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important pepole to the civil rights movement

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important pepole to the civil rights movement

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In 1969, a group of children sat down to a free breakfast before school. On the menu: chocolate milk, eggs, meat, cereal and fresh oranges. The scene wouldn't be out of place in a school cafeteria these days-but the federal government wasn't providing the food. Instead, breakfast was served thanks to the Black Panther Party.

At the time, the militant black nationalist party was vilified in the news media and feared by those intimidated by its message of Black Power and its commitment to ending police brutality and the subjugation of Black Americans. But for students eating breakfast, the Black Panthers' politics were less interesting than the meals they were providing.

"The children, many of whom had never eaten breakfast before the Panthers started their program," the Sun Reporter wrote, "think the Panthers are 'groovy' and 'very nice' for doing this for them."

The program may have been groovy, but its purpose was to fuel revolution by encouraging black people's survival. From 1969 through the early 1970s, the Black Panthers' Free Breakfast for School Children Program fed tens of thousands of hungry kids. It was just one facet of a wealth of social programs created by the party-and it helped contribute to the existence of federal free breakfast programs today.

When Black Panther Party founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the party in 1966, their goal was to end police brutality in Oakland. But a faction of the Civil Rights Movement led by SNCC member Stokeley Carmichael began calling for the uplift and self-determination of African-Americans, and soon Black Power was part of their platform.

At first, the Black Panther Party primarily organized neighborhood police patrols that took advantage of open-carry laws, but over time its mandate expanded to include social programs, too.

Free Breakfast For School Children was one of the most effective. It began in January 1969 at an Episcopal church in Oakland, and within weeks it went from feeding a handful of kids to hundreds. The program was simple: party members and volunteers went to local grocery stores to solicit donations, consulted with nutritionists on healthful breakfast options for children, and prepared and served the food free of charge.

School officials immediately reported results in kids who had free breakfast before school. "The school principal came down and told us how different the children were," Ruth Beckford, a parishioner who helped with the program, said later. "They weren't falling asleep in class, they weren't crying with stomach cramps."

Soon, the program had been embraced by party outposts nationwide. At its peak, the Black Panther Party fed thousands of children per day in at least 45 programs. (Food wasn't the only part of the BPP's social programs; they expanded to cover everything from free medical clinics to community ambulance services and legal clinics.)

For the party, it was an opportunity to counter its increasingly negative image in the public consciousness-an image of intimidating Afroed Black men holding guns-while addressing a critical community need. "I mean, nobody can argue with free grits," said filmmaker Roger Guenveur Smith in A Huey P. Newton Story, a 2001 film in which he portrays Newton.

Free food seemed relatively innocuous, but not to FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, who loathed the Black Panther Party and declared war against them in 1969. He called the program "potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for," and gave carte blanche to law enforcement to destroy it.

The results were swift and devastating. FBI agents went door-to-door in cities like Richmond, Virginia, telling parents that BPP members would teach their children racism. In San Francisco, writes historian Franziska Meister, parents were told the food was infected with venereal disease; sites in Oakland and Baltimore were raided by officers who harassed BPP members in front of terrified children, and participating children were photographed by Chicago police.

"The night before [the first breakfast program in Chicago] was supposed to open," a female Panther told historian Nik Heynan, "the Chicago police broke into the church and mashed up all the food and urinated on it."

Ultimately, these and other efforts to destroy the Black Panthers broke up the program. In the end, though, the public visibility of the Panthers' breakfast programs put pressure on political leaders to feed children before school. The result of thousands of American children becoming accustomed to free breakfast, former party member Norma Amour Mtume told Eater, was the government expanded its own school food programs.

Though the USDA had piloted free breakfast efforts since the mid 1960s, the program only took off in the early 1970s-right around the time the Black Panthers' programs were dismantled. In 1975, the School Breakfast Program was permanently authorized. Today, it helps feed over 14.57 million children before school-and without the radical actions of the Black Panthers, it may never have happened.

