Chapter 21 Section 1: Taking on Segregation

The segregation system Plessy V. Ferguson The Supreme Court ruled that this “separate but equal” law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees all Americans equal treatment Jim Crow laws: Aimed at separating the races These laws forbade marriage between blacks and whites, and established restrictions on social and religious contact Segregation continues into the 20th century African Americans tried to escape Southern racism by moving north

Many African-American sharecroppers abandoned farms for the promise of industrial jobs in Northern cities A developing Civil Rights movement The demand for soldiers in the early 1940s created a shortage of white male laborers Created African Americans, Latinos, and white women One million African Americans served in the armed forces which caused discriminatory policies to end Civil tights organizations actively campaigned for African-American voting rights and challenged Jim Crow laws

Challenging Segregation in Court NAACP: A desegregation campaign which had fought since 1909 to end segregation Thurgood Marshall Won 29 out of 32 cases argued of the cases before the Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Linda Brown charged the board of education for denying her admission to an all-white elementary school

Reaction to the Brown Decision Resistance to school desegregation More than 500 school districts had desegregated their classrooms Ku Klux Klan reappeared and White Citizens Councils boycotted businesses that supported desegregation Brown II: Ordered by the Supreme Court that school desegregation implemented deliberate speed Arkansas became the first Southern state to admit African Americans to state universities without a court order “Little Rock Nine”

The Montgomery bus boycott Rosa Parks: A seamstress and an NAACP officer who took a seat in the front row of the “colored” section of a Montgomery bus Martin Luther King Jr: Elected to lead the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the boycott African Americans filed a lawsuit and for 381 days refused to ride the buses in Montgomery King delivered a passionate and eloquent speech that filled the audience with a sense of mission

Martin Luther King and the SCLC The boycott proved the world that the African American community could unite and organize a successful protest movement “Soul Force” non violent resistance Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC): It’s purpose was to carry on nonviolent crusades against the evils of second-class citizenship They planned to stage protests and demonstrations throughout the South Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC): National protest group SNCC hoped to harness the energy of these student protesters Most important student activist movements in the nation’s history

The movement spreads Congress of Racial Equality (CORE): Staged the first sit-ins where African American protestors sat down at segregated lunch counters and refused to leave until they were served Television crews brought coverage of the protest into homes throughout the U.S This sparked many other sit-ins across the South Students had descended on and desegregated lunch counters in some 48 cities in 11 states by 1960