The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the Civil Rights Movement

Background Information

The civil rights unit will include interpretation of the 13^th and 14^th Amendments to the Constitution and provide legal argument to the verdicts that prelude the Brown decision.

The Thirteenth Amendment ratified in 1865, grants citizenship for all people born in the United States along with equal protection. It plainly mandated that there could no longer be one set of rules governing the conduct of black men and another for whites. It legally abolished slavery in the United States. ⁴ The Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868. It states, "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law." ⁵

Legislation, Acts, and Policies in Chronological Order

The Civil Rights Act of 1875

It is vital that students understand why segregation emerged after the Civil War and Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves. In 1875, the Civil Rights Act was passed, "Be it enacted that all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement."⁶ In 1883, the Supreme Court overturned the Civil Rights Act of 1875 on the ground that it dealt with private discrimination (such as access to privately owned inns and restaurants), but the Fourteenth Amendment only authorized Congress to regulate state action.

Jim Crow Laws (1875)

Ironically, the same year the Civil Rights Act of 1875 passed segregation laws (led by the state of Tennessee) known as Jim Crow laws began to be adopted. The Jim Crow laws varied from state to state but carried the same message of racism.

Stories abound about the origin of the term Jim Crow. Some describe him as a slave; others assert he was a slave trader. The most plausible theory traces the term's roots to the1830s when Thomas 'Daddy' Rice, a minstrel performer, began caricaturing blacks in his show. The character was a buffoon and was treated with disdain. In time, the term became synonymous with legalized segregation of the races.⁷

Students will interpret a current political cartoon or caricature and then interpret one from the Jim Crow era.

Southern Manifesto (1956)

The southern leaders of the United States Congress in 1956 wrote and signed the

document Southern Manifesto. It was signed by 101 congressmen from 11 states

who opposed the integration of public places. It was made by the man in the

South who is usually given credit for having coined the phrase Massive

Resistance and certainly made it his property by the strength of his exhortation

Senator Harry Flood Byrd of Virginia.⁸

Massive Resistance (1956)

The aftermath of the Brown decision and the continuing struggle for an equal education would be blocked by policies such as Southern Manifesto and Massive Resistance. The US Senator Harry Byrd, Jr. from Virginia was pro-segregation and called the decision, "the most serious blow that has been struck against the rights of the states in a manner vitally affecting their authority and welfare."⁹ Senator Byrd and the Byrd Organization were actively engaged in resisting integration and applying the Jim Crow laws. Most of the laws enacted in Byrd's resistance were negated by the courts in the late 1960's.

Civil Rights Act (1964)

In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. It outlawed discrimination in employment, schools and provided equal access to all public facilities. It also established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Students will cooperatively make a Venn diagram comparing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Civil Rights Act of 1865.

Supreme Court Landmark (and Controversial) Decisions

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

After the Civil War, African Americans were free but not equal. The Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, were made virtual dead letters by hostile court decisions, culminating in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson, which gave legal sanction to the principle of "separate but equal" facilities segregated by race.¹⁰

On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy boarded a car of the East Louisiana Railroad thatwas designated for use by white patrons only. Although Plessy was born a free person and was one-eighth black and seven-eighths white, under a Louisiana law enacted in 1890, he was classified as an African-American, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car. When, in an act of planned disobedience, Plessy refused to leave the white car and move to the colored car, he was arrested and jailed. ¹¹

The decision supported a doctrine called separate but equal, which was employed in all aspects of public life.¹² The interpretation of separate but equal facilities, remained law until 1954. In Plessy, racial segregation was protected by law and became the basis in judicial rulings over the next half-century upholding racial segregation in all aspects of southern life. This case dictated the fate of numerous cases to follow and offers an excellent opportunity for debate challenging the Fourteenth Amendment.

Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka (1954)

The United States Supreme Court had on its December, 1952 docket, five cases that challenged the constitutionally of racial segregation in public schools. They represented the states of Kansas, Delaware, Virginia, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. The cases would be consolidated together under one name Oliver Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka. The Supreme Court justices decided to make Brown the keynote case so that the "whole question would not smack of being a purely Southern one."¹³

Davis v. Prince Edward County (Virginia)

A student strike was organized by Barbara Johns in Farmville, Virginia opposing the inadequate facilities at the all Negro Robert Russa Moton High School. The students wanted an equivalent high school to the nearby white Farmville, High School. They believed they were denied equal educational opportunities. The Richmond NAACP took on their case in May of 1951 to strike down segregation in the state of Virginia.¹⁴

Until 1954, the Plessy verdict established law. Jim Crow laws validated racism and were accompanied by white mob rule by beatings, lynching, and intimidation. African-Americans had no legal recourse but to protect themselves using the democratic processes. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) brought a consolidation of five cases known as Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka to the Supreme Court in 1952. On May 17, 1954 Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the opinion for a unanimous Supreme Court decision overturning Plessy and ruling in favor of the African-American plaintiffs.

We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal' has no place.

Chief Justice Earl Warren, United States Supreme Court, May 17, 1954

Brown II (1955)

In 1955, the Supreme Court issued Brown II and ruled that desegregation is to proceed with 'deliberate speed.'¹⁵ The ambiguous language in Brown II allowed school districts to avoid compliance as Bob Smith indicates:

Based on "Brown II," the U.S. District Court ruled that Prince Edward County, Virginia did not have to desegregate immediately. When another court case in 1959 ruled that the county's schools finally had to desegregate, the county board of supervisors stopped appropriating money for public schools which remained closed for five years, from 1959 to 1964. White students in the county were given assistance to attend white-only "private academies" that were taught by teachers formerly employed by the public school system, while black students had no education at all unless they moved out of the county.¹⁶

Unit Focus Case from Brown v. Board of Education

Davis v. Prince Edward County Board of Education

This unit will begin sixty-five miles southwest of Richmond in Farmville, Virginia, the seat of Prince Edward County. Robert Russa Moton High School was the site of a student walkout on April 23, 1951. This protest detailed the horrid and inferior conditions at the all Negro high school that paled in comparison with the pristine all white Farmville High School. Spottswood Robinson, Oliver Hill, Thurgood Marshall and the local Richmond Chapter of the NAACP would take on the case on behalf of the 117 students boycotting the conditions of the school.

In response to the Court's ruling, Prince Edward County Supervisors chose to close the schools from 1959-1964 in massive resistance to the edict issued by the Supreme Court. Many of the white students attended Prince Edward Academy which was later renamed the Fuqua School. The Negro students were either sent out of state to live with relatives to continue their education, tutored by Longwood College students or were unschooled. I want my students to recognize that the education they receive should be valued and to understand the struggle and hardships that led us to this point.

The film Farmville: An American Story ¹⁷ will lead us into the unit and be student interactive. Each student will have a specific task to be responsible for as they watch this film. Students will be given neon Post-it notes and a category listed on the board such as; people, places, attitudes of African-Americans/whites, facility conditions at Robert Moton High School/Farmville High School, fears, important dates. Although each student is responsible for their own category he or she may but may put a note under any other category as the film is shown.

Essential questions will include: What was it like to be in segregated school? What was it like to have no public school? Students will then reflect, was there a time when you felt you were discriminated against or left out? How did it make you feel? If public education is a constitutional right, why do so many students today take it for granted or choose to drop out?

Students will use graphic organizers/concept maps to investigate the role the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) played in the Brown case, specifically how Thurgood Marshall orchestrated in coordinating the five cases argued before the Supreme Court under one umbrella. They will identify the lead lawyers in each case, their arguments, and research the history of the NAACP.

"The only way to get equality is for two people to get the same thing at the same time at the same place."¹⁸

Thurgood Marshall

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP (1909)

• The NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-
• based civil rights organization. The NAACP's stated goal was to secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution, which promised an end to slavery, the equal protection of the law, and universal adult male suffrage. The NAACP's principal objective is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of the United States and to eliminate race prejudice. The NAACP seeks to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes.¹⁹

Dates of Note

Thurgood Marshall was the first African American appointed to the United States Supreme Court in1967. Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday would become a national holiday in 1983. Douglas L. Wilder would become the first elected African American Governor of a state, the state of Virginia in 1989. Barack Obama would become the first elected African American United States President in 2009.