Topic 1 - C3 - The Civil Rights Movement Flashcards
What did the Jim Crow Laws do?
Legally segregated black people from white people in public facilities. Justified as seperate but equal.
How were Jim Crow Laws enforced in the south?
Blacks at the back of the bus, had to buy food from seperate lunch counters, ate on plastic plates and had seperate drinking fountains and toilets
What % of blacks were unable to vote in 1955?
80%
How did Southern whites prevent blacks voting?
Obstructed blacks who tried to register to vote - threatened with violence or intimidation, literacy tests with impossible questions - no. of bubbles in a bar of soap
What is an example of even ‘intelligent’ blacks struggling to vote?
Rose Parks eventually passed test but given a $16.50 poll tax in 1945 - too expensive for many blacks
How were blacks economically inferior to whites?
1949 South Carolina spent $179 p/a to educate a white child while $43 was spent to educate a black child, poorly funded schools = low paid jobs
Could blacks attend university before the CRA?
Yes but segregated, their lecturers had less qualifications - James Meredith tried to enter Uni of Mississippi because his black college had few teachers with doctorates
What is an example of the legal inferiority of blacks?
No protection in court, 14 year old Emmett Till wolf whistled at a white women - body mutilated and left in Mississippi river - not guilty verdict
Who were the NAACP?
CR group - declared that it aimed to make US’s 11 million black citizens economically, intellectually, politically and socially free and equal.
How did the NAACP try to end inequality in education?
Aimed to overturn Plessy v Ferguson (1896) which declared JCL constitutional as long as facilities were separate but equal - 1954 Brown v Board of Topeka declared segregated schools as not equal
The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955) is seen as the start of the CRM, why did it happen?
Black mother put two babies in the white section of the bus to free her hands so she could pay, driver yelled “Take the dirty black brats off the seats” hit the accelerator and the babies fell over
Why did the NAACP and MLK choose to do a bus boycott?
Thought black bus users would have the economic power to force white bus companies to reconsider their policies. RP on trial for sitting in a white’s seat - chose that day
Who led the MGBB and what did it achieve?
MLK, 50,000 joined in, year long, Browder v Gayle in Nov 1956, Montgomery’s buses were desegregated but not in other states
What backlash did the MGBB recieve?
Montgomery Citizens Council organised the opposition to the boycott and used arrests and intimidation to try and frighten MLK.
What white racist organisations existed?
KKK - revitalised after Brown verdict, when buses desegregated sent 40 carloads of robed, hooded members but blacks stood to wave at them, bombed MLK’s house in 1956
