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In 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark decision in the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine.

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How did Plessy v. Ferguson affect segregation in the United States?

Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial " separate but equal" doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws. Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying "equal protection of the laws" to any person within their jurisdictions. Although the majority opinion did not contain the phrase "separate but equal," it gave constitutional sanction to laws designed to achieve racial segregation by means of separate and supposedly equal public facilities and services for African Americans and whites. It served as a controlling judicial precedent until it was overturned by the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954).

Background

The case originated in 1892 as a challenge to Louisiana's Separate Car Act (1890). The law required that all railroads operating in the state provide "equal but separate accommodations" for white and African American passengers and prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race. In 1891 a group of Creole professionals in New Orleans formed the Citizens' Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law. They hired Albion Tourgée, a Reconstruction-era judge and social reformer, as their legal counsel. As plaintiff in the test case the committee chose a person of mixed race in order to support its contention that the law could not be consistently applied, because it failed to define the white and "coloured" races. Homer Plessy, who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth African American, purchased a rail ticket for travel within Louisiana and took a seat in a car reserved for white passengers. (The state Supreme Court had ruled earlier that the law could not be applied to interstate travel.) After refusing to move to a car for African Americans, he was arrested and charged with violating the Separate Car Act. At Plessy's trial in U.S. District Court, Judge John H. Ferguson dismissed his contention that the act was unconstitutional. After the state Supreme Court affirmed the district court's ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari, and oral arguments were heard on April 13, 1896. The court rendered its decision one month later, on May 18.

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Plessy v. Ferguson | Summary, Ruling, Background, & Impact

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Plessy v. Ferguson, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on May 18, 1896, by a seven-to-one majority (one justice did not participate), advanced the controversial 'separate but equal' doctrine for assessing the constitutionality of racial segregation laws.

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CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) was organized at the University of Chicago in 1943.

CORE was a major organization in the civil rights movement.

This organization became well known later on in the 1950s when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made the main tactic of the civil rights movement "nonviolent confrontation".

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This article was most recently revised and updated by

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), interracial American organization established by James Farmer in 1942 to improve race relations and end discriminatory policies through direct-action projects. Farmer had been working as the race-relations secretary for the American branch of the pacifist group Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) but resigned over a dispute in policy; he founded CORE as a vehicle for the nonviolent approach to combating racial prejudice that was inspired by Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi.

Congress of Racial Equality march Thomas J. O'Halloran-U.S. News and World Report Magazine Photograph Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file number. ppmsca-04298 -6A)

CORE's activities began with a sit-in at a coffee shop in Chicago in 1942 for the purpose of protesting segregation in public settings. The event was one of the first such demonstrations in the United States and identified CORE as an influential force in the subsequent desegregation of public facilities in Northern cities. After Southern states ignored the U.S. Supreme Court's 1946 decision regarding the unconstitutionality of segregated seating on interstate buses, CORE and FOR launched the first Freedom Ride, an interracial peaceful protest.

In the late 1950s CORE turned its attention to the South, challenging public segregation and launching voter registration drives for African Americans. It became one of the leading organizations of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s by organizing activist campaigns that tested segregation laws in the South. From this era, the Freedom Rides of 1961 and the Freedom Summer project of 1964 endure as CORE's most memorable contribution to the civil rights struggle. The group's efforts became all the more dramatic when its nonviolent demonstrations were met by vicious responses from whites. CORE volunteers were assaulted, teargassed, and jailed, and some demonstrators were killed. Farmer himself survived a Ku Klux Klan murder plot and once escaped Louisiana state troopers by hiding inside a coffin housed in a hearse. His leadership contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Under the influence of Roy Innis, who became CORE's national director in 1968, the organization's political orientation began to change, moving in a direction that he characterized as "pragmatic" but that many others saw as increasingly conservative. Some accused Innis and CORE of being of overly sympathetic to the interests of big business; Farmer was critical of Innis's centralization of control and of the organization's failure to conduct annual conferences.

By the beginning of the 21st century, CORE's program emphases included worker training and equal employment opportunity, crime victim assistance, and community-oriented crisis intervention. The organization maintains its headquarters in New York City.

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Jeff Wallenfeldt, Manager, Geography and History.

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Congress of Racial Equality | American organization

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Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), interracial American organization established by James Farmer in 1942 to improve race relations and end discriminatory policies through direct-action projects. Farmer had been working as the race-relations secretary for the American branch of the pacifist group

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

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Separate But Equal Doctrine

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites-known as "Jim Crow" laws -and established the "separate but equal" doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka's all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a "detrimental effect upon the colored children" and contributed to "a sense of inferiority," but still upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine.

Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown's case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, then governor of California.

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," as segregated schools are "inherently unequal." As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

Though well intentioned, the Court's actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students-known as the " Little Rock Nine"- were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.

Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board didn't achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent civil rights movement in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr.), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary, ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine, the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation's public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation's school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.

HISTORY Vault: Black History

Sources

History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts.
Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press).
Cass Sunstein, "Did Brown Matter?" The New Yorker, May 3, 2004.
Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org.
Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute, April 17, 2014.

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Brown v. Board of Education: Summary, Ruling & Impact | HISTORY

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.

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On December 1, 1955, Rosa parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to white passengers.

Rosa Parks was arrested, which led to a boycott.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956

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Rosa Parks' Bus

In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the front half of the bus, reserved for whites, was full.

But on December 1, 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks was commuting home on Montgomery's Cleveland Avenue bus from her job at a local department store. She was seated in the front row of the "colored section." When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Parks and three others to vacate their seats. The other Black riders complied, but Parks refused.

She was arrested and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. This was not Parks' first encounter with Blake. In 1943, she had paid her fare at the front of a bus he was driving, then exited so she could re-enter through the back door, as required. Blake pulled away before she could re-board the bus.

Did you know? Nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery for the same act. The city's Black leaders prepared to protest, until it was discovered Colvin was pregnant and deemed an inappropriate symbol for their cause.

Although Parks has sometimes been depicted as a woman with no history of civil rights activism at the time of her arrest, she and her husband Raymond were, in fact, active in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), and Parks served as its secretary.

Upon her arrest, Parks called E.D. Nixon, a prominent Black leader, who bailed her out of jail and determined she would be an upstanding and sympathetic plaintiff in a legal challenge of the segregation ordinance. African American leaders decided to attack the ordinance using other tactics as well.

The Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of Black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system on December 5, the day Parks would be tried in municipal court. The boycott was organized by WPC President Jo Ann Robinson.

Montgomery's African Americans Mobilize

As news of the boycott spread, African American leaders across Montgomery (Alabama's capital city) began lending their support. Black ministers announced the boycott in church on Sunday, December 4, and the Montgomery Advertiser, a general-interest newspaper, published a front-page article on the planned action.

Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders-the majority of the city's bus riders-boycotted the system the next day, December 5. That afternoon, Black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands.

Initially, the demands did not include changing the segregation laws; rather, the group demanded courtesy, the hiring of Black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear.

Ultimately, however, a group of five Montgomery women, represented by attorney Fred D. Gray and the NAACP, sued the city in U.S. District Court, seeking to have the busing segregation laws totally invalidated.

Although African Americans represented at least 75 percent of Montgomery's bus ridership, the city resisted complying with the protester's demands. To ensure the boycott could be sustained, Black leaders organized carpools, and the city's African American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents-the same price as bus fare-for African American riders.

Many Black residents chose simply to walk to work or other destinations. Black leaders organized regular mass meetings to keep African American residents mobilized around the boycott.

Integration at Last

On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, adopted in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War, guarantees all citizens-regardless of race-equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws.

The city appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision on December 20, 1956. Montgomery's buses were integrated on December 21, 1956, and the boycott ended. It had lasted 381 days.

Bus Boycott Meets With Violence

Integration, however, met with significant resistance and even violence. While the buses themselves were integrated, Montgomery maintained segregated bus stops. Snipers began firing into buses, and one shooter shattered both legs of a pregnant African American passenger.

