History Homework

The Modern Civil Rights Movement

Directions: Read the narrative and answer questions about the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 1960s.

The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement

Rosa Parks, an Alabama seamstress, refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus to a white man. A volunteer secretary for the Montgomery branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement since the early 1930s, Parks was returning from work at a department store on Dec. 1, 1955. The bus filled up, whites in the front and blacks in the back. The driver ordered four blacks in the front of the black section of the bus to get up and make room for whites. Three did, but Mrs. Parks did not. She was arrested under a city ordinance that mandated segregated buses and was fined $10 plus $4 court costs.

Her story is filled with myths. For one thing, her refusal to give up her seat was not the product of a premeditated NAACP plan. Rather, it was a spontaneous decision, she later explained. She had been abused and humiliated one time too many:

"Just having paid for a seat and riding for only a couple of blocks and then having to stand was too much. These other persons had got on the bus after I did. It meant that I didn't have a right to do anything but get on the bus, give them my fare, and then be pushed wherever they wanted me.... There had to be a stopping place, and this seemed to have been the place for me to stop being pushed around and to find out what human rights I had."

With support from the local NAACP, a boycott of Montgomery's bus system was organized to show support for Parks. Montgomery's African Americans shared rides, took taxis, or walked to work. Mrs. Parks and many others were fired. There were bombings, beatings, and lawsuits. In February 1956, Parks and a hundred others were charged with conspiracy. When the boycott started, community leaders arranged for 18 black taxis in the city to carry passengers for the same 10 cent fare as a bus. When the city passed an ordinance requiring a minimum 45 cent fare, 150 people volunteered their cars.

The boycott gained national attention with the charismatic leadership of a 26-year-old minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In November 1956, the Supreme Court affirmed a lower court ruling that threw out the Montgomery bus ordinance. After 381 days, the Montgomery bus boycott was over.

In later life, her views ranged between the non-violence of Martin Luther King and the militancy of Malcolm X. "I don't believe in gradualism," she told an interviewer, "or that whatever is to be done for the better should take forever to do." By holding on to her seat, Rosa Parks illustrated how one person's spontaneous act of courage and defiance can alter the course of history.

Little Rock

The first major confrontation between states' rights advocates and the Supreme Court's school integration decision occurred in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the summer of 1957. Eighteen African American students were chosen to integrate Little Rock's Central High School to comply with the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision. By Labor Day, only nine were still willing to serve as foot soldiers in freedom's march.

Arkansas seemed an unlikely place for a confrontation over civil rights. Its largest newspapers were generally supportive of desegregation, and several Arkansas cities had already integrated their public schools. The public library and bus system were desegregated, earning Little Rock a reputation as a progressive town. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus owed his re-election in 1956 to black voters. Ironically, Faubus, responding to polls that showed 85 percent of the state's residents opposed school integration, tried to block desegregation by directing the Arkansas National Guard to keep the nine teenagers from enrolling in the all-white Central High. He said that "blood would run in the streets" if the Central High School was integrated.

For three weeks, the National Guard, under orders from the governor, prevented the nine students from entering the school. President Eisenhower privately pressed Faubus to comply with the court order. When Faubus refused to comply, the president responded by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and sending in 1,000 paratroopers from the Army's 101st Airborne Division to escort the students into the school.

An angry white mob hurled racial epithets. Inside the school, there were still separate restrooms and drinking fountains for black and white students. During the school year, the African American students were ostracized and physically harassed. They were shoved against lockers, tripped down stairways, and taunted by their classmates. Not all the African American students were able to turn the other cheek. One was expelled for dumping a bowl of soup on a classmate's head. The remaining students were greeted the next day with a sign that said, "One down, eight more to go." Only one of the Little Rock nine graduated from Central High. In the fall of 1958, Governor Faubus shut the public high schools down to prevent further integration. The schools did not re-open for a year.

Daisy Bates, the president of Arkansas's NAACP, spearheaded the drive to integrate Central High. Before and after school, she would have the students gather at her home for prayer and counsel. During the integration struggle, rocks were thrown through her windows and a burning cross was placed on her roof. In 1963, Bates, whose mother had been murdered by three white men in an attempted rape, was the only woman to speak at the March on Washington.

Of the Little Rock nine, one student became assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Carter. The others became an accountant, an investment banker, a journalist, a social worker, a psychologist, a teacher, a real estate broker, and a writer. Only one remained in Little Rock.