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How the Black Panthers' Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government | HISTORY

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In 1969, a group of children sat down to a free breakfast before school. On the menu: chocolate milk, eggs, meat, cereal and fresh oranges. The scene wouldn't be out of place in a school cafeteria these days-but the federal government wasn't providing the food. Instead, breakfast was served thanks to the Black Panther Party.

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Kids Meet Former Black Panther Party Members

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Kids Meet Former Black Panther Party Members

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Kids Meet Former Black Panthers | Kids Meet | HiHo Kids

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Here are the goals and beliefs of the Black Panther Party

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HD Stock Footage Martin Luther King Civil Rights March on Washington 1963 Newsreel

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March from Selma to Montgomery | American Freedom Stories | Biography | History

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Bayard Rustin was a top advisor for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

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Find a summary, definition and facts about the SNCC for kids. United States history and the SNCC. Interesting facts about the SNCC for kids, children, homework and schools.

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Congress of Racial Equality

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CORE was founded by a group of students on the Campus of the University of Chicago. Many of the founders of CORE where followers of the Ghandian principles of non-violent civil disobedience and...

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Timeline

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NAACP Logo

NAACP Facts and History Timeline for kids: Fast Fact Sheet
Fast, fun facts and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) about the NAACP Facts.

What does NAACP stand for? The NAACP stands for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Who founded the NAACP? The NAACP was founded by a group of white progressives and liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard and African American civil rights activists including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell

What was the reason for the founding of the NAACP? The NAACP was founded in response to racial discrimination and violence against African Americans including the practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois

What did the NAACP do?: The NAACP fought for civil rights, the elimination of racial discrimination, desegregation, fair voter registration and the advancement of African Americans through lobbying, legal action, and education..

NAACP Facts and History Timeline for kids: The Progressive Era and the Niagara Movement social problems, passed laws, amendments and reforms to protect workers and regulate big business during the presidencies of Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson. However there were limits to Progressivism which failed to address African American reform issues. In 1905 twenty-eight Prominent African American leaders and civil rights activists, led by W.E.B. Du Bois, formed the
The NAACP was sparked by the spirit of the Progressive Movement that tackled many Niagara Movement. Members and supporters of the Niagara Movement formed the NAACP four years later in 1909.

NAACP Facts and History Timeline for kids
The NAACP facts and history timeline details important people and political events in the NAACP Facts and History Timeline. Interesting facts via the NAACP Facts and History Timeline are detailed below. The information via the NAACP Facts and History Timeline is told in a factual, date sequence consisting of a series of short facts providing a simple method of relating the history and events in the fight for civil rights.

NAACP Facts and History Timeline for kids

In 1896 the Supreme Court decided in NAACP Facts Timeline 1896: Plessy vs. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities satisfied the guarantees of 14th Amendment, thus giving legal sanction to Jim Crow Segregation Laws

W.E.B. Du Bois, formed the NAACP Facts Timeline 1905: Niagara Movement in 1905

NAACP Facts Timeline 1913: in 1913 the federal government, under President Wilson, imposed racial segregation in government offices in Washington, D.C.

'Birth of a Nation' perpetuated demeaning stereotypes of African Americans and glorified the Ku Klux Klan.

Many NAACP members protested at the premieres of the movie in numerous American cities and riots broke out in Boston and Philadelphia.

The Assistant Field Secretary of the NAACP, Walter White, travels into the south IN 1918 and reports on NAACP Facts Timeline 1918:
lynching and other violence against African Americans, including the lynching of 15 year old Sammie Smith in Nashville, Tennessee.

Harlem, New York had the highest concentration of black people in the world, and was the cultural heart of African-Americans with many NAACP members. The whole of the all-black 369th Infantry regiment called the NAACP Facts Timeline 1919: Harlem Hellfighters received the French Croix de Guerre.

The NAACP appointed James Weldon Johnson as its first African American executive director. James Weldon Johnson was a NAACP Facts Timeline 1920: Harlem Renaissance writer and, with his brother, had written the song "Lift Every Voice and Sing."