In January 1957, four Black churches and the homes of prominent Black leaders were bombed; a bomb at King's house was defused. On January 30, 1957, the Montgomery police arrested seven bombers; all were members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. The arrests largely brought an end to the busing-related violence.

Boycott Puts Martin Luther King Jr. in Spotlight

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on several fronts. First, it is widely regarded as the earliest mass protest on behalf of civil rights in the United States, setting the stage for additional large-scale actions outside the court system to bring about fair treatment for African Americans.

Second, in his leadership of the MIA, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement while also solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance. King's approach remained a hallmark of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.

Shortly after the boycott's end, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a highly influential civil rights organization that worked to end segregation throughout the South. The SCLC was instrumental in the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, and the March on Washington in August of that same year, during which King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The boycott also brought national and international attention to the civil rights struggles occurring in the United States, as more than 100 reporters visited Montgomery during the boycott to profile the effort and its leaders.

Rosa Parks, while shying from the spotlight throughout her life, remained an esteemed figure in the history of American civil rights activism. In 1999, the U.S. Congress awarded her its highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.

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Montgomery Bus Boycott - Facts, Significance & Rosa Parks | HISTORY

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For 382 days, almost the entire African American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses. The protests marked a turning point in the American civil rights movement.

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On September 4, 1957, 9 black students were chosen to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas

For weeks, violent crowds camped out to protest the entry of the Little Rock 9 to Central High School and were supported by the Governor, the Guard, and the Little Rock Police.

President Eisenhower, inspired by the outrage from the country, ordered the Guard to escort the Little Rock 9 into the school on September 25, 1957. This set a precedent and a triumph for the Civil Rights movement.

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Desegregation of Schools

In its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, issued May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation of America's public schools was unconstitutional.

Until the court's decision, many states across the nation had mandatory segregation laws, or Jim Crow laws, requiring African American and white children to attend separate schools. Resistance to the ruling was so widespread that the court issued a second decision in 1955, known as Brown II, ordering school districts to integrate "with all deliberate speed."

Little Rock Central High School

In response to the Brown decisions and pressure from the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), the Little Rock, Arkansas, school board adopted a plan for gradual integration of its schools.

The first institutions to integrate would be the high schools, beginning in September 1957. Among these was Little Rock Central High School, which opened in 1927 and was originally called Little Rock Senior High School.

Two pro-segregation groups formed to oppose the plan: The Capital Citizens Council and the Mother's League of Central High School.

Who Were the Little Rock Nine?

Despite the virulent opposition, nine students registered to be the first African Americans to attend Central High School. Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Patillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas and Carlotta Walls had been recruited by Daisy Gaston Bates, president of the Arkansas NAACP and co-publisher of the Arkansas State Press, an influential African American newspaper.

Daisy Bates and others from the Arkansas NAACP carefully vetted the group of students and determined they all possessed the strength and determination to face the resistance they would encounter. In the weeks prior to the start of the new school year, the students participated in intensive counseling sessions guiding them on what to expect once classes began and how to respond to anticipated hostile situations.

The group soon became famous as the Little Rock Nine.

Orval Faubus

On September 2, 1957, Governor Orval Faubus announced that he would call in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the African American students' entry to Central High, claiming this action was for the students' own protection. In a televised address, Faubus insisted that violence and bloodshed might break out if Black students were allowed to enter the school.

The Mother's League held a sunrise service at the school on September 3 as a protest against integration. But that afternoon, federal judge Ronald Davies issued a ruling that desegregation would continue as planned the next day.

Elizabeth Eckford

The Little Rock Nine arrived for the first day of school at Central High on September 4, 1957. Eight arrived together, driven by Bates.

Elizabeth Eckford's family, however, did not have a telephone, and Bates could not reach her to let her know of the carpool plans. Therefore, Eckford arrived alone.

The Arkansas National Guard, under orders of Governor Faubus, prevented any of the Little Rock Nine from entering the doors of Central High. One of the most enduring images from this day is a photograph of Eckford, alone with a notebook in her hand, stoically approaching the school as a crowd of hostile and screaming white students and adults surround her.

Eckford later recalled that one of the women spat on her. The image was printed and broadcast widely in the United States and abroad, bringing the Little Rock controversy to national and international attention.

Ronald Davies

In the following weeks, federal judge Ronald Davies began legal proceedings against Governor Faubus, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower attempted to persuade Faubus to remove the National Guard and let the Little Rock Nine enter the school.

Judge Davies ordered the Guard removed on September 20, and the Little Rock Police Department took over to maintain order. The police escorted the nine African American students into the school on September 23, through an angry mob of some 1,000 white protesters gathered outside. Amidst ensuing rioting, the police removed the nine students.

The following day, President Eisenhower sent in 1,200 members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and placed them in charge of the 10,000 National Guardsmen on duty. Escorted by the troops, the Little Rock Nine attended their first full day of classes on September 25.

Numerous legal challenges to integration continued throughout the year, and Faubus repeatedly expressed his wish that the Little Rock Nine be removed from Central High.

Although several of the Black students had positive experiences on their first day of school, according to a September 25, 1957, report in The New York Times, they experienced routine harassment and even violence throughout the rest of the year.

Melba Patillo, for instance, was kicked, beaten and had acid thrown in her face. At one point, white students burned an African American effigy in a vacant lot across from the school. Gloria Ray was pushed down a flight of stairs, and the Little Rock Nine were barred from participating in extracurricular activities.

Minnijean Brown was expelled from Central High School in February 1958 for retaliating against the attacks. Harassment went beyond the students: Gloria Ray's mother was fired from her job with the State of Arkansas when she refused to remove her daughter from the school. The 101st Airborne and the National Guard remained at Central High School for the duration of the year.

Ernest Green

On May 25, 1958, Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, became the first African American graduate of Central High.

In September 1958, one year after Central High was integrated, Governor Faubus closed all of Little Rock's high schools for the entire year, pending a public vote, to prevent African American attendance. Little Rock citizens voted 19,470 to 7,561 against integration and the schools remained closed.

Other than Green, the rest of the Little Rock Nine completed their high school careers via correspondence or at other high schools across the country. Eckford joined the Army and later earned her General Education Equivalency diploma. Little Rock's high schools reopened in August 1959.

Did you know? Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. attended graduation ceremonies at Central High School in May 1958 to see Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, receive his diploma.

Little Rock Nine Aftermath

Several of the Little Rock Nine went on to distinguished careers.

Green served as assistant secretary of the federal Department of Labor under President Jimmy Carter. Brown worked as deputy assistant secretary for workforce diversity in the Department of the Interior under President Bill Clinton. Patillo worked as a reporter for NBC.

The group has been widely recognized for their significant role in the civil rights movement. In 1999, President Clinton awarded each member of the group the Congressional Gold Medal. The nine also all received personal invitations to attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.

Jefferson Thomas became the first of the Little Rock Nine to die when he succumbed to pancreatic cancer at the age of 67 on September 5, 2010. After graduating from Central High, Thomas served in the Army in Vietnam, earned a business degree and worked as an accountant for private companies and the Pentagon.

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Little Rock Nine - Definition, Names & Facts | HISTORY

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The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine Black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

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On May 25, 1958, Earnest Green became the first Black student to graduate from Little Rock Central High School

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Public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas closed because the governor was opposed to desegregation.

Tax payer money was used to open private schools to accommodate white students.

Once schools reopened, only 2 of the Little Rock 9 returned, accompanied by a few new Black students.

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On December 14, 1960, the United Nations issued the Declaration on the Granding of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.

