Social Change Change is happening in the Southeastern United States. Whites are loosing control and are loosing their hold on segregation, so they turn to violence.

Social Change  After the war, MS changed. A stronger middle class started forming with many soldiers coming back from war and going to college.  People began living in suburbs and subdivisions.  Vacuum cleaners and frozen foods made life easier and also replaced the black maids who had been used before.  The split between what had been sharecropper and land owner, disappeared.

Segregation and Integration  1896-Plessy vs Ferguson case legally established a “separate but equal concept.” The concept allowed for facilities to be separate, as long as they were equal.  During the 1940’s and 1950’s it became evident to southerners that soon, this concept was no longer going to be legal.  Governor Hugh White of MS decided he would improve black schools instead of “force” integration.

Gov. Hugh White’s Plan  Raise black teacher pay.  Build black schools to match white schools.  Asked for black teachers support, they refused.  He was shocked they wanted integration.

Brown vs Board of Education  1954  The Supreme Court ruled that the “separate but equal concept” was unconstitutional.  1955-Government decided that all schools must integrate with “all deliberate speed.”  Immediately there was a white resistance movement.  White Citizens Council-formed to protect segregation. (Delta)

Civil Rights Movement  During this time, many IGNORANT whites (not all whites) were very much aware that the segregation they wanted to keep, was not going to hold up.  What we know as the Civil Rights movement is a time period when African Americans used NON VIOLENCE resistance and ideas to gain equality in the South.  Many different things happened, whites became more violent, while blacks attempted to remain non violent.  These are some of those events that happened in MISSISSIPPI…

Emmett Till  1955  14 year old black boy from Chicago.  In MS visiting his cousins and he was accused of “wolf whistled” at a white woman in a store on a dare from his cousin.  Two men (the woman’s husband and brother) kidnapped him.  Beat him, killed him, and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River.  Emmett’s mother wanted an open casket, so the world could see what happened to her child.

Tallahatchie River

Killers J. W. Milam Roy Bryant

Trial  Milam and Bryant spend about an hour in the court room before they were released on no charges by an all white jury.  They later bragged and admitted their guilt in a national magazine.  Made white Mississippians look terrible.

Hello Warning Slide

Emmett Till

Crisis at Ole Miss  1962 James Meredith, a black college student, was refused as he tried to enroll at Ole Miss.  President JFK sent federal Marshalls to MS to help Meredith register.  Later at an Ole Miss football game, the president of the college started a riot of whites demanding Meredith not be allowed in.  National Guard had to be sent in.

Crisis at Ole Miss James Meredith Civil rights monument at Ole Miss

Medgar Evers  1963  Medgar Evers was leader of the MS NAACP branch.  He was shot and killed on his front porch by Byron de La Beckwith a white supremacist.  Beckwith was put on trial but released by a “hung jury.”  Medgar Evers widow took this as an improvement.  For some white men in an all white jury to be willing to put a white man behind bars, was an improvement in MS.

Medgar Evers Medgar evers

Medgar Evers Home Byron de la beckwith

Convicted 31 years later 1994 Trueknowledge.com 0 years old 2001 age 80

Organizations to end Segregation NAACP SNCC  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Sit-Ins  Demonstrations where groups enter public places and refuse to leave.  These pictures would circulate the nation, making southern whites look moronic.  These pictures encouraged white college students to come and help blacks in the south!

Freedom Summer-1964  1,000 college students from up north boarded busses and road south to help African Americans get registered to vote.  These white students would live in black homes, go to black churches.  Their presence brought MUCH hostility from whites. They did not want interference.  By August-4 people had died, 80 beaten, thousands had been arrested.  67 homes, churches, buildings had been burned or bombed.

Neshoba County Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman  Went to Neshoba County to investigate a burned church. They were arrested and let go only to be chased down and killed.  FBI later located the bodies after paying off an informant.

Neshoba County Sheriff Law2.umkc.edu

MIBURN (Mississippi Burning)

Edger Ray Killins yrs old sentenced to 60 yrs

video

Freedom Summer  AT THIS POINT..Most white Mississippians did not agree with this violence. They were actually getting tired of being the “bad guys” of the country.  Also remember, a lot of this violence is now happening in small, backwood towns in MS where the police and small town mayors were involved.  They did resent the Civil Rights workers coming and interfering with their state.

Freedom Summer MCCOMB HATTIESBURG

Freedom Summer Trying to register to vote Freedom schools

School Integration  Schools in MS did not integrate until the 1970’s.  This is 20 years after Brown vs Board of Education.  Private schools developed for people who would not allow their children to go to school with black students “white flight”.  People feared violence, but it was usually all talk.  Discrimination for black principals, almost always made vice principals.