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Brown v. Board of Education
URL:
http://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/history-brown-v-board-
education-re-enactment

Quote:
The case that came to be known as Brown v. Board of Education was actually the name given to five separate cases
that were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the issue of segregation in public schools. These cases were
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County (VA.) ,
Boiling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Ethel . While the facts of each case are different, the main issue in each was the
constitutionality of state-sponsored segregation in public schools. Once again, Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal
Defense and Education Fund handled these cases.
Although it acknowledged some of the plaintiffs'/plaintiffs claims, a three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court that heard
the cases ruled in favor of the school boards. The plaintiffs then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
When the cases came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court consolidated all five cases under the name of Brown
v. Board of Education. Marshall personally argued the case before the Court. Although he raised a variety of legal issues
on appeal, the most common one was that separate school systems for blacks and whites were inherently unequal, and
thus violate the "equal protection clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Furthermore, relying on
sociological tests, such as the one performed by social scientist Kenneth Clark, and other data, he also argued that
segregated school systems had a tendency to make black children feel inferior to white children, and thus such a system
should not be legally permissible.
Meeting to decide the case, the Justices of the Supreme Court realized that they were deeply divided over the issues
raised. While most wanted to reverse Plessy and declare segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, they had
various reasons for doing so. Unable to come to a solution by June 1953 (the end of the Court's 1952-1953 term), the
Court decided to rehear the case in December 1953. During the intervening months, however, Chief Justice Fred Vinson
died and was replaced by Gov. Earl Warren of California. After the case was reheard in 1953, Chief Justice Warren was
able to do something that his predecessor had noti.e. bring all of the Justices to agree to support a unanimous decision
declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional. On May 14, 1954, he delivered the opinion of the Court, stating
that "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate
educational facilities are inherently unequal. . ."
Expecting opposition to its ruling, especially in the southern states, the Supreme Court did not immediately try to give
direction for the implementation of its ruling. Rather, it asked the attorney generals of all states with laws permitting
segregation in their public schools to submit plans for how to proceed with desegregation. After still more hearings before
the Court concerning the matter of desegregation, on May 31, 1955, the Justices handed down a plan for how it was to
proceed; desegregation was to proceed with "all deliberate speed." Although it would be many years before all
segregated school systems were to be desegregated, Brown and Brown II (as the Courts plan for how to desegregate
schools came to be called) were responsible for getting the process underway.

Paraphrase:
The case named Brown v. Board of education was the name given to 5 separate cases all involving school opportunity
and equality for African Americans. They won their case but it took several years to actually take away segregation in
schools.

My Ideas:
Were there any other similar cases like this one that fought for equal education.?
The people that fought for education fought not just for them but for all African Americans.

History:
Created: 04/28/2017 07:21 PM

Jim Crow Laws

URL:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-jim-crow-laws/
Quote:
The segregation and disenfranchisement laws known as "Jim Crow" represented a formal, codified system of racial
apartheid that dominated the American South for three-quarters of a century beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected
almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses,
trains, and restaurants. "Whites Only" and "Colored" signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order.

In legal theory, blacks received "separate but equal" treatment under the law in actuality, public facilities for blacks
were nearly always inferior to those for whites, when they existed at all. In addition, blacks were systematically denied
the right to vote in most of the rural South through the selective application of literacy tests and other racially motivated
criteria.

The Jim Crow system was upheld by local government officials and reinforced by acts of terror perpetrated by Vigilantes.
In 1896, the Supreme Court established the doctrine of separate but equal in Plessy v. Ferguson , after a black man in
New Orleans attempted to sit in a whites-only railway car.
In 1908, journalist Ray Stannard Baker observed that "no other point of race contact is so much and so bitterly discussed
among Negroes as the Jim Crow car." As bus travel became widespread in the South over the first half of the 20th
century, it followed the same pattern.
"Travel in the segregated South for black people was humiliating," recalled Diane Nash in her interview for Freedom
Riders . "The very fact that there were separate facilities was to say to black people and white people that blacks were so
subhuman and so inferior that we could not even use the public facilities that white people used."
Transit was a core component of segregation in the South, as the 1947 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) pamphlet and
Bayard Rustin song, "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow" attests. Keeping whites and blacks from sitting together on a bus,
train, or trolley car might seem insignificant, but it was one more link in a system of segregation that had to be defended
at all times lest it collapse. Thus transit was a logical point of attack for the foes of segregation, in the courtroom and
on the buses themselves.
It would take several decades of legal action and months of nonviolent direct action before these efforts achieved their
intended result.

