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Then and Now

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John Lewis Lets get into some good trouble

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You Will Love History

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Vietnam War in 13 Minutes - Manny Man Does History

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oyez link

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How did a botched burglary become a crisis called Watergate?

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How did a botched burglary become a crisis called Watergate?

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From Don't Know Much About History

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How did a botched burglary become a crisis called Watergate  from Don't Know Much About History

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Military Industrial Complex  from Don't Know Much About History

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Civil Rights and the 1950s: Crash Course US History #39

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You Will Love History

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Facts of the case

Bruce Boynton, an African American law student, bought a Trailways bus ticket from Washington, D.C. to Montgomery, Alabama. The bus route went through Richmond, Virginia, where there was a 40-minute stop scheduled. Boynton entered the segregated restaurant in the bus station and sat on the side reserved for white customers. Both a waitress and a manager requested that Boynton move to the other side of the restaurant, and he explained that he was an interstate bus passenger and refused. A police officer arrived and arrested Boynton. He was tried, convicted, and fined for unlawfully remaining on the premises after being forbidden to do so.

Boynton appealed his conviction to the Hustings Court in Richmond where he filed a motion to dismiss and argued that his constitutional rights were violated. The Hustings Court denied the motion. The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed.

Question

Did Boyton's conviction violate the Interstate Commerce Act?

Conclusion

The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 should be interpreted to ban all forms of segregation by race in any type of public transportation.

Writing for the 7-2 majority, Justice Hugo L. Black concluded that, because the bus carrier provides the services of the terminal and its restaurant to the interstate passengers, these services must be subject to the same discrimination prohibitions as the transportation itself. Since the Interstate Commerce Act prohibits racial discrimination during travel, the same restrictions apply in the stations during stops.

Justice Charles E. Whittaker, joined by Justice Tom C. Clark, wrote a dissenting opinion in which he argued that the restaurant was owned and operated by a private owner unaffiliated with the bus company. Without evidence that the bus company had control over the operation of the restaurant, there was no reason to hold the restaurant to the discrimination prohibitions laid out by the Interstate Commerce Act.

Cite this page

"Boynton v. Virginia." Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/1960/7. Accessed 24 May. 2021.

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Bruce Boynton, an African American law student, bought a Trailways bus ticket from Washington, D.C. to Montgomery, Alabama. The bus route went through Richmond, Virginia, where there was a 40-minute stop scheduled. Boynton entered the segregated restaurant in the bus station and sat on the side reserved for white customers.

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Supreme Court Cases

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Regents of UC v Bakke Homework Help Video

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Regents of UC v Bakke Homework Help Video

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Bill of Rights Institute

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Bill of Rights Institute

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You Will Love History

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Objective 9.2 - Nixon and Vietnamization

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Mutually Assured Destruction Definition 

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Mutually Assured Destruction Definition 

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When Mr. Rogers Taught Kids About Mutually Assured Destruction 

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When Mr. Rogers Taught Kids About Mutually Assured Destruction 

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On April 4, 2020 former NFL legend Tom Dempsey-who set a field goal record with the New Orleans Saints nearly 50 years ago-passed away in New Orleans at the age of 73. It has been reported that Dempsey, who has been battling Alzheimer's disease and dementia since 2012, contracted coronavirus in March and his death was the result of complications from COVID-19. Read on to learn more about Dempsey's remarkable life.
Things weren't looking good for the New Orleans Saints on the evening of November 8, 1970, during a televised game against the Detroit Lions at Tulane Stadium. Though Saints quarterback Billy Kilmer had managed to connect with receiver Al Dodd on a 17-yard pass that stopped the clock, New Orleans was still down 17-16 with just two seconds left in the game. Worse yet, they were on their own 37-yard line-leaving 63 yards between them and the end zone.

Saints head coach J.D. Roberts, who had only been hired the week before, huddled with offensive coordinator Don Heinrich to quickly consider their options. There weren't any. Suddenly, kicker Tom Dempsey, who had joined the team the year before, materialized. "I can kick it," Dempsey told Roberts.

Dempsey would later recall that he didn't know exactly how far the ball had to travel or that it would be an NFL record if he nailed it. If he had, he said, maybe he would've gotten too nervous and shanked it. But kicking the ball was what Dempsey did, even though he was born with only half of a right foot.

Heinrich sighed. There was no other choice. "Tell Stumpy to get ready," he said.

Dempsey was born on January 12, 1947, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and later moved with his family to California. As a student at San Dieguito High School in Encinitas, California, Dempsey appeared unbothered by the congenital defect that resulted in a partial right foot and four missing fingers on his right hand. Dempsey wrestled and ran track. In football, he used his burly frame-he would eventually be 6 feet, 2 inches tall and weigh 255 pounds-to clobber opposing players as an offensive lineman. When coaches wanted to send opponents flying, they called in Dempsey.

After high school, Dempsey went on to attend Palomar Junior College in San Marcos, California, where he played football as a defensive end. At one point, when the team was in need of a kicker, the coach asked his players to line up and do their best to send the ball in the air. None kicked harder or farther than Dempsey, who became the kicker for the team and performed while barefoot, wrapping the end of his foot in athletic tape.

Playing at Palomar prepared Dempsey for a dual role as both lineman and kicker. But his strength, which made him so formidable on the field, occasionally got him into trouble on the sidelines, and he would eventually be kicked off the Palomar team for punching one of his coaches. After the incident, Dempsey tried out for the Green Bay Packers but found the physicality of professional players a little too much for him to handle. Rather than get into on-field collisions as an offensive lineman, he decided to focus solely on the aptitude he seemed to have for kicking. He eventually earned a spot on the San Diego Chargers practice squad in 1968. There, head coach Sid Gillman decided to encourage his choice of position-with some modifications.

Gillman enlisted an orthopedist to help develop a special leather shoe for Dempsey to wear. The boot had a block of leather 1.75 inches thick at one end and was mostly flat. Instead of kicking it soccer-style, as most players do today, Dempsey was able to use his leg like a mallet and hammer the ball with a flat, blunt surface.

The shoe, which cost $200 to fabricate, came in handy when Dempsey joined the Saints in 1969. He made 22 out of 41 field goals his rookie year and found himself in the Pro Bowl. But the 1970 season was comparatively dismal, and the Saints were holding a 1-5-1 record when they met the Detroit Lions on that night in November.

With two seconds left, "Stumpy" (Dempsey found the nickname affectionate rather than offensive) trotted onto the field. At 63 yards, he would have to best the then-record set by Baltimore Colts kicker Bert Rechichar in 1953 by seven yards.

No one appeared to think this was within the realm of possibility-you could almost hear a chuckle in CBS commentator Don Criqui's voice when he announced that Dempsey would be attempting the feat. Even the Lions seemed apathetic, not overly concerned with attempting to smother the play.

The ball was snapped by Jackie Burkett and received by Joe Scarpati, who gave it a quarter-turn. Dempsey remembered advice once given to him by kicking legend Lou "The Toe" Groza: Keep your head down and follow through. He took a step toward the ball and swung his leg like a croquet mallet, smashing into the football with a force that those on or near the field compared to a loud bang or a cannon. It sailed 63 yards to the goal post, which at the time was positioned directly on the goal line, and just made it over the crossbar.

Below, the referee threw his hands in the air to indicate the kick was good, punctuating it with a little hop of excitement. Dempsey was swarmed by his teammates and coaches. Don Criqui's attitude in the booth quickly switched from amusement to incredulity. The Saints had won, 19-17.

"I don't believe this," Criqui exclaimed.

Neither could fans. In an era before instant replay, ESPN, or YouTube, you either caught Dempsey's game-winning play or you heard about it at work or school the next week. Owing to its fleeting existence in the moment, schoolyards and offices filled with stories about how Dempsey's boot may have somehow been augmented with a steel plate or other modification to boost his kicking prowess.

No such thing occurred, though that didn't stop criticism. Tex Schramm, an executive with the Dallas Cowboys and chairman of the NFL's competition committee, thought the shoe was an unfair advantage that allowed Dempsey to smash the ball like a golf club hitting a dimpled target. In 1977, the NFL instituted the "Tom Dempsey Rule," which mandates that anyone and everyone has to wear a shoe shaped like a full foot. There would be no more allowances for special orthopedic shapes.

Dempsey appeared to take it all in stride. Shortly after his victorious kick, he received a letter from President Richard Nixon congratulating him on his inspirational demonstration. Immediately after the game, police officers went in to congratulate him by handing him cases of Dixie beer. Dempsey's girlfriend (and future wife) Carlene recalled that he didn't come home for days due to rampant partying. When he finally settled down, they got married.

Dempsey spent a total of 11 years in the NFL, playing for the Saints, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Los Angeles Rams, the Houston Oilers, and finally the Buffalo Bills. In total, he made 159 field goals out of 258 attempts. For the next several decades, he would work as a salesman in the oil industry and manage a car lot before retiring in 2008 and settling down back near New Orleans. Over the years, Dempsey made several appearances at autograph shows, where he was regularly peppered with questions about the one kick that defined his career.

Almost as amazing as the kick was its attrition in the record books. While several other men managed to tie Dempsey's record, it wasn't until Matt Prater of the Denver Broncos kicked a 64-yard field goal on December 8, 2013, that it was finally broken -almost 43 years to the day. Some observers note that most of these notable field goals took place in Denver, where the air is thin and presumably more hospitable to kicking for distance. Dempsey managed it in New Orleans-and without toes.

Curiously, Dempsey's legendary play was actually foreshadowed one year earlier. On October 5, 1969, he kicked a 55-yard field goal in Los Angeles. That was just one yard shy of the record he would obliterate the following year.

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When Mr. Rogers Taught Kids About Mutually Assured Nuclear Destruction

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On April 4, 2020 former NFL legend Tom Dempsey-who set a field goal record with the New Orleans Saints nearly 50 years ago-passed away in New Orleans at the age of 73. It has been reported that Dempsey, who has been battling Alzheimer's disease and dementia since 2012, contracted coronavirus in March and his death was the result of complications from COVID-19.

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TED Ed (for Digital Learning Assignment)

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The National Civil Rights Museum, located in Memphis, TN, explores the history of the Civil Rights Movement and its impact on our culture today. Plan your visit today.

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Segregation at All Costs Bull Connor and the Civil Rights Movement

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Major events of the Civil Rights Movement

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"There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment."

That was how the authors of the "Negro Motorist Green Book" ended the introduction to their 1948 edition. In the pages that followed, they provided a rundown of hotels, guest houses, service stations, drug stores, taverns, barber shops and restaurants that were known to be safe ports of call for African American travelers. The "Green Book" listed establishments in segregationist strongholds such as Alabama and Mississippi, but its reach also extended from Connecticut to California-any place where its readers might face prejudice or danger because of their skin color. With Jim Crow still looming over much of the country, a motto on the guide's cover also doubled as a warning: "Carry your Green Book with you-You may need it."

Public Domain

First published in 1936, the Green Book was the brainchild of a Harlem-based postal carrier named Victor Hugo Green. Like most Africans Americans in the mid-20th century, Green had grown weary of the discrimination blacks faced whenever they ventured outside their neighborhoods. Rates of car ownership had exploded in the years before and after World War II, but the lure of the interstate was also fraught with risk for African Americans. "Whites Only" policies meant that black travelers often couldn't find safe places to eat and sleep, and so-called " Sundown Towns "-municipalities that banned blacks after dark-were scattered across the country. As the foreword of the 1956 edition of the Green Book noted, "the White traveler has had no difficulty in getting accommodations, but with the Negro it has been different."
READ MORE: Was Jim Crow A Real Person?
Inspired by earlier books published for Jewish audiences, Green developed a guide to help black Americans indulge in travel without fear. The first edition of his Green Book only covered hotels and restaurants in the New York area, but he soon expanded its scope by gathering field reports from fellow postal carriers and offering cash payments to readers who sent in useful information. By the early 1940s, the Green Book boasted thousands of establishments from across the country, all of them either black-owned or verified to be non-discriminatory. The 1949 guide encouraged hungry motorists passing through Denver to stop for a bite at the Dew Drop Inn. Those looking for a bar in the Atlanta area were told to try the Yeah Man, Sportsman's Smoke Shop or Butler's. In Richmond, Virginia, Rest-a-Bit was the go-to spot for a ladies' beauty parlor.

The Green Book's listings were organized by state and city, with the vast majority located in major metropolises such as Chicago and Detroit. More remote places had fewer options-Alaska only had a lone entry in the 1960 guide -but even in cities with no black-friendly hotels, the book often listed the addresses of home owners who were willing to rent rooms. In 1954, it suggested that visitors to tiny Roswell, New Mexico, should stay at the home of a Mrs. Mary Collins.
READ MORE: How Freedom Rider Diane Nash Risked Her Life to Desegregate the South
The Green Book wasn't the only handbook for black travelers-another publication called "Travelguide" was marketed with tagline "Vacation and Recreation Without Humiliation"-but it was by far the most popular. Thanks to a sponsorship deal with Standard Oil, the Green Book was available for purchase at Esso gas stations across the country. Though largely unknown to whites, it eventually sold upwards of 15,000 copies per year and was widely used by black business travelers and vacationers alike. In his memoir " A Colored Man's Journey Through 20th Century Segregated America," Earl Hutchinson Sr. described purchasing a copy in preparation for a road trip he and his wife took from Chicago to California. "The 'Green Book' was the bible of every Negro highway traveler in the 1950s and early 1960s," he wrote. "You literally didn't dare leave home without it."

As its popularity grew, the Green Book expanded from a motorists' companion to an international travel guide. Along with suggestions for the United States, later editions included information on airline and cruise ship journeys to places like Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. "We know a number of our race who have a long standing love affair with the tempestuous city of Paris," the 1962 Green Book noted. The guide also offered travel tips and feature articles on certain cities. The 1949 edition shined the spotlight on Robbins, Illinois, a town "owned and operated by Negroes." In 1954, readers were encouraged to visit San Francisco, which was described as "fast becoming the focal point of the Negroes' future."

In offering advice to its readers, the Green Book adopted a pleasant and encouraging tone. It usually avoided discussing racism in explicit terms-one article simply noted that "the Negro travelers' inconveniences are many"-but as the years passed it began to champion the achievements of the civil rights movement. In one of its last editions in 1963-64, it included a special "Your Rights, Briefly Speaking" feature that listed state statutes related to discrimination in travel accommodations. "The Negro is only demanding what everyone else wants," the article stressed, "what is guaranteed all citizens by the Constitution of the United States."
READ MORE: The Silent Protest That Kick-Started the Civil Rights Movement
Victor Hugo Green died in 1960 after more than two decades of publishing his travel guide. His wife Alma took over as editor and continued to release the Green Book in updated editions for a few more years, but just as Green had once hoped, the march of progress eventually helped push it toward obsolescence. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act finally banned racial segregation in restaurants, theaters, hotels, parks and other public places. Just two years later, the Green Book quietly ceased publication after nearly 30 years in print.

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The Green Book: The Black Travelers' Guide to Jim Crow America

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"There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment."

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The Road to Civil Rights iBook takes readers on a journey through one of the most significant periods in America's history. Travel through the timeline and listen to members of the American Academy of Achievement as they discuss the key events that shaped the future of the country.

What It Takes is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice.

Two policemen came on the bus, and one asked me if the driver had told me to stand. He wanted to know why I didn't stand, and I told him I didn't think I should have to stand up. I asked him, why did they push us around? He said, I don't know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.

Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1, 1955. That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This brave woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States.

The school's philosophy of self-worth was consistent with Leona McCauley's advice to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were." Opportunities were few indeed. "Back then," Mrs. Parks recalled in an interview, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down." In the same interview, she cited her lifelong acquaintance with fear as the reason for her relative fearlessness in deciding to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott. "I didn't have any special fear," she said. "It was more of a relief to know that I wasn't alone." After attending Alabama State Teachers College, the young Rosa settled in Montgomery, with her husband, Raymond Parks. The couple joined the local chapter of the NAACP and worked quietly for many years to improve the lot of African Americans in the segregated South.

"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP," Mrs. Parks recalled, "but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn't seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens."

The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 381 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause to the attention of the world. A Supreme Court decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.

In 1957, Mrs. Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan, where Mrs. Parks served on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor.

After the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. President Clinton presented Rosa Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

When asked if she was happy living in retirement, Rosa Parks replied, "I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is any such thing as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet."

Mrs. Parks spent her last years living quietly in Detroit, where she died in 2005 at the age of 92. After her death, her casket was placed in the rotunda of the United States Capitol for two days, so the nation could pay its respects to the woman whose courage had changed the lives of so many. She was the first woman and the second African American to lie in honor at the Capitol, a distinction usually reserved for Presidents of the United States.

View and listen to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963.

Member of the American Academy of Achievement, poet and best-selling author, Maya Angelou shares her interpretation of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Inducted in 1995

Rosa Parks, the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" was one of the most important citizens of the 20th century. Mrs. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. The bus driver had her arrested. She was tried and convicted of violating a local ordinance.

Her act sparked a citywide boycott of the bus system by blacks that lasted more than a year. The boycott raised an unknown clergyman named Martin Luther King, Jr., to national prominence and resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on city buses. Over the next four decades, she helped make her fellow Americans aware of the history of the civil rights struggle. This pioneer in the struggle for racial equality was the recipient of innumerable honors, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her example remains an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere.

In 1955, you refused to give up your seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Your act inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the event historians call the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Could you tell us exactly what happened that day?

Keys to success - Courage

Rosa Parks: I was arrested on December 1, 1955 for refusing to stand up on the orders of the bus driver, after the white seats had been occupied in the front. And of course, I was not in the front of the bus as many people have written and spoken that I was - that I got on the bus and took the front seat, but I did not. I took a seat that was just back of where the white people were sitting, in fact, the last seat. A man was next to the window, and I took an aisle seat and there were two women across. We went on undisturbed until about the second or third stop when some white people boarded the bus and left one man standing. And when the driver noticed him standing, he told us to stand up and let him have those seats. He referred to them as front seats. And when the other three people - after some hesitancy - stood up, he wanted to know if I was going to stand up, and I told him I was not. And he told me he would have me arrested. And I told him he may do that. And of course, he did.Two policemen came on the bus and one asked me if the driver had told me to stand and I said, "Yes." And he wanted to know why I didn't stand, and I told him I didn't think I should have to stand up. And then I asked him, why did they push us around? And he said, and I quote him, "I don't know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest." And with that, I got off the bus, under arrest.

Did they take you down to the police station?
Rosa Parks: Yes. A policeman wanted the driver to swear out a warrant, if he was willing, and he told him that he would sign a warrant when he finished his trip and delivered his passengers, and he would come straight down to the City Hall to sign a warrant against me.
Did he do that?
Rosa Parks: Yes, he did.
Did the public response begin immediately?
Rosa Parks: Actually, it began as soon as it was announced.