"All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development" (Spring p.113)

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The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 14 December 1960. The deliberate location of the United Nations vote - in the General Assembly rather than in the Security Council where a permanent member's veto would always be available to any one or more of the three permanent members that still had "colonial" legal ties or associations - was an obvious enough choice for the political activist States sponsoring resolution 1514 (XV). And the timing of the vote - in 1960, when the decolonisation process was already well under way - was hardly fortuitous. A working majority in favour of a patently anti-colonialist measure would not become politically possible until the General Assembly's transformation from its original very narrow base of representation limited to the States members of the victorious wartime Alliance against Fascism to something more nearly reflective in cultural and ideological terms of the world community at large. By 1960, this had begun to be achieved, albeit on an intermittent, or casual, step-by-step basis, over the decade and a half from War's end. The numerical breakthrough had occurred as late as 1955, when 16 new States had been admitted in one big step to membership, bringing the total to 76. In 1960 itself, 19 new States had been admitted, sealing the emergence of what became, in Cold War terms, a neutralist or uncommitted, majority voting coalition variously styled as the Non-Aligned bloc, the Group of 77, the Bandoeng group, the Developing or Third World countries. It was this informal electoral alliance, that provided the intellectual cohesiveness and also the political-tactical competence to secure the adoption of resolution 1514 (XV) without a single expressed dissent in the General Assembly.

Why a Declaration, and not something with more obvious and immediate concrete political and legal consequences? The answer must be that it was partly tactical, to convert potential negative votes in the General Assembly into softer, legally ineffective abstentions. But it also has something to do with the patently French civiliste, legal-systemic influences on its styling and drafting. The paradigm-model for resolution 1514 (XV) must be the great French Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen) of 1789. Resolution 1514 (XV), like that historical example, is short and succinct, and written in clear, non-technical, often poetic language.

In the end, the persuasiveness, in both political and legal terms, of resolution 1514 (XV) as Declaration must rest upon its claims to be an authoritative, interpretive gloss upon the Charter of the United Nations as originally written, amplifying and extending the Charter's original historical imperatives so as to encompass the new historical reality of the post-World War II international society of the drives for access to full sovereignty and independence of erstwhile subject-peoples, in an emerging new, culturally inclusive, representative, pluralist world community.

In its substantive law stipulations, the Declaration postulates what may be described as ordering principles, intended to guide the progressive development of international law in accordance with the General Assembly's own explicit mandate under Article 13, paragraph 1 (a), of the Charter of the United Nations:

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that the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights (art. 1);

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that all peoples have the right to self-determination, but that this necessarily includes the right freely to determine their political status and freely to pursue their economic, social and cultural development (art. 2);

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that all armed action or repressive measures of all kinds directed against dependent peoples shall cease (art. 4);

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that immediate steps shall be taken, in United Nations Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories or all other territories which have not yet attained independence, to transfer all powers to the peoples of those territories (art. 5).

And there is the warning, in the premonition of possible future post-decolonisation conflicts (as, at the time, in the former Belgian Congo), against any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a (post-decolonisation) country (art. 6); and as to the obligation of all States to observe the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as to equality and non-interference in the internal affairs of all States, and respect for the sovereign rights of all peoples and their territorial integrity (art. 7).

The Declaration's subsequent history, as a call for legislative activism - affirmative action - within the General Assembly (and, if politically opportune, within the Security Council) and certainly also for parallel initiatives in other coordinate United Nations institutions and agencies (the International Court of Justice in particular), has helped in a process of elevating the Declaration's claimed juridical status to the rank of imperative principles of international law ( jus cogens), binding, as such, on the United Nations as authoritative interpretation of the Charter's norms and entering into general international law in the result.

The Declaration was at the core of Security Council and General Assembly legislative initiatives that provided a legal base for reference to the International Court of Justice for Advisory Opinion in Namibia in 1971. The Declaration is also reflected, in its full spirit, in the International Court's Advisory Opinion ruling on Western Sahara in 1975.

In the immediate political context of the drafting and the diplomatic lobbying leading on to its adoption, the Declaration was generally understood as being directed to "salt-water" Colonialism - occupation of the lands and territories of indigenous, native or aboriginal peoples, in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, who were physically separated by the oceans from their colonial Powers. There is nothing in the language or the spirit of resolution 1514 (XV) inhibiting its legal extension to situations involving relations between European colonial Powers and other European or European-derived peoples overseas. In a major ruling, the International Court of Justice, being seised of a legal complaint of military and paramilitary support by the United States Government for forces from outside Nicaragua attempting to overthrow Nicaragua's elected government, may have come close in its strong judicial majorities to making such a connection.

Within the General Assembly itself, the Declaration gave birth immediately to further legislative acts whose ties of consanguinity to resolution 1514 (XV) are clear: resolution 1515 (XV) of 15 December 1960, on the sovereign right of States to dispose of their own wealth and natural resources and resolution 1803 (XVII) of 14 December 1962, on States' permanent sovereignty over those natural resources. The further Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and the related Programme of Action (resolutions 3201 (S-VI) and 3202 (S-VI) of 1 May 1974), and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States (resolution 3281 (XXIX) of 12 December 1974) are demonstrations of the prophetic quality of resolution 1514 (XV) in providing an inevitable legal linkage between self-determination and its goal of decolonisation, and a postulated new international law-based right of freedom also in economic self-determination.

Collateral questions arising from resolution 1514 (XV) concern its consequences for the continued validity in legal terms of the former territorial frontiers from the colonial era in the post-decolonisation context. The new Organisation of African Unity had displayed, in the early post-decolonisation period, a concern for avoiding the internecine conflicts over territorial frontiers and the resultant pursuit by military means of "natural frontiers". The pragmatic conclusion was that it might be wisest for the new African States to accept, at least for the moment, the legitimacy of their own newly-inherited territorial demarcations even where, as very often happened, they had arbitrarily divided indigenous peoples or "nations" belonging to distinct ethno-cultural communities. Openings in judicial terms to the Latin American legal doctrine of uti possidetis, as in the legal discussion in Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Mali), a ruling in 1986 by a Special Chamber of the International Court of Justice, perhaps do not take full account of that doctrine's own special, intrinsically regional character as a concept limited to disputes inter se of the South American Succession States to the former Spanish and Portuguese colonial Powers. The Badinter Commission's attempt in 1992 to extrapolate the Latin American uti possidetis doctrine to the international boundaries of the succession States to the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia may be questioned substantively on the same basis.

The large conclusion must be that the Declaration has essentially fulfilled its original legislative objective of consolidating the political process, already entered upon, of legally terminating the old Colonial Empires, and of pressing on with all deliberate speed to successful conclusion of the process. With political and economic self-determination now assured for the new succession States, and their control over their own natural and other economic resources guaranteed, the way would be open to pursuing supervening, collateral issues now being canvassed - rectification of inherited frontiers, autonomous development of economic resources on a fully regional basis, and related regional security questions - under other, different legal categories and in other, predominantly diplomatic-legal arenas in aid to the General Assembly's original great legislative act.

This Introductory Note was written in August 2008.

Related Materials

A. Jurisprudence

International Court of Justice, South West Africa (Ethiopia v. South Africa; Liberia v. South Africa). Second Phase, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1966, p. 6.

International Court of Justice,Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970), Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1971, p. 16.

International Court of Justice,Western Sahara, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 1975, p. 12.

International Court of Justice,Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Mali), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 554.

International Court of Justice,Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua (Nicaragua v. United States of America), Merits, Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1986, p. 14.

B. Doctrine

M. Bedjaoui, Terra nullius, 'droits' historiques et auto détérmination, The Hague: Sijthoff, 1975.

M. Bedjaoui, "Non-alignement et droit international", Recueil des Cours, vol. 151, 1976, p.406.

B. Boutros-Ghali, "The Arab League 1945-1970", Revue Egyptienne de Droit International, vol. 25, 1969, p.67.

C.J.R. Dugard, "Organisation of African Unity and Colonisation", International and Comparative Law Quarterly, vol. 16, 1967, pp. 157-190.

E. McWhinney, Self-Determination of Peoples and Plural-Ethnic States in Contemporary International Law, Leiden, Boston, Martinus Nijhoff, 2007, particularly chapters 1-4.

E. McWhinney, United Nations Law Making: Cultural and Ideological Relativism and International Law Making for an Era of Transition, Paris, UNESCO; New York, Holmes and Meier, 1984, particularly Chapter 9 [French version: Les Nations Unies et la formation du Droit, Paris, Unesco, Pedone, 1986].

E. McWhinney, The World Court and the Contemporary International Law-Making Process, Alphen aan den Rijn, Sithoff & Noordhoff, 1979, particularly Chapters 2 and 4.

M. Mushkat, "Process of Decolonisation: International Legal Aspects", University of Baltimore Law Review, vol. 2, 1972-1973, pp. 16-34.

A. Zamora R. (ed.), Actividades Militares y Paramilitares en y contra Nicaragua, (Nicaragua c. Estados Unidos), (Corte Internacional de Justicia), Managua, Nicaragua, 1999.

The question of a declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples was initially proposed for inclusion in the agenda of the General Assembly by Nikita S. Khrushchev, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), during his address to the Assembly on 23 September 1960. This proposal was formalized in a letter to the President of the General Assembly of the same day (A/4501, 23 September 1960), which was submitted together with a draft Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples (A/4502, 23 September 1960). On 28 September 1960, the General Committee recommended that the item proposed by the USSR be included in the General Assembly's agenda at its fifteenth session of the same year and that it be allocated to the First (Political and Security) Committee. On 10 October, the General Assembly decided to place the item on its agenda and, on 13 October, a proposal by the USSR to discuss the item in plenary meetings was unanimously adopted.

The topic was discussed in the General Assembly from 28 November to 7 December 1960 and from 13 December to 14 December 1960 (A/PV.925-939 and A/PV.944-947). The General Assembly had before it, in addition to the draft Declaration submitted by the USSR (A/4502), another draft submitted, on 28 November, by Cambodia on behalf of 26 Asian and African countries, which was eventually sponsored by 43 delegations (A/L.323 and Adds. 1 to 6). The latter draft was adopted without change by the General Assembly, by a vote of 89 to 0, with 9 abstentions, in resolution 1514 (XV) entitled "Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples".

The following year, upon the request of the USSR, the General Committee recommended to the General Assembly that an item entitled "The situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples" be included on the agenda of its sixteenth session, in 1961. The General Assembly decided to include this item in its agenda on 25 September 1961. On 27 November 1961, the General Assembly adopted resolution 1654 (XVI), by which it decided to establish a Special Committee of seventeen members with a mandate to make suggestions and recommendations on the progress and extent of the implementation of the Declaration, and to report to the General Assembly. On 23 January 1962, the President of the General Assembly appointed, in accordance with the resolution, the seventeen members of the Special Committee. The same year, in resolution 1810 (XVII) of 17 December 1962, the membership of the Special Committee was enlarged by seven members, resulting in a total of twenty-four members. The Special Committee was further invited to propose specific measures of implementation for the complete application of the Declaration, and to report to the General Assembly no later than at its eighteenth session. At that session, in 1963, the General Assembly considered the report by the Special Committee (A/5446/Rev.1) and requested the Special Committee to continue to seek the best ways and means for the immediate and total application of the Declaration, and report to the General Assembly no later than at its nineteenth session, in 1964. The Committee was further invited to apprise the Security Council of any developments in any territories which may threaten international peace and security (resolution 1956 (XVIII) of 12 December 1963). In addition, the functions of the Special Committee were expanded to include the work of the Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories, which was dissolved, in resolution 1970 (XVIII) of 16 December 1963. The Special Committee continues to exist and meets annually to consider problems connected with colonial territories, as well as topics of a more general nature assigned to it by the General Assembly.

Text of the Declaration

Selected preparatory documents
(in chronological order)

Letter of 23 September 1960 from the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics addressed to the President of the General Assembly, "Request for the inclusion of an additional item in the agenda of the fifteenth session: item proposed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" ( A/4501, , 23 September 1960)

Draft declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples, submitted by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the 869th plenary meeting of the General Assembly ( A/4502 and Corr.1, 23 September 1960)

Draft resolution, submitted by Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroun, Central African Republic, Ceylon, Chad, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Leopoldville), Cyprus, Dahomey, Ethiopia, Federation of Malaya, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, the Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Republic and Upper Volta (A/L. 323 and Add. 1-6, 28 November 1960)

General Assembly, Verbatim records of plenary meetings Nos. 925 to 939 and 944 to 947, held from 28 November to 7 December 1960 and from 13 December to 14 December 1960 ( A/PV.925, 926, 927, 928, 929, 930, 931, 932, 933, 934, 935, 936, 937, 938, 939 and A/PV.944, 945, 946, 947)

General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 (Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples) General Assembly resolution 1654 (XVI) of 27 November 1961 (The situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoplesReport of the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples ( A/5446/Rev.1, 1963)

For further information concerning the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Special Committee on Decolonization), see the following website:
http://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/decolonization/special_committee_main.htm.

Statements

Fifteenth Session of the General Assembly, 933rd to 939th Plenary Meetings, 2 to 7 December 1960: Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples
[Minor image quality problems in the original] Video (30 minutes, Full version)

Fifteenth Session of the General Assembly, 947th Plenary Meeting, 14 December 1960: Adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
[Minor sound quality problem in the original]
Video (5 minutes, Full version)

Fifteenth session of the General Assembly, 947th meeting, 14 December 1960: Adoption of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples
Audio (2 hours, 44 minutes minutes, Full version)

30 May 1964
Sub-Committee on Southern Rhodesia of the Special Committee of 24 on the ending of colonialism, London Airport.
[Read more]

8 March 1966
Opening of the 1966 session of the Special Committee of 24 on the ending of colonialism,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York.
[Read more]

4 November 1974
Twenty-ninth Session of the General Assembly, Fourth Committee (Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories),
United Nations Headquarters,
New York.
[Read more]

14 December 1975
Exhibit in commemoration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York.
[Read more]

8 October 1986
Forty-first Session of the General Assembly, Fourth Committee Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territories),
United Nations Headquarters,
New York.
[Read more]

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united nations audiovisual library of international law

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Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples

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United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law

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In Nevember of 1960, the United Nations issued the Convention Against Discrimination in Education.

Article 1 of this Convention stated:

"For the purposes of this Convention, the term “discrimination” includes any distinction, exclusion, limitation on preference which, being based on race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, economic condition or birth, has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing equality of treatment in education..."(Spring p.114-115).

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The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, meeting in Paris from 14 November to 15 December 1960, at its eleventh session,

Recalling that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts the principle of non-discrimination and proclaims that every person has the right to education,

Considering that discrimination in education is a violation of rights enunciated in that Declaration,

Considering that, under the terms of its Constitution, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has the purpose of instituting collaboration among the nations with a view to furthering for all universal respect for human rights and equality of educational opportunity,

Recognizing that, consequently, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, while respecting the diversity of national educational systems, has the duty not only to proscribe any form of discrimination in education but also to promote equality of opportunity and treatment for all in education,

Having before It proposals concerning the different aspects of discrimination in education, constituting item 17.1.4 of the agenda of the session,

Having decided at its tenth session that this question should be made the subject of an international convention as well as of recommendations to Member States,

Adopts this Convention on the fourteenth day of December 1960.
Article 1
1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "discrimination" includes any distinction, exclusion, limitation or preference which, being based on race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, economic condition or birth, has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing equality of treatment in education and in particular:
a. Of depriving any person or group of persons of access to education of any type or at any level;
b. Of limiting any person or group of persons to education of an inferior standard;
c. Subject to the provisions of Article 2 of this Convention, of establishing or maintaining separate educational systems or institutions for persons or groups of persons; or
d. Of inflicting on any person or group of persons conditions which are in-compatible with the dignity of man.

2. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "education" refers to all types and levels of education, and includes access to education, the standard and quality of education, and the conditions under which it is given.
Article 2
When permitted in a State, the following situations shall not be deemed to constitute discrimination, within the meaning of Article 1 of this Convention:
a. The establishment or maintenance of separate educational systems or in-stitutions for pupils of the two sexes, if these systems or institutions offer equivalent access to education, provide a teaching staff with qualifications of the same standard as well as school premises and equipment of the same quality, and afford the opportunity to take the same or equivalent courses of study;
b. The establishment or maintenance, for religious or linguistic reasons, of separate educational systems or institutions offering an education which is in keeping with the wishes of the pupil's parents or legal guardians, if participation in such systems or attendance at such institutions is optional and if the education provided conforms to such standards as may be laid down or approved by the competent authorities, in particular for education of the same level ;
c. The establishment or maintenance of private educational institutions, if the object of the institutions is not to secure the exclusion of any group but to provide educational facilities in addition to those provided by the public authorities, if the institutions are conducted in accordance with that object, and if the education provided conforms with such standards as may be laid down or approved by the competent authorities, in particular for education of the same level.
Article 3
In order to eliminate and prevent discrimination within the meaning of this Convention, the States Parties thereto undertake:
a. To abrogate any statutory provisions and any administrative instructions and to discontinue any administrative practices which involve discrimination in education;
b. To ensure, by legislation where necessary, that there is no discrimination in the admission of pupils to educational institutions;
c. Not to allow any differences of treatment by the public authorities between nationals, except on the basis of merit or need, in the matter of school fees and the grant of scholarships or other forms of assistance to pupils and necessary permits and facilities for the pursuit of studies in foreign countries ;
d. Not to allow, in any form of assistance granted by the public authorities to educational institutions, any restrictions or preference based solely on the ground that pupils belong to a particular group;
e. To give foreign nationals resident within their territory the same access to education as that given to their own nationals.
Article 4
The States Parties to this Convention undertake furthermore to formulate, develop and apply a national policy which, by methods appropriate to the circumstances and to national usage, will tend to promote equality of opportunity and of treatment in the matter of education and in particular:
a. To make primary education free and compulsory; make secondary education in its different forms generally available and accessible to all; make higher education equally accessible to all on the basis of individual capacity; assure compliance by all with the obligation to attend school prescribed by law;
b. To ensure that the standards of education are equivalent in all public educational institutions of the same level, and that the conditions relating to the quality of the education provided are also equivalent;
c. To encourage and intensify by appropriate methods the education of persons who have not received any primary education or who have not completed the entire primary education course and the continuation of their education on the basis of individual capacity;
d. To provide training for the teaching profession without discrimination.

Article 5

1. The States Parties to this Convention agree that:
a. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; it shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace;
b. It is essential to respect the liberty of parents and, where applicable, of legal guardians, firstly to choose for their children institutions other than those maintained by the public authorities but conforming to such minimum educational standards as may be laid down or approved by the competent authorities and, secondly, to ensure in a manner consistent with the procedures followed in the State for the application of its legislation, the religious and moral education of the children in conformity with their own convictions; and no person or group of persons should be compelled to receive religious instruction inconsistent with his or their convictions;
c. It is essential to recognize the right of members of national minorities to carry on their own educational activities, including the maintenance of schools and, depending on the educational policy of each State, the use or the teaching of their own language, provided however:
(i) That this right is not exercised in a manner which prevents the members of these minorities from understanding the culture and language of the community as a whole and from participating in its activities, or which prejudices national sovereignty;
(ii) That the standard of education is not lower than the general standard laid down or approved by the competent authorities; and
(iii) That attendance at such schools is optional.

2. The States Parties to this Convention undertake to take all necessary measures to ensure the application of the principles enunciated in paragraph 1 of this Article.
Article 6
In the application of this Convention, the States Parties to it undertake to pay the greatest attention to any recommendations hereafter adopted by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defining the measures to be taken against the different forms of discrimination in education and for the purpose of ensuring equality of opportunity and treatment in education.

Article 7

The States Parties to this Convention shall in their periodic reports submitted to the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on dates and in a manner to be determined by it, give information on the legislative and administrative provisions which they have adopted and other action which they have taken for the application of this Convention, including that taken for the formulation and the development of the national policy defined in Article 4 as well as the results achieved and the obstacles encountered in the application of that policy.
Article 8
Any dispute which may arise between any two or more States Parties to this Convention concerning the interpretation or application of this Convention, which is not settled by negotiation shall at the request of the parties to the dispute be referred, failing other means of settling the dispute, to the International Court of Justice for decision.
Article 9
Reservations to this Convention shall not be permitted.
Article 10
This Convention shall not have the effect of diminishing the rights which individuals or groups may enjoy by virtue of agreements concluded between two or more States, where such rights are not contrary to the letter or spirit of this Convention.
Article 11
This Convention is drawn up in English, French, Russian and Spanish, the four texts being equally authoritative.
Article 12
1. This Convention shall be subject to ratification or acceptance by States Members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in accordance with their respective constitutional procedures.

2. The instruments of ratification or acceptance shall be deposited with the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Article 13
1. This Convention shall be open to accession by all States not Members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization which are invited to do so by the Executive Board of the Organization.

2. Accession shall be effected by the deposit of an instrument of accession with the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Article 14
This Convention shall enter into force, three months after the date of the deposit of the third instrument of ratification, acceptance or accession, but only with respect to those States which have deposited their respective instruments on or before that date. It shall enter into force with respect to any other State three months after the deposit of its instrument of ratification, acceptance or accession.
Article 15
The States Parties to this Convention recognize that the Convention is applicable not only to their metropolitan territory but also to all non-self-governing, trust, colonial and other territories for the international relations of which they are responsible; they undertake to consult, if necessary, the governments or other competent authorities of these territories on or before ratification, acceptance or accession with a view to securing the application of the Convention to those territories, and to notify the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization of the territories to which it is accordingly applied, the notification to take effect three months after the date of its receipt.
Article 16
1. Each State Party to this Convention may denounce the Convention on its own behalf or on behalf of any territory for whose international relations it is responsible.

2. The denunciation shall be notified by an instrument in writing, deposited with the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

3. The denunciation shall take effect twelve months after the receipt of the instrument of denunciation.
Article 17
The Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization shall inform the States Members of the Organization, the States not members of the Organization which are referred to in Article 13, as well as the United Nations, of the deposit of all the instruments of ratification, acceptance and accession provided for in Articles 12 and 13, and of the notifications and denunciations provided for in Articles 15 and 16 respectively.

Article 18

1. This Convention may be revised by the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Any such revision shall, however, bind only the States which shall become Parties to the revising convention.

2. If the General Conference should adopt a new convention revising this Convention in whole or in part, then, unless the new convention otherwise provides, this Convention shall cease to be open to ratification, acceptance or accession as from the date on which the new revising convention enters into force.
Article 19
In conformity with Article 102 of the Charter of the United Nations, this Convention shall be registered with the Secretariat of the United Nations at the request of the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

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Convention against Discrimination in Education

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UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It seeks to build peace through international cooperation in education, the sciences, culture and communication. UNESCO's programmes contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals defined in Agenda 2030, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015.

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Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech before a crowd of some 250,000 people at the 1963 March on Washington

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Civil Rights Movement Before the Speech

Martin Luther King Jr., a young Baptist minister, rose to prominence in the 1950s as a spiritual leader of the burgeoning civil rights movement and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SLCC).

By the early 1960s, African Americans had seen gains made through organized campaigns that placed its participants in harm's way but also garnered attention for their plight. One such campaign, the 1961 Freedom Rides, resulted in vicious beatings for many participants, but resulted in the Interstate Commerce Commission ruling that ended the practice of segregation on buses and in stations.

Similarly, the Birmingham Campaign of 1963, designed to challenge the Alabama city's segregationist policies, produced the searing images of demonstrators being beaten, attacked by dogs and blasted with high-powered water hoses.

Around the time he wrote his famed "Letter from Birmingham Jail," King decided to move forward with the idea for another event that coordinated with Negro American Labor Council (NACL) founder A. Philip Randolph's plans for a job rights march.
READ MORE: Black History Milestones: Timeline
March on Washington

Thanks to the efforts of veteran organizer Bayard Rustin, the logistics of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom came together by the summer of 1963.

Joining Randolph and King were the fellow heads of the "Big Six" civil rights organizations: Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Whitney Young of the National Urban League (NUL), James Farmer of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Other influential leaders also came aboard, including Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Joachim Prinz of the American Jewish Congress (AJC).

Scheduled for August 28, the event was to consist of a mile-long march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, in honor of the president who had signed the Emancipation Proclamation a century earlier, and would feature a series of prominent speakers.

Its stated goals included demands for desegregated public accommodations and public schools, redress of violations of constitutional rights and an expansive federal works program to train employees.

The March on Washington produced a bigger turnout than expected, as an estimated 250,000 people arrived to participate in what was then the largest gathering for an event in the history of the nation's capital.

Along with notable speeches by Randolph and Lewis, the audience was treated to performances by folk luminaries Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and gospel favorite Mahalia Jackson.

'I Have a Dream' Speech Origins

In preparation for his turn at the event, King solicited contributions from colleagues and incorporated successful elements from previous speeches. Although his "I have a dream" segment did not appear in his written text, it had been used to great effect before, most recently during a June 1963 speech to 150,000 supporters in Detroit.

Unlike his fellow speakers in Washington, King didn't have the text ready for advance distribution by August 27. He didn't even sit down to write the speech until after arriving at his hotel room later that evening, finishing up a draft after midnight.

'Free At Last'

As the March on Washington drew to a close, television cameras beamed Martin Luther King's image to a national audience. He began his speech slowly but soon showed his gift for weaving recognizable references to the Bible, the U.S. Constitution and other universal themes into his oratory.

Pointing out how the country's founders had signed a "promissory note" that offered great freedom and opportunity, King noted that "Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'"

At times warning of the potential for revolt, King nevertheless maintained a positive, uplifting tone, imploring the audience to "go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair."

Mahalia Jackson Prompts MLK: 'Tell 'em About the Dream, Martin'

Around the halfway point of the speech, Mahalia Jackson implored him to "Tell 'em about the 'Dream,' Martin." Whether or not King consciously heard, he soon moved away from his prepared text.

Repeating the mantra, "I have a dream," he offered up hope that "my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" and the desire to "transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

"And when this happens," he bellowed in his closing remarks, "and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"

'I Have a Dream' Speech Text

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, Black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check-a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?"

We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.

We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for whites only."

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, that one day right down in Alabama little Black boys and Black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted [sic], every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

MLK Speech Reception

King's stirring speech was immediately singled out as the highlight of the successful march.

James Reston of The New York Times wrote that the "pilgrimage was merely a great spectacle" until King's turn, and James Baldwin later described the impact of King's words as making it seem that "we stood on a height, and could see our inheritance; perhaps we could make the kingdom real."

Just three weeks after the march, King returned to the difficult realities of the struggle by eulogizing three of the girls killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Still, his televised triumph at the feet of Lincoln brought favorable exposure to his movement, and eventually helped secure the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. The following year, after the violent Selma to Montgomery march in Alabama, African Americans secured another victory with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Over the final years of his life, King continued to spearhead campaigns for change even as he faced challenges by increasingly radical factions of the movement he helped popularize. Shortly after visiting Memphis, Tennessee, in support of striking sanitation workers, and just hours after delivering another celebrated speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," King was assassinated by shooter James Earl Ray on the balcony of his hotel room on April 4, 1968.

'I Have a Dream' Speech Legacy

Remembered for its powerful imagery and its repetition of a simple and memorable phrase, King's "I Have a Dream" speech has endured as a signature moment of the civil rights struggle, and a crowning achievement of one of the movement's most famous faces.

The Library of Congress added the speech to the National Recording Registry in 2002, and the following year the National Park Service dedicated an inscribed marble slab to mark the spot where King stood that day.

In 2016, Time included the speech as one of its 10 greatest orations in history.

Sources

"I Have a Dream," Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. National Park Service.
JFK, A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington. The White House Historical Association.
The Lasting Power of Dr. King's Dream Speech. The New York Times.

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MLK's I Have A Dream Speech Video & Text | HISTORY

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Watch & learn about the political & social backdrop to Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous 'I Have A Dream' speech and the rhetorical devices that helped its message.

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On July 2, 1964, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Definition, Summary & Significance | HISTORY

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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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On January 2, 1968, the Bilingual Education Act was passed.

US legislation provided grants to school districts to establish educational programs for students struggling with speaking English.

This was an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965

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Bilingual Education Act (BEA), U.S. legislation (January 2, 1968) that provided federal grants to school districts for the purpose of establishing educational programs for children with limited English-speaking ability. It was the first time that the U.S. government officially acknowledged that these students need specialized instruction. The Bilingual Education Act (BEA) was an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

Beginning in the late 19th century, millions of immigrants entered the United States, and many could not speak English. Some state governments pushed for assimilation, requiring non-English-speaking adults to take English-language classes. Children went to public schools, where they were totally immersed in the English language and often punished for speaking their native language. California and Texas established segregated public schools to accommodate the increase in Spanish-speaking children from Mexico. These schools concentrated on teaching English, but they had less funding than the schools for white non-Latino children and thus had inferior resources and underqualified teachers. Under these conditions many immigrant children dropped out or received an education that limited job opportunities.

In the ensuing years there were sporadic efforts to end school segregation, and these intensified in 1946 after a federal court ruled in that the segregation of Mexican American students in California schools was unlawful. More lawsuits followed, culminating in the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional. This decision helped guide future educational policies toward equal opportunity. The civil rights movement and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964-intending to end discrimination based on race, colour, religion, or national origin-also furthered equality in education.

Despite these developments, language difficulties continued to hamper the education of many Spanish-speaking students. In 1967 U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough of Texas introduced a bill to help school districts educate students with limited English-speaking ability. This was a particularly important issue in Texas and other southwestern states, which were experiencing an increase in Mexican immigration. The bill recommended bilingual education-including Spanish and other native languages-and funding was designated for developing programs, training staff, and obtaining educational resources. In 1968 U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson signed the BEA into law.

Over the years, the BEA underwent various revisions to meet the needs of students, parents, and teachers. For example, when first conceived, the act favoured school districts with high percentages of students from low-income families. Funding was later broadened to include students from a wider range of economic groups. The grants were also expanded to include more options for their use, such as for technical assistance and for the establishment of special training programs.

In January 2002 U.S. Pres. George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. It sought to improve public primary and secondary schools and, thus, student performance via increased accountability for schools, school districts, and states. For example, states were required to administer yearly tests in reading and mathematics to public school students and to demonstrate adequate progress toward raising the scores of all students. (In 2015 U.S. Pres. Barack Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act, which modified NCLB.) Under NCLB the BEA became the English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement Act.

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Bilingual Education Act | Definition, 1968, Summary, & Facts

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Bilingual Education Act, U.S. legislation (1968) that offered federal grants to school districts for the purpose of creating educational programs for students with limited English-speaking ability. It was the first time that the U.S. government officially acknowledged that such students need specialized instruction.

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In March 1968, as many as 22,000 mostly Mexican American students walked out of their classrooms at seven Los Angeles schools.

The unprecedented event spotlighted educational inequality, galvanized the Chicano civil rights movement.

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In the early days of March 1968, as many as 22,000 mostly Mexican American students walked out of their classrooms at seven Los Angeles schools, garnering national attention. The unprecedented event spotlighted educational inequality, galvanized the Chicano civil rights movement and inspired a new generation of activists, artists, educators and elected officials.

