10 Civil Rights Milestones In America’s Southern States

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Southern states involved in the civil rights movement: Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, The Carolinas, Florida.

In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional after a Kansas school board refused to let a black child attend a nearby school for whites. The following year Rosa Parks, a black seamstress from Alabama refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white rider. Her subsequent conviction under Alabama’s segregation laws was overturned in 1956 by the Supreme Court, which asserted that the segregation of public transportation was as unconstitutional as school segregation. These cases led ultimately to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which criminalized segregation in virtually every aspect of American society. The Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama was dedicated in 1989, honoring 40 people who gave their lives between 1954 and 1968 in the fight for racial equality.

1. Jim Crow Laws: Racial segregation and discrimination laws (1876 to 1965 )

   Jim Crow Laws and Customs enforced racial segregation and discrimination across the south of the United States between 1876 and 1965. They gave African Americans separate but ‘equal’ status. The most important laws required that public schools and most public places have separate facilities for whites and blacks. After 1945 the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum and used federal courts to attack Jim Crow. In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act, annulling all Jim Crow Laws.

   The term ‘Jim Crow Laws’ is thought to originate from a popular minstrel show song written in 1828 called Jump Jim Crow, a blackface song which made derogatory references to the character of coloured people. As a result of this song, the term ‘Jim Crow’ became a pejorative or mocking term for coloured people.

2. Jackie Robinson: Entered Major League Baseball in 1947

   In 1947 Jackie Robinson became the first African American Major League Baseball player. Jackie played baseball in 1944 for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro American League where he was noticed by Clyde Sukeforth, a scout working for Branch Rickey, club president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Two years after his debut in the Major League, Jackie won the award for Most Valuable Player.

   Jackie Robinson is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a member of the All-Century Team. He once said:
   

   “I’m not concerned with your liking or disliking me… all I ask is that you respect me as a human being.”

3. Brown vs Board: The end to racial segregation in public education (1954)

   School desegregation was a major part of the Civil Rights Movement. The first legal challenge to segregated schools was in the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. A landmark desicion was taken by the United States Supreme Court to outlaw the racial segregation of public education facilities. It was a giant step forward for the civil rights movement, placing the weight of the Federal Judiciary squarely behind the forces of desegregation.

   The case of Brown v. Board was not solely about Linda Brown and whether or not she should be able to attend the school nearest her home but a consolidation of five different cases, from four states, all of which dealt with the same issue.

4. The Freedom Riders: Rode interstate buses into the segregated south (Summer of 1961)

   In 1961 The Freedom Riders (black and white) rode interstate buses into the segregated South from Washington, D.C., to Jackson, Mississippi. The purpose was to test the 1960 United States Supreme Court decision on Boynton v. Virginia which outlawed racial segregation in interstate transportation facilities, including bus stations and railroad terminals. A total of 436 Freedom Riders, many of whom were college students were arrested and imprisoned for violating state and local Jim Crow Laws.

5. James Meredith: Attended the all-white University of Mississippi in 1962

   James Meredith was born in Kosciusko, Mississippi of Native American (Choctaw) and African American heritage. In September 1962 Meredith applied for admission to the all-white University of Mississippi following a nine year stint in the U.S. Air Force and two years at Jackson State College. A federal court ordered the university to desegregate, but the governor of Mississippi defied the order and tried to prevent the man from enrolling. On 1st October he became the first black student at the University. His enrollment sparked riots on the Oxford campus and required President John F. Kennedy to send federal troops and marshals. James Meredith graduated in the summer of 1963.

   Meredith once said:
   

   “Nothing could be more insulting to me than the concept of civil rights. It means perpetual second-class citizenship for me and my kind”.

   He views himself as an individual American citizen who demanded and got the rights properly extended to any American, not as a participant in the US Civil Rights Movement.

6. Bloody Sunday: 3 marches from Selma to Montgomery, AL (Sunday, 7th March 1965)

   Many events during the Civil Rights Movement turned violent and it was Bloody Sunday that marked its political and emotional peak. Three marches were organised from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery to bring notice to the violations of civil rights. Only the third and final march made it successfully into Montgomery. During the first attempt on Sunday, 7th March 1965 600 marchers were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs, tear gas and bull whips. The following Tuesday Martin Luther King organised a second march but it could not continue to Montgomery due to the delayed issuing of a court order that had been sort to prohibit the police from interfering. Two weeks later the federal judge granted the court order, preventing the State from blocking the marchers and on 24th March 1965 they reached Montgomery.

   Within five months of the third march, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The route is memorialized as the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.

7. Henry David Thoreau: American author and philosopher

   Henry David Thoreau was one of the first people to set forth the basic tenets of civil disobedience. He is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

   Thoreau’s philosophy of nonviolent resistance influenced the political thoughts and actions of the pacifist Leo Tolstoy, the separatist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.. Thoreau is regarded today as one of the foremost American writers, both for the modern clarity of his prose style and the prescience of his views on nature and politics. His memory is honored by the international Thoreau Society, the oldest and largest society devoted to an American author.

8. The Kerner Report: The riot commission (1968)

   In 1967 President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Commission on Civil Disorders and charged it with investigating urban riots in the United States. In 1968 the commission released its report and its finding were that the riots resulted from black frustration at lack of economic opportunity. It warned:
   

   ”Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white–separate and unequal.”

9. Martin Luther King: January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968

   Martin Luther King was a political activist, a baptist minister and leader of the American civil rights movement. He won the Nobel Peace prize in 1964 and following his assasination in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4th, 1968 he was awarded the Presidential medal of Freedom. January 15th has been a Federal holiday in the United States since 1986 in his honour.

   The Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee where Martin Luther King was shot now houses the National Civil Rights Museum. Two months after King’s death James Earl Ray was captured at London Heathrow Airport and charged with the assasination. Ever since his capture, controversy and conspiracy theories have surrounded the assasination, some even attributing it to the FBI who had the Lorraine Motel under surveillance at the time and who were first on the scene. King was in Memphis to support striking black garbage workers.

   Martin Luther King was originally born Michael King but informally changed his name in honour of ‘Martin Luther’ when he became a minister. Martin Luther inspired the Reformation in 1517.