It was put in the paper that I had been arrested. Mr. E.D. Nixon was the legal redress chairman of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, and he made a number of calls during the night, called a number of ministers. I was arrested on a Thursday evening, and on Friday evening is when they had the meeting at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King was the pastor. A number of citizens came, and I told them the story and from then on, it became news about my being arrested. My trial was December 5, when they found me guilty. The lawyers Fred Gray and Charles Langford, who represented me, filed an appeal and, of course, I didn't pay any fine. We set a meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church on the evening of December 5th, because December 5th was the day the people stayed off in large numbers and did not ride the bus.In fact, most of the buses, I think all of them were just about empty with the exception of maybe very, very few people.When they found out that one day's protest had kept people off the bus, it came to a vote and unanimously, it was decided that they would not ride the buses anymore until changes for the better were made.

When you refused to stand up, did you have a sense of anger at having to do it?

Keys to success - Integrity

Rosa Parks: I don't remember feeling that anger, but I did feel determined to take this as an opportunity to let it be known that I did not want to be treated in that manner and that people have endured it far too long. However, I did not have at the moment of my arrest any idea of how the people would react. And since they reacted favorably, I was willing to go with that. We formed what was known as the Montgomery Improvement Association, on the afternoon of December 5th. Dr. Martin Luther King became very prominent in this movement, so he was chosen as a spokesman and the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association.

What are your thoughts when you look back on that time in your life. Any regrets?

As I look back on those days, it's just like a dream. The only thing that bothered me was that we waited so long to make this protest and to let it be known wherever we go that all of us should be free and equal and have all opportunities that others should have.

What personal characteristics do you think are most important to accomplish something?
Rosa Parks: I think it's important to believe in yourself and when you feel like you have the right idea, to stay with it. And of course, it all depends upon the cooperation of the people around. People were very cooperative in getting off the buses. And from that, of course, we went on to other things. I, along with Mrs. Field, who was here with me, organized the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. Raymond, my husband-he is now deceased-was another person who inspired me, because he believed in freedom and equality himself.
You were married during the bus incident.
Rosa Parks: Yes, I was.
How old were you?
Rosa Parks: When I was arrested, I was 42 years old. There were so many needs for us to continue to work for freedom, because I didn't think that we should have to be treated in the way we were, just for the sake of white supremacy, because it was designed to make them feel superior, and us feel inferior. That was the whole plan of racially enforced segregation.
What was it like in Montgomery when you were growing up?

Keys to success - Courage

Rosa Parks: Back in Montgomery during my growing up there, it was completely legally enforced racial segregation, and of course, I struggled against it for a long time.I felt that it was not right to be deprived of freedom when we were living in the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.Of course, when I refused to stand up, on the orders of the bus driver, for a white passenger to take the seat, and I was not sitting in the front of the bus, as so many people have said, and neither was my feet hurting, as many people have said. But I made up my mind that I would not give in any longer to legally-imposed racial segregation and of course my arrest brought about the protests for more than a year.And in doing so, Dr. Martin Luther King became prominent because he was the leader of our protests along with many other people.And I'm very glad that this experience I had then brought about a movement that triggered across the United States and in other places.

What people inspired you as a child?
Rosa Parks: My family, I would say, my mother, and my maternal grandparents. I grew up with them. My mother was a teacher in a little school, and she believed in freedom and equality for people, and did not have the notion that we were supposed to live as we did, under legally enforced racial segregation. She didn't believe in it.
How did she impart that to you?
Rosa Parks: Just by her attitude and the way she talked. We were human beings and we should be treated as such.
She instilled that feeling in you.
Rosa Parks: It was just the way I grew up. Yes, she did. Of course, my grandfather had the same ideas, as well as my grandmother.
What was their background?
Rosa Parks: Both of them were born before the emancipation, before slavery ended. And they suffered a lot, as children they were in slavery and of course, after slavery was not that much better, but I guess it was some better. They were farmers in a rural area in Alabama.
They must have suffered.
Rosa Parks: Yes, especially my grandfather.
Was there a teacher that influenced you?
Rosa Parks: My mother was a teacher and I went to the same school where she was teaching. My very first teacher was Miss Sally Hill, and I liked her very much. In fact, I liked school when I was very young, in spite of the fact that it was a one-room school for students all ages, from the very young to teens, as long as they went to school. It was only a short term for us, five months every year, instead of the regular nine months every year.
You still flourished in this school, despite all that.
Rosa Parks: I liked to read books anyway, and my mother taught me to read even before I began school.
What books did you like to read?
Rosa Parks: Mostly the little stories that they had in the school books, and fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, and those stories, just what they had for young children.
Do you think reading is important?
Rosa Parks: Yes, it's very important. And I always liked to read, especially historic books. I still do like to read.
What would you like to tell us about your life since the bus boycott?
Rosa Parks: I would have to take longer than a minute to give my whole synopsis of my life, but I want to let you know that all of us should be free and equal and have equal opportunity and that is what I'm trying to instill and encourage and inspire young people to reach their highest potential.
Tell us about the goals of the Parks Institute.
Rosa Parks: We work with young people, from the ages of 11 to 17. Our main program is the Pathways to Freedom. And we'll be going from Memphis, Tennessee through ten other states, and Washington, DC, and to Canada. It began July 13th and ends August 8th. We hope to take as many young people and their chaperons as possible throughout these areas, and stop and have workshops and programs. They'll be traveling in buses, and we hope that will inspire and give them a sense of history and also to encourage them to be concerned about their self and history and motivated to reach their highest potential. We always encourage them to have a spiritual awareness, because I feel that with the spirit within and our belief in ourselves and our faith in God that we will overcome many obstacles that we could not with negative attitudes. I want to always be concerned with being positive, and them being positive and believing in themselves, and believing that they should be good citizens and an asset to our country and for the world. And I believe in peace too, and not violence.
What has the American Dream meant to you?
Rosa Parks: I think the American Dream should be to have a good life, and to live well, and to be a good citizen. I think that should apply to all of us. That it is the land of the free and the home of the brave, and I believe it should be just that for all people. Who can think of themselves as human beings and that they will enjoy the blessings of the freedom of this country.
Are we moving as quickly as you might like in that direction?
Rosa Parks: We still have a long way to go, we still have many obstacles and many challenges to face. It's far from perfect, and it may never be, but I think as long as we do the best we can to improve conditions, then people will be benefited.
You don't get negative about the negative things.
Rosa Parks: No, I don't. I try to not think of those things that we cannot control, but I think if we continue to work with positive attitudes, conditions will be better for more people.
Tell me about your husband.
Rosa Parks: He believed in freedom and equality and all the things that would improve conditions.
He was an inspiration to you.
Rosa Parks: Yes, he was.
When did he die?
Rosa Parks: In August of 1977.
What advice would you give to a young person who wants to make a difference?
Rosa Parks: The advice I would give any young person is, first of all, to rid themselves of prejudice against other people and to be concerned about what they can do to help others. And of course, to get a good education, and take advantage of the opportunities that they have. In fact, there are more opportunities today than when I was young. And whatever they do, to think positively and be concerned about other people, to think in terms of them being able to not succumb to many of the temptations, especially the use of drugs and substances that will destroy the physical health, as well as mental health.
What would you say to a kid who's in trouble now?
Rosa Parks: The reason we start with them so young is to try to get them a good family life, before they get into that area. Of course there are those who maybe have strayed away, and I would certainly advise them to find some means of helping themselves, even if they've gotten into some problems.
Family is important to you.
Rosa Parks: Yes, it is, very important. Of course, we have so many broken homes now. Young people need some means of being encouraged and to try to find some role models, people in school, in church, and other organizations. They need to be organized to work together, instead of being so scattered about and not having any positive outlook on life.
Did you feel Dr. King had a special gift?
Rosa Parks: Well, when I first met him it was before I was arrested. I met him in August of 1955, when he came to be the guest speaker at an NAACP meeting and I was secretary. I was very impressed with his delivery as a speaker and, of course, his genuine friendliness as a person. And his attitude, of course, was to work and do whatever he could in the community for the church to make a difference in the way of life we had at that time. And I was really impressed by his leadership, because he seemed to be a very genuine and very concerned person, and, I thought, a real Christian.
Did it surprise you when he became a national hero?
Rosa Parks: No, not really, because I just felt that he filled the position so well. He was the type of person that people really gravitated towards and they seemed to like him personally, as well as his leadership.
A warm person?
Rosa Parks: Yes, he was.
It has been an honor to sit with you here, today. Thank you so much for spending this time with us, Mrs. Parks.
Rosa Parks: Thank you.

Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1, 1955. That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This brave woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere.

Rosa Parks was born Rosa Louise McCauley in Tuskegee, Alabama to James McCauley, a carpenter, and Leona McCauley, a teacher. At the age of two she moved to her grandparents' farm in Pine Level, Alabama with her mother and younger brother, Sylvester. At the age of 11 she enrolled in the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls, a private school founded by liberal-minded women from the northern United States.

The school's philosophy of self-worth was consistent with Leona McCauley's advice to "take advantage of the opportunities, no matter how few they were." Opportunities were few indeed. "Back then," Mrs. Parks recalled in an interview, "we didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down." In the same interview, she cited her lifelong acquaintance with fear as the reason for her relative fearlessness in deciding to appeal her conviction during the bus boycott. "I didn't have any special fear," she said. "It was more of a relief to know that I wasn't alone." After attending Alabama State Teachers College, the young Rosa settled in Montgomery, with her husband, Raymond Parks. The couple joined the local chapter of the NAACP and worked quietly for many years to improve the lot of African Americans in the segregated South.

"I worked on numerous cases with the NAACP," Mrs. Parks recalled, "but we did not get the publicity. There were cases of flogging, peonage, murder, and rape. We didn't seem to have too many successes. It was more a matter of trying to challenge the powers that be, and to let it be known that we did not wish to continue being second-class citizens."

The bus incident led to the formation of the Montgomery Improvement Association, led by the young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The association called for a boycott of the city-owned bus company. The boycott lasted 381 days and brought Mrs. Parks, Dr. King, and their cause to the attention of the world. A Supreme Court decision struck down the Montgomery ordinance under which Mrs. Parks had been fined, and outlawed racial segregation on public transportation.

In 1957, Mrs. Parks and her husband moved to Detroit, Michigan, where Mrs. Parks served on the staff of U.S. Representative John Conyers. The Southern Christian Leadership Council established an annual Rosa Parks Freedom Award in her honor.

After the death of her husband in 1977, Mrs. Parks founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. The Institute sponsors an annual summer program for teenagers called Pathways to Freedom. The young people tour the country in buses, under adult supervision, learning the history of their country and of the civil rights movement. President Clinton presented Rosa Parks with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. She received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

When asked if she was happy living in retirement, Rosa Parks replied, "I do the very best I can to look upon life with optimism and hope and looking forward to a better day, but I don't think there is any such thing as complete happiness. It pains me that there is still a lot of Klan activity and racism. I think when you say you're happy, you have everything that you need and everything that you want, and nothing more to wish for. I haven't reached that stage yet."

Mrs. Parks spent her last years living quietly in Detroit, where she died in 2005 at the age of 92. After her death, her casket was placed in the rotunda of the United States Capitol for two days, so the nation could pay its respects to the woman whose courage had changed the lives of so many. She was the first woman and the second African American to lie in honor at the Capitol, a distinction usually reserved for Presidents of the United States.

View and listen to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963.

Member of the American Academy of Achievement, poet and best-selling author, Maya Angelou shares her interpretation of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

Rosa Parks, the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" was one of the most important citizens of the 20th century. Mrs. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. The bus driver had her arrested. She was tried and convicted of violating a local ordinance.

Her act sparked a citywide boycott of the bus system by blacks that lasted more than a year. The boycott raised an unknown clergyman named Martin Luther King, Jr., to national prominence and resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on city buses. Over the next four decades, she helped make her fellow Americans aware of the history of the civil rights struggle. This pioneer in the struggle for racial equality was the recipient of innumerable honors, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her example remains an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere.

In 1955, you refused to give up your seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Your act inspired the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the event historians call the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Could you tell us exactly what happened that day?

Keys to success - Courage

Rosa Parks: I was arrested on December 1, 1955 for refusing to stand up on the orders of the bus driver, after the white seats had been occupied in the front. And of course, I was not in the front of the bus as many people have written and spoken that I was - that I got on the bus and took the front seat, but I did not. I took a seat that was just back of where the white people were sitting, in fact, the last seat. A man was next to the window, and I took an aisle seat and there were two women across. We went on undisturbed until about the second or third stop when some white people boarded the bus and left one man standing. And when the driver noticed him standing, he told us to stand up and let him have those seats. He referred to them as front seats. And when the other three people - after some hesitancy - stood up, he wanted to know if I was going to stand up, and I told him I was not. And he told me he would have me arrested. And I told him he may do that. And of course, he did.Two policemen came on the bus and one asked me if the driver had told me to stand and I said, "Yes." And he wanted to know why I didn't stand, and I told him I didn't think I should have to stand up. And then I asked him, why did they push us around? And he said, and I quote him, "I don't know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest." And with that, I got off the bus, under arrest.

Did they take you down to the police station?
Rosa Parks: Yes. A policeman wanted the driver to swear out a warrant, if he was willing, and he told him that he would sign a warrant when he finished his trip and delivered his passengers, and he would come straight down to the City Hall to sign a warrant against me.
Did he do that?
Rosa Parks: Yes, he did.
Did the public response begin immediately?
Rosa Parks: Actually, it began as soon as it was announced.

It was put in the paper that I had been arrested. Mr. E.D. Nixon was the legal redress chairman of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP, and he made a number of calls during the night, called a number of ministers. I was arrested on a Thursday evening, and on Friday evening is when they had the meeting at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. Martin Luther King was the pastor. A number of citizens came, and I told them the story and from then on, it became news about my being arrested. My trial was December 5, when they found me guilty. The lawyers Fred Gray and Charles Langford, who represented me, filed an appeal and, of course, I didn't pay any fine. We set a meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church on the evening of December 5th, because December 5th was the day the people stayed off in large numbers and did not ride the bus.In fact, most of the buses, I think all of them were just about empty with the exception of maybe very, very few people.When they found out that one day's protest had kept people off the bus, it came to a vote and unanimously, it was decided that they would not ride the buses anymore until changes for the better were made.

When you refused to stand up, did you have a sense of anger at having to do it?

Keys to success - Integrity

Rosa Parks: I don't remember feeling that anger, but I did feel determined to take this as an opportunity to let it be known that I did not want to be treated in that manner and that people have endured it far too long. However, I did not have at the moment of my arrest any idea of how the people would react. And since they reacted favorably, I was willing to go with that. We formed what was known as the Montgomery Improvement Association, on the afternoon of December 5th. Dr. Martin Luther King became very prominent in this movement, so he was chosen as a spokesman and the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association.

What are your thoughts when you look back on that time in your life. Any regrets?

As I look back on those days, it's just like a dream. The only thing that bothered me was that we waited so long to make this protest and to let it be known wherever we go that all of us should be free and equal and have all opportunities that others should have.

What personal characteristics do you think are most important to accomplish something?
Rosa Parks: I think it's important to believe in yourself and when you feel like you have the right idea, to stay with it. And of course, it all depends upon the cooperation of the people around. People were very cooperative in getting off the buses. And from that, of course, we went on to other things. I, along with Mrs. Field, who was here with me, organized the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development. Raymond, my husband-he is now deceased-was another person who inspired me, because he believed in freedom and equality himself.
You were married during the bus incident.
Rosa Parks: Yes, I was.
How old were you?
Rosa Parks: When I was arrested, I was 42 years old. There were so many needs for us to continue to work for freedom, because I didn't think that we should have to be treated in the way we were, just for the sake of white supremacy, because it was designed to make them feel superior, and us feel inferior. That was the whole plan of racially enforced segregation.
What was it like in Montgomery when you were growing up?

Keys to success - Courage

Rosa Parks: Back in Montgomery during my growing up there, it was completely legally enforced racial segregation, and of course, I struggled against it for a long time.I felt that it was not right to be deprived of freedom when we were living in the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free.Of course, when I refused to stand up, on the orders of the bus driver, for a white passenger to take the seat, and I was not sitting in the front of the bus, as so many people have said, and neither was my feet hurting, as many people have said. But I made up my mind that I would not give in any longer to legally-imposed racial segregation and of course my arrest brought about the protests for more than a year.And in doing so, Dr. Martin Luther King became prominent because he was the leader of our protests along with many other people.And I'm very glad that this experience I had then brought about a movement that triggered across the United States and in other places.

