Civil Rights Coursework Question 2 Christopher Riddell
“The Civil Rights Movement achieved a great deal in the 1950s and 1960s.”
Between 1950 and 1970 the Civil Right Movement began to improve at least for the blacks. The first sign of this was in 1950 when the Supreme Court ruled that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatments to a student solely because of their race. This meant that schools were becoming desegregated. This is shown is Source A a table showing the number of black students attending schools within eleven southern states. Between the years of 1956-7 the numbers were very low and only added up to 3440 and then by 1961 they more than doubled to 6903, this shows that the desegregation worked with great effect. This source contains sufficient evidence to prove an interpretation. The source was produced by Britain therefore they may have had a motive to make America look bad. The source does prove the interpretation but it does not prove that it was the Civil Rights Movement that done all the work. The NAACP were a association formed to be involved in legal battles against segregation and in the 1950s they had a aim, that was to end the system of having separate schools for black and white children in the south. States such as Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were all among the states that were prohibiting blacks attending the same schools as whites. Then in 1952 the NAACP appealed to the Supreme Court to say that school segregation was unconstitutional. Unfortunately the Supreme Court ruled that separate schools were acceptable as long as they were “separate but equal”. After the NAACP found evidence that school were spending almost triple the amount of money on white students as they did black students. After this information was given to the Supreme Court the announced that schools were not equal and therefore unconstitutional (Brown vs. Topeka decision). Some states accepted the ruling. However some states in the Deep South refused to accept the ruling.
