CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE 1950’S

The Context• Eisenhower

– cautious approach

– opposed Truman’s decision to desegregate the armed forces

– reversal of FDR style of Presidential ruling

• Earl Warren-appointed 1953– regret over internment of

Japanese in Calif.

– Activist attitude

Earl Warren

Segregation in the 1950s

The Context• African Americans

– like all Americans: high hopes for prosperity after WWII

– 10% of total pop.– 50% living in poverty– continuing flight to the North– second class treatment in

sports, business, film, housing– Southern schools:

• 3-4 X spending on white than black students

• 100X more on transporting white students

Segregation

The Context

• NAACP Legal Defense Fund– team of lawyers

– 30s/40s: focus on desegregating colleges and graduate schools

– Thurgood Marshall

Brown v. Board• conservative Supreme Court

– judicial restraint: court doesn’t promote social justice

– judicial activism: court promotes social justice

• Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka Kansas, 1954--overturns Plessy v. Ferguson-1896

• NAACP and Earl Warren• Reasoning: 14th Amendment

– segregation takes away equal education opportunity, and “equal protection of the law”

– lowers morale and motivation

Aftermath of Brown

• 1955: Brown II: Court order s integration “with all deliberate speed”

• “my biggest mistake”--Eisenhower slow to implement Brown

• Southern resistance– 80% of whites oppose

– KKK reemerges

– white boycott integrated schools

– Southern state legislatures sabotage

Brown

– Citizen’s Councils fear “Reconstruction II”

– Virginia 1956 --Massive Resistance

Moton, Virginia, English 9 Class

Crisis in Little Rock, 1957

• Gov. Orval Faubus

• Little Rock Nine

• Ike sends in Federal troops

• Little Rock closes public schools next year

• Aug. 1959--Little Rock gives in after another Supreme Court rulingElizabeth Eckford walking through

a jeering mob

IV. Momentum: Bus Boycott, Montgomery

• 1955-1956• Rosa Parks• 80% of bus users were

African American• 400 Days!• Supreme Court rules

in favor of boycott

V. Momentum: New Leaders

• Martin Luther King, Jr.--Southern Christian Leadership Conference

• gospel tradition

• nonviolent principles

• sit-ins, read-ins, wade-ins

• students get involved--Greenboro 1960

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee “snick”Martin Luther King, Jr. arrested

for loitering in Montgomery, Alabama 1959