Embedded Files
Major Events:
Plessy v. Ferguson: The 1896 Supreme Court ruling against Homer Plessy, a mixed race resident of Louisiana, for occupying a seat in the white section of a train car. This ruling coined the segregationist refrain of "separate but equal" and provided legal cover for wide-spread and systematic prejudice in areas such as business, education, public transportation, and worship. This is the law of the land at the time of Scout's birth (roughly 1929). The ruling codified what was already in practice in much of the country -- and particularly in the south -- of creating distinct communities that had little sanctioned interaction, and zero interaction that wasn't strictly under a hierarchical power structure that favored white citizens.
The Scottsboro Nine - On March 25, 1931 a fight broke out on a train passing through Jackson County, Alabama between a group of white men and boys and and a group of Black men and boys that resulted in the whites being forced off the train. They phoned ahead to the next station just outside Paint Rock, where the local sheriffs and a mob were waiting to apprehend the group of Black males: Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Haywood Patterson, Ozzie Powell, Willie Roberson, Charlie Weems, Eugene Williams, and brothers Andy and Roy Wright. They were accused of rape by two white women also on the train. The trials and repeated retrials of the Scottsboro Boys sparked an international uproar and produced two landmark U.S. Supreme Court verdicts, even as the defendants were forced to spend years battling the courts and enduring the harsh conditions of the Alabama prison system.
In the first set of trials in April 1931, an all-white, all-male jury quickly convicted the Scottsboro Boys and sentenced eight of them to death. The trial of the youngest, 13-year-old Leroy Wright, ended in a hung jury when one juror favored life imprisonment rather than death. A mistrial was declared, and Leroy Wright would remain in prison until 1937 awaiting the final verdict on his co-defendants.
At this point, the International Labor Defense (ILD), the legal wing of the American Communist Party, took on the boys’ case, seeing its potential to galvanize public opinion against racism. That June, the court granted the boys a stay of execution pending an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court. The ILD spearheaded a national campaign to help free the nine young men, including rallies, speeches, parades and demonstrations. Letters streamed in from people—Communists and non-Communists, white and black—protesting the guilty verdicts. But in March 1932, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions of seven of the defendants; it granted Williams a new trial, as he was a minor at the time of his conviction.
Powell v. Alabama - In November 1932, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Powell v. Alabama that the Scottsboro defendants had been denied the right to counsel, which violated their right to due process under the 14th Amendment. In the retrial that resulted from this Supreme Court ruling, one of the women who initially accused the Boys, Ruby Bates, recounted her own story, but Patterson and Norris were still found guilty.
Norris v. Alabama - In January 1935, the Supreme Court again overturned the guilty verdicts, ruling in Norris v. Alabama that the systematic exclusion of blacks on Jackson Country jury rolls denied a fair trial to the defendants, and suggesting that the lower courts review Patterson’s case as well.
Eventually, rape charges against four of the defendants—Montgomery, Roberson, Williams and Leroy Wright—were dropped and all four were released. Alabama officials eventually agreed to let four of the convicted Scottsboro Boys—Weems, Andy Wright, Norris and Powell—out on parole. After escaping from prison in 1948, Patterson was picked up in Detroit by the FBI, but the Michigan governor refused Alabama’s efforts to extradite him. Convicted of manslaughter after a barroom brawl in 1951, Patterson died of cancer in 1952.
This case is often compared to Tom Robinson's trial and was almost surely known to Harper Lee when she was writing To Kill a Mockingbird - this too was a sexual crime, allegedly committed by a Black man against a white woman. It can be seen as part of a long line of such criminal claims and a manifestation of a deeply engrained cultural belief and fear about Black men as portrayed in popular culture as predatory and threatening, particularly to the purity and safety of white women. Take a deep dive into the history of this caricature here.
"At the beginning of the twentieth century, much of the virulent, anti-black propaganda that found its way into scientific journals, local newspapers, and best-selling novels focused on the stereotype of the black rapist. The claim that black brutes were, in epidemic numbers, raping white women became the public rationalization for the lynching of blacks." - Ferris State University, The Jim Crow Museum.
To read more about the intersection of race and rape from the American Bar Association.
