The document discusses key events and terms related to the civil rights movement in the United States such as the Black Codes, Jim Crow laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board of Education, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It provides context around the legal and social discrimination faced by African Americans along with important court cases and protests that challenged racial segregation and pushed for desegregation and equal rights.
The Modern Civil Rights MovementDirections Read the narr.docxkailynochseu
The Modern Civil Rights Movement
Directions: Read the narrative and answer questions about the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s.
The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement
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Rosa Parks, an Alabama seamstress, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man. A volunteer secretary for the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement since the early 1930s, Parks was returning from work at a department store on Dec. 1, 1955. The bus filled up, whites in the front and blacks in the back. The driver ordered four blacks in the front of the black section of the bus to get up and make room for whites. Three did, but Mrs. Parks did not. She was arrested under a city ordinance that mandated segregated buses and was fined $10 plus $4 court costs.
Her story is filled with myths. For one thing, her refusal to give up her seat was not the product of a premeditated NAACP plan. Rather, it was a spontaneous decision, she later explained. She had been abused and humiliated one time too many:
“Just having paid for a seat and riding for only a couple of blocks and then having to stand was too much. These other persons had got on the bus after I did. It meant that I didn't have a right to do anything but get on the bus, give them my fare, and then be pushed wherever they wanted me.... There had to be a stopping place, and this seemed to have been the place for me to stop being pushed around and to find out what human rights I had.”
With support from the local NAACP, a boycott of Montgomery’s bus system was organized to show support for Parks. Montgomery's African Americans shared rides, took taxis, or walked to work. Mrs. Parks and many others were fired. There were bombings, beatings, and lawsuits. In February 1956, Parks and a hundred others were charged with conspiracy. When the boycott started, community leaders arranged for 18 black taxis in the city to carry passengers for the same 10 cent fare as a bus. When the city passed an ordinance requiring a minimum 45 cent fare, 150 people volunteered their cars.
The boycott gained national attention with the charismatic leadership of a 26-year-old minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In November 1956, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that threw out the Montgomery bus ordinance. After 381 days, the Montgomery bus boycott was over.
In later life, her views ranged between the non-violence of Martin Luther King and the militancy of Malcolm X. "I don't believe in gradualism," she told an interviewer, "or that whatever is to be done for the better should take forever to do." By holding on to her seat, Rosa Parks illustrated how one person's spontaneous act of courage and defiance can alter the course of history.
Little Rock
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The first major confrontation between states' rights advocates and the Supreme Court's school integration decision.
we know that sometimes we have to do it late rbut struggling is possible than we havce to do it fasdt for sometime we civil engineers obey our teachers and there demand
12. Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South, The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh, And the sudden smell of burning flesh! Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop. Abel Meeropol , performed by Billie Holiday “Strange Fruit” (video footage)
28. People across the country, like these from Poolesville, Maryland, in 1956, took to the streets to protest integration. This kind of opposition exposed the deep divide in the nation, and revealed the difficulty of enforcing the high court’s decision. (Courtesy of Washington Star Collection, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library)
29. Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas; African American students arriving in a U.S. Army car. Supplied by NAACP
30. As white students jeer her and Arkansas National Guards look on, Elizabeth Eckford enters Little Rock Central High School in 1957 Eckford didn’t receive the call from the NAACP stating they would provide transportation; she set out along to desegregate Central High.
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35. If any single event touched off the activist phase of the civil rights movement, it was the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56. Triggered by the refusal of a black seamstress, Mrs. Rosa Parks, to take her place at the back of a city bus when the driver demanded it, this grass-roots movement led by the young Martin Luther King lasted for just over a year, from 1955 to late in the next year. For the first time since the depression, political initiative shifted from Washington back into the country itself, in this case the courts, schools, lunch counters, courthouses, streets and jails of the South. ---from The Experience of Politics Cartoon by Laura Gray, first appeared in The Militant, 2/13/56
56. “ I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” Fannie Lou Hamer , American civil rights leader, at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 1964
63. Malcolm X Early beliefs: Nation of Islam Later: views towards whites softened; “ballots or bullets” Stokely Carmichael Organizer for SNCC; later became a Black Panther
64. New Groups Emerge Nation of Islam* Whites = evil, black separatism, armed self-defense Black Panthers Black nationalism, black power, armed revolt, self-sufficiency, equal housing, employment, protested AA in Vietnam