Continued...

NAACP Facts and History Timeline for kids

NAACP Facts and History Timeline
Details of important people and interesting historical events continue in the NAACP facts and history timeline for kids.

NAACP Facts and History Timeline for kids

NAACP Timeline 1920's/1930's: The NAACP provided legal, financial, and moral support in the Great Depression of the 1920's and 1930s

Support is given to A. Philip Randolph's proposed mass NAACP Facts Timeline 1941: March on Washington to protest discrimination in defense industries and armed forces.

The first segregated airman unit, the 99th Squadron, famously known as the NAACP Facts Timeline 1941: Tuskegee Airmen, was established in 1941

NAACP Facts Timeline 1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional

Martin Luther King became involved in protests against the incident involving Rosa Parks and the NAACP Facts Timeline 1955: Montgomery Bus Boycott beg an.

The president of the Arkansas State Conference of NAACP Branches, Daisy Bates, leads the fight to NAACP Facts Timeline 1957:
desegregate Arkansas schools.

The 1989 Silent March protesting against U.S. Supreme Court decisions reversing many of the gains NAACP Facts Timeline 1989:
made against discrimination.

NAACP Facts and History Timeline for kids

For visitors interested in the history of African Americans refer to the following articles:

Black History for kids: Important People and EventsFor visitors interested in African American History refer to
Black History - People and Events. A useful resource for teachers, kids, schools and colleges undertaking projects for the Black History Month.

NAACP Facts for kids - President Theodore Roosevelt Video
The article on the NAACP Facts provides detailed facts and a summary of one of the important events during his presidential term in office. The following video will give you additional important facts and dates about the political events experienced by the 26th American President whose presidency spanned from September 14, 1901 to March 4, 1909.

NAACP Facts

● Interesting Facts about NAACP Facts for kids and schoolsTheodore Roosevelt
● Key events and NAACP Facts for kids

● The NAACP Facts, a major event in US history
● Theodore Roosevelt Presidency
● Fast, fun facts about the NAACP Facts
● Foreign & Domestic policies of President ● Theodore Roosevelt Presidency and NAACP Facts for schools, homework, kids and children

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NAACP Facts and Timeline: US History for Kids ***

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NAACP Logo NAACP Facts and History Timeline for kids: Fast Fact Sheet Fast, fun facts and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ's) about the NAACP Facts. What does NAACP stand for? The NAACP stands for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Who founded the NAACP?

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Watch: This Southern belle became an unlikely anti-segregation pioneer

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When the delicate socialite Juliette Hampton Morgan set out to take the city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, it was because driving gave her anxiety. But what she saw awoke her conscience. It may have...

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Juliette Morgan was the only child of Frank and Lila Morgan of Montgomery, Alabama . Morgan attended the best schools and graduated near the top of her class in college and graduate school. She was a public school teacher and a librarian. Later in her life, she was the director of research at the Montgomery Public Library-a respected position for an upper class, white woman.

For six generations (over 120 years), the Morgans had been an extremely wealthy family. They had other people to do their laundry, cook their meals and do their yard work. Juliette was raised in a time and place where shops and restaurants displayed "Whites Only" signs. Most white people considered African Americans inferior to them. When Juliette was a little girl, she was used to African Americans doing work to keep her comfortable.

One thing about Juliette life separated her from her privileged friends. She had severe anxiety attacks. That meant she could not drive a car. So, to get to work, she rode the city buses in Montgomery . On those buses, she saw white bus drivers threaten and humiliate African American men and women who paid the same ten-cent fare she paid.

In 1939, 16 years before the famous Montgomery Bus Boycott, Juliette Morgan began writing angry letters to the local newspaper about the mean, unfair behavior she witnessed on the city buses. In her letters, she wrote that segregation was un-Christian and wrong, and the citizens of Montgomery should do something about it. The response was immediate: Juliette lost her job at a local bookstore.

