1. Chapter 9 A Century of Change Lesson 2: Equal Rights

2. Vocabulary  discrimination  desegregate  civil rights  boycott  nonviolence

3. Lesson 2: Unfair Separation  For many years African Americans had faced discrimination, or unfair treatment, and segregation, or the separation of people by race.  Many public places such as hotels, restaurants, and swimming pools were segregated.  African Americans could go to public places, but they had to use separate entrances and separate sections.  African Americans in Alabama had to attend separate public schools.

4.  In 1954 the Supreme Court said that all schools had to desegregate, or end the separation of people by race, in all schools in the U.S.  Alabama’s governor, George C. Wallace, was one of the people who disagreed with desegregation and tried to stop it.  In 1956, Autherine Lucy Foster became the first African American to attend the University of Alabama, but only for three days.

5. Lesson 2: Struggling for Equal Rights  Civil rights are rights that the United States Constitution guarantees to all citizens.  In Montgomery, Rosa Parks stood up for her rights when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person in 1955.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a church minister and civil rights worker, helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott in protest.  He encouraged people to protest peacefully to gain equal rights.

6.  The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for 381 days until Frank M. Johnson Jr., a federal judge from Alabama, ruled that Montgomery’s bus segregation law was illegal.  Another nonviolent way of protest was through sit-ins.  Sit-ins were organized protests where people sat in seats or on the floor of a segregated business and refused to leave.

7.  Some people who were against the Civil Rights movement used violence to protest.  On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham killing four young girls.  This became known as the Birmingham church bombing.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made segregation illegal in all public places.

8.  African Americans could go to all public places, but they still could not vote.  In March 1965, Dr. King organized a march from Selma to Montgomery to protest laws in the South that kept African Americans from voting.  The Selma-to-Montgomery march brought national attention to the struggles of African Americans in the South.  This march prompted lawmakers to pass the Voting Rights Act.

9. Lesson 2: Celebrating Changes  The Civil Rights movement brought many changes to Alabama and the rest of the nation.  Segregation was made illegal, and African Americans were finally able to vote.  African Americans began running for and winning political offices in the South.  Richard Arrington, Jr. was elected as Birmingham’s mayor in 1978.

10. Lesson 2: Martin Luther King, Jr.  Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader of the Civil Rights movement.  He believed that nonviolence was a good way to bring about change.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his work in civil rights.  He was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN.