Rosa Parks

, born Rosa Louise McCauley (February 4, 1913 -

October 24, 2005) was a pivotal figure in the fight for civil rights. Mrs. Parks was a protester of segregation laws in the US, and her actions led to major reforms (changes), including a Supreme Court ruling against segregation. Arrested for Not Giving up Her Bus Seat to a White Man On December 1, 1955, a Alabama, bus driver ordered her seat to a white man. When arrested and fined. Other local women were also segregation laws, including Aurelia S. Browder, Susie Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith. Montgomery, Mrs. Parks to give up she refused, she was arrested for violating McDonald, Claudette

Bus Boycott Mrs. Parks' arrest resulted in thousands of leaflets being distributed, calling for a boycott of city buses on Monday, December 5, 1955 (a bus boycott is when people refuse to use the buses). That same day, Mrs. Parks was convicted of violating local segregation laws and was fined $14. After negotiations between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the city of Montgomery failed, the bus boycott was extended, and eventually lasted for 381 days. Carpools were organized as temporary transportation, and many people simply walked long distances to work every day. Dr. King and 89 others were arrested (March 19, 1956), tried, and convicted (March 22, 1956) for conspiring to conduct the bus boycott. Supreme Court Ruling On February 1, 1956, Mrs. Parks sued. Her case resulted in a Supreme Court ruling (on November 13, 1956) that segregation (separating whites and blacks) on city buses is unconstitutional. The implementation of the Supreme Court's decision, the desegregation of buses, took place on December 20, 1956. Mrs. Parks had finally won.

Questions 1. Why was Rosa Parks arrested? _________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ 2. What state did the boycott take place? ___________________________________________ 3. What did the people boycott? __________________________________________________ 4. Who tried to negotiate with the city for equal rights on the bus? _______________________ __________________________________________________________________________ 5. What is the term used that means separation of whites and blacks? ___________________ __________________________________________________________________________

Linda Brown
Linda's father, Oliver her in the white elementary principal of the school went to McKinley Burnett, branch of the National Advancement of Colored Linda Brown and her sister asked for help. The NAACP walking along the railroad Browns, as it had long tracks to school. segregation in public parents joined and created a class action suit (where together to sue for a single purpose) against the Topeka After losing on a state level, many more joined the suit brought to the Supreme Court, to desegregate not just Schools, but also South Carolina, Virginia, and years, the Supreme Court finally came to a decision and "separate but equal" doctrine for public education, plaintiffs, and required the desegregation of schools The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education segregation in other public areas, such as restaurants require desegregation of public schools by a specific the segregation that existed in 21 states as giant step towards complete desegregation of public Questions
1. What grade was Linda Brown in when she became

Even though a brand new

elementary school sat just seven blocks from her home, its doors were closed to third grader Linda Brown Sumner Elementary was for whites only, and Linda was black. So she was forced to trudge more than a mile along a dangerous railroad switchyard to reach her school. Brown, tried to enroll school, but the refused. Brown then the head of Topeka's Association for the People (NAACP) and was eager to assist the wanted to challenge schools. Other black many people join Public School system. and a new case was Topekas Public Delawares. After two struck down the ruled in favor of the across America. decision did not abolish and restrooms, nor did it time. It did, however, declare unconstitutional. It was a schools.

Linda Brown Smith, 9, is shown in this 1952 photo. Smith was a 3rd grader when her father started a classaction suit in 1951 of the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., which led to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision against school segregation.

a part of the Civil

Rights movement? _________________________________________________________

2. Why wasnt Linda allowed to attend Sumner Elementary, even though it was only blocks from her home?

_______________________________________________________________________________________
3. Why didnt Lindas father want her to go to the segregated school for blacks? _____________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________ 4. Who helped Mr. Brown sue the Topeka school system and did they win? ___________________________ 5. What states eventually joined in to the second suit? _____________________________________________ 6. How did the Supreme Courts ruling affect the rest of the country? _________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________

School Integration in Little Rock, Arkansas

Although most school districts at least attempted to integrate following the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, some school districts, particularly those in the Deep South, actively avoided desegregation. One of the most famous cases involved Little Rock's Central High School, where Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus joined local whites in resisting integration by dispatching the Arkansas National Guard to block the nine black students from entering the school. On September 2, 1957, the day before the nine black students were to enter Central High, National Guardsmen surrounded the school. In a televised speech that night, Governor Orval Faubus explained that he had called the National Guardmen because he had heard t hat white Angry anti-integration protesters outside the school supremacists from all over the state were descending on Little Rock. He declared Central off-limits to blacks and Horace Mann, the black high school, off-limits to whites. He also proclaimed that if the black students attempted to enter Central, "blood would run in the streets." The black students did not attend the first day of school. Early on Wednesday, September 4, Daisy Bates of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who was helping out the nine, called to tell them that they were to meet a few blocks away from the school and walk in together. Unfortunately, Elizabeth Eckford, one of the nine, did not have a phone. She never received the message and attempted to enter the school alone through the front entrance. An angry mob met her, threatening to lynch her, as the Arkansas National Guard looked on. Fortunately, two whites stepped forward to aid her, and she escaped without injury. The other eight were also denied admittance by the National Guard, under orders from Governor Faubus. On September 20, Judge Ronald N. Davies granted NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Wiley Branton an i njunction that prevented Governor Faubus from using the National Guard to deny the nine black students admittance to Central High. Faubus announced that he would comply with the court order, although he hoped that the black students would choose to stay integration could occur

Elizabeth Eckford, being taunted by other students as she tried to enter the school alone

away from Central until without violence.