What people inspired you as a child?
Rosa Parks: My family, I would say, my mother, and my maternal grandparents. I grew up with them. My mother was a teacher in a little school, and she believed in freedom and equality for people, and did not have the notion that we were supposed to live as we did, under legally enforced racial segregation. She didn't believe in it.
How did she impart that to you?
Rosa Parks: Just by her attitude and the way she talked. We were human beings and we should be treated as such.
She instilled that feeling in you.
Rosa Parks: It was just the way I grew up. Yes, she did. Of course, my grandfather had the same ideas, as well as my grandmother.
What was their background?
Rosa Parks: Both of them were born before the emancipation, before slavery ended. And they suffered a lot, as children they were in slavery and of course, after slavery was not that much better, but I guess it was some better. They were farmers in a rural area in Alabama.
They must have suffered.
Rosa Parks: Yes, especially my grandfather.
Was there a teacher that influenced you?
Rosa Parks: My mother was a teacher and I went to the same school where she was teaching. My very first teacher was Miss Sally Hill, and I liked her very much. In fact, I liked school when I was very young, in spite of the fact that it was a one-room school for students all ages, from the very young to teens, as long as they went to school. It was only a short term for us, five months every year, instead of the regular nine months every year.
You still flourished in this school, despite all that.
Rosa Parks: I liked to read books anyway, and my mother taught me to read even before I began school.
What books did you like to read?
Rosa Parks: Mostly the little stories that they had in the school books, and fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, and those stories, just what they had for young children.
Do you think reading is important?
Rosa Parks: Yes, it's very important. And I always liked to read, especially historic books. I still do like to read.
What would you like to tell us about your life since the bus boycott?
Rosa Parks: I would have to take longer than a minute to give my whole synopsis of my life, but I want to let you know that all of us should be free and equal and have equal opportunity and that is what I'm trying to instill and encourage and inspire young people to reach their highest potential.
Tell us about the goals of the Parks Institute.
Rosa Parks: We work with young people, from the ages of 11 to 17. Our main program is the Pathways to Freedom. And we'll be going from Memphis, Tennessee through ten other states, and Washington, DC, and to Canada. It began July 13th and ends August 8th. We hope to take as many young people and their chaperons as possible throughout these areas, and stop and have workshops and programs. They'll be traveling in buses, and we hope that will inspire and give them a sense of history and also to encourage them to be concerned about their self and history and motivated to reach their highest potential. We always encourage them to have a spiritual awareness, because I feel that with the spirit within and our belief in ourselves and our faith in God that we will overcome many obstacles that we could not with negative attitudes. I want to always be concerned with being positive, and them being positive and believing in themselves, and believing that they should be good citizens and an asset to our country and for the world. And I believe in peace too, and not violence.
What has the American Dream meant to you?
Rosa Parks: I think the American Dream should be to have a good life, and to live well, and to be a good citizen. I think that should apply to all of us. That it is the land of the free and the home of the brave, and I believe it should be just that for all people. Who can think of themselves as human beings and that they will enjoy the blessings of the freedom of this country.
Are we moving as quickly as you might like in that direction?
Rosa Parks: We still have a long way to go, we still have many obstacles and many challenges to face. It's far from perfect, and it may never be, but I think as long as we do the best we can to improve conditions, then people will be benefited.
You don't get negative about the negative things.
Rosa Parks: No, I don't. I try to not think of those things that we cannot control, but I think if we continue to work with positive attitudes, conditions will be better for more people.
Tell me about your husband.
Rosa Parks: He believed in freedom and equality and all the things that would improve conditions.
He was an inspiration to you.
Rosa Parks: Yes, he was.
When did he die?
Rosa Parks: In August of 1977.
What advice would you give to a young person who wants to make a difference?
Rosa Parks: The advice I would give any young person is, first of all, to rid themselves of prejudice against other people and to be concerned about what they can do to help others. And of course, to get a good education, and take advantage of the opportunities that they have. In fact, there are more opportunities today than when I was young. And whatever they do, to think positively and be concerned about other people, to think in terms of them being able to not succumb to many of the temptations, especially the use of drugs and substances that will destroy the physical health, as well as mental health.
What would you say to a kid who's in trouble now?
Rosa Parks: The reason we start with them so young is to try to get them a good family life, before they get into that area. Of course there are those who maybe have strayed away, and I would certainly advise them to find some means of helping themselves, even if they've gotten into some problems.
Family is important to you.
Rosa Parks: Yes, it is, very important. Of course, we have so many broken homes now. Young people need some means of being encouraged and to try to find some role models, people in school, in church, and other organizations. They need to be organized to work together, instead of being so scattered about and not having any positive outlook on life.
Did you feel Dr. King had a special gift?
Rosa Parks: Well, when I first met him it was before I was arrested. I met him in August of 1955, when he came to be the guest speaker at an NAACP meeting and I was secretary. I was very impressed with his delivery as a speaker and, of course, his genuine friendliness as a person. And his attitude, of course, was to work and do whatever he could in the community for the church to make a difference in the way of life we had at that time. And I was really impressed by his leadership, because he seemed to be a very genuine and very concerned person, and, I thought, a real Christian.
Did it surprise you when he became a national hero?
Rosa Parks: No, not really, because I just felt that he filled the position so well. He was the type of person that people really gravitated towards and they seemed to like him personally, as well as his leadership.
A warm person?
Rosa Parks: Yes, he was.
It has been an honor to sit with you here, today. Thank you so much for spending this time with us, Mrs. Parks.
Rosa Parks: Thank you.

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Rosa Parks, the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement" was one of the most important citizens of the 20th century. Mrs. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama when, in December of 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger.

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The Montgomery Bus Boycott: Crash Course Black American History #35

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Years before the boycott, Dexter Avenue minister Vernon Johns sat down in the "whites-only" section of a city bus. When the driver ordered him off the bus, Johns urged other passengers to join him. On March 2, 1955, a black teenager named Claudette Colvin dared to defy bus segregation laws and was forcibly removed from another Montgomery bus.

Nine months later, Rosa Parks - a 42-year-old seamstress and NAACP member- wanted a guaranteed seat on the bus for her ride home after working as a seamstress in a Montgomery department store. After work, she saw a crowded bus stop. Knowing that she would not be able to sit, Parks went to a local drugstore to buy an electric heating pad. After shopping, Parks entered the less crowded Cleveland Avenue bus and was able to find an open seat in the 'colored' section of the bus for her ride home.

Despite having segregated seating arrangements on public buses, it was routine in Montgomery for bus drivers to force African Americans out of their seats for a white passenger. There was very little African Americans could do to stop the practice because bus drivers in Montgomery had the legal ability to arrest passengers for refusing to obey their orders. After a few stops on Parks' ride home, the white seating section of the bus became full. The driver demanded that Parks give up her seat on the bus so a white passenger could sit down. Parks refused to surrender her seat and was arrested for violating the bus driver's orders.

Montgomery's black citizens reacted decisively to the incident. By December 2, schoolteacher Jo Ann Robinson had mimeographed and delivered 50,000 protest leaflets around town. E.D. Nixon, a local labor leader, organized a December 4 meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where local black leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)to spearhead a boycott and negotiate with the bus company.

Over 70% of the cities bus patrons were African American and the one-day boycott was 90% effective. The MIA elected as their president a new but charismatic preacher, Martin Luther King Jr. Under his leadership, the boycott continued with astonishing success. The MIA established a carpool for African Americans. Over 200 people volunteered their car for a car pool and roughly 100 pickup stations operated within the city. To help fund the car pool, the MIA held mass gatherings at various African American churches where donations were collected and members heard news about the success of the boycott.

Fred Gray, member and lawyer of the MIA, organized a legal challenge to the city ordinances requiring segregation on Montgomery buses. Before 1954, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision ruled that segregation was constitutional as long as it was equal. Yet, the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision outlawed segregation in public schools. Therefore, it opened the door to challenge segregation in other areas as well, such as city busing. Gray gathered Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith to challenge the constitutionality of the city busing laws. All four of the women had been previously mistreated on the city buses because of their race. The case took the name Browder v. Gayle. Gray argued their 14th Amendment right to equal protection of the law was violated, the same argument made in the Brown v. Board of Education case.

On June 5, 1956, a three-judge U.S. District Court ruled 2-1 that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. The majority cited Brown v. Board of Education as a legal precedent for desegregation and concluded, "In fact, we think that Plessy v. Ferguson has been impliedly, though not explicitly, overruled,...there is now no rational basis upon which the separate but equal doctrine can be validly applied to public carrier transportation..."

The city of Montgomery appealed the U.S. District Court decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and continued to practice segregation on city busing.

For nearly a year, buses were virtually empty in Montgomery. Boycott supporters walked to work--as many as eight miles a day--or they used a sophisticated system of carpools with volunteer drivers and dispatchers. Some took station-wagon "rolling taxis" donated by local churches.

Montgomery City Lines lost between 30,000 and 40,000 bus fares each day during the boycott. The bus company that operated the city busing had suffered financially from the seven month long boycott and the city became desperate to end the boycott. Local police began to harass King and other MIA leaders. Car pool drivers were arrested and taken to court for petty traffic violations. Despite all the harassment, the boycott remained over 90% successful. African Americans took pride in the inconveniences caused by limited transportation. One elderly African American woman replied that, "My soul has been tired for a long time. Now my feet are tired, and my soul is resting." The promise of equality declared in Brown v. Board of Education for Montgomery African Americans helped motivate them to continue the boycott.

The company reluctantly desegregated its buses only after November 13, 1956, when the Supreme Court ruled Alabama's bus segregation laws unconstitutional.

The Montgomery bus boycott began the modern Civil Rights Movement and established Martin Luther King Jr. as its leader. King instituted the practice of massive non-violent civil disobedience to injustice, which he learned from studying Gandhi. Montgomery, Alabama became the model of massive non-violent civil disobedience that was practiced in such places as Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis. Even though the Civil Rights Movement was a social and political movement, it was influenced by the legal foundation established from Brown v. Board of Education.

Brown overturned the long held practice of the "separate but equal" doctrine established by Plessy. From then on, any legal challenge on segregation cited Brown as a precedent for desegregation. Without Brown, it is impossible to know what would have happened in Montgomery during the boycott.

The boycott would have been difficult to continue because the city would have won its challenge to shut down the car pool. Without the car pool and without any legal precedent to end segregation, the legal process could have lasted years. Those involved in the boycott might have lost hope and given up with the lack of progress. However, the precedent established by Brown gave boycotters hope that a legal challenge would successfully end segregation on city buses. Therefore, the influence of Brown on the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Civil Rights Movement is undeniable. King described Brown's influence as, "To all men of good will, this decision came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of human captivity. It came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of colored people throughout the world who had had a dim vision of the promised land of freedom and justice . . . this decision came as a legal and sociological deathblow to an evil that had occupied the throne of American life for several decades."

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The Montgomery Bus Boycott (U.S. National Park Service)

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Years before the boycott, Dexter Avenue minister Vernon Johns sat down in the "whites-only" section of a city bus. When the driver ordered him off the bus, Johns urged other passengers to join him. On March 2, 1955, a black teenager named Claudette Colvin dared to defy bus segregation laws and was forcibly removed from another Montgomery bus.

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The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute

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Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery. The bus boycott demonstrated the potential for nonviolent mass protest to successfully challenge racial segregation and served as an example for other southern campaigns that followed. In Stride Toward Freedom, King's 1958 memoir of the boycott, he declared the real meaning of the Montgomery bus boycott to be the power of a growing self-respect to animate the struggle for civil rights.

The roots of the bus boycott began years before the arrest of Rosa Parks. The Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of black professionals founded in 1946, had already turned their attention to Jim Crow practices on the Montgomery city buses. In a meeting with Mayor W. A. Gayle in March 1954, the council's members outlined the changes they sought for Montgomery's bus system: no one standing over empty seats; a decree that black individuals not be made to pay at the front of the bus and enter from the rear; and a policy that would require buses to stop at every corner in black residential areas, as they did in white communities. When the meeting failed to produce any meaningful change, WPC president Jo Ann Robinson reiterated the council's requests in a 21 May letter to Mayor Gayle, telling him, "There has been talk from twenty-five or more local organizations of planning a city-wide boycott of buses" ("A Letter from the Women's Political Council").

A year after the WPC's meeting with Mayor Gayle, a 15-year-old named Claudette Colvin was arrested for challenging segregation on a Montgomery bus. Seven months later, 18-year-old Mary Louise Smith was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger. Neither arrest, however, mobilized Montgomery's black community like that of Rosa Parks later that year.

King recalled in his memoir that "Mrs. Parks was ideal for the role assigned to her by history," and because "her character was impeccable and her dedication deep-rooted" she was "one of the most respected people in the Negro community" (King, 44). Robinson and the WPC responded to Parks' arrest by calling for a one-day protest of the city's buses on 5 December 1955. Robinson prepared a series of leaflets at Alabama State College and organized groups to distribute them throughout the black community. Meanwhile, after securing bail for Parks with Clifford and Virginia Durr, E. D. Nixon, past leader of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), began to call local black leaders, including Ralph Abernathy and King, to organize a planning meeting. On 2 December, black ministers and leaders met at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and agreed to publicize the 5 December boycott. The planned protest received unexpected publicity in the weekend newspapers and in radio and television reports.

On 5 December, 90 percent of Montgomery's black citizens stayed off the buses. That afternoon, the city's ministers and leaders met to discuss the possibility of extending the boycott into a long-term campaign. During this meeting the MIA was formed, and King was elected president. Parks recalled: "The advantage of having Dr. King as president was that he was so new to Montgomery and to civil rights work that he hadn't been there long enough to make any strong friends or enemies" (Parks, 136).

That evening, at a mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church, the MIA voted to continue the boycott. King spoke to several thousand people at the meeting: "I want it to be known that we're going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong.... If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong" (). After unsuccessful talks with city commissioners and bus company officials, on 8 December the MIA issued a formal list of demands: courteous treatment by bus operators; first-come, first-served seating for all, with blacks seating from the rear and whites from the front; and black bus operators on predominately black routes.

The demands were not met, and Montgomery's black residents stayed off the buses through 1956, despite efforts by city officials and white citizens to defeat the boycott. After the city began to penalize black taxi drivers for aiding the boycotters, the MIA organized a carpool. Following the advice of T. J. Jemison, who had organized a carpool during a 1953 bus boycott in Baton Rouge, the MIA developed an intricate carpool system of about 300 cars. Robert Hughes and others from the Alabama Council for Human Relations organized meetings between the MIA and city officials, but no agreements were reached.

In early 1956, the homes of King and E. D. Nixon were bombed. King was able to calm the crowd that gathered at his home by declaring: "Be calm as I and my family are. We are not hurt and remember that if anything happens to me, there will be others to take my place" (Papers 3:115). City officials obtained injunctions against the boycott in February 1956, and indicted over 80 boycott leaders under a 1921 law prohibiting conspiracies that interfered with lawful business. King was tried and convicted on the charge and ordered to pay $500 or serve 386 days in jail in the case State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr. Despite this resistance, the boycott continued.

Although most of the publicity about the protest was centered on the actions of black ministers, women played crucial roles in the success of the boycott. Women such as Robinson, Johnnie Carr, and Irene West sustained the MIA committees and volunteer networks. Mary Fair Burks of the WPC also attributed the success of the boycott to "the nameless cooks and maids who walked endless miles for a year to bring about the breach in the walls of segregation" (Burks, "Trailblazers," 82). In his memoir, King quotes an elderly woman who proclaimed that she had joined the boycott not for her own benefit but for the good of her children and grandchildren (King, 78).

National coverage of the boycott and King's trial resulted in support from people outside Montgomery. In early 1956 veteran pacifists Bayard Rustin and Glenn E. Smiley visited Montgomery and offered King advice on the application of Gandhian techniques and nonviolence to American race relations. Rustin, Ella Baker, and Stanley Levison founded In Friendship to raise funds in the North for southern civil rights efforts, including the bus boycott. King absorbed ideas from these proponents of nonviolent direct action and crafted his own syntheses of Gandhian principles of nonviolence. He said: "Christ showed us the way, and Gandhi in India showed it could work" (Rowland, "2,500 Here Hail"). Other followers of Gandhian ideas such as Richard Gregg, William Stuart Nelson, and Homer Jack wrote the MIA offering support.

On 5 June 1956, the federal district court ruled in that bus segregation was unconstitutional, and in November 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Browder v. Gayle and struck down laws requiring segregated seating on public buses. The court's decision came the same day that King and the MIA were in circuit court challenging an injunction against the MIA carpools. Resolved not to end the boycott until the order to desegregate the buses actually arrived in Montgomery, the MIA operated without the carpool system for a month. The Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling, and on 20 December 1956 King called for the end of the boycott; the community agreed. The next morning, he boarded an integrated bus with Ralph Abernathy, E. D. Nixon, and Glenn Smiley. King said of the bus boycott: "We came to see that, in the long run, it is more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation. So ... we decided to substitute tired feet for tired souls, and walk the streets of Montgomery" (Papers 3:486). King's role in the bus boycott garnered international attention, and the MIA's tactics of combining mass nonviolent protest with Christian ethics became the model for challenging segregation in the South.

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Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery.

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Many African Americans inspired by the Brown decision, the unjust murder of Emmett Till and the courage of Rosa Parks had been waiting for faster progress in school desegregation and civil rights reforms. College students were eager to join the movement and adopted a new non-violent tactic inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., based on the philosophy of Gandhi and Jesus. It consisted in peacefully and patiently sitting at segregated locations such as lunch counters, movie theaters, parks and other public places.

Protests were well organized, students were coached by SNCC's leaders to remain calm as angry crowds threw food and insulted them. One of the early organizers was James Lawson, a theology student from Vanderbilt who came up with the following rules: "Do show yourself friendly on the counter at all times. Do sit straight and always face the counter. Do not strike back or curse if attacked. Do not laugh out. Do not hold conversations. Do not block entrances."

As early as 1947 students had led sit-ins but it was in Greensboro, North Carolina where it caught the nation's attention.

Greensboro Sit-In

On February 1, 1960 four African American freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) College walked into the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro and tried to place an order. The waitress told them to leave as they did not serve colored people. Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNewil and David Richmond did not leave instead they remained patiently seated until the store closed at 5:30pm. The following day they returned and brought 20 more students. On the third day they were joined by three white students from the University of North Carolina and 60 more students from Bennett College and North Carolina A&T. They occupied 63 of the 66 seats at the Woolworth lunch counter.

White and black students protested for two months. The goal was to disrupt business activity and demonstrate that segregated businesses profited from white and black costumers equally. The Greensboro sit-in became national news with heavy television coverage consequently other cities started imitating this non violent resistance protests.

Consequences of the Greensboro sit-in

News of the Greensboro sit-in spread rapidly throughout the South. Within two weeks sit-ins were organized in Virginia and South Carolina; and within two months it had spread to 54 cities in nine states. It is estimated that more than 2000 people were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.

Students gathered at a conference organized by Ella Baker, director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to share experiences in sit-ins and to coordinate future activities. The conference concluded with the formation of a student led group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - SNCC.

Another sit-in that gained prominence was the Rich's department store in Georgia where Martin Luther King Jr. and 36 students were arrested for trespassing. The group declared "rather jailed than bailed". Atlanta mayor negotiated a two-month truce, charges were dropped against the students and were released. On the other hand, Dr. King did not have the same luck, because he was arrested earlier for driving without a valid Georgia driver license and was in violation of his probation, he was sent to Reidsville State Prison for four months of hard labor. Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General, appealed to the judge and Dr. King was released.

In the summer of 1960 Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro was desegregated and opened to all races. By the end of 1960 hundreds of other stores in the south had also changed their policy and welcomed people from all colors and backgrounds.

The non-violent tactics of sit-ins had earned the civil rights movement a strong momentum and helped them win supporters across the nation. They inspired activists to test rights they had won in the court of law such as the adherence of the Supreme Court ruling on interstate transportation in southern cities also known as Freedom Rides.

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Many African Americans inspired by the Brown decision, the unjust murder of Emmett Till and the courage of Rosa Parks had been waiting for faster progress in school desegregation and civil rights reforms. College students were eager to join the movement and adopted a new non-violent tactic inspired by the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., based on the philosophy of Gandhi and Jesus.

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1st February 1960: Start of the Greensboro sit-ins to protest segregation

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Reflections on the Greensboro Lunch Counter

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Fighting racial segregation in the South, these activists were beaten and arrested. Where are they now, nearly fifty years later?

Smithsonian Magazine |

On Sunday, May 14, 1961-Mother's Day-scores of angry white people blocked a Greyhound bus carrying black and white passengers through rural Alabama. The attackers pelted the vehicle with rocks and bricks, slashed tires, smashed windows with pipes and axes and lobbed a firebomb through a broken window. As smoke and flames filled the bus, the mob barricaded the door. "Burn them alive," somebody cried out. "Fry the goddamn niggers." An exploding fuel tank and warning shots from arriving state troopers forced the rabble back and allowed the riders to escape the inferno. Even then some were pummeled with baseball bats as they fled.

A few hours later, black and white passengers on a Trailways bus were beaten bloody after they entered whites-only waiting rooms and restaurants at bus terminals in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama.

The bus passengers assaulted that day were Freedom Riders, among the first of more than 400 volunteers who traveled throughout the South on regularly scheduled buses for seven months in 1961 to test a 1960 Supreme Court decision that declared segregated facilities for interstate passengers illegal.

After news stories and photographs of the burning bus and bloody attacks sped around the country, many more people came forward to risk their lives and challenge the racial status quo. Now Eric Etheridge, a veteran magazine editor, provides a visceral tribute to those road warriors in Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders. The book, a collection of Etheridge's recent portraits of 80 Freedom Riders juxtaposed with mug shots from their arrests in 1961, includes interviews with the activists re-flecting on their experiences.

Etheridge, who grew up in Carthage, Mississippi, focuses on Freedom Riders who boarded buses to Jackson, Mississippi, from late May to mid-September 1961. He was just 4 years old at the time and unaware of the seismic racial upheaval taking place around him. But he well remembers using one entrance to his doctor's office while African-Americans used another, and sitting in the orchestra of his local movie theater while blacks sat in the balcony.

"Looking back," Etheridge says, "I can identify with what the white South African photographer Jillian Edelstein has said: 'Growing up white in apartheid South Africa entitled one to massive and instant privilege.'"

A few years ago, Etheridge, who lives in New York City and has worked for Rolling Stone and Harper's, began looking for a project to engage his budding photographic skills. During a visit with his parents in Jackson in 2003, he was reminded that a lawsuit had forced the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, an agency created in 1956 to resist desegregation, to open its archives. The agency files, put online in 2002, included more than 300 arrest photographs of Freedom Riders."The police camera caught something special," Etheridge says, adding that the collection is "an amazing addition to the visual history of the civil rights movement." Unwittingly, the segregationist commission had created an indelible homage to the activist riders.

Nearly 75 percent of them were between 18 and 30 years old. About half were black; a quarter, women. Their mug-shot expressions hint at their resolve, defiance, pride, vulnerability and fear. "I was captivated by these images and wanted to bring them to a wider audience," Etheridge writes. "I wanted to find the riders today, to look into their faces and photograph them again." Using the Internet and information in the arrest files, he tracked riders down, then called them cold. "My best icebreaker was: 'I have your mug shot from 1961. Have you ever seen it?' Even people who are prone to be cautious were tickled to even think that it still existed."

Most of the riders were college students; many, such as the Episcopal clergymen and contingents of Yale divinity students, had religious affiliations. Some were active in civil rights groups like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which initiated the Freedom Rides and was founded in 1942 on Mahatma Gandhi's principle of nonviolent protest. The goal of the rides, CORE director James Farmer said as he launched the campaign, was "to create a crisis so that the federal government would be compelled to enforce the law."

The volunteers, from 40 states, received training in nonviolence tactics. Those who could not refrain from striking back when pushed, hit, spit on or doused with liquids while racial epithets rang in their ears were rejected.

As soon as he heard the call for riders, Robert Singleton remembers, he "was fired up and ready to go." He and his wife, Helen, had both been active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and they took 12 volunteers with them from California. "The spirit that permeated the air at that time was not unlike the feeling Barack Obama has rekindled among the youth of today," says Singleton, now 73 and an economics professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Peter Ackerberg, a lawyer who now lives in Minneapolis, said that while he'd always talked a "big radical game," he had never acted on his convictions. "What am I going to tell my children when they ask me about this time?" he recalled thinking. Boarding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, "I was pretty scared," he told Etheridge. "The black guys and girls were singing....They were so spirited and so unafraid. They were really prepared to risk their lives." Today, Ackerberg recalls acquiescing and saying "sir" to a jail official who was "pounding a blackjack." Soon after, "I could hear the blackjack strike [rider C.T. Vivian's] head and him shrieking; I don't think he ever said 'sir.'"

John Lewis, then 21 and already a veteran of sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters in Nashville, was the first Freedom Rider to be assaulted. While trying to enter a whites-only waiting room in Rock Hill, South Carolina, two men set upon him, battering his face and kicking him in the ribs. Less than two weeks later, he joined a ride bound for Jackson. "We were determined not to let any act of violence keep us from our goal," Lewis, a Georgia congressman since 1987 and a celebrated civil rights figure, said recently. "We knew our lives could be threatened, but we had made up our minds not to turn back."

As riders poured into the South, National Guardsmen were assigned to some buses to prevent violence. When activists arrived at the Jackson bus depot, police arrested blacks who refused to heed orders to stay out of white restrooms or vacate the white waiting room. And whites were arrested if they used "colored" facilities. Officials charged the riders with breach of peace, rather than breaking segregation laws. Freedom Riders responded with a strategy they called "jail, no bail"-a deliberate effort to clog the penal facilities. Most of the 300 riders in Jackson would endure six weeks in sweltering jail or prison cells rife with mice, insects, soiled mattresses and open toilets.

"The dehumanizing process started as soon as we got there," said Hank Thomas, a Marriott hotel franchise owner in Atlanta, who was then a sophomore at Howard University in Washington, D.C. "We were told to strip naked and then walked down this long corridor.... I'll never forget [CORE director] Jim Farmer, a very dignified man ...walking down this long corridor naked...that is dehumanizing. And that was the whole point."

Jean Thompson, then a 19-year-old CORE worker, said she was one of the riders slapped by a penal official for failing to call him "sir." An FBI investigation into the incident concluded that "no one was beaten," she told Etheridge. "That said a lot to me about what actually happens in this country. It was eye-opening." When prisoners were transferred from one facility to another, unexplained stops on remote dirt roads or the sight of curious onlookers peering into the transport trucks heightened fears. "We imagined every horror including an ambush by the KKK," rider Carol Silver told Etheridge. To keep up their spirits, the prisoners sang freedom songs.

None of the riders Etheridge spoke with expressed regrets, even though some would be entangled for years in legal appeals that went all the way to the Supreme Court (which issued a ruling in 1965 that led to a reversal of the breach of peace convictions). "It's the right thing to do, to oppose an oppressive state where wrongs are being done to people," said William Leons, a University of Toledo professor of anthropology whose father had been killed in an Austrian concentration camp and whose mother hid refugees during World War II. "I was aware very much of my parents' involvement in the Nazi resistance," he said of his 39-day incarceration as a rider. "[I was] doing what they would have done."

More than two dozen of the riders Etheridge interviewed went on to become teachers or professors, and there are eight ministers as well as lawyers, Peace Corps workers, journalists and politicians. Like Lewis, Bob Filner, of California, is a congressman. And few former Freedom Riders still practice civil disobedience. Joan Pleune, 70, of New York City, is a member of the Granny Peace Brigade; she was arrested two years ago at an anti-Iraq War protest in Washington, D.C. while "reading the names of the war dead," she says. Theresa Walker, 80, was arrested in New York City in 2000 during a protest over the police killing there the year before of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed immigrant from Guinea.

Though the Freedom Rides dramatically demonstrated that some Southern states were ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court's mandate to desegregate bus terminals, it would take a petition from U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy to spur the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to issue tough new regulations, backed by fines up to $500, that would eventually end segregated bus facilities. Even after the order went into effect, on November 1, 1961, hard-core segregation persisted; still, the "white" and "colored" signs in bus stations across the South be- gan to come down. The New York Times, which had earlier criticized the Freedom Riders' "incitement and provocation," acknowledged that they "started the chain of events which resulted in the new I.C.C. order."

The legacy of the rides "could not have been more poetic," says Robert Singleton, who connects those events to the election of Barack Obama as president. Obama was born in August 1961, Singleton notes, just when the riders were languishing in Mississippi jails and prisons, trying to "break the back of segregation for all people, but especially for the children. We put ourselves in harm's way for a child, at the very time he came into this world, who would become our first black president."

Marian Smith Holmes is an associate editor.
Photographer Eric Etheridge maintains a Web site, breachofpeace.com, that publishes information about the Freedom Riders.

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Smithsonian Magazine | On Sunday, May 14, 1961-Mother's Day-scores of angry white people blocked a Greyhound bus carrying black and white passengers through rural Alabama. The attackers pelted the vehicle with rocks and bricks, slashed tires, smashed windows with pipes and axes and lobbed a firebomb through a broken window.

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Honors

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The Cold War: Nixon in Vietnam - Vietnamisation, Cambodia and Invasion of Laos - Episode 36

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Why Nixon and Kissinger try to stop the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers?

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Why Nixon and Kissinger try to stop the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers?

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Why did Nixon and Kissinger try to stop the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers from Don't Know Much About History

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"We Americans are a do-it-yourself people.... Instead of teaching someone else to do a job, we like to do it ourselves. And this trait has been carried over into our foreign policy," President Richard Nixon told the nation in a televised address on November 3, 1969, explaining that the United States would no longer take the lead in the fight against the North Vietnamese. Instead, US forces would train the South Vietnamese military to handle the conflict on its own.

"In the previous administration," Nixon said into the camera, "we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace."

Nixon with US Army 1st Infantry Division troops during a visit to Dian, South Vietnam, July 30, 1969.

This strategy-dubbed "Vietnamization" by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and the "Nixon Doctrine" by the press-was best captured, Nixon said, by a leader of another Asian country who once told him: "When you are trying to assist another nation defend its freedom, US policy should be to help them fight the war but not to fight the war for them."

In addition to a withdrawal of US forces, Nixon pledged an increase in the training and equipping of the South Vietnamese military, as well as an adherence to all treaty commitments. "This withdrawal will be made from strength and not from weakness," he asserted. "As South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater."

Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu met at Midway Island in the Pacific, June 8, 1969, where the US president announced withdrawal of 25,000 troops by the end of August-to be replaced by South Vietnamese forces.

Referencing the massive antiwar protests on the home front, Nixon asked those who were not protesting-the "great silent majority of my fellow Americans"-for their support of his withdrawal plan. It was a winning one-liner with longevity, as this televised address (below) is widely referred to as Nixon's "silent majority" speech.

Nixon's handwritten notes preparing for his "silent majority" speech.

INCURSION INTO CAMBODIA

Nixon used visual aids to explain to the American people the importance of bombing sites in Cambodia.

In his first year, Nixon attempted to settle the war on favorable terms. But when negotiators failed to make progress through the public peace talks being held in Paris, Nixon turned to more clandestine channels. Through secret negotiations between National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese, the president warned that if major progress were not made by November 1, 1969, he would be "compelled-with great reluctance-to take measures of the greatest consequences."

None of it worked. The North Vietnamese did not yield. Nixon did not carry out his threats; the war continued. Bringing the conflict to a successful resolution proved elusive.

Publicly, Nixon said his strategy was a combination of negotiating and Vietnamization. In fact, he began the withdrawals even before he issued his secret ultimatum to the Communists, and continued to announce partial troop withdrawals throughout his first term.

But Vietnamization could work only if American withdrawal was offset by improvement in Saigon's fighting capacity. And with Communist forces continuing to move down the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia and on into South Vietnam, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) would remain continually under siege.

By the spring of 1970, developments in the region seemed to offer a way not only to take the heat off the South Vietnamese, but to deal the Communists a more punishing blow.

A Cambodian coup in March 1970 had replaced neutralist leader Prince Sihanouk with a pro-American military government, albeit of dubious survivability. American officials also believed they had located in Cambodia the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN)-the headquarters for Communist operations below the 17th parallel. Seeking to bolster the fledgling force in Cambodia and to strike at COSVN, as well as to buy time for ARVN's improvement, Nixon ordered a temporary invasion of Cambodia-the administration called it an incursion-by a combined force of American and South Vietnamese troops.

On April 28, 1970, the president authorized a preemptive strike in Cambodia, sending US troops across the border from South Vietnam in order to destroy Viet Cong base camps that were providing support to the Communists fighting in South Vietnam.

Two days later, Nixon took to the airwaves again, to explain to the American people that the US military, along with the South Vietnamese People's Army, were invading Cambodia in order to intensify the destruction of Viet Cong base camps and to impede North Vietnamese supply lines.

Several years later, looking back on the bombing and incursion in Cambodia, Nixon revealed in the recording below how those actions destabilized the Southeast Asian nation. Nixon told Treasury Secretary John B. Connally that it was a mistake for him not to retaliate militarily against North Korea after it shot down an American EC-121 reconnaissance plane in April 1969, shortly after he became president. He recalled the great popularity of his "silent majority" speech, then revealed to Connally for the first time that in 1969 he had secretly ordered American B-52s to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail in the border area of Cambodia. The code name was Operation Menu, with individual rounds of bombing named Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Supper, and Snack.

The assault had an unintended consequence: It drove the North Vietnamese deeper into Cambodia, destabilizing the neutralist government. Read the transcript here.

KENT STATE

Nixon has an impromptu meeting with Vietnam War protestors at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

The Cambodian incursion energized lawmakers on Capitol Hill to claw back some of the power it had ceded to the executive during the course of the war. Not only did it generate proposals to limit the powers of the president; it sparked bipartisan legislation to limit US military action in Cambodia and to end the American war in Vietnam.

The Cambodian operation also provoked the largest round of antiwar rallies in American history. In response to the protests specifically at universities, according to the New York Times, Nixon told Pentagon civilian employees on May 1, 1970: "You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, storming around about this issue. You name it. Get rid of the war there will be another one.

Hard hats presented to Nixon after riots on May 8, 1970, as construction workers protested New York City Mayor John Lindsay's decision to fly the American flag at half-mast after the Kent State shootings. The construction workers rioted in the city on May 7 and 8, prompting Nixon to thank them for their public demonstration of support. (National Archives, Nixon Library)

"Then out there we have kids who are just doing their duty. They stand tall and they are proud. I am sure they are scared. I was when I was there. But when it really comes down to it, they stand up and, boy, you have to talk up to those men. They are going to do fine and we have to stand in back of them."

It was during these campus demonstrations in May 1970 that National Guardsmen fired at rock-throwing protestors at Kent State University in Ohio, killing four. Two weeks later, police fired on students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, leaving two more dead.

THE WITHDRAWAL

White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman's detailed records are housed at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and include seven handwritten diaries, 36 dictated diaries as sound recordings, and two handwritten audio cassette tape subject logs.

By the end of 1970, Nixon had planned to wrap up the American military withdrawal from Vietnam within 18 months. But Kissinger talked him out of it. Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, documented a discussion about the president's plans in his diary on December 21, 1970:

"Henry was in for a while and the president discussed a possible trip for next year. He's thinking about going to Vietnam in April [1971] or whenever we decide to make the basic end-of-the-war announcement. His idea would be to tour around the country, build up [South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van] Thieu and so forth, and then make the announcement right afterwards. Henry argues against a commitment that early to withdraw all combat troops because he feels that if we pull them out by the end of '71, trouble can start mounting in '72 that we won't be able to deal with, and which we'll have to answer for at the elections. He prefers instead a commitment to have them all out by the end of '72 so that we won't have to deliver finally until after the [US presidential] elections [in November 1972] and therefore can keep our flanks protected. This would certainly seem to make more sense, and the president seemed to agree in general, but he wants Henry to work up plans on it."

MISSION IN LAOS

Communist supply lines running along the Ho Chi Minh trail from North Vietnam, through Laos, and south to Cambodia were a logical target for interdicting the North's operation. But American troops were not able to take part in ground combat operations in either Laos or Cambodia because of the Cooper-Church Amendment, passed by Congress in late 1970, prohibiting such action on the ground.

US troops could, however, assist from the air. So on February 8, 1971, South Vietnamese ground forces, with American air support, took part in Lamson 719, an offensive in Laos intended to sever the Ho Chi Minh trail. Lamson was considered at least a partial test of the success of Vietnamization. It went badly, but did manage to disrupt Communist supply lines long enough to aid the war effort.

In this recording from March 11, 1971, Nixon and Kissinger discussed the timing of the South Vietnamese military's departure from Laos as it concluded Lamson 719. Read the transcript here.

MORE PROTESTS ON THE HOMEFRONT

On the eve of mass antiwar demonstrations in April and May of 1971, the president's pollsters found just 28 percent in favor of the protests and 65 percent opposed. President Nixon smelled opportunity, telling Haldeman to "make a note there: Take on the f**king demonstrators."

But in April 1971 when the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) arrived in the nation's capital with plans for a weeklong protest, Nixon responded more gingerly. The Interior Department had denied the VVAW permission to encamp overnight on the National Mall, but the group set up anyway, filing appeals that they ultimately took to the Supreme Court. Recalling the public outcry when President Herbert Hoover ordered the Army to evict the Bonus Expeditionary Force-a large group of WWI veterans demanding cash payments during the depths of the Great Depression-Nixon instructed White House special counsel John W. Dean that no one, including DC police, should touch the Vietnam veterans.

Two days later, in this Oval Office conversation, Nixon and his advisors discussed the recent press coverage of VVAW. They were particularly impressed by the performance of John F. Kerry before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the previous day.

Kerry's testimony included sharp accusations of war crimes being committed on a daily basis by US troops, with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.

The protests continued. On May 3, 1971, police clashed with the self-described "Mayday Tribe"-antiwar protesters who demonstrated for three days in DC. They tried blocking traffic and courting mass arrest in an attempt to bring the city to a halt-and with it, the war.

They succeeded in getting arrested, making people late for work, and providing the president with the political opportunity to take a popular hard line against disruptive protest. They did not, however, succeed in shortening the war.

The president hoped to bring the last American troops home from Vietnam sometime between July 1972 and January 1973, when enough US troops remained in South Vietnam to prevent the fall of Saigon before Election Day 1972. In the meantime, he relished the opportunity to score political points off the unpopular demonstrations, as this conversation indicates. Read the transcript here.

PENTAGON PAPERS

When work was completed on what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers on January 15, 1969, the team of 36 military personnel, historians, and defense analysts from the RAND Corporation and the Washington Institute for Defense Analysis had produced 47 volumes and 7,000 pages.

A defense analyst specializing in nuclear weapons strategy and counterinsurgency theory, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg was a member of the Vietnam Study Task Force created in 1967 to study the history of America's role in Vietnam. His brief stint with the task force confirmed what he had already come to suspect: The US government's involvement in Vietnam was one of deception. Ellsberg became increasingly frustrated with the Nixon administration, believing that its conduct in Vietnam was merely a continuation of his predecessors' patterns of deception and escalation. As his frustration grew, Ellsberg began to contemplate leaking the study so that its contents and its lessons could be made public.