Right: Samuel Leibowitz, the chief defense attorney, spoke with Haywood Patterson, one of the nine men charged with the rape of two white women on a train, in 1933 in Decatur, Ala.Credit...Bettman/Corbis
The Great Depression - While the stock market crash of 1929 is often cited as the beginning of the largest economic downturn in US history, in Alabama, it only exacerbated existing problems in a struggling economy that had never fully rebuilt in the post slave labor market. Based largely on agriculture, which had begun to show signs of weakness in the US as early as 1921 after the end of World War I, the Alabamian economy was further depressed by low cotton prices (dropping from $0.35 cents a pound to only $0.05 cents over the course of the decade), the boll weevil infestation, and increasingly less productive soil due to poor faming practices. Personal annual income fell from an already low $311 in 1929 to a $194 in 1935 (or about $5,055 in 1929 to $3,9035 in 1935, through the current inflationary lens). Those who attempted to flee the economic hardships of farming in the early 1920s by moving to industrail centers like Birmingham, only had a short respite before the impacts of the Great Depression began to hit those industries too - forcing them back to their farms to scratch out a substance living. The photographs of Walker Evans and writing of future Pulitzer Prize winning author James Agee in Let Us Know Praise Famous Men, has become the iconic representation of the hardships of this period in the rural US. While Alabama is not considered part of the so-called Dust Bowl, it experienced many similar agricultural and economic hardships with many families struggling to find enough food.
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka (1954) - In an unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' was found unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law. The case was combined with other similar pending cases before being heard by the court, with Oliver Brown's case suing the Board of Education in Topeka for denying his daughter Linda Brown access to an all-white elementary school. The case was argued by Thurgood Marshall, who would later go on to be the first Black Supreme Court Justice (appointed by LBJ) under the auspices of the NAACP and heard by the famed Warren Court. Earl Warren, previously Governor of California, was appointed by Dwight D. Eisenhower to replace Chief Justice Vinson, who was on record as agreeing with the racist Plessy doctrine of separate but equal.
The Civil Rights Movement - "In the 19th and 20th centuries, the resistance of African Americans to their oppression was expressed in three general approaches, as illustrated by prominent leaders. Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) stressed industrial schooling for African Americans and gradual social adjustment rather than political and civil rights. Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) called for racial separatism and a "Back-to-Africa" colonization program. W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) argued that African Americans were in the United States to stay and should fight for their freedom and political equality; it was this approach that laid the foundation for the American civil rights movement." Ferris State Timeline. Certainly however, resistance to oppression did not begin until after the Civil War.
To read more about how the film of To Kill a Mockingbird reflected the real Civil Rights Movement.
Citing cases that influenced the creation of the novel by being in the zeitgeist and geographically close to the young Nelle Lee, Time sites the trial her father lost several years before her birth, resulting in the death of two Black men accused of murder,The Scottsboro Boys, and: "Then, third: In November 1933, outside Monroeville, a poor white woman, Naomi Lowery, claimed that a black man, Walter Lett, had raped her. At the time A.C. Lee was editing The Monroe Journal, and his paper covered Lett’s trial. There was fear that Lett would be lynched. Many of the town’s citizens, including Lee, petitioned Alabama governor Benjamin Miller, seeking clemency, and Miller commuted Lett’s death sentence to life in prison. To say that these stories came home in the Lees’ house is to state the obvious.
General Terms
The term "Jim Crow" comes from a minstrel character created by Thomas Rice and dates back at least to 1828. Rice is regarded as the father of minstrelsy and his creation, Jim Crow, aided in spreading the offensive and stereotypical form of entertainment as well as the name. At first a mild racial slur, the term would come to signify the system of legal, cultural, and economic rules that kept Black Americans oppressed, primarily in the South.
For specific examples, see: https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/links/misclink/examples.htm
"The South" is a term that has been used to describe trends in culture, economics, religion, and politics since the founding of the United States. Determined by geography, spurred by population density disparity, and abetted by a false narrative of racism, the term is most often identified with Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Florida, the Carolinas, and the Virginias. The closest codification we have of this culture understanding is the Mason Dixon Line; drawn as a result of a land dispute between Pennsylvania and Maryland when the states were still colonies, it established a border between slave and free states in the Missouri Compromise of 1820 -- a failed attempt to keep the country out of Civil War. (ref)
Origins of Racism - Racism exists when one ethnic group or historical collectivity dominates, excludes, or seeks to eliminate another on the basis of differences that it believes are hereditary and unalterable. However, "Race" is a social construction, rather than a biological one; considering race in light of this reality begs the question - what is the social purpose of this construction? The clear answer is to assert a hierarchical dominance over another group of people. One of the earliest recorded examples of such a pattern of oppression comes from sixteenth century Spain with persecution of Jews forced to convert to Christianity and their descendants.
