I have a dream Flashcards
(41 cards)
Earl Warren
14th chief justice of the united states
liberal
revolutionary in the supreme court and made sure many of the major supreme courts rulings on major civil rights legislation were unanimous to strengthen the case
brown v board of education date and case and ruling
1954
case brought by NAACP and Thurgood marshall
Brown’s daughter had to walk six blocks to her school bus stop to ride to Monroe Elementary, her segregated black school one mile away, while Sumner Elementary, a white school, was seven blocks from her house
overturned Plessy precedent of separate but equal
even if facilities were equal, it was psychologically harmful
unanimous 9-0 decision
when and why did brown 2 happen
1955
brown 1 set no time frame for integrating schools
brown 2 declared it had to be carried out ‘with all deliberate speed’
how significant was the murder of emmett till to the cr movement
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement.
Emmett Till’s murder was a spark in the upsurge of activism and resistance that became known as the Civil Rights movement. The sight of his brutalized body pushed many who had been content to stay on the sidelines directly into the fight
little rock
by 1956 not one public school in the south had been integrated
1957 central high school, little rock, Arkansas integrated
9 a/a students carefully selected
faced huge violence and verbal aggression
resulted in direct action by President Eisenhower as he had to deploy 1000 of the 101st airborne division to get the kids inside the school
Melba Pattillo
one of the little rock nine
was inspired by the ‘self-assured air’ of Thurgood marshall
was pushed down the stairs + had burning paper and chemicals thrown in her face
when older said she couldn’t believe NAACP had put them in such a position
wrote a book afterwards ‘Warriors Don’t Cry’
when was the Montgomery bus boycott and which boycott before it had failed
1956
baton rouge boycott before it had failed so needed this to succeed
spark that set of Montgomery bus boycott
Rosa Parks, Montgomery, Alabama - NAACP activist
I white man standing so driver asks four black passengers to stand as they couldn’t sit parallel
Rosa parks refused to move
E.D. Nixon took up her case
how boycott worked
blacks boycotted the buses which destroyed businesses as a/a weren’t able to shop where they used to and the bus company’s profits slumped
Martin luther King led the boycott and this helped his rise to fame
MIA = Montgomery improvement association set up to help blacks (eg offered alternative lifts)
381 days bus company had to buckle
SCLC what does it stand for, aims and when
southern Christian leadership conference
advance the civil rights movement in a non-violent manner
1957
SCLC failure
1961-2 Albany, Georgia
protest against racially discrimination - not enough media coverage and so was quietly dealt with
SCLC birmingham
Birmingham, Alabama 1963
non-violent protested over discrimination
Bull Connor sent police in who violently ended the protest
MLK ‘a letter from a Birmingham jail’
businesses offered some desegregation
MIA
As a result of this, about 40,000 African Americans joined the boycott, a form of non-violent mass protest. This made up over 90% of the city’s African American population.
The Montgomery Improvement Association, MIA, was formed by black ministers and other community leaders of the city as well. The group’s mission was to coordinate and maintain the boycott. The MIA was led by the, at the time, rising star in the civil rights movement, none other than Martin Luther King Jr. himself. Beyond the boycott, the MIA also sought to improve race relations in general.
As a consequence of this, the MIA decided to continue the boycott until the city of Montgomery would meet its demands. The initial demands by this group included:
To hire black drivers
To enforce courtesy
A first-come, first-seated policy
However, the group eventually helped coordinate a legal challenge to the city’s bus segregation ordinance in partnership with the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.
Why was the Montgomery bus boycotts significant
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on several fronts. First, it is widely regarded as the earliest mass protest on behalf of civil rights in the United States, setting the stage for additional large-scale actions outside the court system to bring about fair treatment for African Americans.
Second, in his leadership of the MIA, Martin Luther King emerged as a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement while also solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance. King’s approach remained a hallmark of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.
