What Are Civil Rights? - Kyrene School District

What Are Civil Rights? - Kyrene School District

What Are Civil Rights?
The American Civil Rights
Movement
After the Civil War laws were passed that
limited the rights of African-Americans.
These were called black codes.
 Plessy v Ferguson was a court case in the
1890s that upheld this separation

Jim Crow Laws were laws passed after
Plessy v Ferguson that limited the rights of
African-Americans.
 Provided for the separation of the races.
 Brown v Board of Education ruled that
separate is never equal

Civil Rights

Definition: Rights granted to all people
Brown vs. Board of Education of
Topeka (1954)

A case in which the Supreme Court ruled
that “separate but equal” education for
black and white students was
unconstitutional.
Overturned Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896)
 Provided the foundation for most of the civil
rights laws in the 1950s and 1960s

Linda Brown
(age 8)
Monroe School, the segregated
school that Brown was forced to
attend in 1954
Showdown in Little Rock (1957)



The school board in Little Rock, Arkansas made
plans to integrate the public schools
Nine African-American students were enrolled to
integrate Central High
Gov. Orval Faubus sided with the
segregationists and ordered National Guard
troops to prevent students from entering


This continued for 3 weeks
President Eisenhower ordered the 101st
Airborne to escort the students into Central High
Little Rock’s Central High
School
The Little Rock Nine
Gloria Ray
Terrance Roberts
Melba Patillo
Elizabeth Eckford
Ernest Green
Minnijean Brown
Jefferson Thomas
Carlotta Wells
Thelma Mothershed
Terrence Roberts being
stopped from entering
Central H.S by National
Guardsmen
The Little Rock Nine being escorted
by the 101st Airborne on the campus
of Central High School
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955)
City buses: white passengers in the front,
black passengers in the back (blacks were
forced to give up seats to whites)
 Rosa Parks: arrested for not giving up her
seat to a white man
 Martin Luther King Jr. was chosen to help
lead the boycott
 Before the boycott began, 2/3 of bus riders
in Montgomery were African-American

An empty Montgomery city bus during the
boycott (1956)
Montgomery Bus Boycott (1956)
The boycott continued for 13 months
 Boycotters organized carpools and walked
 Leaders of the boycott were threatened by
bombs, death, and jail sentences
 National media attention
 November 13, 1956: The Supreme Court
ruled that the laws were unconstitutional
and ended segregation on Montgomery
buses.

Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat
on a city bus in 1955
Martin Luther King Jr. getting booked in a
Montgomery, AL jail (February, 1956)
Results of the Montgomery Bus
Boycott…
Ended segregation on Montgomery buses
 Led to the founding of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)



Coordinated nonviolent civil rights protests
across the South
Began the well-known career of Martin
Luther King Jr. and his leadership on civil
rights issues
Two African-American men sit in the
first seat behind the bus driver after
the Supreme Court ruled segregation
on buses was unconstitutional.
The Sit-in Movement

February 1960: 4 African-American college
students began a sit-in movement in
Greensboro, NC



They were trying to integrate a lunch counter in a
store
They sat at the counter and ordered coffee but were
refused service because of their race
The first day, the students stayed for one hour. As the
days went on, they started bringing more and more
protesters and staying for longer periods of time.
Sit-in at a Walgreen’s in Nashville, TN.
1960
What happened during the sit-ins?

Protesters were abused by segregationists
Covered with ammonia, itching powder, and
acid
 Burned with cigarettes
 Yelled at and beaten
 Some were sent to jail


New protesters would replace the abused
ones, and the cycle continued
Sit-in that took place in Jackson, Mississippi was the most
widely publicized. (May, 1963)
Thurgood Marshall
African-American lawyer
 1940- Appointed chief counsel of the
NAACP


Won 29 out of 32 Supreme Court cases
 Brown

v. Board of Education of Topeka
1967-Appointed by Lyndon Johnson as
the first African-American Supreme Court
Justice

Served in this role for 24 years
Marshall after
being appointed
to the Supreme
Court in 1967
Thurgood Marshall’s
Supreme Court
Portrait