In 1951, the father of a black student named Linda Brown sued the Board of Education because a white school had prevented Brown from attending a school which was only seven blocks away, compared to the segregated black school she was attending which was more than seven blocks away from her home. Despite losing the first legal battle, Brown’s father did not give up. He found help from the NAACP, a prominent civil rights organisation which appealed on his behalf to the Supreme Court of USA. Following the appeal, in May 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren declared the US Constitution to be ‘colour-blind’ and therefore ordered the Topeka Board of education to end segregation in its schools. This was one of the first major steps in the civil rights movement.
Gautreaux Vs Cha was a lawsuit that was made for public housing segregation. It was filed by Dorothy Gautreaux in 1969 through federal court and the case went on although she was dead. “The Chicago Housing Authority and HUD had violated the US constitution which states that everyone is equal.” The purpose was to develop a law that would help all race, the riches and the poor to integrate. HUD and CHA created a plan that specifically had African- Americans to mobilize in to the white areas surrounding the city. In order to relocate 7100 families, it took well over 20 years.
The idea of using non-violence as a technique in the civil rights movement was the idea of Martin Luther King which branched from Ghandi’s belief of non-violence from the time he spent in India and his own Christian beliefs. A range of non-violent methods were used by the protestors. In 1955, the Montgomery Busy Boycott was the biggest protest to date and was the first major time that so many people had come together to overturn the Jim Crow laws. The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of non-violent protests in 1960 which led to the Woolworths department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in southern US as well as segregation in public areas being largely abandoned in Florida, Texas etc. The freedom rides were when civil rights activists rode interstate buses into the southern US in 1961 to test the supreme courts decision of ruling segregation on interstate transport illegal.
Although it can be argued that this help from the federal government was what enabled the civil rights movement to defeat Jim Crow between the years 1960-1965, it has to be recognized that this federal government intervention was contingent to ratchet events which unfolded such as the rash of student sit-ins which occurred in the spring of 1960. This had catalyzed the movement led by Martin Luther King and his organization – the SCLC – which, after the Greensboro sit in mobilized the new grass-roots behind the encompassing struggle for federal intervention against Jim Crow in the south. To add to that, further pressure was added on the federal government to act in pursuit of Civil Rights, as white attitudes were changing in both the north and south due to the progression of technology which made the civil rights movement not only a national topic but an international topic but also in a sense America was slowly ‘growing up’. Therefore, although it could be argued that the federal government intervention was what had led to the ultimate demise of Jim Crow between the years 1960-1965, it has to be acknowledged that there were outside factors which catalyzed in a sense ratcheted up federal government intervention. It is evident that Jim Crow could not of had been defeated between
They filed the suit hoping that the school district would change its policy of racial segregation. When 20 parents tried to enroll their kids in the schools closest to them, they were denied enrollment. These schools were segregated and were the same as the ones black kids were supposed to attend. Since they were not allowed enrollment, the case was taken to the Topeka Board of Education. They decided that they should attend their own schools because they were exactly the same when it came to the facility, treatment, and staff.
King attended a segregated public school in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen and received his B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College; a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. In June 1953 Martin married Coretta Scott and had four kids. In 1954 King became the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. During this time Rosa Parks was arrested for failure to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus.
In 1965 John Tinker made the decision that he and others from his school would wear black armbands to their school in Des Moines, Iowa in protest of the ongoing Vietnam war. The armbands, which were plain besides a white peace symbol, were meant to signify the teenagers support of the Christmas truce called for by Robert F Kennedy as well as the end of the United States involvement in the Vietnam war. The reason of the students opposition was the high amount of United States soldiers that were killed and wounded in a war that many deemed unnecessary. Principals at the Des Moines schools came together to make the decision that any students that refused to remove the armbands in school would be suspended, so when Tinker was forced to leave school because he would not remove the armband many said this was a violation of his first and fourteenth amendment rights. Reasons given to these suspensions was that the school system did not allow for students to wear armbands in school.
In response to numerous unsuccessful attempts to ensure equal opportunities for all children, African American community leaders and organizations across the country stepped up efforts to change the educational system. In 1950 members of the Topeka, Kansas, Chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) agreed to again challenge the "separate but equal" doctrine governing public education. The strategy was conceived by the chapter president, McKinley Burnett, and the law firm of Scott, Scott, Scott and Jackson. For a period of two years Mr. Burnett had attempted to persuade Topeka school officials to integrate their schools. This law suit was a final attempt.
Her father tried to get her into a white school, which was only seven blocks away, but the principle of the school refused to allow her to enroll. Brown went to the head of Topeka’s NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and asked for his help. The NAACP was all eager to help the Browns in their case against the school because they wanted to take on segregation in schools for quite some time. The case was described as, “the right plaintiff at the right time.” By 1951, with other black parents joining the cause, the NAACP pushed for an injunction to end segregation in Topeka’s public schools. When the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas heard their case, the NAACP argued that segregated schools gave the message to black children that they weren’t equal, and naturally inadequate.
The NAACP fought to have the government uphold desegregation in the US as it was said to be against the 14th and 15th amendments. And example in this was in their fight for the little rock high school to admit black students, also their fight for rosa parks bus boycott Three years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, nine African American students. The students were known as the Little Rock Nine, were recruited by president of the Arkansas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP). As president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, Martin Luther King wrote President Dwight D. Eisenhower requesting a swift resolution allowing the students to attend school. On 4 September 1957 (the