The Civil Rights Movement Education
Jan 19, 2016
The Civil Rights Movement
Education
Aims:
• Examine how the Civil Rights campaign led to changes in education.
• One of the first major events in the Civil Rights Movement was over education.
• Twenty states in the USA, all in the South, had segregated schools
• Schools for Black children were much worse.• Therefore Black children were denied the same
opportunities as Whites.
Division In Education
Brown v the Topeka Board of Education
• In 1951, Linda Brown was an eight year old Black girl. She had to walk a great distance to school as she was banned for attending the school near to where she lived.
• The school she attended was much worse than her local one.
• Her father challenged this discrimination and took the Topeka School Board to Court.
• They were supported by the NAACP – National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.
• The NAACP was setup in 1909 and campaigned for equality for coloured people
• The case was taken to the Supreme Court in America, where the Browns were successful.
• In 1954 the Supreme Court ordered that schools should be desegregated.
• This was an important victory – if segregation in education was illegal, the next step was that segregation in other areas should also be made illegal.
• In 1955 the Supreme Court ordered that schools should be desegregated as fast as possible.
• By the end of 1956, not one black child attended a white school in the South.
Tasks
• Read pages 63-64 and complete Activities 1-3 on page 64.
• Read page 65 and complete Activities 1-3 on page 65.
Little Rock, Arkansas 1957
• This was the most famous struggle to integrate schools in the USA.
• Central High School in Little Rock decided it would take nine Black students on Sept 3rd, 1957.
• The Governor, Orval Faubus sent state soldiers to surround the school and prevent this from happening.
• An angry white mob also gathered outside the school.
Little Rock, Arkansas 1957
• Elizabeth Eckford, aged 15 was one of the first students to arrive.
• The National Guard prevented her from entering the school and she was chased down the street by an angry white mob.
• The President, Dwight Eisenhower was no longer willing to have states ignoring federal law.
• The Governor was ordered to remove the state soldiers and 1000 US soldiers were sent to protect Black children at Little Rock. The troops stayed for a year and patrolled the school corridors.
Tasks
• Using your workguide pages 66-67 and the information from this powerpoint, write a detailed paragraph describing the events in Little Rock Arkansas in 1957.