African American Politicians & Civil Rights Activists
SOWING THE SEEDS FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT What What are civil rights Civil rights are the rights that all citizens are supposed to have for example the right to go to school to ride a bus and to eat in a restaurant The right to vote The right to be protected equally by the law But in the United States the laws have not always been fair Even after the Civil War ended slavery black Americans were not treated the same as whites Many states particularly in the South had laws and traditions that discriminated against black Americans Along with many whites black citizens have fought against those practices ever since JIM CROW PLAGUES THE SOUTH Following the Civil War blacks living in the South were segregated segregated from whites on trains and buses in schools and restaurants restaurants and even in public bathrooms Some laws made it illegal illegal for blacks and whites to shake hands or play checkers These racist Jim Crow laws got their unusual name from minstrel 4 CHAPTER ONE
SOWING THE SEEDS FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT African American people were not allowed to use the same drinking fountains as white people shows Minstrel stage shows featured white performers performers with their faces painted black The actors were pretending to be African Americans They portrayed blacks as being inferior whites One minstrel minstrel performer sang a song called Jump Jim Crow This song was so popular that the term Jim Crow became a nasty way to refer to black Americans A Louisiana law said that railroads had to provide equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races In 1892 a light-skinned black man challenged it Homer Plessey sat in a whites only train car When he told the conductor he was part African American he was ordered to move Mr Plessey refused He was arrested and convicted of breaking the law His lawyers fought back Sadly shockingly in a case called Plessey v Ferguson the US Supreme Court decided that separate but equal laws were legal Understandably black and many white Americans felt that separate but equal laws were terrible Prejudice and racial problems were becoming worse In 1908 in Springfield Illinois two black men were accused of committing crimes against whites The arrests triggered race riots For two long days whites attacked blacks They killed two people injured hundreds and burned down many black-owned black-owned homes and businesses 5
AFRICAN AMERICAN POLITICIANS CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS THE NAACP RISES TO FIGHT INEQUALITY After the riots sixty people met in New York City to discuss the mistreatment of African Americans Seven were black The rest were white Many white northerners did not support segregation laws or legal discrimination This group formed an organization called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP In 1909 the NAACP began fighting for equal rights for all races Forty-one years later the NAACP was called upon to help fight school segregation All over the South schools for black children children were in terrible condition The good schools were reserved for whites In Topeka Kansas thirteen black families tried to enroll their children in white schools They were turned away At about the same time Barbara Johns was a sixteen-year-old high school student in Virginia The school she attended was terribly terribly overcrowded Some of her classes were taught in buses or cold leaky shacks The students school supplies were torn and tattered Fed up with these terrible conditions Barbara organized a student strike Students walked out of school and refused to return until a new school was built The NAACP wanted to help the students But the lawyers understood that building a new school for blacks would not solve the real problem of segregation It would simply continue to follow the racist separate but equal laws So the NAACP agreed to help the students on one condition condition that they give up their demands for a new school and join the bigger fight to end school segregation Barbara and her fellow 6
SOWING THE SEEDS FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Attorneys George E C Hayes left Thurgood Marshall center and James Nabrit Jr smile in front of the US Supreme Court Building after winning the Brown v Board of Education case which ended segregation in public schools students agreed In 1951 the fight began Officially known as Brown v Board of Education the fight involved cases in five places Barbara Johns and the students in Virginia the thirteen families in Kansas plus Delaware South Carolina and Washington DC After a long fight history was made In 1954 the US Supreme Court ruled that school segregation was against the Constitution Separate but equal was no longer legal Brown v Board of Education opened a door for African Americans But through this door many more years of struggle were waiting 7