Over the course of several weeks in the fall of 1969, Ellsberg managed to secretly photocopy the study. With these copies in his possession, Ellsberg turned to members of Congress such as Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AK), Senator Charles Mathias Jr. (R-MD), Senator George McGovern (D-SD), and Congressman Paul (Pete) McCloskey Jr. (R-CA), all in the hope that one of them would be willing to enter the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. Despite his pleas, all four declined. But Senator McGovern suggested that he provide his copies to the press. So in March 1971, Ellsberg decided to show the study to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan.

Sheehan and the Times understood how big of a story they had. On June 10, word reached Sheehan that against the advice of the paper's attorneys, the management of the Times had decided that the need to reveal the history of deception outweighed the danger of possible criminal prosecution. The New York Times published its first Pentagon Papers article on Sunday, June 13, 1971. It was, the Times announced, part one of a series.

Taking legal action against the Times was not Nixon's first reaction. In a June 13, 1971, conversation with Kissinger, the president recognized that in some ways the publication of the Pentagon Papers helped him politically, since the study reminded readers that the Vietnam War was more the product of his predecessors' mistakes than his own. Nixon and Kissinger both assumed, mistakenly, that the release of the study was timed to affect an upcoming vote on the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which would require the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. To be sure, Nixon denounced the publication as "unconscionable" and worse, but the lesson he drew from it was that the administration should just plow ahead and make sure to "clean house" of disloyal people who might partake in such a "treasonable" act.

BROOKINGS BREAK-IN

In response to the leak of the Pentagon Papers, the president met in the Oval Office on June 17, 1971, with his closest aides. Haldeman suggested blackmailing Nixon's predecessor, President Lyndon B. Johnson, on the Vietnam issue that nearly cost Nixon the 1968 presidential election: the "bombing halt." Less than a week before the election, Johnson had ordered a complete halt to American bombing of North Vietnam in exchange for secret military concessions by Hanoi and the start of new peace talks between North and South Vietnam. Republicans charged that Johnson had stopped the bombing to bolster the presidential campaign of Hubert H. Humphrey, Johnson's vice president. (The declassified record shows otherwise.)

Nixon's reaction to Haldeman's suggestion stunned his aides. He told them to implement the Huston Plan, which called for using illegal break-ins, wiretaps, and mail-opening against domestic terrorists. But instead of terrorists, Nixon wanted to use the plan against former Johnson administration officials who (the president mistakenly believed) had a secret file on the bombing halt in a classified safe at Brookings. Read the transcript here.

NIXON'S REELECTION

Nixon and Kissinger, standing in front of a window in the Oval Office on February 10, 1971.

Nixon with Vice President Spiro Agnew at the 1972 Republican National Convention on August 23, 1972.

Nixon and Kissinger's worst fears were realized when the North Vietnamese regular army poured into the South in March 1972. Nixon responded by implementing some of the plans he had considered in 1969. He mined Haiphong Harbor and used B-52s to bomb the North. The combined power of the American and South Vietnamese military ultimately stopped the offensive, though not before the Communists had more territory under their control.

The North Vietnamese were eager to reach a settlement before the American presidential election, after which Nixon would no longer have to face the electorate at the ballot box. Hanoi made a breakthrough proposal in October 1972 and reached agreement with Kissinger rapidly. The South Vietnamese government balked, however, chiefly because the agreement preserved North Vietnamese control of all the territory Hanoi currently held. To turn up the political pressure on Nixon, the North Vietnamese began broadcasting provisions of the agreement. Kissinger held a press conference announcing that "Peace is at hand," without giving away too many details.

After Nixon's re-election, he told South Vietnamese president Thieu that if he did not agree to the settlement, Congress would cut off aid to his government-and that conservatives who had supported South Vietnam would lead the way. He promised that the United States would retaliate militarily if the North violated the agreement.

To coax Saigon into signing the agreement, and to bring Hanoi back to the conference table, Nixon launched the "Christmas Bombings" of 1972. Both parties responded as Nixon desired, and peace seemed imminent. Negotiations resumed in January to resolve the few outstanding issues that remained.

Secretary of State William Rogers signs the peace agreement to end the US involvement in the Vietnam War on January 27, 1973.

In this recorded conversation from January 23, 1973, Nixon laments the news coverage of him finally ending this unpopular war. "You'd think, you know, that even at this time, even those a**holes would say, 'Well, you know...maybe it's good news.' But no!" Nixon told Kissinger. Four days later, the Paris Peace Accords went into effect, bringing an end to the American war in Vietnam.

In his last statement as defense secretary in 1973, Laird said, "Vietnamization...today is virtually completed.... The South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese."

That statement would prove incorrect within two years. On April 30, 1975, the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam captured Saigon, thus eliminating the dividing line at the 17th parallel and reunifying North and South under a Communist regime. America's ally South Vietnam had lost the war.
*Adapted from "Richard Nixon: Foreign Affairs" by Ken Hughes and "First Domino: Nixon and the Pentagon Papers"-both first published on millercenter.org.

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"We Americans are a do-it-yourself people.... Instead of teaching someone else to do a job, we like to do it ourselves. And this trait has been carried over into our foreign policy," President Richard Nixon told the nation in a televised address on November 3, 1969, explaining that the United States would no longer take the lead in the fight against the North Vietnamese.

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National Archives link

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In the early 1960s, young Black college students conducted sit-ins around America to protest the segregation of restaurants. Ella Baker, a Civil Rights activist and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) official, invited some of those young Black activists (including Diane Nash, Marion Barry, John Lewis, and James Bevel) to a meeting at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April of 1960. From that meeting, the group formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). It was made up mostly of Black college students, who practiced peaceful, direct action protests. Ella Baker recommended that the group keep its autonomy and to not affiliate itself with the SCLC or other civil rights groups.

Prominent Members/Events of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Resources

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The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

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In the early 1960s, young Black college students conducted sit-ins around America to protest the segregation of restaurants. Ella Baker, a Civil Rights activist and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) official, invited some of those young Black activists (including Diane Nash, Marion Barry, John Lewis, and James Bevel) to a meeting at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April of 1960.

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Moments In History: Remembering Thurgood Marshall

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A Spotlight on a Primary Source by Bowman Gum Company

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Anti-Communist Trading Cards, 1951 | Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

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Anti-Communist Trading Cards, 1951 | | On June 25, 1950, war broke out on the Korean peninsula when the Soviet-backed Communist forces in North Korea invaded the recently founded democratic republic of South Korea. Following a unanimous UN resolution condemning the invasion, President Harry S. Trum…

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Images of the Anti-Communist Trading Cards

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Images of the Anti-Communist Trading Cards

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1951 "Red Menace" (R701-12)
Bowman Gum, United States

Title: Red Menace

ACC No.: R701-12

Issued by: Bowman Gum Company

No. of Cards: 48

Numbering: 1 to 48 on card Backs

Dimensions: 2½ × 3&frac18; inches

Circa: 1951

Overview ¹

During the early 1950s, Bowman Gum's "Red Menace" was one of the most popular and colorful trading card sets of the post World War II era.

As you may recall, this was the "McCarthy" era and the "Scare Years." During this era, we all learned how to "Duck and Cover" in anticipation of a nuclear attack. The series of cards was a byproduct of this era which saw Communist takeovers in Eastern Europe, the invasion of Korea, Russian A-bomb tests, and the emergence of leftist political movements in Latin America. The artwork for the series was quite spectacular ... and graphic.

There were 48 cards in the set, which was issued by Bowman in 1951. Each card measured 2½ × 3&frac18;. Each card had a subheading, "CHILDREN'S CRUSADE AGAINST COMMUNISM" printed on the Back at the top. The card number, card title, and text were printed below. The cardboard stock on the reverse came in both gray and tan. Every card was issued in both colors. The American Card Catalog reference number for the set is R701-12.

Image Guide ²

5¢ Box and 5¢ Wrapper ³

A very special thanks to Vladislav Kuchta from Prague, Czech Republic for sending us a scans of the R701-12 "Red Menace" 5¢ box and 5¢ Wrapper. Vladislav is a long-time collector of chewing gum wrappers. He has over 100,000 items in his collection.

A Little History and the "Crusader Oath" 4, 5 & 6

When Bowman's "Red Menace" set was issued in 1951, the World was already several years deep into the "Cold War". Often dated from 1947 to 1991, the "Cold War" was a sustained state of political and military tension between powers in the Western Bloc, dominated by the United States with NATO among its allies, and powers in the Eastern Bloc, dominated by the Soviet Union along with the Warsaw Pact. This began after the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the USSR and the United States as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences.

This was the era of "Duck and Cover". "Duck and Cover" was a suggested method of personal protection against the effects of a nuclear explosion, which the United States government taught to generations of United States school children from the early 1950s until the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s. It was intended to protect them in the event of both an unexpected nuclear attack, which, they were told, might come at any time without warning. Under the conditions of a surprise attack, immediately after they saw a flash they had to stop what they were doing and get on the ground under some cover-such as a table, or at least next to a wall-and assume a prone like position, lying face-down and covering their exposed skin and Back of their heads with their clothes, or if no excess clothes such as a coat was available, to cover the Back of their heads with their hands.

If that wasn't enough stress for everyone, let's throw Sen. Joseph McCarthy into the mix! Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy (11/14/08 - 5/2/1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate.

The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents. So, it was no surprise that the following pledge was printed on the Back of each "Red Menace" 5¢ box.

Join the Children's Crusade Against Communism Crusader Oath:

I Believe in God, and the God-given freedom of man. I believe in the United States of America and the United Nations. I believe in government of the people, by the people, and for the people ... I am against any system which enslaves man and makes them merely tools of the State. I pray for the people who must live under such a system. I pray that they may be delivered from oppression. I pledge my faith, loyalty and devotion to the cause of freedom for all mankind.

"Red Menace" Checklist
"Red Menace"
R701-12 Checklist
References

1. Benjamin, Christopher, The Sport Americana® Price Guide to the Non-Sports Cards 1930-1960, Number 2, Edgewater Book Company, Cleveland, Ohio, 1993, ISBN 0-937424-66-8, pp. 370

2. Shupek, John. Card scans via the Skytamer Archive Collection.

3. Kuchta, Vladislav. R701-12 5¢ Box and 5¢ Wrapper images.
Wikipedia. Cold War.
4. Wikipedia. Duck and Cover

5. Wikipedia. Joseph McCarthy

Copyright © 1998-2018 (Our 20th Year) Skytamer Images, Whittier, California
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Red Menace (48) Bowman Gum (R701-12) United States

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1951 "Red Menace" (R701-12) Bowman Gum, United States Title: Red Menace ACC No.: R701-12 Issued by: Bowman Gum Company No. of Cards: 48 Numbering: 1 to 48 on card Backs Dimensions: 2½ × 3⅛ inches Circa: 1951 Overview ¹ During the early 1950s, Bowman Gum's "Red Menace" was one of the most popular and colorful trading card sets of the post World War II era.

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Video

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From Don't Know Much About History

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Whaat Was McCarthyism from Don't Know Much About History

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Why Did President Eisenhower Send the Army Into Little Rock, Arkansas?

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Why Did President Eisenhower Send the Army Into Little Rock, Arkansas?

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Why Did President Eisenhower send the Army into Little Rock Arkansas from Don't Know Much About History

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What Was Sputnik from Don't Know Much About History

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What was the Feminine Mystique  from Don't Know Much About History

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Martin vs Malcolm  from Don't Know Much About History

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The Birmingham Campaign was a movement led in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) which sought to bring national attention of the efforts of local black leaders to desegregate public facilities in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign was led by Dr. Martin Luther … Read Mor…

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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

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On August 28, 1963 a quarter million people came to the nation’s capital to petition their duly elected government in a demonstration known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Frustrated by the inaction of a gridlocked Congress, the marchers called for Congress to pass the Civil Rights…

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March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (U.S. National Park Service)

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t was the largest gathering for civil rights of its time. An estimated 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, arriving in Washington, D.C. by planes, trains, cars, and buses from all over the country.

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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (usually shortened to the " March on Washington") took place on August 28, 1963. More than 250,000 people from all over the country gathered on the National Mall, between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, to demand civil rights and economic equality for all Americans.

The peaceful rally is most remembered for its closing speech, delivered by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.- "I Have a Dream." The speech remains powerful and eloquent, but was only part of the March on Washington, which itself was a part of the larger civil rights movement.

To learn more about the March on Washington and dispel some popular myths about the event, read the Fast Facts.

Consult California History-Social Science standard 11.10: Examine the roles of civil rights advocates (e.g., A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, James Farmer, Rosa Parks), including the significance of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and "I Have a Dream" speech.

Discuss leading participants of the March on Washington, suggesting march participants such as Bayard Ruskin or Harry Belafonte, or members of the "Big Six" as topics for biographical book reports. Members of the Big Six are more fully addressed in question one in the Questions tab.

Discuss where the March on Washington took place. The significance of the Lincoln Memorial is more fully addressed in question two in the Questions tab.

Consult California History-Social Science Standard 12.3, parts 1-2: 1. Explain how civil society provides opportunities for individuals to associate for social, cultural, religious, economic, and political purposes. 2. Explain how civil society makes it possible for people, individually or in association with others, to bring their influence to bear on government in ways other than voting and elections.

Discuss the First Amendment, and how it guarantees the freedom of assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Discuss what grievances-real-world issues-the March on Washington was meant to confront, and how these issues persist today. The two major issues (civil and economic rights) are addressed in question three in the Questions tab.

Students may want to consider how different marginalized groups work to assert their civil and economic rights: the poor, Native Americans, women, Latinos, the LGBT community, the disabled, etc.

Discuss the concept of public space. Students may want to review the significance of the Lincoln Memorial explored in question two.

Identify some public spaces in your community. Examples of public spaces and how they are used are listed in question four of the Questions tab.

1. The March on Washington was one of the few instances where the "Big Six" leaders of the civil rights movement worked together on a specific project. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), is the most famous of the Big Six. Can you name any of the others?

Answer

was president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the most powerful African American force in organized labor. Randolph planned the March on Washington with Bayard Rustin, and delivered its opening and closing remarks.

founded the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and organized the 1961 Freedom Riders campaign, which led to the desegregation of interstate buses. Farmer was scheduled to speak at the March on Washington, but could not attend. He had just been arrested in Plaquemine, Louisiana, for "disturbing the peace" while organizing civil rights protests, and was still in jail.

was the youngest member of the Big Six, and president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). At the March on Washington, Lewis cut part of his speech after other leaders thought it was too controversial and critical of the Kennedy administration.

was the executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wilkins saw the march as a show of support for the civil rights bill then being debated in Congress.

was the executive director of the National Urban League. Young tried to keep the focus of the march on civil, not economic, rights.

2. The speeches at the March on Washington took place at the Lincoln Memorial. Why do you think march leaders chose this location?

Answer

President Abraham Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator," was widely credited with ending slavery in the United States. In fact, the march took place during the centennial year of the Emancipation Proclamation, issued in January 1863.

Aside from its historic significance, the Lincoln Memorial is an easily accessed public space, sitting at the west end of the National Mall. The Mall is a huge, grassy area lined by museums and government buildings. The Capitol, where Congress meets, anchors the east end of the Mall. The Lincoln Memorial itself stands on a fairly steep series of steps, allowing speakers and performers to look out over the expanse of the Mall.

In 1939, the Lincoln Memorial had been the site of the largest gathering on the National Mall prior to the March on Washington-a free concert by operatic soprano Marian Anderson. Anderson's concert, organized after a nearby venue refused to host an integrated audience, drew about 75,000 people.

3. Gatherings like the March on Washington are guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Consider the First Amendment when answering the next two questions, about the right to petition the government and the right to peaceably assemble (freedom of assembly).

Right to petition the government: "We will not stop [protesting] until the dogs stop biting us in the South and the rats stop biting us in the North." So wrote James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), in his speech prepared for the March on Washington. (Floyd McKissick, who succeeded Farmer at CORE, actually delivered the speech, as Farmer was in jail for organizing civil-rights protests in Louisiana.) What grievances do you think Farmer was talking about by "dogs in the South" and "rats in the North"?

Answer

Farmer's words brilliantly address the two main grievances of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: economic equality (jobs) and civil rights (freedom).

Dogs in the South: Farmer was alluding to police brutality, specifically the use of police dogs, to violently discourage civil-rights demonstrations in the South.

Rats in the North: Farmer was alluding to unequal access to jobs and housing in urban areas such as New York, Chicago, and Boston. Unfairly segregated, many African Americans were forced to live in homes that did not have adequate access to health, safety, and sanitation standards that would eliminate vermin such as rats.

4. Freedom of assembly: Freedom of assembly is often associated with the concept of public space. Are there public spaces where members of your community are able to peaceably assemble? What are some reasons people may gather in a public space?

Answer

Answers will vary! Public spaces are generally defined as places that are open to people without a fee or authorization. Public parks, beaches, and city squares or plazas are some familiar public spaces.

People may gather in public spaces for a wide variety of reasons: political or social protest (as the March on Washington), artistic opportunities such as concerts, or recreational opportunities, including athletics or historical re-enactments.

Myth: The March on Washington united the civil rights community.

The March on Washington was remarkable for bringing together very disparate elements of the civil rights movement, but many other civil rights activists did not support the march at all. The most famous of these dissenters was probably Malcolm X, a leader in the Nation of Islam, who derided the March on Washington as a "Farce on Washington." Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders thought the placid tone and participation of non-African Americans reduced the impact of the event. Other critics of the march noted the absence of any female speakers at the event.

Myth: The March on Washington was apolitical.

The March on Washington had specific, entirely political goals. Marchers sought legal guarantees of civil, economic, and voting rights. Many marchers supported a civil rights bill that had been introduced (but not yet passed) by the House of Representatives just months earlier. Other marchers thought this bill was not strong enough, and wanted to lobby Congress to ensure African Americans had fair access to jobs, public facilities, police protection, housing, and voting rights. In fact, leaders of the march were actually late for its start because they were meeting with members of Congress.

Myth: All participants in the March on Washington were African Americans from the South.

An overwhelming number of participants in the March on Washington were African American men and women-unofficial estimates put the number as high as 80 percent. Although many arrived from the South, including nearby Virginia, most probably came from urban areas such as New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. (On the morning of August 28, one radio station reported buses were pouring in from Baltimore at a rate of 100 per hour.) Thousands of white, Asian, Latino, and Native American marchers also participated.

Myth: The March on Washington was a march to Washington.