Montgomery put martin at the centre of attention for the spotlights ad the news turned from Roser park to MLK.. Montgomery sarked more civil rights movements and was the major reason
Little rock nine
Many schools in the South refused to admit black students, even though the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision decreed school segregation unconstitutional. Despite resistance Civil Rights organizations worked to enrol black students in segregated schools. In Arkansas, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) recruited young girls and boys to integrate schools. Daisy Bates was the president of the Arkansas NAACP chapter. She was an expert organizer. Under Bates, the NAACP sued the Little Rock school board. Then she and her husband recruited nine students to integrate the all-white Central High School. The reaction from white -parents and students was bad they started kicking over barriers and was upset with the decision of Eisenhower In sending the troops inn
The impact that the little rock nine have on the civil rights is that the little rock nine was nine black students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957 testing a landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
Greensboro Sit-In?
What is a sit in -A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change?
What happened- The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. By February 5, some 300 students had joined the protest at Woolworth’s, paralyzing the lunch counter and other local businesses. Heavy television coverage of the Greensboro sit-ins sparked a sit-in movement that spread quickly to college towns throughout the South and into the North, as young Blacks and whites joined in various forms of peaceful protest segregation in libraries, beaches, hotels and other establishments. Wasn’t served as shouldn’t be served at the same time as the white people
By the end of March, the movement had spread to 55 cities in 13 states. Though many were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, national media coverage of the sit-ins brought increasing attention to the civil rights movement.
In response to the success of the sit-in movement, dining facilities across the South were being integrated by the summer of 1960. At the end of July, when many local college students were on summer vacation, the Greensboro Woolworth’s quietly integrated its lunch counter. Four Black Woolworth’s employees—Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones and Charles Best—were the first to be served.
How successful and why were the sit ins
The sit-in movement produced a new sense of pride and power for African Americans. By rising up on their own and achieving substantial success protesting against segregation in the society in which they lived, Blacks realized that they could change their communities with local coordinated action. For many white Southerners, the sit-in movement demonstrated Blacks’ dissatisfaction with the status quo and showed that economic harm could come to white-owned businesses unless they desegregated peacefully. The sit-in movement proved the inevitability of the end of the Jim Crow system. Most of the success in actual desegregation came in the upper Southern states, such as in cities in Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, and Tennessee. On the other hand, no cities in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, or South Carolina desegregated as a result of the sit-in movement.
The sit-in movement marked the first major effort by thousands of local Blacks in civil rights activism. However, the sit-ins failed to create the kind of national attention necessary for any federal intervention. Although SNCC did develop out of the sit-in movement, becoming a permanent organization separate from CORE and the SCLC, the sit-ins faded out by the end of 1960. A new phase of Black protest arose in the form of Freedom Rides, and new coordinated white resistance changed the tactics of civil rights leaders, dramatically raising the level and degree of violence by white civil rights opponents.
Freedom rights 1961 What were they
Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Freedom Riders tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters at bus stations in Alabama, South Carolina and other Southern states. The groups were confronted by arresting police officers—as well as horrific violence from white protestors—along their routes, but also drew international attention to the civil rights movement.
How did people react to the Freedom Rides?
On May 14, 1961, the Greyhound bus was the first to arrive in Anniston, Alabama. There, an angry mob of about 200 white people surrounded the bus, causing the driver to continue past the bus station. The mob followed the bus in automobiles, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. The Freedom Riders escaped the bus as it burst into flames, only to be brutally beaten by members of the surrounding mob.
The white people were infuriated by the protests of the Freedom Riders. They hated their guts to stand up to them, and then picket. Typical reactions to the protests was the throwing of rotten eggs and tomatoes, and bottles at the Freedom Riders. the reaction was far stretched when a grazier’s son rammed the Freedom Rides bus off the road when it was leaving Walgett in the middle of the night. Luckily no one was hurt, but this incident showed the reactions the Freedom Rides were receiving, and the incident was also make national as a reporter was on board at that time. The reactions from the Aboriginal people were different. When the Freedom Riders first began their protests, the Aboriginal members of the community were confused as to what their motives were, but after seeing their determination, they also extended a hand, and supported them in their protest.