One morning as she rode the bus, Juliette watched an African American woman pay her fare and then get off the bus to re-enter through the back door where black riders were supposed to sit. That was the custom, but, as soon as the woman stepped out, the white bus driver pulled away, leaving the woman behind even though she had already paid. Angry, Juliette Morgan jumped up and pulled the emergency cord to stop the bus. She demanded the bus driver open the door and let the woman come on board. The other passengers on the bus, African American and white, were frozen in surprise. In the days that followed, Juliette pulled the emergency cord every time she witnessed such an injustice.

News spread quickly. Bus drivers began to hassle Juliette Morgan. When she got angry, she would get off the bus and walk where she was going, even if it was more than a mile. White passengers made fun of her as she got off the bus. Her own mother told her she was making a fool of herself and tarnishing the family's good name.

Then, on December 1, 1955, an African American passenger named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus. Her action sparked a citywide boycott. Most African Americans refused to ride the segregated buses.

Juliette Morgan wrote another letter to the newspaper editor. She wrote in support of the boycott. She began to receive threatening letters and telephone calls. The city mayor demanded the library fire her. Although they did not fire Morgan, library officials told her not to write any more letters. She promised to remain silent. But it was hard. Because of the boycott, white people were bombing African American homes and churches.

In January 1957, Buford Boone, a white newspaper editor, told local racist whites that they were to blame for the continuing violence. Juliette Morgan wrote another letter, this time to tell Buford Boone how pleased she was. She wrote:

There are so many Southerners from various walks of life that know you are right.... They know what they call 'our Southern way of life' must... change. Many of them even are eager for change, but are afraid to express themselves-so afraid to stand alone.... I had begun to wonder if there were any men in the state-any white men-with any moral courage.

Boone asked Morgan's permission to print her letter in the newspaper. She was reluctant, because she had promised her bosses she would not write any more letters. But she felt a personal responsibility to encourage white people to confront racism. She hoped her letter would cause other white people to take a stand for justice. Buford's newspaper published her letter in January. By July, she had lost all her friends, and her job. Her own mother did not want to speak to her. Juliette Morgan died soon after that.

Fifty years later, white people in Alabama began to see that Morgan was right. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2005 and the Montgomery City Council voted to rename the main public library after her. Juliette Morgan gave away her own privileges to help bring justice for all.

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Juliette Morgan was the only child of Frank and Lila Morgan of Montgomery, Alabama . Morgan attended the best schools and graduated near the top of her class in college and graduate school. She was a public school teacher and a librarian.

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20th century recording artist Mahalia Jackson, known as the Queen of Gospel, is revered as one of the greatest musical figures in U.S. history.

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Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

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Black History Month Video: Who is Mahalia Jackson? (Educational Cartoon for Children)

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Be sure to listen to the Podcast!

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When you hear the voice, you know the woman.

"That's where the power comes from," says the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who first met the singer in the 1960s. "When there is no gap between what you say and who you are, what you say and what you believe - when you can express that in song, it is all the more powerful."

Mahalia Jackson was born in 1911 in New Orleans. When she was 16, she traveled the well-worn path up the Mississippi River to Chicago.

Beginning in the 1940s, she was one of the first singers to take gospel out of the church, drawing white audiences and selling millions of records. She inspired generations of singers, including Aretha Franklin, Della Reese, Albertina Walker and Mavis Staples of The Staples Singers.

Still, Staples says, Mahalia Jackson's success didn't always go over well back home in the black church.

"The ministers in the churches didn't want her singing in their church, because she would put a beat behind these traditional gospel songs," Staples says. "They would say, 'She's singing the blues.' "
Causing Trouble
And when Jackson brought her brand of gospel to the recording studio, it could cause trouble, as well, says the Rev. Stanley Keeble of Chicago's Gospel Music Heritage Museum.

For example, she worked with the great Mitch Miller.

"Mahalia had him pulling out his hair at the recording session," Keeble says. "Mahalia had a problem staying within those time measures that he had set. And gospel music is more inspirational than time-induced."