On Monday, September 23, the nine black students, often called "The Little Rock Nine" set off for Central High. Meanwhile, the mob outside the school beat several black reporters there to cover the event. The reporters were saved when word came that the black students had entered the school. The mob went crazy. Mothers yelled to their children, "Come out! Don't stay in there with those niggers!" Inside the school, the black students The nine students being escorted into the school became the brunts of various jokes. White students spat on them, tripped them, and yelled insults. More serious problems were to come. By 11:30, the city police surrounding the school felt that they could no longer control the mob. The students had to leave the school through a rear entrance.

To ensure that the Little Rock Nine could complete a full day of classes, President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock. The 101st patrolled outside the school and escorted the black students into the school. In addition, the black students were assigned a personal guard from the 101st who followed them around the school. Still, they were subjects of unspeakable hatred. White students yelled insults in the halls and during class. They beat up the black students, particularly the boys. They walked on the heels of the blacks until they bled. They destroyed the black students' lockers and threw flaming paper wads at them in the bathrooms. They threw lighted sticks of dynamite at Melba Pattillo, stabbed her, and sprayed acid in her eyes. The acid was so strong that had her 101st guard not splashed water on her face immediately, she would have been blind for the rest of her life. Gradually, the 101st Airborne left Central High and the black students were left to fend for themselves. By the time Christmas rolled around, they were certainly ready for a vacation. Unfortunately, vacation did not come soon enough for Minnijean Brown, who dumped her lunch tray over the heads of two boys who had been taunting her on December 17th. Even though the boys said that they "didn't blame her for getting mad" after all the insults she had endured over the course of the year, Minnijean was suspended for six days. She was "reinstated on probation [on] January 13, 1958, with the agreement that she would not retaliate, verbally or physically, to any harassment but would leave the matter to the school authorities to handle." But she was expelled in February after she called a girl who Jefferson Thomas with was provoking her "white trash." The whites in the school were jubilant, making up cards that Minnijean Brown (left) and Thelma Mothershed said, "One down...eight to go!"
Federal troops at Central High School at Central High

It was not to be. The other eight all finished the school year. In May, despite numerous protests and under the watchful eye of 125 federalized Arkansas National Guardsmen, Ernest Green became the first black graduate of Central High, the sole minority student in his 602-member class. As Ernest Green graduated from Central High, segregationists in Arkansas geared up to prevent the other seven students from doing the same. Once again, the Little Rock School Board asked for an injunction delaying integration until 1961. Although the injunction was initially granted, it was overturned by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in August 1958. The reversal was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on September 12, 1958. The highest court in the land had told Little Rock that it must integrate. But Governor Faubus had other plans. After he learned of the Supreme Court decision, he signed a package of segregation bills that had been passed by the Arkansas State Legislature in August, including a bill that granted him the power to shut down the public schools in any part of the state. He then proceeded to close down all four of Little Rock's public high schools, stating, "If Daisy Bates [an NAACP leader] would find an honest job and go to work, and if the U.S. Supreme Court would keep its cottonpicking hands off the Little Rock School Board's affairs, we could open the Little Rock [public] schools!" Meanwhile, the families of the Little Rock Nine came under tremendous pressure. Three of their parents were fired or forced to

resign from their jobs. Some of the families moved away. The five students who remained in Little Rock took correspondence courses from the University of Arkansas while they waited for the public schools to reopen. Finally, in the summer of 1959, the act which Governor Faubus had used to shut down the schools was declared unconstitutional. He immediately began work on a new law to take its place, but to avoid it, the school board opened the Little Rock high schools early, on August 12th. The only two black students assigned to Central High were both members of the original Little Rock Nine, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls; three other black students were assigned to the newer Hall High. Both Jefferson and Carlotta graduated that spring.
Blacks protesting school segregation

could attain the Constitution if they in the courtroom. Rides, and similar Negroes, would possibly have any case," noted occurred when they Little Rock than to occur when the time spark. Little Rock of the American

The crisis in Little Rock had a profound impact on America and the rest of the world. It provided indelible proof of the lengths to which some Southerners would go to prevent integration. It also showed African Americans that they rights guaranteed to them by the made themselves heard, on the street and "The lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom struggles in which Negroes, led by successfully engaged in after Little Rock taken place at some time in the future in Daisy Bates. "But that these events did is probably due more to the impact of any other factor . . . . Events in history has ripened for them, but they need a was that spark at that stage of the struggle Negro for justice." Questions

1. Did this event happen before or after the Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education that

segregation in schools was unconstitutional? 2. If the Supreme Court had already ruled that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, why wasnt Central High already integrated? 3. Who was Orval Faubus and was he for or against integration? 4. What did the National Guard do? 5. What did President Eisenhower do? 6. Were the students safe once they were admitted into the school? What happened to them? How long did this go on? 7. What did Miniijean decide to do that got her expelled? 8. Who was the first black student to graduate from Central High? 9. What did Governor Faubus do to try to prevent any other black students from graduating at Central High? 10. What did the integration of Central High School prove? 11. What does Daisy Bates think the integration at Central High led to?