USA Civil Rights Flashcards
Plessey v Ferguson case
Homer Plessey challenged segregation on trains saying that it was against the 14th Amendment.
Supreme court upheld Jim Crow Laws. It said that segregation was acceptable if the facilities provided were equal
NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Set up 1909, created legal defence
fund in 1940 to campaign for integration and to overthrow Plessy. Focused on fighting for civil rights
in the courts, and particularly on school segregation
CORE
Congress of Racial Equality
Set up 1942, protested against segregation
used non-violent direct action protests such as sit-ins, boycotts etc. Trained not to react even in the face of extreme intimidation/attack
Black voting
Technically, black Americans were allowed to vote. However, by 1956, only 20% of them had registered to do so in the face of intimidation by white Americans
Little Rock and significance
9 black students tried to enrol at Little Rock High School in Arkansas. They were stopped by the State Governor, Orval Faubus, who surrounded the school with the state National Guard.
Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort and protect the students – showed that US government was willing to support desegregation of schools
Brown v. Topeka case (1954)
In 1954 Oliver Brown took the City of Topeka in Kansas to court for forcing his daughter to attend school a long way away, instead of being allowed to go to a nearby whites-only school.
The NAACP supported the case and 4 others. In 1954 the Supreme Court declared that all segregated schools were illegal, because separate must mean unequal
Montgomery Bus Boycott date
1955-60
Opposition to Civil Rights
KKK were involved in violent attacks,e.g the murders of George Lee, Lamar Smith and Emmet Till
Dixiecrat- sourthen democrats that formed a break away party after 1948 Civil Rights Bill
White Citizens’ Council set up in Mississippi to oppose desegregation
Jim crow laws
After the Civil War in 1865 black Americans were, in theory, given equal rights (14th Amendment). In
reality, blacks still faced discrimination. In the south ‘Jim Crow’ laws enforced segregation that covered all aspects of life.
Plessey v Ferguson date
1896
Little rock date
1957
Montgomery Bus Boycott timeline
1955
Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white man. Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Improvement Association organised a boycott
of the buses which lasted for a year until the bus company gave in.
1956
Supreme Court said that segregation on buses was also illegal
1957
Eisenhower introduced the first Civil Rights Act since 1875. It set up a commission to prosecute anybody who tried to deny American citizens their rights.
Opposition to the civil rights movement
KKK
organised demonstrations against Civil Rights and were involved in violent attacks
The murders of George Lee, Lamar Smith and Emmet Till (14 year old boy) got a lot of coverage across the country – exposed the racism, and injustice that existed in southern states and added impetus to the Civil Rights campaigns.
Dixiecrats – southern democrats that formed a breakaway party after 1948 Civil Rights Bill
White Citizens’ Council set up in Mississippi (aimed to preserve segregation and used violence intimidation)
Greensboro sit-in
King began to organise non-violent protests all over the South. Blacks and whites joined
the civil rights protest campaigns. Their main method was the sit-in. The first was at Woolworth’s in Greensboro North Carolina, where eighty-five students demanded to be
served at a whites-only counter. When they were refused they organised a sit-in.
Greensboro sit-in significance
Altogether 70,000 took part in sit-ins across the south and 3,600 went to jail. When whites turned violent there was widespread television coverage and support for Civil Rights.
