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CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE 1950’S
The Context• Eisenhower
– cautious approach
– opposed Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed forces
– reversal of FDR style of Presidential ruling
• Earl Warren-appointed 1953– regret over internment of
Japanese in Calif.
– Activist attitude
Earl Warren
Segregation in the 1950s
The Context• African Americans
– like all Americans: high hopes for prosperity after WWII
– 10% of total pop.– 50% living in poverty– continuing flight to the North– second class treatment in
sports, business, film, housing– Southern schools:
• 3-4 X spending on white than black students
• 100X more on transporting white students
Segregation
The Context
• NAACP Legal Defense Fund– team of lawyers
– 30s/40s: focus on desegregating colleges and graduate schools
– Thurgood Marshall
Brown v. Board• conservative Supreme Court
– judicial restraint: court doesn’t promote social justice
– judicial activism: court promotes social justice
• Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka Kansas, 1954--overturns Plessy v. Ferguson-1896
• NAACP and Earl Warren• Reasoning: 14th Amendment
– segregation takes away equal education opportunity, and “equal protection of the law”
– lowers morale and motivation
Aftermath of Brown
• 1955: Brown II: Court order s integration “with all deliberate speed”
• “my biggest mistake”--Eisenhower slow to implement Brown
• Southern resistance– 80% of whites oppose
– KKK reemerges
– white boycott integrated schools
– Southern state legislatures sabotage
Brown
– Citizen’s Councils fear “Reconstruction II”
– Virginia 1956 --Massive Resistance
Moton, Virginia, English 9 Class
Crisis in Little Rock, 1957
• Gov. Orval Faubus
• Little Rock Nine
• Ike sends in Federal troops
• Little Rock closes public schools next year
• Aug. 1959--Little Rock gives in after another Supreme Court rulingElizabeth Eckford walking through
a jeering mob
IV. Momentum: Bus Boycott, Montgomery
• 1955-1956• Rosa Parks• 80% of bus users were
African American• 400 Days!• Supreme Court rules
in favor of boycott
V. Momentum: New Leaders
• Martin Luther King, Jr.--Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• gospel tradition
• nonviolent principles
• sit-ins, read-ins, wade-ins
• students get involved--Greenboro 1960
• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee “snick”Martin Luther King, Jr. arrested
for loitering in Montgomery, Alabama 1959