In her determination to keep her music reflective of her faith and personal vision, Mahalia Jackson could stand up to producers, preachers and even friends. Louis Armstrong was one of many who begged her to try jazz or pop, but she steadfastly insisted on singing only gospel.

Her voice became the soundtrack of the civil rights movement. Jesse Jackson says that, when a young Martin Luther King Jr. called on her, she never refused, traveling with him to the deepest parts of the segregated south. Mahalia Jackson sang at Selma, the March on Washington and King's funeral.

"She put her career and faith on the line, and both of them prevailed," Jesse Jackson says. "And, of course, when she got through with the big meetings, she could cook as good as she could sing."

When food is cooked with love and soul, you can taste it. Her friends say that what made Mahalia Jackson a great singer is what made her a great cook: Her heart and her home were always open, especially to the young. Mavis Staples says you can feel her love and faith after all these years.

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Mahalia Jackson: Voice Of The Civil Rights Movement

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The gospel singer was born about 100 years ago in New Orleans, and when she was 16, she traveled the well-worn path up the Mississippi to Chicago. Beginning in the 1940s, she was one of the first singers to take gospel out of the church, drawing white audiences and selling millions of records.

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Fifty years ago this month, Charles Avery left his high school in Jefferson County, Alabama, to lead about 800 of his fellow students on a 10-mile walk to Birmingham City. They were stopped by the sheriff's department, arrested, and jailed. "I was put in the paddy wagon with Dick Gregory and his writer," says Avery, who was 18 at the time and president of his senior class. "I would never forget that day."

In 1963 Birmingham was known as one of the most racist cities in the South. Martin Luther King Jr. had described it as a "symbol of hard-core resistance to integration." Activists had nicknamed it Bombingham, because of the frequency of violent attacks against those fighting the system of segregation.

It was the Rev. James Bevel, a leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and adviser to King, who came up with the idea of a protest group made up of children. In May 1963 they launched the Children's Crusade and began a march on Birmingham. By the time Avery made it to the city May 7, more than 3,000 black young people were marching on the city.

It was King's words that inspired 16-year-old Raymond Goolsby to participate in the march.

"Rev. Martin Luther King stood right beside me," remembers Goolsby, 66. "He said, 'I think it's a mighty fine thing for children, what you're doing because when you march, you're really standing up; because a man can't ride your back unless it is bent.' And, boy, I mean he talked so eloquent and fast, after he finished his motivational speech, I was ready."

On May 2, 1963, Goolsby joined thousands of students who left their classrooms and gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. It was there where they spilled out in groups of 50 to march downtown. "My group was the first of 50 to march," says Goolsby. "Our job was to decoy the police. We got arrested about a block and a half from 16th Street."

The next day, the police, led by infamous commissioner of public safety Bull Connor, brought out fire hoses and attack dogs and turned them on the children. It was a scene that caused headlines across the nation and around the world.

"Pictures of the bravery and determination of the Birmingham children as they faced the brutal fire hoses and vicious police dogs were splashed on the front pages of newspapers all across America and helped turn the tide of public opinion in support of the civil-rights movement's fight for justice," says Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund.

Jessie Shepherd, then 16, was soaked when she was loaded up in a paddy wagon. "I was told not to participate," says Shepherd, now a retired clinical diet technician. "But I was tired of the injustice."

"I couldn't understand why there had to be a colored fountain and a white fountain," says Shepherd. "Why couldn't I drink out the fountain that other little kids drank out of? As I got older, I understood that's just the way it was, because my skin was black, and we were treated differently because of that."

So she marched.

Soon the city's jails were so overcrowded that students were sent to the local fair ground. They slept on cots and sang freedom songs while waiting for movement leaders to raise money for their bail.

"I didn't anticipate the outcome being so drastic," says Shepherd.

