Early Civil Rights Struggles 1945 - 1959

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Early Civil Rights Struggles1945 - 1959
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Segregation in Education

• "separate" facilities ok but had to be equal
• Went unchallenged for 50 years.

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Important Segregation Casesat the University
Level

• Sweatt v. Painter
• McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher
  Education

Herman Sweatt waiting in a UT registration
line http//weeklywire.com/ww/02-09-98/austin_pols
_feature2-1.gif
http//www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/images/br0047s.j
pg
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Segregation and Public Schools
http//www.digisys.net/users/hootie/brown/Girl.jpg

• 1950s - racial segregation was the norm.
• Regardless of separate but equal, black
  facilities were inferior.

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Brown vs the Board of Education

• Topeka, Kansas
• 1951 the NAACP took the case to court
• NAACP argued
• Segregation TOLD black children they were
  inferior therefore, the schools were un.
• The Board of Education argued
• Reality
• Not harmful Frederick Douglass, Booker T.
  Washington, and George Washington Carver were
  proof.

The Brown Family http//www.kawvalley.k12.ks.us/br
own_v_board/images/brown_family.jpg
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Results of Brown vs the Board of Education

• Kansass district court ruled in favor of the
  Board of Education.
• Supreme Courts overruled on May 17, 1954
  segregation was unconstitutional.

http//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/7/77/Thur
good-marshall.jpg
Thurgood Marshall, future Supreme Court Justice,
was the lawyer for the NAACP.
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Emmett TillA Northerner in Mississippi
http//www.crimelibrary.com/graphics/photos/notori
ous_murders/famous/emmett_till/2-2Young20Emmett2
0Till,20posing.jpg

• "Have you ever sent a loved son on vacation and
  had him returned to you in a pine box, so
  horribly battered and water-logged that someone
  needs to tell you this sickening sight is your
  son -- lynched?" -- Mamie Bradley, mother of
  Emmett Till
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vamxbnwrO9g8feature
  related

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Emmett Till

• Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were arrested
  immediately for kidnapping.
• Deliberation just over an hour, then returned
  a "not guilty" verdict on September 23rd.
• Impact
• Northern blacks saw that violence against blacks
  in the South could affect them in the North.
• Rallied the movement.

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Montgomery Bus Boycott

• December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up
  her bus seat to a white passenger.
• Arrested, convicted
• Over 50,000 Af Ams boycotted the Montgomery Bus
  system.
• White response
• Physical attacks
• Bombed homes
• Fired boycotters
• Nov 1956 the Supreme Court declared
  segregationwas unconstitutional.

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Showdown at Little Rock

• School desegregation moved slowly.
• September 1957 9 black students were admitted
  to the all-white Central HS
• Governor Orval Faobus opposed and called on the
  AK National Guard.
• Eisenhower calls in federal troops and on
  September 25, 1957 the Little Rock Nine finally
  enter.

http//www.youtube.com/watch?vtQcwQfyTOyo
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Civil Rights Act of 1957

• Eisenhower
• Made it a federal crime to prevent qualified
  persons from voting.
• Set up the Civil Rights Commission

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Bibliography

• http//www.watson.org/lisa/blackhistory/contents.
  html
• Boyer, Paul. The American Nation. Austin
  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1995.