The civil rights movement is often associated with marches, most notably the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches in Alabama. However, the March on Washington was organized as an enormous meeting-not a journey-with people gathering in the Washington, D.C., area from all over the country. Bayard Rustin expertly managed the march's complex logistics-involving thousands of buses, trains, planes, and cars.

Myth: Martin Luther King, Jr., organized the March on Washington.

The march was planned and organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, experienced and exemplary leaders in the civil rights community.

Randolph was president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major labor organization led by African Americans. He was also vice-president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions (including the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) in the U.S.

Rustin was perhaps one of the most skilled civil rights activists at the march. During World War II, he worked to protect the property of Japanese Americans detained in internment camps and successfully met with President Roosevelt to help desegregate the armed services. Rustin was also the chief adviser to King on the theories and practices of non-violent protest.

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Myth: The March on Washington united the civil rights community.

The March on Washington was remarkable for bringing together very disparate elements of the civil rights movement, but many other civil rights activists did not support the march at all. The most famous of these dissenters was probably Malcolm X, a leader in the Nation of Islam, who derided the March on Washington as a "Farce on Washington." Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders thought the placid tone and participation of non-African Americans reduced the impact of the event. Other critics of the march noted the absence of any female speakers at the event.

Myth: The March on Washington was apolitical.

The March on Washington had specific, entirely political goals. Marchers sought legal guarantees of civil, economic, and voting rights. Many marchers supported a civil rights bill that had been introduced (but not yet passed) by the House of Representatives just months earlier. Other marchers thought this bill was not strong enough, and wanted to lobby Congress to ensure African Americans had fair access to jobs, public facilities, police protection, housing, and voting rights. In fact, leaders of the march were actually late for its start because they were meeting with members of Congress.

Myth: All participants in the March on Washington were African Americans from the South.

An overwhelming number of participants in the March on Washington were African American men and women-unofficial estimates put the number as high as 80 percent. Although many arrived from the South, including nearby Virginia, most probably came from urban areas such as New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. (On the morning of August 28, one radio station reported buses were pouring in from Baltimore at a rate of 100 per hour.) Thousands of white, Asian, Latino, and Native American marchers also participated.

Myth: The March on Washington was a march to Washington.

The civil rights movement is often associated with marches, most notably the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches in Alabama. However, the March on Washington was organized as an enormous meeting-not a journey-with people gathering in the Washington, D.C., area from all over the country. Bayard Rustin expertly managed the march's complex logistics-involving thousands of buses, trains, planes, and cars.

Myth: Martin Luther King, Jr., organized the March on Washington.

The march was planned and organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, experienced and exemplary leaders in the civil rights community.

Randolph was president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first major labor organization led by African Americans. He was also vice-president of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions (including the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters) in the U.S.

Rustin was perhaps one of the most skilled civil rights activists at the march. During World War II, he worked to protect the property of Japanese Americans detained in internment camps and successfully met with President Roosevelt to help desegregate the armed services. Rustin was also the chief adviser to King on the theories and practices of non-violent protest.

Writer

Caryl-Sue, National Geographic Society

Editor

Sean P. O'Connor

Producer

Caryl-Sue, National Geographic Society

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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (usually shortened to the " March on Washington") took place on August 28, 1963. More than 250,000 people from all over the country gathered on the National Mall, between the Washington and Lincoln Memorials, to demand civil rights and economic equality for all Americans.

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Murder of Medgar Evers – Medgar Evers College

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On June 12, 1963, U.S. president John F. Kennedy—who would be assassinated only a few short months later—called the white resistance to civil rights for blacks “a moral crisis” and pledged his support to federal action on integration.

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Throughout his short life, Medgar Evers heroically spoke out against racism in the deeply divided South. He fought against cruel Jim Crow laws, protested segregation in education, and launched an investigation into the Emmett Till lynching. In addition to playing a role in the civil rights movement, he served as the NAACP's first field officer in Mississippi.

Returning from war

Evers began his journey as a civil rights activist when he and five friends were turned away from a local election at gunpoint. He had just returned from the Battle of Normandy in World War II and realized fighting for his country did not spare him from racism or give him equal rights.

After attending college at the historically black Alcorn State University in Mississippi and taking a job selling life insurance in the predominantly Black town of Mound Bayou, Evers became president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL). As head of the organization, Evers mounted a boycott of gas stations that barred Black people from using their restrooms, distributing bumper stickers with the slogan "Don't Buy Gas Where You Can't Use the Restroom." annual conferences between 1952 and 1954 in Mound Bayou attracted tens of thousands.

NAACP field officer

Evers soon turned his sights on desegregation after being rejected from the University of Mississippi Law School because of the color of his skin. The Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education 1954 ruling making school segregation unconstitutional. His fight to desegregate the University of Mississippi Law School bore fruit eight years after he began when James Meredith was enrolled in 1962.

As NAACP's first field officer in Mississippi, Evers established new local chapters, organized voter registration drives, and helped lead protests to desegregate public primary schools, parks, and Mississippi Gold Coast beaches.

Death threats and murder

Evers gained notoriety in the eyes of white supremacists after becoming involved in two high-profile Mississippi cases. His public investigations into the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till and the 1960 conviction of Clyde Kennard, a Black civil rights activist framed for crimes he didn't commit, left Evers vulnerable to attack.

White supremacists made several attempts on Evers's life before succeeding on June 12, 1963. After pulling into his driveway and getting out of his car carrying NAACP T-shirts reading "Jim Crow Must Go," Evers was shot in the back and died at the local hospital less than an hour later. He was murdered just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights.

After becoming NAACP's first field officer in Mississippi and moving to the state capital of Jackson, Evers established new local NAACP chapters, organized voter registration drives, and helped lead protests to desegregate public primary schools, parks, and Mississippi Gold Coast beaches.

A member of the Ku Klux Klan, Byron De La Beckwith, was arrested for Evers's murder but remained free after all-white juries twice deadlocked on his guilt. Three decades later, justice was finally served when De La Beckwith was found guilty of Evers's murder and sent to prison in his 70s.

A lasting legacy

Evers was buried with full military honors in front of more than 3,000 people at Arlington National Cemetery. His murder and the failure to convict De La Beckwith inspired a number of songs from popular musicians, including Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game" and "Too Many Martyrs" and "Another Country" by Phil Ochs. The 1996 film The Ghosts of Mississippi starring Alec Baldwin and Whoopi Goldberg depicts the 1994 trial of De La Beckwith for Evers's murder.

Evers's family also carried his legacy forward. Both his wife Myrlie Evers-Williams and his brother Charles became prominent civil rights activists, with Myrlie serving as chairwoman of NAACP from 1995 to 1998.

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A prominent Southern civil rights activist, Medgar Evers was the NAACP's first field officer in Mississippi.

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Sound Smart: The Freedom Rides | History

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The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute

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Although the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had labored for civil rights in rural Mississippi since 1961, the organization found that intense and often violent resistance by segregationists in rural areas of Mississippi would not allow for the kind of direct action campaigns that h…

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National Archives

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In the summer of 1964 the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) began organizing a movement regarding voting rights. COFO was a group of Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

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Freedom Summer (June-August, 1964) was a nonviolent effort by civil rights activists to integrate Mississippi's segregated political system. It began late in 1963 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) decided to recruit several hundred northern college students, ... Read MoreFreedom Summer (1964)

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Contents

1. Lead-up to the Civil Rights Act

2. Civil Rights Act Moves Through Congress

3. Lyndon Johnson Signs The Civil Rights Act of 1964

4. What Is the Civil Rights Act?

5. Legacy of the Civil Rights Act

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and passed additional civil rights legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Lead-up to the Civil Rights Act

Following the Civil War, a trio of constitutional amendments abolished slavery (the 13 Amendment), made the formerly enslaved people citizens ( 14 Amendment) and gave all men the right to vote regardless of race ( 15 Amendment).

Nonetheless, many states-particularly in the South-used poll taxes, literacy tests and other measures to keep their African American citizens essentially disenfranchised. They also enforced strict segregation through " Jim Crow" laws and condoned violence from white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

For decades after Reconstruction, the U.S. Congress did not pass a single civil rights act. Finally, in 1957, it established a civil rights section of the Justice Department, along with a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory conditions.

Three years later, Congress provided for court-appointed referees to help Black people register to vote. Both of these bills were strongly watered down to overcome southern resistance.

When John F. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, he initially delayed supporting new anti-discrimination measures. But with protests springing up throughout the South-including one in Birmingham, Alabama, where police brutally suppressed nonviolent demonstrators with dogs, clubs and high-pressure fire hoses-Kennedy decided to act.

In June 1963 he proposed by far the most comprehensive civil rights legislation to date, saying the United States "will not be fully free until all of its citizens are free."
READ MORE: 8 Steps That Paved the Way to the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act Moves Through Congress

Kennedy was assassinated that November in Dallas, after which new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately took up the cause.

"Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined," Johnson said in his first State of the Union address. During debate on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, southerners argued, among other things, that the bill unconstitutionally usurped individual liberties and states' rights.

In a mischievous attempt to sabotage the bill, a Virginia segregationist introduced an amendment to ban employment discrimination against women. That one passed, whereas over 100 other hostile amendments were defeated. In the end, the House approved the bill with bipartisan support by a vote of 290-130.

The bill then moved to the U.S. Senate, where southern and border state Democrats staged a 75-day filibuster-among the longest in U.S. history. On one occasion, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, a former Ku Klux Klan member, spoke for over 14 consecutive hours.

But with the help of behind-the-scenes horse-trading, the bill's supporters eventually obtained the two-thirds votes necessary to end debate. One of those votes came from California Senator Clair Engle, who, though too sick to speak, signaled "aye" by pointing to his own eye.
READ MORE: When Did African Americans Get the Right to Vote?
Lyndon Johnson Signs The Civil Rights Act of 1964

Having broken the filibuster, the Senate voted 73-27 in favor of the bill, and Johnson signed it into law on July 2, 1964. "It is an important gain, but I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come," Johnson, a Democrat, purportedly told an aide later that day in a prediction that would largely come true.

Did you know? President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with at least 75 pens, which he handed out to congressional supporters of the bill such as Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen and to civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkins.

What Is the Civil Rights Act?

Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, segregation on the grounds of race, religion or national origin was banned at all places of public accommodation, including courthouses, parks, restaurants, theaters, sports arenas and hotels. No longer could Black people and other minorities be denied service simply based on the color of their skin.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act barred race, religious, national origin and gender discrimination by employers and labor unions, and created an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission with the power to file lawsuits on behalf of aggrieved workers.

Additionally, the act forbade the use of federal funds for any discriminatory program, authorized the Office of Education (now the Department of Education) to assist with school desegregation, gave extra clout to the Commission on Civil Rights and prohibited the unequal application of voting requirements.

Legacy of the Civil Rights Act

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. said that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was nothing less than a "second emancipation."

The Civil Rights Act was later expanded to bring disabled Americans, the elderly and women in collegiate athletics under its umbrella.

It also paved the way for two major follow-up laws: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of property. Though the struggle against racism would continue, legal segregation had been brought to its knees in the United States.
READ MORE: Civil Rights Movement Timeline

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The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.

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Although the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments outlawed slavery, provided for equal protection under the law, guaranteed citizenship, and protected the right to vote, individual states continued to allow unfair treatment of minorities and passed Jim Crow laws allowing segregation of public facilities. These were upheld by the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1895), which found state laws requiring racial segregation that were "separate but equal" to be constitutional. This finding help continue legalized discrimination well into the 20th century.

Following World War II, pressures to recognize, challenge, and change inequalities for minorities grew. One of the most notable challenges to the status quo was the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas which questioned the notion of "separate but equal" in public education. The Court found that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and a violation of the 14th Amendment. This decision polarized Americans, fostered debate, and served as a catalyst to encourage federal action to protect civil rights.

Marshals standing by fence near crowd during the March on Washington, 1963
Warren K. Leffler, LOC, LC-U9- 10361-23

Each year, from 1945 until 1957, Congress considered and failed to pass a civil rights bill. Congress finally passed limited Civil Rights Acts in 1957 and 1960, but they offered only moderate gains. As a result of the 1957 Act, the United States Commission on Civil Rights was formed to investigate, report on, and make recommendations to the President concerning civil rights issues. Sit-ins, boycotts, Freedom Rides, the founding of organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), local demands for inclusion in the political process, all were in response to the increase in legislative activity through the 1950s and early 1960s.

1963 was a crucial year for the Civil Rights Movement. Social pressures continued to build with events such as the Birmingham Campaign, televised clashes between peaceful protesters and authorities, the murders of civil rights workers Medgar Evers and William L. Moore, the March on Washington, and the deaths of four young girls in the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. There was no turning back. Civil rights were firmly on the national agenda and the federal government was forced to respond.

President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation on civil rights, June 11, 1963

In response to the report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, President John F. Kennedy proposed, in a nationally televised address, a Civil Rights Act of 1963.A week after his speech, Kennedy submitted a bill to Congress addressing civil rights (H.R. 7152). He urged African American leaders to use caution when demonstrating since new violence might alarm potential supporters. Kennedy met with businessmen, religious leaders, labor officials, and other groups such as CORE and NAACP, while also maneuvering behind the scenes to build bipartisan support and negotiate compromises over controversial topics.

Following Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, both Martin Luther King, Jr. and newly inaugurated President Lyndon B. Johnson continued to press for passage of the bill - as King noted in a January 1964 newspaper column, legislation "will feel the intense focus of Negro interest...It became the order of the day at the great March on Washington last summer. The Negro and his white compatriots for self-respect and human dignity will not be denied."

The House of Representatives debated H.R. 7152 for nine days, rejecting nearly 100 amendments designed to weaken the bill. It passed the House on February 10, 1964 after 70 days of public hearings, appearances by 275 witnesses, and 5,792 pages of published testimony.

President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, July 2, 1964.
Cecil Stoughton, White House Press Office

The real battle was waiting in the Senate, however, where concerns focused on the bill's expansion of federal powers and its potential to anger constituents who might retaliate in the voting booth. Opponents launched the longest filibuster in American history, which lasted 57 days and brought the Senate to a virtual standstill.

Senate minority leader Everett Dirksen nurtured the bill through compromise discussions and ended the filibuster. Dirksen's compromise bill passed the Senate after 83 days of debate that filled 3,000 pages in the Congressional Record. The House moved quickly to approve the Senate bill.

Within hours of its passage on July 2, 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson, with Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Height, Roy Wilkins, John Lewis, and other civil rights leaders in attendance, signed the bill into law, declaring once and for all that discrimination for any reason on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin was illegal in the United States of America.

What is it? A landmark piece of civil rights legislation.

Significance: Outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, color, or national origin.

Date: July 2, 1964

Associated Sites: The United States Capitol, The White House

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 (U.S. National Park Service)

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Although the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments outlawed slavery, provided for equal protection under the law, guaranteed citizenship, and protected the right to vote, individual states continued to allow unfair treatment of minorities and passed Jim Crow laws allowing segregation of public facilities. These were upheld by the Supreme Court in Plessy v.

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Sound Smart: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 | History

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MLK, Jr 1967

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Editor's Note: Read The Atlantic's special coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy.

Image above: The riots in Detroit brought fires and looting. Three weeks after 43 people were killed in race riots in Detroit-the worst of the more than 150 urban riots during the "long hot summer" of 1967-King addressed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. He delineated the causes of the violence, notably "the white backlash," black unemployment, racial discrimination, and the war in Vietnam.
A million words will be written and spoken to dissect the ghetto outbreaks, but for a perceptive and vivid expression of culpability I would submit two sentences written a century ago by Victor Hugo:

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

The policy makers of the white society have caused the darkness; they created discrimination; they created slums; they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also declare that the white man does not abide by law in the ghettos. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison.

Let us say it boldly that if the total slum violations of law by the white man over the years were calculated and were compared with the lawbreaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man.

After establishing the general cause of outbursts, it is possible to identify five immediate causes:

1. The white backlash.

2. Unemployment.

3. General discriminatory practices.

4. War.

5. Features peculiar to big cities: crime, family problems, and intensive migration.

I place the white backlash first because the outbursts have an emotional content that is a reaction to the insults and depravity of the white backlash. Many people point out that there have been years of some progress, and this is true. Yet equally true is the fact of an animalistic reaction by a significant section of the white population. In the midst of progress Negroes were being murdered in the South and cynical white jurors automatically freed the accused. In Chicago last year thousands of vicious white hoodlums with murder in their hearts bombarded Negroes with rocks and bottles because they dared to ask to be neighbors. The white backlash told Negroes that there were limits to their progress; that they must expect to remain permanently unequal and permanently poor. The white backlash said Negroes should not confuse improvements with equality. True equality, it said, will be resisted to the death. The so-called riots in a distorted and hysterical form were a Negro response that said inequality will now be resisted to the death.

The second major cause is unemployment because it furnishes the bulk of the shock troops. Government figures reveal that the rate of unemployment for Negroes runs as high as 15% in some cities-and for youth up to 30-40%! It is not accidental that the major actors in all the outbreaks were the youth. With most of their lives yet to live, the slamming of doors in their faces could be expected to induce rage and rebellion. This is especially true when a boastful nation, while neglecting them, gloats over its wealth, power and world pre-eminence. Yet almost 40% of Negro youth waste their barren lives standing on street corners.

I proposed that a national agency be established to immediately give employment to everyone needing it. Training should be done on the job, not separated from it and often without any guarantee of employment in which to use the training. Nothing is more socially inexcusable than unemployment in this age. In the thirties when the nation was bankrupt, it instituted such an agency, the W.P.A. In the present conditions of a nation glutted with resources it is barbarous to condemn people willing to work to soul-sapping inactivity and poverty.

I am convinced that one massive act of concern will do more than the most massive deployment of troops to quell riots and still hatreds. I am not convinced that the statesmanship exists in Washington to do it. Hugo could have been thinking of 20th century America when he said, "There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher classes."

The third cause is discrimination, which pervades all experiences of Negro life. It pushes the Negro off the economic ladder after he has ascended a few rungs. It stultifies his initiative and insults his being. Even the few Negroes who realize economic security do not attain respect and dignity, because on upper levels discrimination closes different doors to them.

Discrimination is a hell hound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

The fourth cause is the war in Vietnam. Negroes are not only conscripted in double measure for combat, but they are told the billions needed for remaking their lives are necessary for foreign intervention. Democracy at home is starved to seek a spurious democracy abroad. Dictators, oligarchies, are given our resources to perpetuate their rule at the rate of $80,000,000 per day, but we cannot afford to spend 10% of this on anti-poverty programs ...

To war against your own people, while warring against another nation, is the ultimate in political and social bankruptcy.