Who was Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor and what role did he play
He was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, for more than two decades. He strongly opposed the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
After a stop in Anniston, Alabama, the Greyhound bus of the Freedom Riders was attacked. They were offered no police protection. After they left town, they were forced to stop by a violent mob that firebombed and burned the bus, but no activists were fatally hurt. A new Greyhound bus was placed into service and departed for Birmingham. The activists on the earlier Trailways bus had been accosted by KKK members who boarded the bus in Atlanta and beat up the activists, pushing them all to the back of the bus.
The Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham on May 14, 1961. As the Trailways bus reached the terminal in Birmingham, a large mob of Klansmen and news reporters was waiting for them. The Riders were viciously attacked soon after they disembarked from the bus and attempted to gain service at the whites-only lunch counter. Some were taken to the loading dock area, away from reporters, but some reporters were also beaten with metal bars, pipes, and bats and one’s camera was destroyed. After 15 minutes, the police finally arrived, but by then most Klansmen had left.
Connor intentionally let the Klansmen beat the Riders for 15 minutes with no police intervention. He publicly blamed the violence on many factors, saying that “No policemen were in sight as the buses arrived, because they were visiting their mothers on Mother’s Day”.[14] He insisted that the violence came from out-of-town meddlers and that police had rushed to the scene “as quickly as possible.” The violence was covered by national media.
Who was Robert F. Kennedy and what role did he play?
Robert F. Kennedy became Attorney General in January 1961, after his brother John F. Kennedy won election as President of the United States. Robert Kennedy had given a speech expressing the administration’s support of civil rights to a Southern white audience a few days after the start of the Freedom Rides on May 6. However the issue was not yet a major priority for a Kennedy White House preoccupied with Cold War politics.
Caught off guard by the violence that erupted during the May 14 Anniston, AL bus burning and the riot at Birmingham Trailways Bus Station, Robert Kennedy dispatched special assistant John Seigenthaler to Birmingham, AL to aid the embattled CORE Freedom Riders. Seigenthaler helped arrange a plane flight from Birmingham to New Orleans, LA. Robert Kennedy sought protection for the Riders by Alabama state officials like Gov. John Patterson, with limited success, eventually sending in U.S. Marshals to protect the Riders during the May 21 siege and firebombing of the First Baptist Church.
The Freedom Rides campaign was an opportunity for the Kennedy brothers to begin building a rapport with civil rights leaders through phone conversations, meetings, and cautious collaborations. These ties to the Civil Rights Movement would only deepen in the coming years.
In 1964, Robert F. Kennedy was elected as U.S. Senator for New York. He was assassinated on June 5, 1968 while he campaigned for President.
James Meredith, October 2, 1962. Who was James Meredith
First black students to get into Mississippi uni, he was an air force pilot, after high school, Meredith spent nine years in the United States Air Force before enrolling in Jackson State College — an all-Black school — in Mississippi.
What was ‘Ole Miss’
This is later on. is Mississippi uni but Ole Miss was a centre of activity during the American civil rights movement when a race riot erupted in 1962 following the attempted admission of James Meredith, an African American, to the segregated campus. The Ole Miss riot of 1962, , was an incident of mob violence by proponents of racial segregation beginning the night of September 30, 1962. Federal and U.S. state law enforcement were dispatched to accompany Meredith during his registration to maintain civil order, but a riot erupted on campus. Two civilians, one being a French journalist, were killed during the night, and over 300 people were injured, including one-third of the federal law enforcement personnel deployed.
What roles did Robert F Kennedy and Governor Barnett play?
Tried to do everything to not let him In Robert Kennedy got the national guard to let him in. On September 29, 1962, as measures are taken to safely transport James Meredith to the University of Mississippi where he will enrol in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding desegregation of the institution, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy make a series of phone calls to Gov. Ross Barnett who has openly defied the Court’s ruling. In one secretly recorded call that day, Attorney General Kennedy gets exasperated when the governor shoots down his idea for crowd control.