US8 Civil Rights Movement

Question 1

What does ‘civil rights’ mean?

Answer 1

Equal opportunities with regards to access to employment, housing and education, as well as the right to vote and be free of racial discrimination.

Question 2

When did the civil rights movement take place?

Answer 2

1940s - late 1960s

Question 3

What were the aims of the civil rights movement?

Answer 3

To achieve civil rights for African Americans equal to those of white Americans

Question 4

What were some early examples of civil rights movement successes?

Answer 4

• the Fair Employment Law in 1941
• Truman’s 1946 Presidents Committee on Civil Rights to try and eliminate segregation in American life

Question 5

What was ‘Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, 1954’

Answer 5

In 1951, in Topeka, Kansas the father of an African American girl named Linda Brown took the board of education to court wanting to take his daughter to a ‘whites only’ school

Question 6

What happened in the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka?

Answer 6

• Brown lost the case but appealed against the decision to the Supreme Court
• in May 1954 the chief judge declared that every education board had to end segregation in schools
• within weeks many cities and towns begun to de-segregate their schools

Question 7

What was the Montgomery bus boycott?

Answer 7

• on 1 December 1955 Rosa Parks, an African American woman refused to move from the whites only section of a bus and was arrested
• local black community leaders called for a boycott of all city buses.

Question 8

Who led the Montgomery bus boycott?

Answer 8

• Church preacher Martin Luther King led the boycott
• some protesters received threatening phone calls and vandalism but King told the black community to remain peaceful

Question 9

What did Martin Luther King believe was the most effective form of protest?

Answer 9

King believed non violent protest or ‘direct action’ was the best way to achieve equal rights

Question 10

What was the ultimate outcome of the Montgomery bus boycott?

Answer 10

Almost a year after Parks refused to give up her seat the Supreme Court ruled that segregated buses were illegal.

Question 11

What was the Little Rock case?

Answer 11

• Arkansas had refused to de-segregate its schools
• September 1957 nine African American pupils tried to attend high school in Little Rock Arkansas

Question 12

What happened at the school in Little Rock when nine black children tried to attend in 1957?

Answer 12

• the governor of Arkansas sent National Guard soldiers to prevent the children from entering
• a large hostile crowd greeted the children
• the African Americans of Little Rock took the governor to court and won - the soldiers left and the children could attend school

Question 13

By 1960, how many black children in Arkansas were attending de-segregated schools?

Answer 13

2500 out of a total of 2 million children

Question 14

By 1962 how many black children were attending white schools in Alabama, South Carolina or Mississippi?

Answer 14

0