Finally, a complex of causes is found in the conditions of urban life. Crime is well organized in the cities and produces an underclass of great numbers. Rackets are the big business of the ghetto, with masses of employees. In any period of unrest they utilize conditions for advantage. Organized crime has a protected sanctuary in the slums, with police tolerance, if not connivance. It becomes a normal feature of life, poisoning the young and confounding the adult ...

Cities are also victims of the anarchic migrations of Negroes. Although everyone knew in the past decade that millions of Negroes would have to leave the land without schooling, no national planning was done to provide remedies. White immigrants in the 19th century were given free credit and land by the government. In the early 20th century a plethora of social agencies helped them to adjust to city life. The economy readily absorbed white workers into factories and trained them to skills. There were obstacles and privations for white immigrants but every step was upward; care and concern could be found.

When the Negro migrated he was substantially ignored or grossly exploited within a context of searing discrimination. He was left jobless and ignorant, despised and scorned as no other American minority has been ...

To list the causes is to structure the remedial program. A program is not, however, our problem. Our real problem is that there is no disposition by the [Johnson] Administration nor Congress to seek fundamental remedies beyond police measures. The tragic truth is that Congress, more than the American people, is now running amok with racism. We must devise the tactics, not to beg Congress for favors, but to create a situation in which they deem it wise and prudent to act with responsibility and decency.

Some people assert riots are just such a method. Perhaps it would be well to examine the nature of the outbreaks. They reveal in the first place that the time we have is shorter than many of us believed. Patience is running out and the intransigence and hostility of government-national, state and municipal-is aggravating grievances to explosive levels.

The riots are not simply a reign of terror or a splurge of crime, though both elements are partially present. They are also a wildly emotional protest and a desperate attempt to display the utter desperation that has engulfed many Negroes. The vast majority who actively participated were remarkably discriminating in avoiding harm to persons, venting their anger by appropriating or destroying property. There is an ironic purpose in this choice; to attack a society that appears to cherish property above people, the worst wounds to inflict on it are those to property.

The outbursts cannot be considered an insurrection, because insurrections are organized and can sustain themselves for more than a few days. The riots are powered by spontaneous bitter emotions and therefore die out rapidly.

Rolls Press / Popperfoto / Getty

We have not devised the tactics for urban slum reform. We spent ten years in the South using new tactics of nonviolence that were successful. But in the Northern cities, with time running out, we failed to achieve creative methods of work. As a result, a desperate, essentially leaderless mass of people acted with violence and without a program ...

There is probably no way, even eliminating violence, for Negroes to obtain their rights without upsetting the equanimity of white folks. All too many of them demand tranquility when they mean inequality ...

Related Stories

Nonviolent action in the South was effective because any form of social movement by Negroes upset the status quo. When Negroes merely marched in Southern streets it was close to rebellion. In the urban communities marches are less disquieting because they are not considered rebellions and secondly, because the normal turbulence of cities absorbs them as merely transitory drama which is ordinary in city life.
This excerpt appears in the special MLK issue print edition with its original title, "The Crisis in America's Cities." © 1967 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., © renewed 1995 Coretta Scott King. All works by Martin Luther King Jr. have been reprinted by arrangement with the Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., care of Writers House as agent for the proprietor, New York, New York.
To raise protest to an appropriate level for cities and to invest it with aggressive but nonviolent qualities, it is necessary to adopt civil disobedience. To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive. Moreover, it is more difficult for government to quell it by superior force. Mass civil disobedience can use rage as a constructive and creative force. It is purposeless to tell Negroes they should not be enraged when they should be.

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Editor's Note: Read The Atlantic's special coverage of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy. Image above: The riots in Detroit brought fires and looting. Three weeks after 43 people were killed in race riots in Detroit-the worst of the more than 150 urban riots during the "long hot summer" of 1967-King addressed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta.

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From Don't Know Much About History

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What Happened in Watts from Don't Know Much About History

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Landmark Cases explores the human stories and constitutional dramas behind some of the most significant and frequently cited decisions in the Supreme Court's history. This 12-part series delves into cases that represent some of the tipping points in our nation's story and in our evolving understanding of rights in America.

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In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court identified a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which the court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married couples. Above, a man protests outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven, Connecticut.

Reproduction courtesy of Corbis Images

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy. The case concerned a Connecticut law that criminalized the encouragement or use of birth control. The 1879 law provided that "any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purposes of preventing conception shall be fined not less than forty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days." The law further provided that "any person who assists, abets, counsels, causes, hires or commands another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principle offender."

Estelle Griswold, the executive director of Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, doctor and professor at Yale Medical School, were arrested and found guilty as accessories to providing illegal contraception. They were fined $100 each. Griswold and Buxton appealed to the Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut, claiming that the law violated the U.S. Constitution. The Connecticut court upheld the conviction, and Griswold and Buxton appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reviewed the case in 1965.

The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision written by Justice William O. Douglas, ruled that the law violated the "right to marital privacy" and could not be enforced against married people. Justice Douglas contended that the Bill of Right's specific guarantees have "penumbras," created by "emanations from these guarantees that help give them life and opinion." In other words, the "spirit" of the First Amendment (free speech), Third Amendment (prohibition on the forced quartering of troops), Fourth Amendment (freedom from searches and seizures), Fifth Amendment (freedom from self-incrimination), and Ninth Amendment (other rights), as applied against the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, creates a general " right to privacy" that cannot be unduly infringed.

Further, this right to privacy is "fundamental" when it concerns the actions of married couples, because it "is of such a character that it cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of our civil and political institutions." Because a married couple's use of contraception constitutes a "fundamental" right, Connecticut must prove to the Court that its law is "compelling" and "absolutely necessary" to overcome that right (i.e., the "strict scrutiny test"). Because Connecticut failed to prove this, the law was struck down as applied.

Other justices, while agreeing that marital privacy is a "fundamental right" and that the Connecticut law should be struck down, disagreed with Justice Douglas as to where in the Constitution such a "fundamental right" exists. In his concurrence, Justice Arthur Goldberg argued that the Ninth Amendment, which states that the Bill of Rights does not exhaust all the rights contained by the people, allows the Court to find the "fundamental right to marital privacy" without having to ground it in a specific constitutional amendment. In another concurrence, Justice John Marshall Harlan II maintained that a "fundamental right to marital privacy" exists only because marital privacy has traditionally been protected by American society. Finally, in yet another concurrence, Justice Byron White argued that a fundamental right to marital privacy constitutes a liberty under the Due Process Clause, and is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against the states.

Yet, for all their differences, the majority in Griswold v. Connecticut agreed that the "right to privacy," in addition to being "fundamental," was " substantive." In West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937), the Court had rejected the idea that the Constitution protects "substantive rights," i.e., protects certain activities from government interference that are not explicitly mentioned in the Bill of Rights. In Griswold, however, it ruled that "substantive rights" do exist in non-economic areas like "the right to privacy," even if they do not in economic activities like the right to contract. Over the next 10 years, the Court expanded this fundamental, substantive "right to privacy" beyond the marital bedroom, ruling that the state could not ban the use of contraceptives by anyone (Eisenstadt v. Baird [1972]), and that the state could not ban most abortions ( Roe v. Wade [1973]).

AUTHOR'S BIO

Alex McBride is a third year law student at Tulane Law School in New Orleans. He is articles editor on the TULANE LAW REVIEW and the 2005 recipient of the Ray Forrester Award in Constitutional Law. In 2007, Alex will be clerking with Judge Susan Braden on the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington.

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The Supreme Court . Expanding Civil Rights . Landmark Cases . Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) | PBS

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In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court identified a constitutionally protected right to privacy, which the court reasoned prohibited states from denying birth control to married couples. Above, a man protests outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in New Haven, Connecticut. Reproduction courtesy of Corbis Images Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) In Griswold v.

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The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education marked a turning point in the history of race relations in the United States. On May 17, 1954, the Court stripped away constitutional sanctions for segregation by race, and made equal opportunity in education the law of the land.

Brown v. Board of Education reached the Supreme Court through the fearless efforts of lawyers, community activists, parents, and students. Their struggle to fulfill the American dream set in motion sweeping changes in American society, and redefined the nation's ideals.

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Separate Is Not Equal - Brown v. Board of Education

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The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education marked a turning point in the history of race relations in the United States. On May 17, 1954, the Court stripped away constitutional sanctions for segregation by race, and made equal opportunity in education the law of the land.

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From Don't Know Much About History

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What Happened at My Lai  from Don't Know Much About History

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Fifty years later, Mary Beth Tinker looks back at her small act of courage and the Supreme Court case that followed

smithsonian.com

In the late 1965, the evening news blared with news of the U.S. engagement in Vietnam, disheartening a 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker as she ate dinner with her family. The month prior, Mary Beth's 15-year-old brother, John, and his friend Christopher Eckhardt marched against the war in Washington, D.C. Back in Iowa, the boys thought their small circle of peace supporters were alone in the anti-war fight. But in Washington, they became inspired by the support they felt from the thousands of other Americans in attendance. The boys carried that confidence home to Des Moines, and come December, Eckhardt and the Tinker siblings discussed how they could take their stand against what they saw as an unjust war.

The plan: Wear black armbands to school in peaceful protest. Their school board promptly banned the wearing of armbands and suspended the students when they disobeyed the directive. Though simple, the young adults' actions would cascade into what became "one of the seminal cases in constitutional law in American history" in the words of constitutional scholar David Hudson. The so-called "Tinker Test," established 50 years ago when the United States Supreme Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines, forever changed the legality of school protest, for better and for worse.

The students gleaned inspiration from a group of college students and adults who had gathered in the Eckhardt family home to discuss ways Iowans could advocate for peace in Vietnam. The next day, word of the peaceful protest plan spread to a high school Liberal Religious Youth group gathered at the Eckhardt's, and later, to the Tinker siblings. Wearing black armbands, as had been done to mourn the children murdered in the Birmingham church bombing, became the course of action. Soon, the principals of the Des Moines schools the students attended received word of the protest and hastily moved to ban black armbands from school premises. Yet, seven students - including Mary Beth, John and Chris - carried on and five were suspended, the youngest being Mary Beth.

"I had no idea our small action would lead to something so consequential," Mary Beth now says.

News of their protest spread and retribution came swiftly. Red paint was tossed across the Tinker's driveway, and a local talk show host encouraged people to attack family patriarch Leonard Tinker. Soon, individuals from the Iowa branch of the American Civil Liberties Union offered legal aid to the families, citing that they could sue the Des Moines school district for violating their First Amendment rights to free speech. The initial case, argued before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, did not end in their favor. Judge Roy Stephenson acknowledged the students' expression was a "symbolic act" protected by the First Amendment, but argued that it should not surpass the school's concern for "the disciplined atmosphere of the classroom." The appeal to the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals went no better. The eight judges were evenly divided 4-4 in their decision, upholding the lower court's ruling, and pushing the students' attorneys to file a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in a last effort to prevail.

On November 12, 1968, the case of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District came before the Supreme Court. Though preoccupied by the continuing quagmire in Vietnam, with more than 16,000 American troops killed that year alone, the Tinker family was eager for a resolution to their case. Before the justices, Dan Johnston, a lawyer working with the ACLU, argued that the balance between a school's effort to maintain discipline and the right of increasingly politicized students to voice their opinions was " not an isolated problem... And we suggest that this case provides a good context for the Court to provide guidance..."

Three months later, on February 24, 1969, the court ruled 7-2 in favor of the students, with Justice Abe Fortas writing in the decision, " It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." He added, "In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism... [students] are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State. In our system, students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the State chooses to communicate."

Hudson, a law professor at the Nashville School of Law and author of Let the Students Speak!: A History of the Fight for Free Expression in American Schools, says of the Tinker case, "It's hard to overstate its importance." Since 1969, the decision has been cited as precedent in practically every case having to do with free speech for public school students. And while it appeared to be a First Amendment triumph, a win for public school students across the nation, in practice, it's been interpreted in many unexpected ways.

In defending the students' rights, the seven justices pointed to a 1966 lower court decision: Burnside v. Byars. In that case, a group of Mississippi students wore "freedom buttons" to school in 1964, and school authorities hastily threw together a rule banning the protest. At the time, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it was unreasonable to believe "the mere presence of 'freedom buttons' is calculated to cause a disturbance sufficient to warrant their exclusion from school premises..." Thus began the age of "substantial disruption."

First suggested in Burnside and later codified in Tinker, substantial disruption asks schools to determine whether a student protest causes enough of an impediment to learning to merit discipline. The Tinker ruling established what is commonly referred to as the "Tinker test," a barometer to measure student speech against. However, the only concrete standard established by the "Tinker Test," was that passively wearing armbands alone was not substantial enough. This left walk-outs, signs, sit-ins and other forms of speech up for debate.

The Tinker case also laid the groundwork for "reasonable forecast." In order to implement disciplinary actions, Hudson says, "Public-school officials don't have to wait for an actual riot or wide-scale disruption. They can point to specific facts that certain expression will cause substantial disruption." In other words, public schools can legally prohibit student speech, if they have reason to believe substantial disruption will result.

In March 2018, the ACLU cited Tinker to argue a Georgia school unconstitutionally suspended student Amari Ewing, who walked out of school in protest of gun violence. The usual punishment for such offense was a one-day, in-school suspension. Ewing was suspended for five days. In a letter to the school district, the ACLU wrote, "It is hardly clear how Amari's leaving school during the break between classes without fanfare has caused a material and substantial disruption to school. If you have such evidence, we ask that you provide it immediately. Absent such evidence, the school's overreaction to Amari's expression appears to be nothing more than 'an urgent wish to avoid the controversy which might result from the expression.'" Eventually, according to the ACLU of Georgia, Ewing's suspension was reduced to an amount all parties agreed was acceptable.

The ACLU sued the Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas on behalf of students who allege their school prohibited them from mentioning "gun violence" during a planned anti-gun violence protest. The Shawnee Mission School District is also accused of stopping student journalists from covering the event and even cancelling a student rally altogether.

The ambiguous nature of student speech rights has universal impact. Madison Oster, who walked out of her Illinois school in support of gun rights in March, is similarly suing her school district for censoring her free speech. Oster alleges the school "selectively bann[ed] her viewpoint" by initially insisting she and her fellow gun supporters stage their protest near the school's front door, far from where the crowd of anti-gun violence protesters demonstrated on the football field, and keeping them "out of everyone else's sight or hearing."

This is just a sampling of instances when students felt their freedom of speech has been impeded. Even more are argued outside the court house, as schools negotiate their own limits of "reasonable forecast" and "substantial disruption." With the power to define these terms, schools can also redefine them and over-discipline students. While up for interpretation, the Tinker test still requires schools provide adequate proof of disruption. And, still "in our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism."

Today, celebration around youth activism is abundant. Mary Beth's protest will be honored in a 2020 exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History that focuses on the ways young girls have forever been on the frontlines of change.

"We tend to think about childhood as something that is isolated and pristine," exhibit curator Nancy Bercaw says. "We think that girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. But all along major government policies have come from girls' actions, like Mary Beth's."

Five years ago, Mary Beth left her career as a family nurse practitioner. "Young people aren't going to have optimal health until they have the rights to speak up about their status," she realized and started the Tinker Tour. She travels the country stopping at schools and teacher colleges, encouraging others to speak out for their passions.

"I show them that they can be a part of history and democracy," she says. "And when you are, life becomes very interesting, meaningful and somedays even fun. History is going to be made one way or another, and they could have a part in making it. They should and they deserve to."

Mary Beth believes we are living in "mighty times," similar to the ones of her youth. To her, the voices of the current generation are vital. These new voices value Mary Beth's too. Last February, March for Our Lives activist Emma González said in a speech, "We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks... Just like Tinker v. Des Moines, we are going to change the law.... it's going to be due to the tireless effort of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most of all the students."

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The Young Anti-War Activists Who Fought for Free Speech at School

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smithsonian.com In the late 1965, the evening news blared with news of the U.S. engagement in Vietnam, disheartening a 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker as she ate dinner with her family. The month prior, Mary Beth's 15-year-old brother, John, and his friend Christopher Eckhardt marched against the war in Washington, D.C.

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Why did Jane Roe sue Wade  from Don't Know Much About History

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"Reflections" captures the spirit of the Little Rock Nine in 1957& 2007, 50 years post-integration.
Lyuba Bogan

The End of Legal Segregation
In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision outlawed segregation in public education. Little Rock School District Superintendent Virgil Blossom devised a plan of gradual integration that would begin at Central High School in 1957. The school board called for volunteers from all-black Dunbar Junior High and Horace Mann High School to attend Central.

Prospective students were told they would not be able to participate in extracurricular activities if they transferred to Central such as football, basketball, or choir. Many of their parents were threatened with losing their jobs, and some students decided to stay at their own schools.

"[Blossom said] you're not going to be able to go to the football games or basketball games. You're not going to be able to participate in the choir or drama club, or be on the track team. You can't go to the prom. There were more cannots..."
Carlotta Walls LaNier

"When my tenth-grade teacher in our Negro school said there was a possibility of integration, I signed up. We all felt good. We knew that Central High School had so many more courses, and dramatics and speech and tennis courts and a big, beautiful stadium."
Minnijean Brown to Look Magazine, June 24, 1958

On September 3, 1957, the Little Rock Nine arrived to enter Central High School, but they were turned away by the Arkansas National Guard. Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard the night before to, as he put it, "maintain and restore order..." The soldiers barred the African American students from entering.

"I was not prepared for what actually happened."
Elizabeth Eckford

"I thought he [Faubus] was there to protect me. How wrong I was."
Thelma Mothershed Wair

The students arrived at Central alone on the first day. By prior arrangement, they gathered at the 16th Street entrance with several local ministers who accompanied them. Elizabeth Eckford arrived at the other end of the block by herself. She was met by a mob screaming obscenities and threats, chanting, "Two, four, six, eight, we ain't gonna integrate!"

"We didn't know that his [Faubus'] idea of keeping the peace was keeping the blacks out."
Jefferson Thomas

More than two weeks went by before the Little Rock Nine again attempted to enter Central High School. On September 23, 1957, the Little Rock Nine entered the school. Outside, rioting broke out and the Little Rock police removed the Nine for their safety.

The President Becomes Involved
On September 24, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered units of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division -the "Screaming Eagles"- into Little Rock and federalized the Arkansas National Guard. In a televised speech delivered to the nation, President Eisenhower stated, "Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of the courts."

On September 25, 1957, under federal troop escort, the Little Rock Nine made it inside for their first full day of school. The 101st Airborne left in October and the federalized Arkansas National Guard troops remained throughout the year.