Nearly half a century after the Little Rock nine entered Central High School, the city's school system still struggles with integration. Today, almost 50 percent of the white students who live in the district do not enroll in the public school system. Despite busing 14,000 of its 25,000 students to achieve racial balance, 18 of the district's 49 schools have at least 75 percent black enrollment.

Bombingham

By the end of 1961, protests against segregation, job discrimination, and police brutality had erupted from Georgia to Mississippi and from Tennessee to Alabama. Staunch segregationists responded by vowing to defend segregation. The symbol of unyielding resistance to integration was George C. Wallace, a former state judge and a one-time state Golden Gloves featherweight boxing champion. Elected on an extreme segregationist platform, Wallace promised to "stand in the schoolhouse door" and go to jail before permitting integration. At his inauguration in January 1963, Wallace declared: "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

It was in Birmingham, Alabama, that civil rights activists faced the most determined resistance. A sprawling steel town of 340,000, Birmingham had a long history of racial acrimony. In open defiance of Supreme Court rulings, Birmingham had closed its 38 public playgrounds, 8 swimming pools, and 4 golf courses rather than integrate them. Calling Birmingham "the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States," the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. announced in early 1963 that he would lead demonstrations in the city until demands for fair hiring practices and desegregation were met.

Day after day, well-dressed and carefully groomed men, women, and children marched against segregation--only to be jailed for demonstrating without a permit. On April 12, King himself was arrested; while in jail he wrote his now-famous "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," a scathing attack on a group of white clergymen who asked black Americans to wait patiently for equal rights. On pieces of toilet paper and newspaper margins, King wrote:

"I am convinced that if your white brothers dismiss us as `rabble rousers' and 'outside agitators'--those of us who are working through the channels of nonviolent direct action--and refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, millions of Negroes, out of frustration and despair, will seek solace and security in black nationalist ideologies, a development that will lead inevitably to a frightening racial nightmare."

For two weeks, all was quiet; but in early May, demonstrations resumed with renewed vigor. On May 2 and again on May 3, more than a thousand of Birmingham's black youth marched for equal rights. In response, Birmingham's police chief, Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor, unleashed police dogs on the children and sprayed them with fire hoses with 700 pounds of pressure. Watching the willful brutality on television, millions of Americans, white and black, were shocked by the face of segregation.

Tension mounted as police arrested 2,543 blacks and whites between May 2, 1963 and May 7, 1963. Under intense pressure, the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce reached an agreement on May 9 with black leaders to desegregate public facilities in 90 days, to hire blacks as clerks and salespersons in 60 days, and to release demonstrators without bail in return for an end to the protests.

King's goal was nonviolent social change, but the short-term results of the protests were violence and confrontation. On May 11, white extremists firebombed an integrated motel. That same night, a bomb destroyed the home of King's brother. Shooting incidents and racial confrontations quickly spread across the South. In June, an assassin, armed with a Springfield rifle, ambushed 37-year-old Medgar Evers, the NAACP field representative in Mississippi, and shot him in the back. In September, an explosion destroyed Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four black girls and injuring 14 others. Segregationists had planted 10 to 15 sticks of dynamite under the steps of the 50-year-old church building. That same day, a 16-year-old black Birmingham youth was shot from behind by a police shotgun, and a 13-year-old boy was shot while riding his bicycle. All told, 10 people died during racial protests in 1963, 35 black homes and churches were firebombed, and 20,000 people were arrested during civil rights protests.

Guiding Problems

1. Why was Rosa Parks arrested on December 1, 1955?

2. Why did Rosa Parks decide to defy Montgomery's ordinance segregating bussing?

3. How did the NAACP react to Mrs. Park's arrest?

4. Other than Rosa Parks, who else gained national attention during the Montgomery Bus incident?

5. Which Supreme Court case required schools around the country to integrate, allowing white and black children to attend schools together?

6. Why did people in favor of segregation believe integrating schools was a states' rights issue?

7. Why was Little Rock, Arkansas an unlikely place for a battle over desegregation?

8. How did Orval Fuabus react to the Supreme Court's integration order resulting from the Brown v. the Board of Education ruling? How did President Eisenhower react to Faubus' reaction?

9. How well has Little Rock public school system integrated its schools since the desegregation fight?

10. Who was George Wallace and how did he feel about desegregation?

11. Why did Martin Luther King Jr. decide to hold civil rights protests in Birmingham, Alabama?

12. What did King write after being arrested for his role in the protests in Birmingham?

13. How did "Bull" Conner actions in Birmingham actually help the civil right movement?

14. Briefly describe the violence that ensued after the protests in Birmingham?