"During the Enlightenment, a secular or scientific theory of race moved the subject away from the Bible, with its insistence on the essential unity of the human race. Eighteenth century ethnologists began to think of human beings as part of the natural world and subdivided them into three to five races, usually considered as varieties of a single human species. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, however, an increasing number of writers, especially those committed to the defense of slavery, maintained that the races constituted separate species." Darwin's theories on the competition for survival fueled a form of 'scientific racism'.
"The dominant “anthropological” concept that emerged around 1750 was called degeneration, which can be understood as the precise opposite of what we now know to be true about humankind’s origins. In contrast to the model that shows how evolution and successive human migrations from the African continent account for humanity’s many colors, degeneration theory maintained that there was an original and superior white race, and that this group of humans moved about the globe and mutated in different climates. These morphological and pigmentation changes were not seen as adaptations or the results of natural selection; they were explained as a perversion or deterioration of a higher archetype."
"Octoroon" and "One drop" legislation - The word "Octoroon," like "Quadroon" and "Mulatto" is part of a constellation on antiquated and generally offensive terms to describe the amount of European v African ancestry. These definitions from LSU, while specific to Louisiana provide a general understanding:
Negro: In antebellum Louisiana, “negro” or “negress” described a person who did not have any European ancestry, as distinguished from a “person of color.”
Mulatto: Historically this term is meant to describe someone of mixed African and European ancestry. In Louisiana, it is even more specific- describing someone who is believed to be of one-half African ancestry and one-half European ancestry.
Griffe: Refers to a person who is believed to be one-quarter European descent and three-quarters African descent. Alternately, it could refer to someone of African and Native American ancestry.
Quadroon: Refers to a person who is thought to be of one-quarter African descent and three-quarters European descent.
Octoroon: Refers to a person who is of one-eighth African descent and seven-eighths European descent.
Loving v. Virginia - The classification of an individual's race had broad implications on that person's ability to participate equally in society and its institutions. In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state's anti-miscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail (the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years).
"Four cases, two from Alabama and two from Virginia, went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1883, Pace v. Alabama supplied a major precedent in favor of the constitutionality of anti-miscegenation statutes; Virginia relied on Pace into the 1960s to justify its own anti-miscegenation laws. In two cases in the 1950s, Jackson v. Alabama6 and Naim v. Virginia,7 the Court skirted the issue and left Pace intact. In 1967, in Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court finally reversed Pace and established a new law of race and marriage throughout the nation. Only in the 1960s, a full century after Emancipation, did the Supreme Court declare statutes against interracial marriage unconstitutional only then did the law of slavery and racism defer at last to the law of freedom and racial equality."
Sources:
For more on the origins of Race and Racism: https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-01.htm
A timeline on the ideological development: https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_03_a-godeeper.htm
For more on the definition of Octoroon from the LSU glossary: https://lib.lsu.edu/sites/all/files/sc/fpoc/terminology.html
For more on the "One Drop" rule: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/mixed/onedrop.html
For more on Plessy v. Ferguson: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537
For more on Alabama in the Great Depression: http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3608
For more on the Scottsboro Trial: http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1456
For more on the term "Jim Crow": https://www.ferris.edu/htmls/news/jimcrow/who/index.htm
For more on Alabama's relationship to the Dust Bowl: https://www.al.com/spotnews/2012/11/alabama_wasnt_a_part_of_the_du.html#:~:text=Alabama%20is%20not%20a%20Plains,Dust%20Bowl%20in%20the%20west.&text=By%20one%20estimate%2C%20almost%20three,1930s%20were%20worked%20by%20tenants.
