1. #44 Chapter 21 Civil Rights Section 1 Taking on Segregation
OBJECTIVE: Understand how civil rights activists broke down racial barriers.

2. Civil Rights Intro
On your sheet of paper, list and explain 3 issues facing African Americans during the 1950s.

3. I. The Segregation System
Civil Rights Act of 1875 outlawed segregation. Declared unconstitutional in 1883.
1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson rules “separate but equal” constitutional.
Jim Crow Laws creates separate societies for Whites and African Americans.

4. WWII creates jobs and opportunities for African-Americans.
Need for fighting men.
Returning African-American veterans fight for civil rights at home.

5. II. Challenging Segregation in Court
Thurgood Marshall- U.S. lawyer, served on Supreme Court.
NAACP leads campaign for equal rights.
Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court unanimously strikes down school segregation. Winning lawyer was Thurgood Marshall.

6. III. Reaction to the Brown Decision
Strong resistance towards school desegregation.
Crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas:
Governor Orval Faubus against desegregation.
Has the Arkansas National Guard turn away 9 African-American students at Little Rock’s Central HS.
Eisenhower has National Guard, paratroopers integrate schools.

7. Little Rock 9- Central HS

8. IV. The Montgomery Bus Boycott
1955 NAACP officer Rosa Parks arrested for not giving up seat on bus.
Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) formed, organizes bus boycott.
Elect 26 year old Baptist pastor Martin Luther King, Jr. leader.

9. African-Americans file lawsuit, boycott buses, use carpools, walk.
Get support from African-American community, outside groups, and sympathetic Whites.
1956 Supreme Court outlaws bus segregation.

10. V. MLK and the SCLC
MLK calls for nonviolent protest: civil disobedience and massive demonstration.
MLK and others form Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Goal: “To carry on nonviolent crusades against the evils of second-class citizenship.”

11. By 1960, African-American students think SCLC pace to slow.
Form Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Use sit-ins to protest segregated lunch counters. Seek integration.
SNCC members physically and verbally abused by Whites.