The Civil

Rights
Movement
Brown v Board of Education of
Topeka, KS
•1954
•Linda Brown, a student of Topeka’s public schools, is required to go to a
school that is segregated and over a mile away from her home. There is
an all-white school only six blocks from her home.
•These plaintiffs were arguing that de jure segregation was a violation of the
14th amendment and that these facilities were not of an equal setting

•Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, rejecting the idea that

racially segregated schools could offer equal services
•Court ordered the desegregation of public schools “with all deliberate
speed”
Brown Continued.
•The case is a class action suit brought with 13
parents and 20 children were arguing that the
system is unequal.

•The NAACP will provide the legal argumentation in

front of the Supreme Court with Thurgood Marshall
serving as the lead lawyer.

•The Supreme Court will rule in favor of the Plaintiffs

and that Plessy v Ferguson is no longer
constitutional. De Jure Segregation of schools should
no longer be the law of the land.
Brown Pt. 3
➢The Supreme Court decision will face staunch resistance
throughout the South.

➢Southern Manifesto-The Brown decision angered many

white Southerners and in 1956, over 100 Southern members
of Congress signed the “Southern Manifesto” declaring the
Court’s decision to be “abuse of judicial power” and pledging
to support segregation through every legal avenue available

➢There won’t be meaningful changes in desegregation until

the end of the 1960’s into the 1970’s
Emmett Till
•14-year old from Chicago, Illinois who was
visited family near Money, Mississippi
•Accused of making inappropriate advances
towards a married white woman outside of a
Grocery Store.
•The woman’s husband and brother-in-law will
kidnap and lynch Till then submerge his body
in the local river.
Till part 2
• With the media covering the funeral, the US and the world are
shown the effects of lynching and lack of rights in the South
for African-Americans.

•The media outrage helps reignite and reinvigorate the Civil

Rights movement.

•Helps create the conditions to pass the Civil Rights Act of

1957. Commission on Civil Rights and outlaws voter
intimidation.
Rosa Parks
•1913 – 2005
•Civil rights activist even before her
famous refusal to give up her bus seat
on Dec. 1, 1955
•Parks was arrested for violating the city
of Birmingham, AL segregation laws
which required that blacks surrender
their seats if necessary to
accommodate white passengers
•Montgomery begins to boycott the
system. Organized by the
Montgomery Improvement
Association and NAACP.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
•In response to Parks’ arrest, black leaders
organized a boycott of the Birmingham public
transportation system
•Over 75% of the bus system’s riders were black,
so the boycott seriously damaged revenues. The
community helped boycotters by providing other
means of transportation through cheap taxi fare
and car pools.

•The boycott lasted for 381 days, until Parks’ case

was resolved when the Supreme Court declared
the Birmingham segregation law
unconstitutional- Browder v Gayle- Federal courts
rule that Alabama’s bus policies were a violation of
the 14th Amendment.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
•1929 – 1968
•As a young minister, King was chosen to
organize the Birmingham bus boycott and
chose to do so using only non-violent means
of protest (Civil disobedience)
•The success of the boycott propelled him
and his technique of “civil disobedience” to
national fame
•Major Contributions: Civil Rights Act 1964,
Voting Rights Act 1965, St Augustine
Movement, Montgomery Boycott, March of
Washington
 Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC)
•Created in 1957 in the wake of the success of
the Montgomery Boycott.
•Collection of Southern African- American
leaders working towards improvements in
equality by using civil disobedience and
boycotts in order to help blacks to register to
vote
•Civil rights organization composed of mainly
Southern African-American ministers which
worked to end segregation
•Helped organize events in Selma, Alabama and
St. Augustine, Florida.
•First president was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Eisenhower’s Reaction
President Eisenhower supported civil
rights, but believed that racism and
segregation would have to end gradually,
stating “I don’t believe you can change the
hearts of men with laws or [court]
decisions”
Still, once the Supreme Court ordered
schools desegregated, Eisenhower felt
obligated as President to enforce that
decision
The Little Rock
Nine
•Sept. 1957
•Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the National
Guard to block 9 black students from enrolling at
the all-white Little Rock Central High School and
later simply relied on white mobs to intimidate
the students
•Eisenhower ordered the US Army to protect the
black students , sending 1000 soldiers to
encircle the school and allow the students to
register; the soldiers stayed for the rest of the
school year
•1958- Little Rock closed schools for a whole year
to protest integration and appeal decisions in
court system.
Civil Rights Act of 1957
Designed to protect black’s right to
vote
Created a civil rights division within
the Dept. of Justice and the US
Commission on Civil Rights to
investigate and prosecute
allegations of voting violations
Greensboro Sit-in
Feb. 1960
4 students at NC A&T in Greensboro, NC sat
down at the racially segregated lunch counter
at Woolworth’s and demanded service,
refusing to leave when they were denied; over
the next few days, the number of students
involved grew and the sit-ins spread
throughout the state, gaining national
attention
By summer, Woolworth’s relented and
desegregated their lunch counters
Jesse Jackson
1941 – Present
Student at NC A&T who was
inspired by the sit-ins and went on
to become a major, if often
controversial, civil rights leader and
later candidate for President in the
1980s
Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC)
•Executive director of the SCLC, Ella Baker, held a
convention at Shaw University in April 1960 to
help students organize themselves into the
SNCC, a student-led civil rights organization
dedicated to continuing the successes of non-
violent protest and to encouraging rural Southern
blacks to register to vote

•Used Sit-Ins to protest segregated stores and

restaurants around college towns in the South.

•In 1964, 3 SNCC members were murdered in

Mississippi while attempting to register black
voters