Civil Rights

Civil Rights Plessy v. Ferguson 1896 Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” facilities did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Set precedent for Southern states to segregate whites and blacks legally as long as the separate facilities were equal. In effect, the Supreme Court upheld segregation or Jim Crow laws that were passed in the late 19th century after the Civil War.

Civil Rights In practice the facilities, which Southern states provided African-Americans, were always separate, but seldom, if ever, equal.

Civil Rights In 1909 an interracial group of reformers organized the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The purpose of the NAACP was to secure the legal rights of African-Americans. Consistently worked to end legal segregation in the Southern states and gain the right to vote for the South’s black citizens. W.E.B. DuBois was one of the NAACP’s leaders during the early years of its existence.

Civil Rights Before World War II ended in 1945, the NAACP attacked Jim Crow laws by attacking the “equality” issue of the “separate but equal” doctrine. The NAACP argued that Southern states were violating the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, when they failed to provide equal facilities for African-Americans.

Civil Rights After World War II, the NAACP decided to attack directly the Plessy decision’s idea that racial segregation or separation of the races could be constitutional. The NAACP argued that racial segregation was illegal and violated the Constitution under any and all circumstances. The NAACP employed a team of lawyers, called the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, who filed lawsuits against racial segregation in several public school systems in the South.

Thurgood Marshall served as chief counsel or lawyer of the NAACP and headed the national NAACP Legal Defense Team. Oliver Hill, an African-American attorney from Richmond, headed the NAACP Legal Defense Team in Virginia and worked on the school desegregation suit, which the NAACP filed against Prince Edward County Public Schools.

Civil Rights In 1954 the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (This also applied to the Prince Edward County desegregation case) The Supreme Court declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. It said public school segregation violated the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Massive Resistance After World War II, Virginia was still part of the Solid South (expression coined in the early 1900s to denote the Democratic Party’s control of southern politics. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. led the organization of Democratic party leaders who controlled Virginia’s politics at that time. Under Byrd’s leadership, Virginia’s governor and state legislature adopted the policy of Massive Resistance. The Virginia General Assembly passed state laws that made it illegal for Virginia public schools to desegregate, even when they were under federal court order to do so. To desegregate schools meant to allow white children and African-American children to attend the same school. Also called - integration Protesters in Norfolk, VA

Massive Resistance Virginia’s Massive Resistance movement reached a climax in 1959. The governor closed several public schools rather than obey federal court orders to integrate them racially. In addition, upper and middle class white Virginians established private academies to avoid sending their children to racially integrated public schools.

Massive Resistance Virginia’s Massive Resistance didn’t last long. Virginia’s governor initially accepted federal court ordered school desegregation on a case-by-case basis. By the mid-seventies, Virginia had completely ended its dual school system and children of all races attended the same public schools.

Civil Rights During the sixties and seventies, many white families moved from the cities to the suburbs in search of predominantly white public schools. This pattern of white flight from urban school systems has continued until today. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education had a tremendous effect on the American South causing at social revolution. The Brown decision showed that, by interpreting its powers broadly, the United States Supreme Court could reshape American society.

Civil Rights In 1956 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gained national television coverage as the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott beginning in 1955 when Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to obey the segregation law that blacks sit in the back of Montgomery, Alabama’s city buses. During the boycott, African-Americans refused to ride on the city buses to protest racially segregated seating. By the end of 1956, the Supreme Court used the Brown decision as precedent and ruled that racial segregation on city buses was unconstitutional, because it denied Montgomery’s black citizens “equal protection of the laws.”

In August 1963 several civil rights organizations planned a March on Washington to lobby Congress for passage of major civil rights legislation. Approximately, 250,000 Americans attended this event. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. inspired millions of Americans and became the national leader of the civil rights movement when he delivered his “I have a dream” speech.

“I have a dream,” said Dr. King, that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood….I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today….From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village, from every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up the day when all God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!’

The 1963 March on Washington helped influence public opinion to support major civil rights legislation. It also demonstrated the power of non-violent, mass protest, which Dr. King had urged throughout his career.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 and Lyndon B. Johnson became President. President Johnson played an important role in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 1) Outlawed discrimination based on race, religion, and sex by employers. 2) It outlawed racial, religious and sex discrimination in public places (made it illegal to segregate public buildings or schools) and made it illegal for hotels, motels, and restaurants to deny service to customers because of their race. 3) Third, it gave the federal government more power to enforce all the laws governing civil rights.

Voting Rights Act of 1965 Outlawed literacy tests (to determine if a voter could read and write) as a requirement for voter registration. Southern states has used literacy tests as a way to deny the right to vote . Second, the Voting Rights Act sent federal registrars to the South to register voters. This act resulted in a large increase in the number of African-American voters throughout the South.

Civil Rights In 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. In Dr. King’s memory President Johnson persuaded Congress to pass a third major civil rights law. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. With Dr. King’s death and passage of federal open housing legislation the United States entered a new era in its history.