Paraphrase:
Jim Crow laws were laws that segregated African Americans from whites. They were a system of laws that created an
environment in which African Americans were inferior to Whites. It created separation between the two races. It made
African Americans sit in certain places, eat in certain places, and go to certain places.

My Ideas:
Did any conflict go one with the federal government and the states who enforced Jim Crow Laws?
These Laws represent just how much the state government got away with segregation and racism "legally".

History:
Created: 04/28/2017 06:30 PM

Lunch Sit ins

URL:
http://www.ushistory.org/us/54d.asp

Quote:
1960, the Civil Rights Movement had gained strong momentum. The nonviolent measures employed by Martin Luther
King Jr. helped African American activists win supporters across the country and throughout the world.
On February 1, 1960, a new tactic was added to the peaceful activists' strategy. Four African American college students
walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the local WOOLWORTH'S store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for
coffee. When service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly
and waited to be served.
The civil rights sit-in was born.

Paraphrase:
Lunch sit ins were peaceful protests to protest segregation in lunch counters and restaurants.

My Ideas:
Did the lunch sit ins correspond with the freedom rides at all?
History:
Created: 04/28/2017 07:39 PM

Montgomery Bus Boycott

URL:
http://www.montgomeryboycott.com/overview/

Quote:
When Rosa Parks refused on the afternoon of Dec. 1, 1955, to give up her bus seat so that a white man could sit, it is
unlikely that she fully realized the forces she had set into motion and the controversy that would soon swirl around her.
Other black women had similarly refused to give up their seats on public buses and had even been arrested, including
two young women earlier that same year in Montgomery, Ala. But this time the outcome was different.
Unlike those earlier incidents, Rosa Parks courageous refusal to bow to an unfair law sparked a crucial chapter in the
Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the Montgomery Bus Boycott . ,I didnt get on the bus with the intention of
being arrested, she often said later. I got on the bus with the intention of going home. Pressures had been building in
Montgomery for some time to deal with public transportation practices that treated blacks as second-class citizens.
Those pressures were increased when a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin , was arrested on March 2, 1955, for refusing
to give up her seat to a white person.

Paraphrase:
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white man. She started a movement that lasted almost the rest of
the century. She was an inspiration to may people to did just what she did.

My Ideas:
Did Rosa became any sort of leader for the movement in the future?