Gwen Gamble had just been released from jail and didn't want to go back. Shortly before the crusade, the teenager had been arrested for participating in a lunch-counter sit-in and jailed for five days. "We were put in with people who had actually broken the law. It was scary. They weren't nice," says Gamble, who was 15.

She and her two sisters were trained by the movement to be recruiters for the Children's Crusade. On the first day of the march, they went to several schools and gave students the cue to leave. They then made their way to 16th Street Baptist.

"We left the church with our picket signs and our walking shoes," says Gamble. "Some of us even had on our rain coats because we knew that we were going to be hosed down by the water hoses."

Under intense public pressure, Birmingham negotiated a truce with King, and on May 10, Connor was removed from his position. The Children's Crusade had worked.

"The Birmingham campaign was a crucial campaign," says Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. "He had never led a massive campaign of civil disobedience before, and there were not enough adults prepared to be arrested. So the Children's Crusade turned the tide of the movement."

Carson also notes that had King failed in Birmingham, his legacy wouldn't be what it is. "If he hadn't won, there probably wouldn't have been an 'I Have a Dream' speech or a Man of the Year award or a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964," says Carson.

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the march, there will be a reenactment of the Children's Crusade and the opening of an exhibit on the children's march at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

Today Birmingham has an African-American mayor, a majority-black City Council, and a black superintendent of schools.

"Had it not been for those children going out in the streets of Birmingham making a difference, going to jail, protesting, I really don't believe what we have to day would be possible," says Gamble. "I definitely say there would not be a Barack Obama."

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How the Children of Birmingham Changed the Civil-Rights Movement

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Fifty years ago this month, Charles Avery left his high school in Jefferson County, Alabama, to lead about 800 of his fellow students on a 10-mile walk to Birmingham City. They were stopped by the sheriff's department, arrested, and jailed.

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Kids learn about the biography of Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to attend an all white elementary school in the South.

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There are a lot of sources on this site

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Sylvia Mendez and Her Family's Fight for Desegregation

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Sylvia Mendez and her family moved from Santa Ana, California to Westminster, California. When trying to enroll in the Westminster school, Sylvia and her two...

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Brown v. Board of Education (1954) | Separate Is NOT Equal

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In 1957, federal troops were called in to help nine black students integrate Little Rock High School in Arkansas.

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Little Rock Nine

Racial discrimination and oppression has been a shameful part of the American history. Life in the 1950's in many of the states still contain segregation policies and outright discrimination against Black Americans. These policies included the requirement that Black American children attend 'Black only' schools and were not allowed in the schools that white children attended. In the fall of 1957, nine Black American students were told by the U.S. Supreme Court that they had the right to attend the Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the uproar that occurred became a news item that spread across the country.

The nine students that wanted to attend the school became known as the "Little Rock Nine". They were boys and girls that made their intentions known that they were going to show up at the school to attend. Arkansas was considered to be a southern state, and they carried many of the discrimination policies.

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Racial discrimination and oppression has been a shameful part of the American history. Life in the 1950's in many of the states still contain segregation policies and outright discrimination against Black Americans. These policies included the requirement that Black American children attend 'Black only' schools and were not allowed in the schools that white children ...

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Listen to the Podcast in the top left corner

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Few people know the story of Claudette Colvin: When she was 15, she refused to move to the back of the bus and give up her seat to a white person - nine months before Rosa Parks did the very same thing.

Most people know about Parks and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that began in 1955, but few know that there were a number of women who refused to give up their seats on the same bus system. Most of the women were quietly fined, and no one heard much more.

Colvin was the first to really challenge the law.

Now a 69-year-old retiree, Colvin lives in the Bronx. She remembers taking the bus home from high school on March 2, 1955, as clear as if it were yesterday.

The bus driver ordered her to get up and she refused, saying she'd paid her fare and it was her constitutional right. Two police officers put her in handcuffs and arrested her. Her school books went flying off her lap.

"All I remember is that I was not going to walk off the bus voluntarily," Colvin says.

