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A young African American girl was denied admission to her neighborhood school in Topeka, Kansas because of her race. She had to travel across town just to attend an all-black school. Her parents sued the Topeka school board with the help of the NAACP.
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The Supreme Court affirmed the decision of a special three-judge panel declaring Alabama’s laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional. Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on the bus to a white man showed that even small acts of defiance could empower people to create change. Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader of this boycott.
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In September 1957, the school board in Little Rock, Arkansas, won a court order requiring that 9 black students be admitted to Central High, a school with 2,000 white students. The governor of Arkansas was known as moderate on racial issues, but he was determined to win reelection and begin to campaign as a defender of white supremacy. He ordered troops to prevent the 9 students from entering the school. He immediately ordered the Army to send troops to Little Rock.
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The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee led the sit-in movement, which was a sit-in at the whites only lunch counter until they have gotten the same services as the whites. Later, more and more people supported this act and joined in with them. Their names were Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, and Franklin McCain.
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Many African Americans and white volunteers were asked to travel into the South to draw attention to refusal to integrate bus terminals. They were beaten up by a gang of young men who were armed with bats, chains and lead pipes.
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James Meredith was an African American air force veteran. President Kennedy dispatched 500 federal marshals to escort Meredith to the campus.
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Dr. King realized that Kennedy would have a very difficult time pushing his civil rights bill through Congress. Therefore, he searched for a way to lobby Congress and to build more public support. As an alternative, Dr. King had received an idea from A. Phillip Randolph to march on Washington. The March on Washington is most famous for Dr King's "I have a Dream" speech. Shortly after the march, the Civil Rights act of 1964 was passed.
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He had lost patience with the slow progress of civil rights and felt that African Americans needed to act more militantly and demand equality, not wait for it to be given to them. After Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam, he continued to criticize the organization. Because of this, organization members shot and killed him in February 1965.
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Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, voting rights were far from secure. The act had focused on segregation and job discrimination, and it did little to address voting issues. The Selma March protested against voting rights. Many demonstrators were beaten by police forces as they were ignoring their commands. The bill had the US attorney general send federal examiners to register qualified voters, by passing local officials who often refused to register African Americans.
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African Americans lived in poor neighborhoods in the nation’s major cities were overcrowded and dirty, leading to higher rates of illness and infant mortality. Many were trapped in poverty and found themselves forced into low-paying jobs with little chances of advancements. Their views of civil rights were that they believed that a revolution was necessary in the US, and they urged African Americans to arm themselves and prepare to force whites to grant them equal rights.
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