History:
Created: 04/28/2017 07:32 PM

Plessy v. Ferguson
URL:
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=52

Quote:
During the era of Reconstruction, black Americans political rights were affirmed by three constitutional amendments and
numerous laws passed by Congress. Racial discrimination was attacked on a particularly broad front by the Civil Rights
Act of 1875. This legislation made it a crime for an individual to deny the full and equal enjoyment of any of the
accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters and other
places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to
citizens of every race and color.
In 1883, the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 act, ruling that the 14th Amendment did not give Congress authority
to prevent discrimination by private individuals. Victims of racial discrimination were told to seek relief not from the
Federal Government, but from the states. Unfortunately, state governments were passing legislation that codified
inequality between the races. Laws requiring the establishment of separate schools for children of each race were most
common; however, segregation was soon extended to encompass most public and semi-public facilities.
Beginning with passage of an 1887 Florida law, states began to require that railroads furnish separate accommodations
for each race. These measures were unpopular with the railway companies that bore the expense of adding Jim Crow
cars. Segregation of the railroads was even more objectionable to black citizens, who saw it as a further step toward the
total repudiation of three constitutional amendments. When such a bill was proposed before the Louisiana legislature in
1890, the articulate black community of New Orleans protested vigorously. Nonetheless, despite the presence of 16 black
legislators in the state assembly, the law was passed. It required either separate passenger coaches or partitioned
coaches to provide segregated accommodations for each race. Passengers were required to sit in the appropriate areas
or face a $25 fine or a 20-day jail sentence. Black nurses attending white children were permitted to ride in white
compartments, however.
In 1891, a group of concerned young black men of New Orleans formed the Citizens Committee to Test the
Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. They raised money and engaged Albion W. Tourge, a prominent Radical
Republican author and politician, as their lawyer. On May 15, 1892, the Louisiana State Supreme Court decided in favor
of the Pullman Companys claim that the law was unconstitutional as it applied to interstate travel. Encouraged, the
committee decided to press a test case on intrastate travel. With the cooperation of the East Louisiana Railroad, on June
7, 1892, Homer Plessy, a mulatto (7/8 white), seated himself in a white compartment, was challenged by the conductor,
and was arrested and charged with violating the state law. In the Criminal District Court for the Parish of Orleans, Tourge
argued that the law requiring separate but equal accommodations was unconstitutional. When Judge John H. Ferguson
ruled against him, Plessy applied to the State Supreme Court for a writ of prohibition and certiorari. Although the court
upheld the state law, it granted Plessys petition for a writ of error that would enable him to appeal the case to the
Supreme Court.
In 1896, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson . Justice Henry Brown of Michigan delivered the
majority opinion, which sustained the constitutionality of Louisianas Jim Crow law.

Paraphrase:
A man named Homer Plessy was required to sit in a Jim Crow train car. He refused to and sat in the whites only car. He
took the case to supreme court. The cost declared the Louisiana Law separate but equal. Plessy lost his case.

My Ideas:
Did any other cases like this one take place after it?
Was Plessy punished at all for "breaking the law"?
Plessy was true leader when he sat in the white car. He inspired others.

History:
Created: 04/28/2017 06:43 PM

Remark at Gettysburg on Civil Rights

URL:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/remarks-at-gettysburg-on-civil-rights/

Quote:
If the white over-estimates what he has done for the Negro without the law, the Negro may under-estimate what he is
doing and can do for himself with the law.
If it is empty to ask Negro or white for patience, it is not emptyit is merely honestto ask perseverance. Men may build
barricadesand others may hurl themselves against those barricadesbut what would happen at the barricades would
yield no answers. The answers will only be wrought by our perseverance together. It is deceit to promise more as it would
be cowardice to demand less.
In this hour, it is not our respective races which are at stakeit is our nation. Let those who care for their country come
forward, North and South, white and Negro, to lead the way through this moment of challenge and decision.
The Negro says, Now. Others say, Never. The voice of responsible Americansthe voice of those who died here and
the great man who spoke heretheir voices say, Together. There is no other way.
Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of mens
skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not
fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free.

Paraphrase:
Johnson talks about how for this nation to be great we all need to work together and treat each other as equals no matter
what race.

My Ideas:
How did the media and people respond to this speech?

History:
Created: 04/28/2017 07:43 PM

The civil rights movements

URL:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/ap-us-history/period-8/apush-civil-rights-
movement/a/introduction-to-the-civil-rights-movement
Quote:
Civil rights and the Supreme Court
One of the earliest approaches was centered in the courts. Spearheaded by the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ), this strategy initiated lawsuits to undermine the legal foundation of Jim Crow
segregation in the South. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling held that separate facilities were
inherently unequal and thereby declared segregation in public education to be unconstitutional.55start
superscript, 5, end superscript
While the Supreme Court decision was a major victory for civil rights, white supremacists in the South pledged " massive
resistance " to desegregation . In response to Brown v. Board , a group of Southern congressmen issued the Southern
manifesto, denouncing the courts decision and pledging to resist its enforcement. Ultimately, federal intervention was
required to implement the ruling .
Nonviolent protest and civil disobedience
With authorities in the South actively resisting court orders to desegregate, some leaders of the Civil Rights Movement
turned to direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience. Civil rights activists launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott in
1955, after Rosa Parks refused to vacate her seat on the bus for a white person . Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged as a
leader of the boycott , which was the first mass direct action of the contemporary Civil Rights Movement and provided a
template for the efforts of activists across the country.