The Little Rock Nine had assigned guards to walk them from class to class. The guards could not accompany the students inside the classrooms, bathrooms, or locker rooms. They would stand outside the classrooms during class time. In spite of this, the Little Rock Nine endured verbal and physical attacks from some of their classmates throughout the school year. Although some white students tried to help, few white students befriended any of the Nine. Those who did received similar treatment as the Nine, such as hate mail and threats.

One of the Little Rock Nine, Minnijean Brown, was suspended in December for dropping chili on some boys after they refused to let her pass to her seat in the cafeteria. She was later expelled in February 1958 for calling a girl who had hit her with a purse "white trash." After Brown's expulsion, students passed around cards that read, "One Down, Eight to Go."

Brown finished high school at New Lincoln School in New York City, while living with Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark. The Clarks were the social psychologists whose "doll test" work demonstrated for the Supreme Court in Brown that racial prejudice and segregation caused African-American children to develop a sense of inferiority.

The remaining eight students completed the school year at Central. Senior Ernest Green was the first African American student to graduate from Central High School.

"It's been an interesting year. I've had a course in human relations first hand."
Ernest Green, Life Magazine, June, 1958

The following year, the city's high schools were closed to prevent further desegregation while the NAACP continued to pursue the legal case to integrate Little Rock's schools.

When the schools reopened, Carlotta Walls and Jefferson Thomas returned to Central and graduated in 1960. Thelma Mothershed received her diploma from Central High School by taking correspondence courses to complete her studies.

Little Rock Nine Biographies
The rest of the Little Rock Nine completed their high school educations at different schools. The Little Rock Nine have received numerous accolades and awards, from the renowned NAACP Spingarn Medal to the nation's highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.

Minnijean Brown Trickey graduated from New Lincoln High School in 1959. She received a Bachelor of Social Work degree in Native Human Services from Laurentian University and a Master of Social Work degree at Carleton University, in Ontario Canada. Brown Trickey has worked in various settings committed to peacemaking, gender and social justice advocacy, youth leadership, diversity education and training, cross-cultural communication, and environmental issues. She served in Clinton Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Workforce Diversity in the Department of the Interior. Brown Trickey continues to work as a teacher, writer, and motivational speaker; she is the subject of the critically acclaimed documentary, Journey to Little Rock: The Untold Story of Minnijean Brown Trickey.

After 60 years, the infamous photo of Elizabeth Eckford walking through the mob in front of Little Rock Central High School still serves as a symbol of white resistance against integration in the Civil Rights Movement. Along with the other eight students, Elizabeth faced her share of adversity within the walls of Central High and can recall numerous incidents of harassment and hostility at the hands of her white peers. After Governor Faubus closed all public high schools in Little Rock to prevent further integration during the 1958-1959 school year, Elizabeth moved to St. Louis, Missouri where she obtained a GED. Eckford served in the U.S. Army as a pay clerk, information specialist, and newspaper writer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History from Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio. For her great contributions to social justice, Eckford has received many prestigious awards such as the Congressional Gold Medal, the NAACP Spingarn Medal, and the Humanitarian Award presented by the National Conference for Community and Justice. Today, Eckford is still a strong proponent of tolerance in every aspect of life.

Ernest Green is the first African American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School (May 1958). He holds a Bachelor of Science in Social Science and Master of Science in Sociology from Michigan State University as well as honorary doctorates from Michigan State University, Tougaloo College, and Central State University. Green served as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training during the Carter Administration. He was appointed to Chairman of the African Development Foundation by President Bill Clinton and by Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley to serve as Chairman of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Capital Financing Advisory Board. Green is a recipient of the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, the Boy Scouts of America's Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, the Urban League's Frederick Douglass Freedom Medal, the John D. Rockefeller Public Service Award, and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Thelma Mothershed Wair received her diploma from Little Rock Central High School in 1960 after completing correspondence courses and transferrable summer school credits. She earned a bachelor's degree in Home Economics Education from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and received a master's degree in Guidance and Counseling plus an Administrative Certificate in Education from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville. Wair worked in the East St. Louis school system for 28 years - 10 years as a Home Economics teacher and 18 years as a counselor for elementary career education - before retiring in 1994. She also served at the St. Clair County Jail/Juvenile Detention Center in St. Clair County, Illinois and was an instructor of survival skills for women at the American Red Cross. In addition to the NAACP's Spingarn Medal and the Congressional Gold Medal, Wair has received numerous awards for her professional contributions and community service including the Outstanding Role Model award from the East St. Louis Chapter of the Top Ladies of Distinction and an award from the Early Childhood/Pre-Kindergarten staff from the East St. Louis School District. She collaborated with Richard J. Hansen for a book narrating her experiences from Central High School entitled Education Has No Color: The Story of Thelma Mothershed Wair, One of the Little Rock Nine.

Dr. Melba Pattillo Beals finished her high school education at Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa, California. Beals earned a bachelor's degree in Journalism from San Francisco State University, a Master of Arts in Communications from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in International Multicultural Studies from the University of San Francisco. She has worked as an on-camera television reporter for KQED's Newsroom, as an NBC-TV news reporter, and as a radio news talk show host for KGO, ABC radio, San Francisco. Dr. Beals founded the Department of Communications and Media Studies at the Dominican University of California. She has written four books based on her experiences at Central High School. Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High is a firsthand account of the experience that Beals and the Little Rock Nine encountered at Central High School. Other works include March Forward, Girl, the prequel to Warriors Don't Cry; White is a State of Mind, the sequel to Warriors Don't Cry; and I Will Not Fear, an examination of her faith through her journey of terror, oppression, and persecution. Dr. Beals is the recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Spingarn Medal, the Congressional Gold Medal, and is a communications consultant and motivational speaker.

Gloria Ray Karlmark graduated from Kansas City Central High School in 1960. She earned a bachelor's degree in Chemistry and Mathematics from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT); post-graduation, she joined the ITT Research Institute as Assistant Mathematician on the APT IV Project (robotics, numerical control, and online technical documentation) and collaborated with Boeing in Seattle, McDonnell-Douglas in Santa Monica, and the NASA Automation center in St. Louis. Karlmark has served as a teacher, mathematician, systems analyst, and technical writer. She founded and served as the Editor-in-Chief for Computers in Industry, an international journal of computer science and engineering. Karlmark also worked in the Netherlands for Philips Telecommunications in Hilversum and Philips Lighting in Eindhoven.

Dr. Terrence Roberts graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1959. He earned a bachelor's degree in Sociology from California State University and a master's degree in Social Welfare from the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1976, Roberts was awarded a Ph.D. in psychology from Southern Illinois University and later became Department Chair of the Psychology program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. He is the author of Lessons from Little Rock, a memoir of the 1957-58 school year at Central, and Simple, Not Easy, a reflection on community, social responsibility, and tolerance. Dr. Roberts is CEO of Terrence J. Roberts & Associates, a management consultant firm devoted to fair and equitable practices. He maintains a private psychology practice, conducts lectures, and presents workshops and seminars on a wide variety of topics. Dr. Roberts is the recipient of the Spingarn Medal and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Jefferson Thomas returned to graduate from Little Rock Central High School in 1960. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Los Angeles State College and served as a staff sergeant in South Vietnam with the 9th Infantry Division, United States Army. Thomas, with his father, operated the family-owned Retail Sales Business, worked as an Accounting Clerk and Supervisor for Mobil Oil Corporation - Los Angeles Credit Card Center, and later as an Accounting Clerk with the Department of Defense. He was the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Ohio Dominican University in recognition of his life-long efforts in human rights and equality. Jefferson Allison Thomas died on September 5, 2010 in Columbus, Ohio.

Carlotta Walls LaNier returned to graduate from Little Rock Central High School in 1960. LaNier attended Michigan State University for two years before moving with her family to Denver. In 1968, she earned a Bachelor of Science from Colorado State College, now the University of Northern Colorado. In 1977, she founded LaNier and Company, a real estate brokerage firm. LaNier serves as president of the Little Rock Nine Foundation and is a member of the Denver Chapter of The Links, Incorporated, and the Johnson Legacy, Inc. Board of Directors. In addition to the NAACP's Spingarn Medal and the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to her as a member of the Little Rock Nine, LaNier is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Northern Colorado and is an inductee in the Colorado Woman's Hall of Fame, the Girl Scouts Women of Distinction and the National Women's Hall of Fame. She is the author of A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.

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The Little Rock Nine (U.S. National Park Service)

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The End of Legal Segregation In 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision outlawed segregation in public education. Little Rock School District Superintendent Virgil Blossom devised a plan of gradual integration that would begin at Central High School in 1957.

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You Will Love History

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Objective 8.9- Social Change in the Sixties

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You Will Love History

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Objective 8.10- 1968 & 1969 A Tumultuous End

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President Eisenhower's Response to the crisis at Central High School

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President Eisenhower's Response to the crisis at Central High School

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60 Years Ago: Pres. Eisenhower on Little Rock School Integration 9-24-1957

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Ch 14 in McGraw-Hill

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1950 Family Date, Dinner In A 1950's Home

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Hip Hughes History

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The Little Rock Nine Explained: US History Review

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60 years later

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The pictures have since become iconic: Elizabeth Eckford walking stoically as a white mob jeers and shouts at her; Terrence Roberts and Carlotta Walls LaNier clutching textbooks under the cover of armed soldiers; Minnijean Brown arriving at Little Rock Central High School, escorted by the 101st Division of the Airborne Command.

The Southern Poverty Law Center attended a ceremony at the high school to commemorate the 60th anniversary of its integration by the Little Rock Nine.

"I feel like I'm visiting a religious shrine," said Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., speaking in the school's auditorium Monday. "And if this is a shrine, ladies and gentlemen, these are the saints."

The surviving members of the Little Rock Nine addressed the high school's current students on the occasion of their first full day of class 60 years ago. By Sept. 25, 1957, they had withstood mobs, a hostile governor and the Arkansas National Guard in one of the most iconic struggles of the civil rights movement.

"The integration of Central High was so early in the civil rights movement, it was before many of the counter sit-ins. It was before the [Freedom] bus rides," said Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. "That fact gives us all an even greater appreciation for the lonely steps of the Little Rock Nine."

But members of the Little Rock Nine say they see activists today taking steps just as lonely.

"Emmett Till turns to Heather Heyer in Charlottesville protesting Nazis," said Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine. "Muhammad Ali turns to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee for injustice. And the Little Rock Nine turns to the Charleston Nine, who gave the ultimate sacrifice for peaceably assembling in a church."

Almost every member of the Little Rock Nine was quick to warn those in attendance at the ceremony that the march for justice is far from over.

"Today we have [president] number 45, who behind the scenes and through his Twitter account, we become as we were 60 years ago - anxious and worried and concerned about what lies ahead," said LaNier.

Nor was she the only dignitary to reference President Trump. Former President Bill Clinton, an Arkansas native, acknowledged the disparity between the ceremony in Little Rock and Trump's rally in Alabama, a rally where Trump referred to a hypothetical football player kneeling during the national anthem as a "son of a bitch."

"I heard that rally down in Alabama, I thought, 'Oh my God, I gotta come look at the Little Rock Nine,'" Clinton said. "They're down there talking in ways you haven't heard since George Corley Wallace, the governor of Alabama, and again - they've forgotten the history."

Trump's comments exposed a selective patriotism, one that allows him to vilify black athletes who have the temerity to protest, but see "very fine people" among the neo-Nazis and white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville.

"We don't want to go back there. We don't want to give in to hate," Clinton said. "Are we really going to let the 200 years of our struggle to get over the idea that our differences are more important than our common humanity just be blown away?"

Clearly, 60 years after the Little Rock Nine overcame massive resistance to integrate an Arkansas high school, the country is reeling from the bigotry and hatred once again given a voice by President Trump.

Today, as in the 1960s, it is easy for some Americans to see any disruption of the status quo as going "too far." Peaceful protestors have long been asked to silence their concerns and patiently wait for justice, but it has been through bravely pushing forward with such protest that justice has been won. As LaNier reminded those in attendance, "In the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'We have come too far to turn back now.'"

The Editors.

P.S. Here are some other pieces we think are valuable this week:
SPLC's Weekend Readings are a weekly summary of the most important news reporting and commentary from around the country on civil rights, economic and racial inequality, and hate and extremism. Sign up to receive Weekend Readings every Saturday morning.

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Weekend Read: The Little Rock Nine - and America - 60 years later

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The pictures have since become iconic: Elizabeth Eckford walking stoically as a white mob jeers and shouts at her; Terrence Roberts and Carlotta Walls LaNier clutching textbooks under the cover of armed soldiers; Minnijean Brown arriving at Little Rock Central High School, escorted by the 101st Division of the Airborne Command.

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You've probably seen the photo: a young African-American girl walks to school, her eyes shielded by sunglasses. She is surrounded by a hateful crowd of angry white people, including a girl caught mid-jeer, her teeth bared and her face hardened with anger. It's one of the most famous images of the civil rights era, but it turns out that the story of the young women in the photo is even more complicated than the racial drama their faces portray.

Hazel Bryan was just 15 when the photo was taken, but her actions on September 4, 1957-and the hatred on her face-turned her into an infamous symbol of the bigotry of Jim Crow and the intolerance faced by the students who tried to go to school that day.

It was the first day of school in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Elizabeth Eckford, also 15 and the girl Bryan was screaming at, was headed to class at Little Rock Central High School. That fact alone was anything but normal: Eckford and eight other black students were recruits sent to the all-white school to test Arkansas' supposed intention to integrate its schools.

Three years earlier, the Supreme Court ruled the segregation of public schools unconstitutional. But in a South ruled by the brutality of Jim Crow, many whites clung to segregation. Like other Southern states, Arkansas dragged its feet, and when the Supreme Court tried to force integration with a second landmark decision, the Little Rock school board decided it would integrate its schools over a period of many years.

Technically, Little Rock Central High School was to be the first to integrate. Eckford and her fellow black students were entitled to attend Central High under the law, but city officials gerrymandered the district in a way that would have forced the majority of black students to attend a different school than whites. The NAACP decided to defy those rules and desegregate Central High on its own. The group recruited students, then registered them at the school.

But on the first day of school, a mob of furious white people assembled to make sure they couldn't get in. The black students had trained for this moment. But nothing could prepare Eckford for the screaming, taunting crowd that surrounded the school. They called out for her to be lynched and yelled slogans like "Two, four, six eight, we don't want to integrate!" In the midst of the horde, reporters and photojournalists recorded the chaos.

Women in the crowd "shrieked in spasms, as tears flowed down their cheeks," wrote one reporter. Screams of obscenities and slurs echoed through Eckford's ears. A group of girls-including Bryan- "started to shriek and wail" as Eckford passed and headed toward the school. As she clutched a folder, trying to move forward, Bryan screamed at her and told her to "go back to Africa."

Eckford and the rest of the Nine never made it into school that day. Acting on the orders of Governor Orville Faubus, Arkansas National Guardsmen stopped her at the door and she was chased away from the school by the mob. Later that month, after President Dwight Eisenhower intervened, Eckford and the other eight students went back to school escorted by members of the 101st Airborne and were finally allowed in.

The day after the incident, the photograph, taken by photojournalist Will Counts, ran on the front page of the Arkansas Democrat. It, and a similar wire photo taken by another photographer, quickly spread throughout the country. When Bryan received disapproving mail, her parents pulled her from the school.

Meanwhile, Eckford endured constant harassment and hatred inside the school she had helped integrate. She was spat upon, punched, hit with eggs and vegetables and faced with a barrage of slurs and insults all year long. Though Eckford managed to finish the school year, the bigots of Little Rock could not abide another year with integrated schools. Rather than repeat integration the next year, they shut down schools altogether.

But though Little Rock's schools reopened-and finally integrated-the year after, the story didn't end there. When Eckford, who moved to St. Louis soon after, visited Little Rock at age 21, she received a call from Bryan, who apologized. Then they went their separate ways again.

Eckford stayed silent about her ordeals for years and suffered from depression and trauma throughout her adult life. Bryan spent years atoning on her own, learning about the civil rights movement and becoming more racially conscious. In 1997, Will Counts, the photographer whose iconic shot was by then considered a defining document of a moment in the struggle for black equality in the United States, arranged for the two to meet in person. Forty years after Bryan screamed at Eckford, they reunited, reconciled and became friends.

Or did they? After a brief, warm friendship that saw them attend events and seminars together and even pose for a poster entitled "Reconciliation" that featured a modern-day photo of the pair outside Little Rock Central, their paths split again when they realized they could not truly reconcile. "True reconciliation can occur only when we honestly acknowledge our painful, but shared past," said Eckford.

Though both Hazel Bryan-now Massey-and Elizabeth Eckford are still alive, it's unclear if they will find that reconciliation during their lifetimes. Their journey from enemies to friends to tense acquaintances is a reminder of the lasting effects of America's history, just as the photograph of two diametrically opposed girls shows just how far the nation has come.

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The Story Behind the Famous Little Rock Nine 'Scream Image'

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You've probably seen the photo: a young African-American girl walks to school, her eyes shielded by sunglasses. She is surrounded by a hateful crowd of angry white people, including a girl caught mid-jeer, her teeth bared and her face hardened with anger.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were illegal. The case, Brown v. The Board of Education, has become iconic for Americans because it marked the formal beginning of the end of segregation.

But the gears of change grind slowly. It wasn't until September 1957 when nine teens would become symbols, much like the landmark decision we know as Brown v. The Board of Education, of all that was in store for our nation in the years to come.

The "Little Rock Nine," as the nine teens came to be known, were to be the first African American students to enter Little Rock's Central High School. Three years earlier, following the Supreme Court ruling, the Little Rock school board pledged to voluntarily desegregate its schools. This idea was explosive for the community and, like much of the South, it was fraught with anger and bitterness.

On September 2, 1957 the night prior to what was to be the teens' first day in Central High classrooms, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus ordered the state's National Guard to block their entrance. Faubus said it was for the safety of the nine students.

On September 4, just 24 hours after a federal judge ordered the Little Rock Nine to begin attending Central High immediately, a belligerent mob, along with the National Guard, again prevented the teens from entering the school.

Sixteen days later a federal judge ordered the National Guard removed. Once again on September 23, the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter the school. Though escorted by Little Rock police into a side door, another angry crowd gathered and tried to rush into Central High. Fearing for the lives of the nine students, school officials sent the teens home. They did, however, manage to attend classes for about three hours.

Finally, 52 years ago today, on September 25, 1957, following a plea from Little Rock's mayor, Woodrow Mann, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and sent U.S. Army troops to the scene. Personally guarded by soldiers from the National Guard soldiers and the Army's 101st Airborne, the Little Rock Nine began regular class attendance at Central High.

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In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were illegal. The case, Brown v. The Board of Education, has become iconic for Americans because it marked the formal beginning of the end of segregation.