History: Source Analysis

Greensboro sit-ins

Southern state colleges

Jim Crow Laws segregated blacks from whites on lunch counters

Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina and refused to leave after being denied service.

Police could not detain, Lack of provocation

Unplanned first sit-in February 1 1960

Freedom rides

political protests against segregation by Blacks and whites who rode buses together through the American South in 1961

1964 US Supreme court banned segregation on transport

Lasted 7 months

Southern states

Brown v Board of Education

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case

Racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional

Precedent “Equal but separate”

Plessy v Ferguson

1896 Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson

Racially segregated public facilities were legal as long as the black and whites were equal

Jim Crow Laws

Elizabeth Eckford and Little Rock Nine

The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine Black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957

test of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional

September 4, 1957, the first day of classes at Central High, Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to block the Black students’ entry into the high school. 

Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls had been recruited by Daisy Gaston Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP 

Rosa Parks and Montgomery Bus Boycott 

Montgomery bus boycott mass protest against the segregated bus system of Montgomery, Alabama by civil rights activists and their supporters which led to a 1956 US Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery's segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional. 381-day bus boycott. Rev Martin Luther King Jr. important leader. Triggered in Montgomery December 1, 1955, after seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a city bus.  She was taken to jail and was bailed out by a local civil rights leader. 

March in Washington 

August 28, 1963. US Washington DC. March on Washington for jobs and freedom. 250k people protested against racial discrimination to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress. Result of collaboration "Big Six" James Farmer, Martin Luther King Jr, John Lewis, A. Phillip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young. Main organiser Bayard Rustin. On the National Mall in shadow of Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. Musical performances. Black women Rosa Parks and Myrlie Evers. King was final speaker, and he said his "I Have A Dream" speech. Greatly influenced national opinion and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 guaranteeing equal voting rights, outlawing discrimination in restaurants, theatres, and public accommodations etc. 

Significance of Martin Luther King Jnr. 

Baptist Minister and social activist who led the civil rights movement in the US from mid 1950s till his assassination in 1968. Leadership was fundamental to movement's success in ending the legal segregation of African Americans in the South etc. Southern Christian Leadership Conference which promoted nonviolent tactics. March on Washington 1963 "I have a Dream". Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Came from a middle-class family. As a kid (6 years old) he experienced prejudice. His white friend said that his parents no longer allowed him to play with King because they attended segregated schools. 

“I Have A Dream” 

By Martin Luther King Jr, on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. Call for equality and freedom. Most defining moments of civil rights movement. Spoke about Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Emancipation Proclamation. 

Jim Crow Laws 

Segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" was a formal codified system to racial apartheid which dominated American South beginning in 2890s. Mandatory segregation in schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains and restaurants, Whites only and coloured signs were hung. Blacks received "separate but equal" treatment under the law. Public facilities for blacks were always inferior to whites.  Denied the right to vote in most of rural South. Jim Crow laws upheld by local government officials. In 2896 Supreme Court established doctrine of separate but equal in Plessy v Ferguson. After a black man in New Orleans attempted to sit in a white-only railway car.