It was Negro history month, and at her segregated school they had been studying black leaders like Harriet Tubman, the runaway slave who led more than 70 slaves to freedom through the network of safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. They were also studying about Sojourner Truth, a former slave who became an abolitionist and women's rights activist.

The class had also been talking about the injustices they were experiencing daily under the Jim Crow segregation laws, like not being able to eat at a lunch counter.

"We couldn't try on clothes," Colvin says. "You had to take a brown paper bag and draw a diagram of your foot ... and take it to the store. Can you imagine all of that in my mind? My head was just too full of black history, you know, the oppression that we went through. It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn't get up."

Colvin also remembers the moment the jail door closed. It was just like a Western movie, she says.

"And then I got scared, and panic come over me, and I started crying. Then I started saying the Lord's Prayer," she says.
'Twice Toward Justice'
Now her story is the subject of a new book, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

Author Phil Hoose says that despite a few articles about her in the Birmingham press and in USA Today, and brief mentions in some books about the civil rights movement, most people don't know about the role Colvin played in the bus boycotts.

Hoose couldn't get over that there was this teenager, nine months before Rosa Parks, "in the same city, in the same bus system, with very tough consequences, hauled off the bus, handcuffed, jailed and nobody really knew about it."

He also believes Colvin is important because she challenged the law in court, one of four women plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the court case that successfully overturned bus segregation laws in Montgomery and Alabama.

There are many reasons why Claudette Colvin has been pretty much forgotten. She hardly ever told her story when she moved to New York City. In her new community, hardly anyone was talking about integration; instead, most people were talking about black enterprises, black power and Malcolm X.

When asked why she is little known and why everyone thinks only of Rosa Parks, Colvin says the NAACP and all the other black organizations felt Parks would be a good icon because "she was an adult. They didn't think teenagers would be reliable."

She also says Parks had the right hair and the right look.

"Her skin texture was the kind that people associate with the middle class," says Colvin. "She fit that profile."

David Garrow, a historian and the author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says people may think that Parks' action was spontaneous, but black civic leaders had been thinking about what to do about the Montgomery buses for years.

After Colvin's arrest, she found herself shunned by parts of her community. She experienced various difficulties and became pregnant. Civil rights leaders felt she was an inappropriate symbol for a test case.

Parks was the secretary of the NAACP. She was well-known and respected and, says Garrow, Parks had a "natural gravitas" and was an "inherently impressive person."

At the same time, Garrow believes attention to Colvin is a healthy corrective, because "the real reality of the movement was often young people and often more than 50 percent women." The images you most often see are men in suits.

Hoose says he believes Colvin understands the pragmatism that pushed Parks to the fore, but "on the other hand, she did it."

Hoose says the stories of Parks and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are wonderful, but those are the stories of people in their 30s and 40s. Colvin was 15. Hoose feels his book will bring a fresh teen's perspective to the struggle to end segregation.

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Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin

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Most people know about Rosa Parks and the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. Nine months earlier, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on the same bus system.

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Claudette Colvin

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Children of the civil rights movement .pdf

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The Selma to Montgomery March to promote African-American voting rights was actually three marches, totalling 54 miles, from Selma, Ala., to the State Capitol in Montgomery.

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John Lewis' Journey to the March on Washington

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At age 23, the former chairman of SNCC stepped up to the podium to deliver a powerful speech to thousands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

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March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

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March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

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Civil Rights for Kids: March on Washington

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Kids learn about the history of the March on Washington including Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech, the Big Six planners, and the results such as Civil Rights Act in 1964.

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Be Sure to READ THE CAPTIONS

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student nonviolent coordinating 
committee

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national association for the advancement 
of colored people

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Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- Images of a Peoples' Movement

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The Greensboro Four | Kid Reporters' Notebook | Scholastic Inc.

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On February 1, 1960, four college freshmen in Greensboro, North Carolina, stunned the world by a simple act. Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond sat down at a "whites only" lunch counter at the local Woolworth's. The young black men politely asked for coffee.