Religious groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), student organizations like the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) , and labor unions such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO), all
took part in massive protests to raise awareness and to accelerate the momentum for passage of federal civil rights
legislation. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the largest civil rights protest in US history, and
contributed to the successful implementation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 .
Mass direct action was highly effective, particularly due to widespread news media coverage of nonviolent protestors
being harassed and physically beaten by law enforcement officers.

Paraphrase:
- One of the earliest approaches was centered in the courts. Spearheaded by the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ),
- Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling held that separate facilities were inherently unequal and thereby
declared segregation in public education to be unconstitutional.55start superscript, 5, end superscript
- Civil Rights Movement turned to direct action and nonviolent civil disobedience. Civil rights activists launched the
Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, after Rosa Parks refused to vacate her seat on the bus for a white person. Martin
Luther King, Jr. emerged as a leader of the boycott, which was the first mass direct action of the contemporary Civil
Rights Movement and provided a template for the efforts of activists across the country.
- Mass direct action was highly effective, particularly due to widespread news media coverage of nonviolent protestors
being harassed and physically beaten by law enforcement officers.

My Ideas:
During the Civil rights movement many different types of protests took place. From lawsuits to peaceful protests, rican
americans fought with all of their might to create equal rights and an equal country.

History:
Created: 04/13/2017 10:05 AM

The start of Civil Rights

URL:
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/ap-us-history/period-8/apush-civil-rights-
movement/a/introduction-to-the-civil-rights-movement

Quote:
The emergence of the Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement did not suddenly appear out of nowhere in the twentieth century. Efforts to improve the
quality of life for African Americans are as old as the United States. By the time of the American Revolution in the late
eighteenth century, abolitionists were already working to eliminate racial injustice and bring an end to the institution of
slavery.11start superscript, 1, end superscript During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation, which was codified into law as the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The
Thirteenth Amendment officially outlawed slavery and went into effect in 1865.
After the Civil War, during the period known as Reconstruction, the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments
established a legal foundation for the political equality of African Americans. Despite the abolition of slavery and legal
gains for African Americans, racial segregation known as Jim Crow arose in the South.22start superscript, 2,
end superscript Jim Crow segregation meant that Southern blacks would continue to live in conditions of poverty and
inequality, with white supremacists denying them their hard-won political rights and freedoms.33start
superscript, 3, end superscript

The twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement emerged as a response to the unfulfilled promises of emancipation, partly
as a result of the experiences of black soldiers in the Second World War. African Americans fought in a segregated
military while being exposed to US propaganda emphasizing liberty, justice, and equality. After fighting in the name of
democracy in other countries around the world, many African American veterans returned to the United States
determined to achieve the rights and prerogatives of full citizenship.44start superscript, 4, end superscript
The Civil Rights Movement involved many different strategies and approaches, including legal action, nonviolent civil
disobedience, and black militancy.

Paraphrase:
- The first step against racial discrimination was the 13th amendment, Passed by Abraham Lincoln, that outlawed
slavery.
- During the reconstruction period, the 14th and 15th amendment were put into place for the political equality of African
Americans
- During this time period, racial segregation known as Jim Crow arose
- The twentieth-century Civil Rights Movement emerged as a response to the unfulfilled promises of emancipation, partly
as a result of the experiences of black soldiers in the Second World War.
- A lot of African Americans fought in a segregated military to fight for liberty, justice, and equality.
- many African American Veterans returned to the United States determined to achieve the rights and prerogatives of full
citizenship.4 4 start superscript, 4, end superscript
- The Civil Rights Movement involved many different strategies and approaches, including legal action, nonviolent civil
disobedience, and black militancy.

My Ideas:
How did the government respond to African Americans and their fight for equality?
Were their specific White Americans that also protested for African American rights?
What were the goals of the Civil rights movement?
The United States government put the ideas of liberty and equality inside if the brains of the African Americans that
fought in the war for them. When the African American soldiers came back they were once again discriminated.
Discriminated by the same country that they fought for. The same country that promised equality and liberty for all.

History:
Created: 04/13/2017 09:42 AM