Early demands for equality Chapter 14, section 1
Segregation divides america ▸ South: Jim Crow laws ○ Plessy v. Ferguson: “separate but equal” ○ de jure segregation: segregation imposed by law ▸ North: still faced discrimination and segregation ○ de facto segregation: segregation by unwritten custom or tradition ▸ Southwest & West: Asian Americans and Mexican Americans also faced segregation
▸ 1 940s: new momentum ▸ Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) founded to use nonviolent methods to gain equality ▸ 1947: Jackie Robinson - first African American major league baseball player ▸ 1948: Truman used an executive order to desegregate the military
Emmett Till Emmett Till Legacy
Brown v. Board of education
▸ NAACP attorneys under Thurgood Marshall won several court cases ▸ Brown v. Board of Education: segregated schools violated the Constitution ○Chief Justice Earl Warren - “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” ▸ Hernandez v. Texas: ended exclusion of Mexican Americans from trial juries ▸ “The Southern Manifesto” - opposed Brown ▸ KKK revival Brown v. board of education
Brown v. Board of Education
Federal and state governments clash ▸ Little Rock Nine ○ 1957: Nine African American students attended desegregated Central High School ○ Arkansas governor against integration ■ Called the National Guard to block the students ○ None of the students entered the school ○ Elizabeth Eckford: “I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again she spat on me.” ○ President Eisenhower finally stepped in by sending federal troops to escort the students daily
Little Rock Nine
▸ Civil Rights Act of 1957: established the United States Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of civil rights ○ first civil rights bill passed since the Reconstruction Era
The Montgomery Bus Boycott ▸ December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama and sat in an open seat. ○Several stops later, the driver asks Parks to give up her seat for whites. ○She refused and was arrested. ▸ In response to Parks’ arrest, civil rights activists organized a bus boycott that continued for more than a year ○Montgomery bus boycott
▸ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. : called for nonviolent protests to gain equality ○follow Christian doctrines ○influenced by Mohandas Gandhi ○became the leader of the group that sponsored the bus boycott