For more on the Civil Rights Movement: https://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement
A Brief History of Africans in New World America
from Benny Ambush
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PART A: bulleted excerpts from “A Brief History of the Negro in the United States” by John Hope Franklin up to 1945…addendums to 1957 from Benny Ambush
The first Negroes in the New World were from Europe, used as labor to do work
The plunder of the New World took place for minerals and other raw/natural materials
Oppression of Africans justified by attempts to convert the “heathens” to Christianity
Slave trading was big business generating economic profits and political power for whites
Slavery existed in the Caribbean, Central and South America: tobacco, sugar, rice were grown in the early years
Slaves were not considered as human, but factors in production to maintain the plantation system
The Caribbean slave system was a dress rehearsal for the U.S. slave system
Slaves were brutally disciplined and punished with impunity
Slaves were “broken”, forbidden to read
Legislation made the sub-human status of slaves legal regardless of Christian conversion
Slave codes: blacks were property & legally designated 3/5’s of a human being
Slavery revealed contradictions and hypocrisy in Christian practice
There was always resistance and slave revolts throughout the slave period
It is ironic that blacks fought for the Independence of the nation from the British
Domestic slave trade was essential to provide labor for the rise of the U.S. Cotton Kingdom spurred on by the innovation of the spinning/weaving machines, the westward “Manifest Destiny” expansion, and industrial development
Slave breeding broke up the black family
White supremacy was worn as a badge of honor and as an entitlement
Slaves had no legal standing; they couldn’t marry, their children were not legitimate; they couldn’t own land, couldn’t possess firearms, couldn’t purchase or sell goods, couldn’t visit homes of whites or free Negroes; they were forbidden to be taught to read or write, couldn’t testify against whites, had no right to assembly, had no free time - they merely subsisted
Complete submission was required and enforced by the whiplash and the law
The first segregation was in the white church
It is a myth that slaves were docile, happy with their condition, child-like, savages
Truth: slaves concealed their true selves from their masters - tricked and deceived them, ran away, sabotaged things, resisted
The Civil War was fought over the South’s desire to expand slavery into western territories and succeed from the Union and block Republican Abraham Lincoln who sought to contain the spread of slavery
There was an uneasy post bellum peace: Black Reconstruction was reversed in the 1877 Hayes Compromise
White superiority thereafter was reinforced through a reign of terror, the Ku Klux Klan, and corruption
Post Hayes Compromise - no economic/political security for blacks - a “New Slavery” arose: sharecropping and peonage making blacks dependent upon whites still
Segregation ruled, miscegenation was outlawed, land was not redistributed; there was some political representation, but freedom for blacks was compromised
Darwinism applied to white supremacy: survival of the fittest and the natural order of the world placing whites on top were supported by biblical scripture. Negroes were deemed inferior
Jim Crowism disenfranchised blacks who were left out of industry and progress
1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court ruling made “separate but equal” the law of the land
There were poll taxes, grandfather clauses, political and social degradation, white exploitation and control
Blacks were resourceful nonetheless and endured - fought for the “passport” of education as a means to gain a better future and were engaged in self-help
Big ideological debate about how to proceed embodied by W.E.B. DuBois vs. Booker T. Washington
A self-sufficient Negro world was created as a result of their exclusion from the mainstream of American life - the black church was central to this
There were riots, lynchings
A legal, state-sanctioned political apparatus prohibited blacks from gaining full citizenship and denied them rights enjoyed by other Americans
Black frustration was high
As northern cities grew and prospered and the southern economy stagnated, southern blacks believed going north would be better and thus migrated in large numbers
Blacks had no welcome when they arrived in northern cities - blacks met with white resistance, housing discrimination, could only get shit jobs, ghettoes were formed, race hatred abounded, the few rights blacks had were rolled back; there was weak willed government protection
Do-for-self, self-help action groups formed: among them, the NAACP, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, and the Urban League to demand economic opportunity, equal education, fair justice, end segregation, protest, protect against white violence, terror and hostility
Deep disillusionment set in among blacks
During World War I and II, the armed forces were segregated
In post WWI, there was still lynchings, burnings, hostility and no rights for blacks
Talk of democracy in WWI raised hopes for blacks - the era saw a rise in black race consciousness
Protests weren’t enough - plans were needed
Destiny was in black own hands now
Restoration of self respect
Urban concentration and political regeneration (p. 66)
Militancy and organizing increased in the economic sphere
Garvey appealed to those believing entrance into America’s bounty was impossible
Political sophistication grew
There was slight relief for blacks during FDR’s 1930’s New Deal
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), a federation of unions, was organized in 1938, organizing workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955
Black patience wore thin under prevailing segregation, denial of rights, discrimination
The late 1930’s saw mobilization efforts to fight for rights with a sense of entitlement
Rise of the black middle class - a few got through
The Black church strengthened
The Black press provided needed news, voice and influence
Autonomous black communities became diverse (p. 73)
There was separate and unequal education
Some black scholarship to help restore respect for a place for blacks in American life
Lingering segregation, discriminatory army, humiliation, indignities
In 1945, the U.S. Army integrated
There was continued white resistance to equal treatment of blacks
Blacks fought for employment in war/defense industries
The 1940’s saw the start of lukewarm government involvement in economic improvement programs
Question continued about urban racial integration
President Harry Truman stepped up equal opportunity in 1947 (p. 79-80)
Post WWII saw an improved climate
There were beneficial Supreme Court actions in the late 1940’s/early 1950’s
The late 1940’s saw all out assault on segregation (p. 81)
Growing political strength – elected/appointed public offices
Continued involvement by federal government for improvement
Principles of equality supported
Growing determination
The Civil Rights Movement was about to launch, buoyed up by the accumulation of breakthroughs, organizing and resistance as well as the liberation of several African countries, led by Ghana’s independence in 1957.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PART B: More Info from various sources from Benny Ambush
1868: 14th Amendment passed: Constitutional amendment forbids any state from depriving citizens of their rights and privileges and defines citizenship.