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Freedom Rides from Teaching Tolerance.pdf

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Freedom Rides (1961) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

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The Freedom Riders failed to reach New Orleans, Louisiana. However the international attention their efforts received forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to petition the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to outlaw segregation in interstate travel. Unlike the earlier Supreme Court rulings which segregationists largely ignored, the ICC immediately imposed sanctions and penalties for the violation of its order.

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Click on The Freedom Riders in the far right of the first row.

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1960-1962: FREEDOM FIGHTERS

At segregated lunch counters from Greensboro to Nashville, young college students face arrest to bring the injustices of segregation to light. And a small group of blacks and whites from the north calling themselves the Freedom Riders brave mob violence in their attempt to expose segregation in bus stations across the South.

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At segregated lunch counters from Greensboro to Nashville, young college students face arrest to bring the injustices of segregation to light. And a small group of blacks and whites from the north calling themselves the Freedom Riders brave mob violence in their attempt to expose segregation in bus stations across the South.

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Kids learn about the biography of Malcolm X including his early life, joining the Nation of Islam, becoming a leader, the civil rights movement, and assassination.

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Fresberg Cartoon – Learning & History for Students

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Malcolm X Biography: Black History Month (Educational Videos for Students)

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X marks the name of one of the most important leaders of the Civil Rights movement. Learn about the life and legacy of Malcolm X.

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First hand account of what it was like with Jim Crow Laws

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First hand account of what it was like with Jim Crow Laws

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History for kids - Free history network for kids

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Racial discrimination may have been most well-known as a southern state situation, but in reality it occurred in all of the states. The oppression included state approved discrimination as well as violence. Many of the 'Jim Crow Laws' were set in place after the Civil War and during the reconstruction of the southern states and were allowed on both the state and local levels. Those Black Americans that had been former slaves, but were now considered free, had limited rights under the Jim Crow Laws.

This means that if a local area passed a law that was based on discrimination, it was allowed. The Jim Crow Laws basically offered African Americans a 'separate by equal' status. They had equality, only as far as the local or state laws permitted. The reason these laws were passed is due to the fact that the white governing communities thought that Black Americans were inferior to them.

Some of the Jim Crow Laws that were passed were heavily based on segregation. This is the separation of Black Americans from the white population in many of the daily activities and lifestyle actions. This included: separate schools, drinking fountains, bathrooms, hotels, public libraries, restaurants and public transportation. The United States military was also segregated, allowing Black American soldiers to serve in 'Black Only' infantry. There were also Jim Crow laws forbidding Black Americans to participate in or attend sporting events. Even Black and White Americans working together in the same office was considered against the law in some areas.

President Woodrow Wilson was a southerner and during his presidency, supported the Jim Crow Laws of any state or area. The government turned away at every complaint or protest, even when the Jim Crow Laws allowed murder without the benefit of a fair trial. Wilson appointed southern representatives to his cabinet and they made sure that laws were not passed to allow any additional freedoms to the Black Americans.

Some of the most important Jim Crow Laws had to do with voting rights. Many of the southern states passed laws requiring a voter to be able to pass a literacy test before they were given the approval to vote. Since many of the Black Americans still lived in the south and most were not literate due to previous laws against educating slaves, a majority of the Black Americans could not vote. Additional Jim Crow laws on voting added a 'polling tax' which was a payment that allowed you to vote at the voting polls. The lower income Black Americans could not pay the 'polling tax' and this reduced their voting abilities.

I wasn't until 1953, when attorney Thurgood Marshall, brought a legal case to court known as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, that the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) had their day in trial. The court case that Marshall won over ruled all laws, local or state, that would be considered "Jim Crow Laws" and listed them as unconstitutional.

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"Jump Jim Crow" was the name of a 19th century song that created a stereotype about African Americans. It became the term that was used for the type of laws that allowed oppression and racial discrimination that was common in the United States.

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Kids learn about the history of Jim Crow Laws including segregation in the South, example laws, grandfather clauses, black codes, and how they got the name Jim Crow.

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology