Classism

So many children paved the way for civil rights movements
Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954)
- Girl won, as the girl was placed in danger (alongside her family) just to obtain a proper education
- Essentially denied her first class citizenship
- NAACP and Brown worked together
- “The Topeka curriculum or any school curriculum can’t be equal under segregation”
- Chief Justice Earl Warren:
  - “In the field of public education separate facilities are inherently unequal”
After WWII, they promise a land of America, benefits of capitalist democracy, all for a better society compared to a communist society
- US was built on strong family structure and value

Kenneth + Mamie Clark
- Child psychologists that graduated from Columbia university
- Segregation was incredibly traumatic for children of color

Emmet Louis Till (1941-1955)
- Chicago native, with Mississippi roots
- Be categorized as a sexualized being

Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)
- Student of non-violent resistance
- Knew they had to sway the opinions of non-white Americans to see changes for the Civil Rights movement
- Was chosen by Montgomery Civil Rights movements to help lead the Civil Rights movements
- Came from a wealthy middle class family
  - Baptist preacher lineage
  - Attended a sex-separated HBCU
- Satyagraha: Passive political resistance
- “The Negro all over the South must say to his white brother “We will meet your physical force with soul force” - MLK Oct. 28th, 1957
Mrs. Rosa Parks
- Born in Tuskegee, Alabama
- Traumatized by KKK nightriders
- 1933: Joined Montgomery chapter of NAACP
- 1955: Attended summer programs at Highlander Folk School Kentucky

Biggest and most prestigious high school in its state
Daisy Bates and the NAACP
“Little Rock Nine”
- Looked for students to fit the middle-class model of being “appropriate” to help desegregate the school
- School wanted to control how many students came in, with the absolute bare minimum (that being 9)
- Those 9 students would integrate with over 2000 white students
Massive resistance (September 4th, 1957)
- Ultimately became an international scandal
- US President had to step in and provide federal soldiers to ensure the school could continue its academic term and that the Little Rock Nine could be allowed entry
- Civil Rights Act of 1957
  - Constant stories were published
  - Children were being denied their first class citizen educational rights to attend the school
  - Dwight Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act in 1957
    - Became a federal crime to deny any person on the basis of color or ethnicity with the rights they’re guaranteed by the constitution

July 1958: NAACP Youth Council stages sit-ins at Dockum Drug Store in Wichita, Kansas
August 1958: NAACP Youth Council stages sit-ins across Oklahoma City at segregated lunch counters
- Launches six-year sit in movement in that city
September 1958: Federal judge orders Louisiana State University to desegregate
October 1958: Federal judge in Virginia rules that public money may not be used to fund segregated private schools
April 1959: Martin Luther King Jr. speaks for school integration at Lincoln Memorial
Greensboro Sit-Ins, February 1960
- North Carolina A & T and Bennett College: History of collaboration
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- One of the most important civil rights organizations in the US
- North Carolina organization
  - Started at Shaw University (Raleigh) on April 16th, 1960
- Ella Baker
  - Had been a NAACP member for 25 years
- Founded by activists, led by college students who became major civil rights figures
  - Congressional representatives, senators, mayors, etc
- Interracial
  - White students form the midwest made up the majority of SNCC
- Along with NAACP, SNCC on front lines of movement
  - NAACP is known as the formidable soldiers of the movement
    - Mainly courtroom force compared to SNCC
  - SNCC is direct action, societal based
    - Enduring verbal/psychological/physical assault

Civil Rights Organizations are planned and purposeful

SNCC helped desegregate lunch counters
- Helped with voting rights and shared public spaces (all Southerners paid for)
Dr. King hated the sit-ins out of concern for the students and their lives
Students managed to educate their elders, seeing their direct action had worked
- Elders considered this to be a disrespectful form of protest
Lot of apathy and discouragement, alongside trauma
- People began to drop out of the movement, which was dangerous for the change that was trying to be made
Mississippi is one of the most white supremacist states in the union
Freedom Summer was an ambitious campaign where SNCC activists moved over to Mississippi
- Local activists housed the SNCC activists
- SNCC activists set up schools at barns, picnic styles, etc
- Educated on Mississippi folks on what it meant to have the right to vote
  - Stressed the 15th amendment
  - Educated them on their rights
  - Educated them on how anti-democratic Jim Crow was
  - Educated them on black history
Movement was successful, but had plenty of incidents

3 activists were abducted and murdered by the Klan
- Michael Schwerner - Jewish New Yorker
- James Cheney - Black man born in Mississippi
- Andrew Goodman - Jewish Chicago resident
The reaction from the public wasn’t expected
- Mainly because two of the victims were white, leaving out James