1896: Plessy v. Ferguson: a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal". Gives legal approval to Jim Crow laws.
1901: Booker T. Washington writes Up From Slavery in which he argues that gradual progress is the best path for blacks, Washington focuses on job training and suggests that self-respect and self-help would bring opportunities.
1905: Niagara Movements - W.E.B. DuBois demands immediate racial equality and opposes all laws that treats blacks as different from others. Leads to creation of NAACP in 1909.
1919: Race Riots ad Lynchings: Over 25 race riots occur in the summer of 1919 with 38 killed in Chicago. 70 blacks, including 10 veterans, are lynched in the South.
1945
August - The first issue of Ebony.
Freeman Field Mutiny, where black officers attempt to desegregate an all-white officers club.
1946
June 3 – In Morgan v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court invalidates provisions of the Virginia Code which require the separation of white and colored passengers where applied to interstate bus transport. The state law is unconstitutional insofar as it is burdening interstate commerce – an area of federal jurisdiction.
In Florida, Daytona Beach, DeLand, Sanford, Fort Myers, Tampa, and Gainesville all have black police officers. So does Little Rock, Arkansas; Louisville, Kentucky; Charlotte, North Carolina; Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio in Texas; Richmond, Virginia; Chattanooga and Knoxville in Tennessee
Renowned actor/singer Paul Robeson founds the American Crusade Against Lynching.
1947
April 15 - Jackie Robinson plays his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player in professional baseball in 60 years.
John Hope Franklin authors the non-fiction book From Slavery to Freedom
1948
January 12 – In Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla., the Supreme Court rules that the State of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma Law School could not deny admission based on race ("color").
May 3 – In Shelley v. Kraemer, and companion case Hurd v Hodge (ACLU) the Supreme Court rules that the government cannot enforce racially restrictive covenants and asserts that they are in conflict with the nation's public policy.
July 12 – Hubert Humphrey makes a controversial speech in favor of American civil rights at the Democratic National Convention.
July 26 – President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 ordering the end of racial discrimination in the Armed Forces. Desegregation comes after 1950. Executive Order 9981: "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin
Atlanta hires its first black police officers.
1950
June 5 – In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents the Supreme Court rules that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of his race.
June 5 – In Sweatt v. Painter the Supreme Court rules that a separate-but-equal Texas law school was actually unequal, partly in that it deprived black students from the collegiality of future white lawyers.
June 5 – In Henderson v. United States the Supreme Court abolishes segregation in railroad dining cars.
September 15 - University of Virginia, under a federal court order, admits a black student to its law school.
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is created in Washington, DC to promote the enactment and enforcement of effective civil rights legislation and policy.
Orlando, Florida, hires its first black police officers.
Dr. Ralph Bunche wins the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize.
Chuck Cooper, Nathaniel Clifton and Earl Lloyd break the barriers into the NBA.
1951
February 15 – Maryland legislature ends segregation on trains and boats; meanwhile Georgia legislature votes to deny funds to schools that integrate.
April 23 – High school students in Farmville, Virginia, go on strike: the case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County is heard by the Supreme Court in 1954 as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
June 23 - A Federal Court ruling upholds segregation in SC public schools.
July 11 - White residents riot in Cicero, Illinois when a black family tries to move into an apartment in the all-white suburb of Chicago; National Guard disperses them July 1.
July 26 – The United States Army high command announces it will desegregate the Army.
December 24 – The home of NAACP activists Harry and Harriette Moore in Mims, Florida, is bombed by KKK group; both die of injuries.
December 28 – The Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) is founded in Cleveland, Mississippi by T.R.M. Howard, Amzie Moore, Aaron Henry, and other civil rights activists. Assisted by member Medgar Evers, the RCNL distributed more than
50,000 bumper stickers bearing the slogan, "Don't Buy Gas Where you Can't Use the Restroom." This campaign successfully pressured many Mississippi service stations to provide restrooms for blacks.
1952
January 5 - Governor of Georgia Herman Talmadge criticizes television shows for depicting blacks and whites as equal.
January 28 – Briggs v. Elliott: after a District Court had ordered separate but equal school facilities in South Carolina, the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
March 7 - Another federal court upholds segregated education laws in Virginia.
April 1 – Chancellor Collins J. Seitz finds for the black plaintiffs (Gebhart v. Belton, Gebhart v. Bulah) and orders the integration of Hockessin elementary and Claymont High School in Delaware based on assessment of "separate but equal" public school facilities required by the Delaware constitution.
September 4 – Eleven black students attend the first day of school at Claymont High School, Delaware, becoming the first black students in the 17 segregated states to integrate a white public school. The day occurs without incident or notice by the community.
September 5 – The Delaware State Attorney General informs Claymont Superintendent Stahl that the black students will have to go home because the case is being appealed. Stahl, the School Board and the faculty refuse and the students remain. The two Delaware cases are argued before the Warren Supreme Court by Redding, Greenberg and Marshall and are used as an example of how integration can be achieved peacefully. It was a primary influence in the Brown v. Board case. The students become active in sports, music and theater. The first two black students graduated in June 1954 just one month after the Brown v. Board case.
Ralph Ellison authors the novel Invisible Man which wins the National Book Award.
1953
June 8 - US Supreme Court strikes down segregation in Washington, DC restaurants.
August 13 – Executive Order 10479 signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower establishes the anti-discrimination Committee on Government Contracts.
September 1 – In the landmark case Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, WAC Sarah Keys, represented by civil rights lawyer Dovey Roundtree, becomes the first black to challenge "separate but equal" in bus segregation before the Interstate Commerce Commission.
James Baldwin's semi-autobiographical novel Go Tell It on the Mountain is published.
1954
May 3 – In Hernandez v. Texas, the Supreme Court of the United States rules that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
May 17 - The Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice. July 11 – The first White Citizens' Council meeting takes place, in Mississippi.
September 2 - In Montgomery, Alabama, 23 black children are prevented from attending all-white elementary schools, defying the recent Supreme Court ruling.
September 7 - District of Columbia ends segregated education; Baltimore, Maryland follows suit on September 8
September 15 - Protests by white parents in White Sulphur Springs, WV force schools to postpone desegregation another year.
September 16 - Mississippi responds by abolishing all public schools with an amendment to its State Constitution.
September 30 - Integration of a high school in Milford, Delaware collapses when white students boycott classes.
October 4 - Student demonstrations take place against integration of Washington, DC public schools.
October 19 - Federal judge upholds an Oklahoma law requiring African American candidates to be identified on voting ballots as "negro".
October 30 - Desegregation of U.S. Armed Forces said to be complete.
Frankie Muse Freeman is the lead attorney for the landmark NAACP case Davis et al. v. the St. Louis Housing Authority, which ended legal racial discrimination in public housing with the city.
1955
January 7 – Marian Anderson (of 1939 fame) becomes the first African American to perform with the New York Metropolitan Opera.
January 15 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10590, establishing the President's Committee on Government Policy to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in Federal employment.
January 20 – Demonstrators from CORE and Morgan State University stage a successful sit-in to desegregate Read's Drug Store in Baltimore, Maryland
April 5 - Mississippi passes a law penalizing white students who attend school with blacks with jail and fines.
May 7 – NAACP and Regional Council of Negro Leadership activist Reverend George W. Lee is killed in Belzoni, Mississippi.
May 31 – The Supreme Court rules in "Brown II" that desegregation must occur with "all deliberate speed".
June 8 - University of Oklahoma decides to allow black students.
June 23 - Virginia governor and Board of Education decide to continue segregated schools into 1956.
June 29 – The NAACP wins a Supreme Court decision, ordering the University of Alabama to admit Autherine Lucy.
July 11 - Georgia Board of Education orders that any teacher supporting integration be fired.
July 14 - A Federal Appeals Court overturns segregation on Columbia, SC buses.
