Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement
“Racial segregation was the rule rather than the exception during the 1950s in the southern states, where the great majority of black Americans lived. Outside the Jim Crow laws were less common, but racial prejudice and discrimination were widespread.”(Michael Johnson, pg. 239). African Americans began to stand up for themselves and began protesting for their rights and for equality. “The legal strategy of the major civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), reached its crowning achievement with the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.” (Johnson, pg. 884). The Brown v. Board of Education trial was when Oliver Brown protested for equality in schools. It didn’t make sense for his daughter to have to go more than a mile each way to attend her black school, when there was a white school only seven blocks from their home. “Oliver Brown, a World War II veteran and welder in Topeka, Kansas, filed suit because his eight-year-old daughter had to pass by a white school just seven blocks from their home to attend a black school more than a mile away.” (Johnson, pg. 884).
During the court case, another suit joined Brown. NAACP’s lawyer insisted the court to overturn the “separate but equal” standard. Bringing to the court that the “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and which dishonored the fourteenth amendment. President Eisenhower refused to support Brown, and allowed for the separation to carry on. African Americans continued to face obstacles while President Eisenhower stayed quiet; they were still being beaten, bullied and even murdered. “He also kept silent in 1955 when white murdered Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black boy who had allegedly whistled at a white woman in Mississippi.” (Johnson, pg. 885).
Two years later in September of 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, a major crisis occurred. “Local officials dutifully prepared for the...