Civil Rights

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Transcript of Civil Rights

The Civil Rights Movement28.1MaterialismAll the new wealth and consumer products made some people worry- were Americans too rich? Too comfortable?

Some thinkers and religious leaders warned of materialism- that Americans were too concerned about material gain (stuff) to care about family, religion, and other civic commitments. DiscriminationNon-white Americans, especially African Americans, enjoyed few of these things.

Basically everyone was still racist in the 1950s, and some states had laws that allowed for discrimination and segregation. Brown v Board of EducationYou may remember that in the 1896 case Plessy v Ferguson, "separate but equal" was ruled legal.

In 1952, a seven year old African American named Linda Brown was denied access to a school in her district.

With help from the NAACP, her family sued and it got all the way to the Supreme Court.

In Brown v Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that the schools were not equal and thus segregated schools violated the constitution. IntegrationSome schools integrated (combined) quickly, but others, especially in the south, resisted.

In 1957, the governor of Arkansas called the state national guard to keep blacks from entering white schools.

Dwight Eisenhower then sent US soldiers Little Rock to force the governor to back down. Rosa ParksIn 1955, an African American woman named Rosa Parks was chosen by the NAACP to sit on a segregated bus and refuse to sit in the black section. This was to draw attention to segregation.

She was arrested and fined 10 dollars.

As a result, African Americans boycotted the bus companies for over a year.

In 1956, the Supreme Court rules that bus segregation was illegal. MovementThe bus boycotts sparked the "Civil Rights Movement" in which both black and white leaders took charge to press the issue.

One of them, a prominent speaker during the rallies against the buses, was Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. He founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which helped organize Civil Rights events and marches. ReminderQuiz Wednesday