August 1 - Georgia Board of Education fires all black teachers who are members of the NAACP.
August 13 – Regional Council of Negro Leadership registration activist Lamar Smith is murdered in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
August 28 – Teenager Emmett Till is killed for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi.
November 7 – The Interstate Commerce Commission bans bus segregation in interstate travel in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, extending the logic of Brown v. Board to the area of bus travel across state lines. On the same day, the US Supreme Court bans segregation on public parks and playgrounds. The governor of Georgia Herman Talmadge responds that his state would "get out of the park business" rather than allow playgrounds to be desegregated.
December 1 – Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This occurs nine months after 15-year-old high school student Claudette Colvin became the first to refuse to give up her seat. Colvin's was the legal case which eventually ended the practice in Montgomery.
1956
January 9 - Virginia voters and representatives decide to fund private schools with state money to maintain segregation.
January 24 - Governors of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia agree to block integration of schools.
February 1 - Virginia legislature passes a resolution that the Supreme Court integration decision was an "illegal encroachment".
February 3 – Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama. Whites riot for days, and she is suspended. Later, she is expelled for her part in further legal action against the university.
February/March- The Southern Manifesto, opposing integration of schools, is created and signed by members of the Congressional delegations of Southern states, including 19 senators and 81 members of the House of Representatives, notably the entire delegations of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia. On March 12, it is released to the press.
February 13 - Wilmington, Delaware school board decides to end segregation.
February 22 - 90 black leaders in Montgomery, Alabama are arrested for leading a bus boycott.
February 29 - Mississippi legislature declares Supreme Court integration decision "invalid" in that state.
March 1 - Alabama legislature votes to ask for federal funds to deport blacks to northern states.
March 22 - Dr. King sentenced to fine or jail for calling Montgomery bus boycott, suspended pending appeal.
April 11 – Singer Nat King Cole is assaulted during a segregated performance at Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham, Alabama.
April 23 - Supreme Court strikes down segregation on buses nationwide.
May 26 – Circuit Judge Walter B. Jones issues an injunction prohibiting the NAACP from operating in Alabama.
May 28 – The Tallahassee, Florida bus boycott begins.
September 2–11 - Teargas and National Guard used to quell segregationists rioting in Clinton, TN; 12 black students enter high school under Guard protection. Smaller disturbances occur in Mansfield, TX and Sturgis, KY.
September 10: Two black students are prevented by a mob from entering a junior college in Texarkana, Texas. Schools in Louisville, KY are successfully desegregated.
September 12: 4 black children enter an elementary school in Clay, KY under National Guard protection; white students boycott. The school board bars the 4 again on Sep. 17.
October 15: Integrated athletic or social events are banned in Louisiana.
November 5 – Nat King Cole hosts the first show of The Nat King Cole Show. The show went off the air after only 13 months because no national sponsor could be found.
November 13 – In Browder v. Gayle, the Supreme Court strikes down Alabama laws requiring segregation of buses. This ruling, together with the ICC's 1955 ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach banning Jim Crow in bus travel among the states, is a landmark in outlawing Jim Crow in bus travel.
December 24 - Blacks in Tallahassee, Florida begin defying segregation on city buses.
December 25 – The parsonage in Birmingham, Alabama occupied by Fred Shuttlesworth, movement leader, is bombed. Shuttlesworth receives only minor scrapes.
Director J. Edgar Hoover orders the FBI to begin the COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt "dissident" groups within the United States.
1957
February 8 - Georgia Senate votes to declare the 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution null and void in that state.
February 14 – Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is named chairman of the organization.
April 18 - Florida Senate votes to consider Supreme Court's desegregation decisions "null and void".
May 17 – The Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, DC is at the time the largest non-violent demonstration for civil rights.
Sept 2 - (Little Rock, Ark.) Formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine."
September 15 - New York Times reports that in 3 years since the decision, there has been minimal progress toward integration in 4 southern states, and no progress at all in seven.
September 24 – President Dwight Eisenhower federalizes the National Guard and also orders US Army troops to ensure Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas is integrated. Federal and National Guard troops escort the Little Rock Nine.
September 27 – Civil Rights Act of 1957 signed by President Eisenhower.
October 7 - The finance minister of Ghana is refused service at a Dover, Delaware restaurant. President Eisenhower hosts him at the White House to apologize Oct. 10.
October 9 - Florida legislature votes to close any school if federal troops are sent to enforce integration.
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