CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Chapter 2: Brown v. Board of Education: Beginning of Civil Rights Movement

Chapter Overview:
To most Americans, civil rights include such freedom as the right to vote, the right to a good education, and the right to any job for which a worker is qualified. Americans believe they have the right to buy or rent housing wherever they chose, the right to be admitted to all public places. Some of these rights are guaranteed by the constitution and its amendments. Others are protected by acts passed by law by Congress. However, some groups of Americans have at times been denied these civil rights. Among them are black Americans. In the 1950s, many black Americans joined in an effort to gain their civil rights. This effort became known as the civil rights movement.

Attacking School Segregation

The nations public schools became one of the first targets of the civil rights movement. Public schools had been legally segregated ever since the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. In that case, separate but equal educational facilities were constructional. But in actual practice, black schools and white schools were not equally good. In 1954, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took a school segregation case to court. The case was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In its ruling on the case, the Supreme Court decided that segregation in public schools was unlawful and must be ended. It also declared that all children-both black and white- had an equal right to a good education. Since segregating children on the basis of race was hurting black children, segregated schools were not equal schools. The Court ordered the nations schools to desegregate with all deliberate speed.

White Resistance in the South

A few southern communities obeyed the Supreme Courts ruling. They began to allow black children to attend the same schools. However, three years after the Brown decision, fewer than seven hundred out of three thousand school districts in the South had ended segregation. Most communities simply refused to obey the Supreme Court. The federal government did little to force the schools of the South to integrate until September 1957. At the same time, nine black students attempted to register at an all-white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. To prevent this integration, the Governor of Arkansas called in the National Guard. Although the guard was later removed, angry white citizens replaced them and prevented the students from registering. President Eisenhower was finally forced to call in federal troops so that the students could register and attend the school.

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Despite the victory at Little Rock, the pace of school integration remained slow in all sections of the nation. Northern communities did not have laws requiring segregated schools, but most black Americans lived in all-black students attended all-black because of where they lived.

Follow-up Activity: Complete Worksheet on Brown v. Board of Education