The Civil Rights Movement.

GCSE America

The Civil Rights Movement

The Campaign for Civil Rights in Education

The belief that all people regardless of skin color should have the right to a decent education.
1n 1945 the two areas where segregation and racism was most obviously applied was in housing and education.
In the southern states the African Americans lived in the poorest areas with the worst facilities.
Without a good education no-one could advance themselves in society.
Therefore a poor education guaranteed a poor lifestyle for the African Americans.
Within the south the general philosophy was that an educated ‘boy’ could become a danger. There was also a belief that they were not intelligent enough deserve an education.

1896 Supreme Court: ‘Separate but Equal’

This was a law that established that segregation was allowed in education but the provision for all students at schools and colleges of further education had to be the same.
However this was not the case.
There was certainly no equality in the standards of schools for black and white children. Black schools had few teachers, few classrooms and few books.
Equal facilities did not exist in further education colleges:
no black college existed where it was possible to study for a PhD
no black college existed where it was possible to study engineering or architecture
law could only be studied at two colleges
medicine could only be studied at two colleges

The Campaign begins

The person who began the campaign to fight for equality in education was Thurgood Marshall. He had been rejected from the University of Maryland Law School on racial grounds but he did go on to study law at the Howard University Law School. By 1938 he was the chief legal advisor to the NAACP.
Marshall led the campaign to make sure that the education of Black Americans was equal to that provided for Whites. As a consequence of his campaign the Supreme Court in June 1950 issued two orders:
Texas was forced to admit ...

The Campaign begins

The person who began the campaign to fight for equality in education was Thurgood Marshall. He had been rejected from the University of Maryland Law School on racial grounds but he did go on to study law at the Howard University Law School. By 1938 he was the chief legal advisor to the NAACP.
Marshall led the campaign to make sure that the education of Black Americans was equal to that provided for Whites. As a consequence of his campaign the Supreme Court in June 1950 issued two orders:
Texas was forced to admit an African American student to a whites only law school
Oklahoma was banned from segregating facilities within its graduate school of education.
These decisions encouraged the NAACP to carry on fighting to end segregation in other states. The most famous of these cases was the Brown v the Board of Topeka case.

The consequences of the Brown vs Topeka case.

The decision had an enormous impact on Americans.
For many people campaigning for civil rights the decision by the Supreme Court was wonderful news.
Warren’s decision gave judicial legitimacy to the civil rights movement. The Supreme Court was one of the most powerful institutions in America and it looked as if it was willing to support the campaign for civil rights.
By the end of 1957 723 schools in the southern states had desegregated its schools.
The ending of segregation in the education gave even more hope that the campaign for civil rights would be successful and equality for Black Americans would be gained. It gave the civil rights campaign a new spark of life.
However not everybody was happy

But

Some African Americans were not happy with the decision by the Supreme Court. They believed that black children would face persecution and abuse if they went to desegregated schools. They were better in their own schools.

There was enormous resistance to the law in many states. Many states in the south refused to pay desegregate their schools.

In March 1956 22 southern Senators and 82 Representatives issued the Southern Manifesto which claimed that the Supreme Court had abused its judicial power and that they would do all they could to stop the forcible desegregation of schools in the south.

In some states such as Mississippi it gave an extra boost to those racially more extreme than others. Racial moderates gave way to these extremists determined to prevent black people gaining civil rights.

The Ku Klux Klan also campaigned to prevent integration. They burnt houses and churches and committed many acts of violence against individuals. Their aim was to intimidate the African Americans to keep to their ‘own’ schools so that desegregation might exist on the statute book but not in actual reality.