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.