Chapter 20Section 3

Voices of Dissent

Objectives1. How did the Brown decision affect

school segregation and expose conflict over segregation?

2. How was the Montgomery bus boycott a major turning point in the civil rights movement?

3. What challenges did Hispanics, Asian Americans, and American Indians face in the 1950s?

4. How did writers and scholars criticize 1950s society?

5. What problems did poor Americans face in the 1950s?

Brown vs. Board of Education

In 1896 the Supreme Court established the legality of “separate but equal” schools.

For a long time the NAACP campaigned against segregation in public education by trying to prove the inferiority of the African American schools

One legal case the NAACP supported was the case of Brown vs. Board of Education which involved Linda Brown, an African American student from Topeka Kansas

The all white school was close to her house, but she had to walk several miles which included crossing a dangerous railroad track to get to her school

{NAACP lawyer, Thurgood Marshall, argued on Brown’s behalf}

{The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown vs. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional}

Showdown in Little Rock Unsurprisingly, desegregation in the South moved

slowly The Little Rock school board was the first to announce

that it was going to comply with the court’s decision and desegregate

{The day that Central High School was supposed to be integrated, Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround the school}

Faubus claimed that it was to protect the school from protesters. What he actually ended up doing was exaggerated the danger and spread panic

One of the nine black students, Elizabeth Eckford did not get the message that the students were advised not to go to school alone

When she attempted to enter the school, an angry mob and the National Guardsmen stopped her

{For nearly three weeks the Little Rock Nine were prevented from entering the school}

“When I got in front of the school…I didn’t know what to do…Just then the guards let some white students through…I walked up to the guard who had let them in…When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised hi bayonet, and then the other guard moved in…Somebody [in the crowd] started yelling, ‘Lynch her! Lynch her!’.” - -Elizabeth Eckford

Continued…. The students continued to be harassed. Minnie-jean Brown was suspended for dumping

a food tray on a boy who made a racist comment to her. She was later permanently expelled from school for verbally defending herself from racist and vulgar comments

Despite such pressures the other students stayed in school

But Governor Faubus was still looking for ways to avoid integration

He shut down the Little Rock public school system in 1958 and 1959 and opened a private school for white kids only

African Americans and poor white kids had no school to attend anymore

In 1959 the schools were court ordered to reopen.

REVIEW

How did the Brown decision affect school segregation and expose conflict over segregation?

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

On December 1, 1955, {Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress was arrested for not giving up her seat on the bus to a white passenger}

In protest, 50,000 African Americans organized a boycott of the bus system in Montgomery

The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) persuaded the community to continue the boycott while the NAACP and Ms. Parks made their court appeals

{The MIA chose 26 year old Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. as its spokesperson}

The boycott went on for months. White protesters tried through intimidation and outright violence to end it.

The houses of King and other MIA leaders were bombed

King, having studied the nonviolent tactics on Mohandas Gandhi, urged the African American community not to respond to violence with violence

Dr. Kings house after it was bombed

The Boycott Succeeds Finally the nonviolent protests and boycotts

worked and in November 1956 the Supreme Court declared Alabama segregation laws unconstitutional

By the end of that year Montgomery had a new desegregated bus system and the civil rights movement had a new leader, Martin Luther King

{Congress then passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. This act made it a federal crime to prevent qualified persons from voting}

The act also established the Civil Rights Commission to investigate violations of the law

A follow-up law in 1960 increased the court’s power to protect the voting rights of African Americans

Just because segregation was deemed unconstitutional does not mean things got any better right away. When these three college students sat down at a recently desegregated café they were accosted “A huge mob gathered, with open police support while the three of us sat there for three hours. I was attacked with fists, brass knuckles and the broken portions of glass sugar containers, and was burned with cigarettes. I'm covered with blood and we were all covered by salt, sugar, mustard, and various other things”

But most of the time, rather than have to serve African Americans, business owners would just shut down their establishments

This café went so far as to remove all of their seats from the front counter so that African Americans could not sit at the counter.

REVIEW

How was the Montgomery bus boycott a major turning point in the civil rights movement?

The Hispanic Experience Felix Longoria was a Mexican American soldier that

gave his life for his country in WWII In 1948 his body was returned to the U.S. to be laid to

rest in Three Rivers, Texas {The towns only funeral home refused to allow

Longoria’s family to use the chapel because the soldier was a Mexican American}

When the media publicized this many were outraged at such treatment of a veteran

Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson arranged for Longoria to be buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery

This incident led to the formation of the American GI Forum, a group dedicated to protecting the rights of Hispanic veterans

The GI Forum received aid from the League of United Latin American Citizens, which was much like the NAACP for Hispanics

Relocation of American Indians

In 1953 the U.S. government adopted a policy of termination

Termination was a plan to eradicate the Native American reservation system tribe-by-tribe, and to cut the federal funding for American Indians

In backing of the termination policy the Eisenhower administration came up with the {Relocation Act to encourage American Indians to relocate to urban areas and abandon their reservations}

Considering this policy an attempt to wipe out American Indian communities, many Native American groups led protests and presses lawsuits against the termination policy

By 1958, the Eisenhower administration had abandoned the termination policy and stated that it would no longer support legislation “to terminate tribes without their consent.”

REVIEW

What challenges did Hispanics, Asian Americans, and American Indians face in the 1950s?

Questioning Conformity Many scholars argued that underneath its façade of

conformity, prosperity and peace, there were some huge underlying problems that the U.S. needed to face.

{African American writer, Ralph Ellison published Invisible Man in 1952. In the novel a black man searches for his place in a world that is both hostile and indifferent toward him}

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote to warn the privileged in society that they were ignoring “pressing social issues in their pursuit of material possessions”

{The beats were a small group of writers that the lifestyles of the middle class as well.} Beats wrote as they lived, on the spur of the moment.

On of the best known beat works was On the Road written by Jack Kerouac The novel rejoices the search for ones OWN identity and at the refutation of precaution and consistency (Mrs. Epley recommends this novel)

Ralph Ellison

“And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone’s way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.”

Jack Kerouac

REVIEW

How did writers and scholars criticize 1950s society?

Urban Communities By 1960 more than 20 million city dwellers were living

in poverty As more and more middle class white people were

moving into the suburbs, poor inner city communities became comprised mostly of minorities

Partly due to discriminatory real estate practices preventing minorities from getting decent housing

Minorities were usually confined to crowded tenements and old housing in the poorest neighborhoods

{To improve the tenement housing the federal government proposed Urban Renewal programs to replace old run down tenements with new ones}

The new high rise buildings had a cold and impersonal aura and unfortunately most became run down themselves and were plagued by the same problems as before

REVIEW

What problems did poor Americans face in the 1950s?

The following letters are from a “freedom school” in Seattle Washington. After the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional some schools still refused to integrate. In response the school’s faculty, parents and students boycotted the schools. These are a few copies of the ACTUAL letters that were sent to the Board of Education by students that participated in the boycotts

Objectives1. How did the Brown decision affect

school segregation and expose conflict over segregation?

2. How was the Montgomery bus boycott a major turning point in the civil rights movement?

3. What challenges did Hispanics, Asian Americans, and American Indians face in the 1950s?

4. How did writers and scholars criticize 1950s society?

5. What problems did poor Americans face in the 1950s?