The schools involved served the Mexican barrios of the city's Eastside neighborhoods, or East Los Angeles, where Chicanos or Mexican Americans made up about 75 percent (130,000) of the student population. Students protested the vast educational inequality they faced: schools that were run down and understaffed, teachers that were overworked and undertrained. Class size averaged around 40 and the student-to-counselor ratio was 4,000-to-1, according to the United Way of Los Angeles. Students also complained they were being steered toward vocational and domestic training, instead of academic courses that would help them get into college.

Early 1968 was a time of deep civil unrest in the U.S., rife with antiwar and civil rights protests. Aware of these and other parallel social movements taking place in the country and around the world, Chicanos demanded that their language, history and culture be reflected in their schools' curriculum.

Historians point to the East L.A. walkouts as the first time the Chicano movement moved from the rural setting of the United Farm Workers' strikes of 1965 to an urban setting. The Blowouts, as they are also known, also marked the movement's first major youth-led protest.

"This time, it was the youth who said, unh-uh," says Valerie Talavera-Bustillos, professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Los Angeles. "That really made people stop and think, 'Oh yeah, these kids are right. We don't have to accept [the school conditions].' It was a turning point."

Building Youth Empowerment

Many of the walkout leaders had participated in the Chicano Youth Leadership Conference (CYLC), a yearly gathering that began in 1963 at a Jewish campground in Malibu, an upscale beach community. There, they opened up about their personal struggles and learned about crucial moments in Mexican and Mexican American history.

"Seeing, listening and being proud of all of these accomplishments really helped the students think critically about their own family [situations]," says Talavera-Bustillos. "What they were going through [at home], but also their own lives in school. To say, 'Why should we put up with these things?'"

Sal Castro, a regular at the conference, took some of what he learned at the CYLC to his social studies classroom at Lincoln High School, in the Eastside barrio of Lincoln Heights.

"In East L.A., this generation was fortunate to have a role model like Sal Castro," wrote Mario T. García, a professor of Chicano/a Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in , a 2011 memoir co-authored by Castro. "As a teacher, [Castro] encouraged his students to think critically, to be proud of themselves and, most important, to believe in themselves. And that included the idea of going on to college."

Eager to promote empowerment, Castro taught his students they should first take their grievances to the school board. With their demands unheard, he helped them organize the walkouts.

The Walkouts Were Spread Across Five Days

The original plan was for students at four Eastside schools to walk out on March 6, but an unscheduled walkout took place at Wilson High School on March 1. On March 5, 2,000 students at Garfield walked out, and administrators alerted the police.

The next day, students walked out at other Eastside schools-Roosevelt, Lincoln and Belmont,- despite the school administrators barring the doors and locking the gates. Helmeted police who arrived at the schools arrested students or escorted them to the principal's office. There were at least two police beatings reported on March 6 at Roosevelt.

Parents and community members also participated in the protests, which extended to two other Los Angeles schools, Jefferson and Venice.

One Protester's Remembrance

Carlos Montes was a student at East Los Angeles College in 1968 and a member of the Brown Berets, an activist Chicano group that helped execute the walkouts.

Two years before, Montes himself had been a student at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. "I almost dropped out [when] the vice principal called me to the office to sign up for the Selective Service System, when I was 18," he says. "I started becoming angry. I saw that the teachers didn't really care about the regular student, they only cared about the elite intellectuals. The rest of [us] just shuffled through."

Montes recalled that on March 6, 1968, he drove his car to Lincoln High School and parked across the street from the campus.

"At 10 a.m., we ran into Lincoln High School...[and] started yelling 'Walkout,'" he says. "The principal came out, [said] 'What are you doing?' We said, get out of the way, this is business... This is a walkout."

Later that same day, Montes and other Brown Berets helped students at Roosevelt High School break open a gate purposely locked by police. Montes said undercover police photographed the events at both schools, and that he was temporarily detained when he and a friend went to deliver flyers to another school.

Demands Denied, Leaders Arrested

Almost a week after the walkouts, on March 11, a committee of students, teachers, parents and community activists tried to meet with the Los Angeles Board of Education, to present their list of 39 demands. They ranged from instituting bilingual education and removing racist teachers to expanding libraries and incorporating a culturally inclusive menu at the school cafeterias.

The board held a meeting to discuss the demands on March 28 but concluded it didn't have the funds to implement any changes.

On March 31, police arrested Castro and 12 other walkout leaders and charged them with disturbing the peace and other crimes. People protested the jailing of the so-called East L.A. 13, and they were released on bail on June 2. Castro lost his job at Lincoln but was reinstated after protesters held sit-ins at school board meetings.

In 1970, all charges were dropped against the East L.A. 13.

The Walkouts' Legacy for Chicano Civil Rights

Although the walkouts had no immediate effect in changing conditions for Chicanos in Los Angeles schools, historians and activists consider them a catalyst for the then-burgeoning Chicano civil rights movement.

"It put us on the map," says Montes, now a community activist focused on police brutality. "It energized the community, radicalized a new generation of Chicano activists."

"It taught us that the only way things can change is by protesting and taking up the system," he adds.

Many walkout participants and youth organizers later took part in the Chicano Moratorium of August 29, 1970, an anti-Vietnam War march that became the largest protest in Los Angeles history to that date.

Considered pivotal moments in the Chicano movement, the walkouts and the Moratorium inspired a generation of artists, writers, activists and educators, many of whom are active today.

"Those students who walked out...really gave back," affirms Talaveras-Bustillos. "Chicano and Chicana studies, Latinx studies... They became professors, they became activists in their own communities."

Fact Check

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How 1968 East L.A. Student Walkouts Ignited the Chicano Movement | HISTORY

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Thousands of Mexican American students participated in the 'Blowout,' the first urban, youth-led protest of the burgeoning Chicano civil rights crusade.

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In 1975, the United States Congress enacted the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act.

The Act allowed for Indian tribes to have greater autonomy and to have the opportunity to assume the responsibility for programs and services administered to them on behalf of the Secretary of the Interior through contractual agreements.

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Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior encompasses the Office of the Assistant Secretary-Indian Affairs(ASIA), the Bureau of Indian Affairs(BIA) and the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). Through its bureaus, offices and programs, Indian Affairs carries out the United States’ government-to-government relationship with the Federally recognized tribes, and to maintain its unique and continuing responsibility to the American Indian/Alaska Native people. Indian Affairs supports and assists the tribes as they develop their governmental structures and operations; build strong, safe communities; and provide services to their members.

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The Native American Languages Act was passed in 1990

This policy stated that the United States "declares to preserve, protect and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use practice and develop Native American Languages"

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The Native American Languages Act of 1990 is the short cited title for executive order PUBLIC LAW 101-477 enacted by the United States Congress on October 30, 1990. Public Law 101-477 of 1990 gave historical importance as repudiating past policies of eradicating Indian Languages by declaring as policy that Native Americans were entitled to use their own languages. The fundamental basis of the policy's declaration was that the United States "declares to preserve, protect and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use practice and develop Native American Languages". In addition, to "fully recognize the right of Indian Tribes and other Native American governing bodies, States, territories, and possessions of the United States to take action on, and give official status to their Native American languages for the purpose of conducting their own business".

SEC. 104. It is the policy of the United States to-

(1) preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages; (2) allow exceptions to teacher certification requirements for Federal programs, and programs funded in whole or in part by the Federal Government, for instruction in Native American languages when such teacher certification requirements hinder the employment of qualified teachers who teach in Native American languages, and to encourage State and territorial governments to make similar exceptions; (3) encourage and support the use of Native American languages as a medium of instruction in order to encourage and support- (A) Native American language survival, (B) educational opportunity, (C) increased student success and performance, (D) increased student awareness and knowledge of their culture and history, and (E) increased student and community pride; (4) encourage State and local education programs to work with Native American parents, educator, Indian tribes, and other Native American governing bodies in the implementation of programs to put this policy into effect; (5) recognize the right of Indian tribes and other Native American governing bodies to use the Native American languages as a medium of instruction in all schools funded by the Secretary of the Interior; (6) fully recognize the inherent right of Indian tribes and other Native American governing bodies, States, territories, and possessions of the United States to take action on, and give official status to, their Native American languages for the purpose of conducting their own business; (7) support the granting of comparable proficiency achieved through course work in a Native American language the same academic credit as comparable proficiency achieved through course work in a foreign language, with recognition of such Native American language proficiency by institutions of higher education as fulfilling foreign language entrance or degree requirements; and (8) encourage all institutions of elementary, secondary and higher education, where appropriate, to include Native American languages in the curriculum in the same manner as foreign languages and to grant proficiency in Native

American languages the same full academic credit as proficiency in foreign languages.

