme Court decision banning segregated buses.
 April 30, 2009

Daisy Bates and The Little Rock Nine

Arkansas-born Daisy Bates

worked as a crusading
newspaper owner-journalist,
becoming president of the
Arkansas NAACP. After the
1954 Brown school-
desegregation decision,
Little Rock school board
officials decided to begin
desegregation of Central
High School in September
1957.

Arkansas governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National

Guard to preserve order, a euphemism for keeping the nine
prospective African American students out. However, on September
25, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas
National Guard and deployed paratroopers to carry out the
desegregation orders of the federal courts. Bates supported the
students throughout the year and with them received the NAACP's
Spingarn Medal in 1958.
 April 30, 2009

James Meredith and Ole Miss

Marion S. Trikosko.James Meredith, Oxford, Mississippi, 1962

In September 1962, a federal court ordered the University of Mississippi to

accept James Meredith, a twenty-eight-year-old Air Force Veteran, much to the
consternation of segregationists. Governor Ross Barnett said he would never
allow the school to be integrated. After days of violence and rioting by whites,
Meredith, accompanied by federal officials, enrolled on October 1, 1962.
Because he had earned college credits elsewhere, Meredith graduated the
following August without incident.

In 1966 Meredith began a 220-mile "March Against Fear" from Memphis,

Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. He hoped to demonstrate a positive change
in the racial climate, but he was shot soon after he commenced the march.
Civil rights leaders rallied to the cause and came to continue the march from
the point at which Meredith fell.
 April 30, 2009

Sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and Demonstrations

Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-in

In 1960 four freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and

Technical College in Greensboro strolled into the F. W. Woolworth
store and quietly sat down at the lunch counter. They were not
served, but they stayed until closing time. The next morning they
came with twenty-five more students. Two weeks later similar
demonstrations had spread to several cities, within a year similar
peaceful demonstrations took place in over a hundred cities North
and South. At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, the
students formed their own organization, the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "Snick"). The
students' bravery in the face of verbal and physical abuse led to
integration in many stores even before the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964.
 April 30, 2009

Freedom Riders Seek to Integrate Southern Transportation

The Freedom Riders of the early 1960s, organized by the

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), rode through the South
seeking integration of the bus, rail, and airport terminals. This
Associated Press release, authored by Sid Moody, includes a map
and an exceptionally descriptive text that illustrates the routes
taken and the history behind the freedom rides. Together, the map
and text record the individual cities visited, when and where
violence occurred, and how many Freedom Riders were arrested.
The text also describes some disturbances resulting from the
staged sit-ins and forced recognition of CORE's causes and issues.
Looking at the map and reading the text, one can perceive the
struggles that these Freedom Riders endured in their quest for full
citizenship in 1961.
 April 30, 2009

1963 March On Washington

The August 28, 1963, March on Washington riveted the nation's

attention. Rather than the anticipated hundred thousand marchers,
more than twice that number appeared, astonishing even its
organizers.

Blacks and whites, side by side, called on President John F.

Kennedy and the Congress to provide equal access to public
facilities, quality education, adequate employment, and
decent housing for African Americans. During the assembly
at the Lincoln Memorial, the young preacher who had led the
successful Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, Reverend Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a stirring message with the
refrain, "I Have a Dream."
 April 30, 2009

1964 Civil Rights Act

The Civil Rights bill was brought before Congress in 1963 and in a
speech on television on 11th June, Kennedy pointed out that: "The
Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the
nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of
completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the
same day; one third as much chance of completing college; one third
as much chance of becoming a professional man; twice as much
chance of becoming unemployed; about one-seventh as much chance
of earning $10,000 a year; a life expectancy which is seven years
shorter; and the prospects of earning only half as much."

Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil RIghts Act

The 1964 Civil Rights Act made racial discrimination in public

places, such as theaters, restaurants and hotels, illegal. It also
required employers to provide equal employment opportunities.
Projects involving federal funds could now be cut off if there was
evidence of discriminated based on colour, race or national origin.
April 30, 2009
 April 30, 2009

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

The 1965 Voting Rights Act created a significant change in the

status of African Americans throughout the South. The Voting
Rights Act prohibited the states from using literacy tests,
interpreting the Constitution, and other methods of excluding Afric
an Americans from voting. Prior to this, only an estimated twenty-
three percent of voting-age blacks were registered nationally, but
by 1969 the number had jumped to sixty-one percent.