-  Section 104, Native American Languages Act

In the United States, Native American languages came under pressure through contact with superstrate colonial languages with the arrival of the first European settlers. Estimates place the number of Native languages at the time of European contact between three and six hundred.

Assimilation

Legislation mandated English as the exclusive language of instruction enforced on reservations in the 19th century. The Civilization Fund Act of 1819 authorized allotted funds to organizations such as missionaries and agents and employees of the Federal Government to live on and amongst the Indians to educate and assimilate the Indian people into the standards of Euro-American society. As the foreign culture became more dominant, racial overtones surfaced. Native American boarding schools were the impetus for executing the paradigm of assimilation even further. Indian children were removed from their homes and placed in distant boarding schools run by federal government officials and missionaries. Many emotional and psychological issues today found in Indian communities have their foundations within the traumatic experiences of the children educated in such schools. The Dawes Allotment Act was another further impetus to assimilate the Indian people into private land owners and away from the communal life of the indigenous community. This Act enabled outsiders to chip away Indian land. Many non-Indian men married Indian women to own land and property, as did non-Indian explorers who were given land if marrying Indian women in Alta California and New Spain during early colonization.

Recognition

It was not until the Civil Rights Movement that there began to be found traces of recognition and cultural revitalization.[citation needed ] This started with President Johnson's approval of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968. This Act was primarily an outgrowth within the Civil Rights Movement and it was to assist particularly minorities speaking Spanish in English schools to help students with English. Yet, Bilingual Education was expanded with the Lau v. Nichols case. Lau reflects the now-widely accepted view[who? ] that a person's language is so closely intertwined with their national origin (the country someone or their ancestors came from) that language-based discrimination is effectively a proxy for national origin discrimination.[citation needed ] Though this act was aimed towards immigrant students, Native Americans took the opportunity to apply for funding to initiate projects for their own bilingual studies addressing their own language. Subsequent reform initiated by the Nixon administration during the Self-Determination Era gave back some sovereign power to tribes within self governance, with choices as to what federal programs to apply for funding for schools and health programs. In the wake of the Self-Determination Era, tribes and U.S. territorial communities were coming together to re-establish their cultures and language.

Executive Order

In 1974 the Native American Programs Act was enacted as Title VIII of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, to promote the goal of social and economic self-sufficiency for American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and Native American Pacific Islanders through programs and projects that: (1) Advance locally developed social and economic development strategies (SEDS) and strengthen local governance capabilities as authorized by Sec. 803(a); (2) preserve Native American languages authorized by Sec. 803C; (3) improve the capability of the governing body of the Indian tribe to regulate environmental quality authorized by Sec. 803(d); and (4) mitigate the environmental impacts to Indian lands due to Department of Defense activities. Communities who were re-establishing their cultures sought support through these programs. In response to the language decline in Native American communities and also responding to English-only attempts a powerful grass roots movement was initiated in 1988 at the International Conference at the Native Languages Issues Institute. The conference produced a resolution that found its way to Senator Daniel K. Inouye, chair of the senate select committee of Indian Affairs. Two years later it became the Native American Languages Act which officially addresses the fundamental rights of Native American peoples.

Political figures/groups

The Act's provisions came from the International Native American Language conference with most of the texts drawn from a resolution adopted by the Hawaiian Legislature in 1987, which addressed Congress to enact legislation in support of Native American Languages.[citation needed ] The founders of 'Aha Punana Leo, an educational program revitalizing the Hawaiian language, William Wilson, Chair of Hawaiian Studies at Hilo and his wife Kauanoe Kamana, were the major players whose efforts affected the Hawaiian resolution. Their advocacy to change national policy was joined by American Indian language advocates. In 1988 Senator Daniel K. Inouye introduced a joint resolution, but Congress adjourned without any action.[citation needed ]

The following year Inouye introduced a revised version (S. 1781) with nine sponsors, but the Bush administration opposed it because of the funding costs. Inouye revised the bill regarding the administrative concerns and was approved by the Senate on April 3, 1990 and sent to the House of Representatives ". Key members of the House refused to allow the bill out of the committee because of the use of languages other than English in America. Lurline McGregor, Inouye's aide and manager of the bill looked for a bill with a title that did not mention the word 'language' in it. A bill that Robert D. Arnold, on the professional staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, who was managing a bill met the requirements. Inouye took the bill to the floor and offered an amendment with the text of his Native American Language Bill. It was approved by the Senate and later concurred by the House. The billed signed by Bush was titled "Tribally Controlled and Navajo Community Colleges, Reauthorizations," on October 30, 1990, and he was also approving Title 1, the Native American Languages Act of 1990.

President George H. W. Bush signed the Native American Languages Act of 1992 on October 26, "to assist Native Americans in assuring the survival and continuing vitality of their languages".<sh community programs and to construct facilities. In spite of testimony and support of tribal representatives, linguists, language groups and national organizations, Dominic Mastraquapa opposed the bill by saying that funding was adequate. Yet, no grants in the fiscal year of 1991 included language components. U.S. English support encouraged Inouye to present a substitution of the bill". The new provisions encouraged tribal governments to establish partnerships with schools, colleges, and universities. Grant funds would be used for recording equipment and computers for languages programs. Passed unanimously in the Senate, the bill went on to the Committee on Education and Labor. Harris Fawell of Chicago opposed the passage of the bill. Even with provisions to increase local match funding of 10 to 20%, Fawell refused to allow the bill to go to the House. Hawaiians and language institutes and advocates were alerted and Fawell's phone received more phone calls from Indians and other Native Americans than all the terms he held in Congress. He was known to say "Please call off the troops, we'll let the bill move".

Congress found convincing evidence that student achievement and performance, community and school pride, and educational opportunity are clearly and directly tied to respect for, and support of, the first language of the child.

The Native American Language Act of 1990 has been a counterbalance to the English only movement and has been the catalyst for bilingual education on the reservations. "The Native American Languages Act of 1990 is the American Indian's answer to the English-only movement, and the Act's bilingual/multicultural educational approach is supported by the dismal historical record of assimilationist approaches to Indian education in the United States"Jon Reyhner.

Funders such as ELF have helped start up pilot programs and advocates such as Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival have helped to create language nests, and immersion programs. The Blackfeet Piegan Institute and the Aha Punana Leo program are examples of this movement.

From 2007-2012, funding for language instruction in public schools has been made available through the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act, signed by President George W. Bush on December 14, 2006, to prevent the loss of heritage and culture. "Since 2000, 390 grants have been awarded under the program for a total of nearly $50 million to help preserve Native languages through language immersion programs." As of Sept. 2012, the New Mexico Congressional delegation has introduced a bill to renew the funding.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska and Sen. Tim Johnson, D-South Dakota, introduced the Native American Languages Reauthorization Act of 2014 on May 5, 2014. The full name is "S.2299 - A bill to amend the Native American Programs Act of 1974 to reauthorize a provision to ensure the survival and continuing vitality of Native American languages". Other supporters include Senator John Walsh (D-Montana).

A related measure, the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act, introduced on Jan 16, 2014, "would establish a grant program to fund Native language educational programs."

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The Native American Languages Act of 1990 is the short cited title for executive order PUBLIC LAW 101-477 enacted by the United States Congress on October 30, 1990. Public Law 101-477 of 1990 gave historical importance as repudiating past policies of eradicating Indian Languages by declaring as policy that Native Americans were entitled to use their own languages.