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Home , Kelly Ingram Park

Day 1: Awakenings Timeline:

Emmet Till murdered: August 28, 1955 refuses to give up her seat on the bus: Dec. 1, 1955 Bus boycott begins: Dec. 5, 1955 Bus boycott ends: Dec. 21, 1956

Vocabulary:

Boycott: the refusal to buy, use, attend, or deal with a product, activity, business or the like, usually as a protest or means of persuasion.

NAACP: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the oldest Civil Rights organization in the US, founded in 1909, that has been and still is united on one premise that "all men and women are created equal." The NAACP usually works in the legal and electoral systems (court cases and voter drives)

Klu Klux Klan: The Ku Klux Klan's long history of violence grew out of the resentment and hatred many white Southerners felt in the aftermath of the Civil War. Blacks, having won the struggle for freedom from slavery, were now faced with a new struggle against widespread racism and the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan. While the menace of the KKK has peaked and waned over the years, it has never vanished. For more information on the KKK, here's a website from the Southern Poverty Law Center detailing the history of the KKK: http://www.iupui.edu/~aao/kkk.html

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience: Refusal to boy civil laws in an effort to induce change in governmental policy or legislation by the use of passive resistance or other nonviolent means.

Brown v. Board of Education: 1954 Supreme Court decision reversing Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) making segregation illegal in schools and other public facilities. Plessy v. Ferguson was a supreme court decision of "" saying that segregation did not violate the Constitution.

Discussion Questions:

1. What was the climate of black oppression in the first half of the century? In the south, blacks lived under --separate but not equal. However, the climate was more than just separate water fountains or riding at the back of the bus; it was also a climate of grave fear as lynchings and disappearances of African Americans in the South was commonplace. From 1889 to 1930, over 3,700 men and women were reported lynched in the United States--most of whom were southern blacks.

2. Three different methods/strategies for social change: 1. the legal system (court, lawsuits, congressional laws), 2. media, and 3. civil disobedience.

3. Look in newspapers, do you see evidence of protest, courts/legal battles or media campaigns for social change?

4. What has your protest experience been?

5. What would you be willing to protest for? Day 2: Fighting Back

Timeline: Brown v. Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision: May 17, 1954 Little Rock admits 9 students to its Central High School: May 24, 1955 school board adopts a plan of gradual desegregation to begin in September 1957. In September 1956, 27 black students attempt to enroll in all-white schools and all are turned down. On September 25, 1957, after protests and riots, with the protection of the Army, nine black students are escorted into Little Rock Central H. S. Fist black student, Ernest Green, graduates from Little Rock Central: May 27, 1958 registers at the Univ. of Mississippi and riots ensue: October 1, 1962

Vocabulary: State Power and Federal Power: The 10th Amendment of the US Constitution states, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Throughout the history of the US, the debate has persisted between State v. Federal rights. In the Civil Rights years, southern states wanted to continue their ways of segregation and Jim Crow laws and believed they had the legal right to do so as long as the state government agreed. However, the preemption doctrine derives from the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution states that the "Constitution and the laws of the United States…shall be the supreme law of the land…anything in the constitutions or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." This means of course, that any federal law--even a regulation of a federal agency--trumps any conflicting state law.

Segregation: The separation or isolation of a race, class, or ethnic group by enforced or voluntary residence in a restricted area, by barriers to social intercourse, by separate educational facilities or by other discriminatory means.

Integration: The act of blending people of different groups or races into a society as equals.

Desegregation: The act of breaking down barriers that separate or isolate people on the basis of race, class, or ethnic group. Incorporating an "outside" group into the community.

Discussion Questions: 1. When else in US history has there been a conflict between state's rights and federal power? Two instances shape the history of the US: 1.) the making of the Constitution with the debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists. 2.) when the southern states seceded from the United States--they seceded from the Union in order to keep their way of life.

2. Would you have had the courage to be one of those students?

3. If we had a chart of where minority students live in Portland today, do you think you would favor desegregation? What type, voluntary or involuntary?

Day 3: Ain't Scared of Your Jails

Timeline: Student sit-ins in Nashville: Feb. 1960 - April 1960 First black people are served at a lunch counter in Nashville: May 10, 1960 Boycott of chain stores that segregate in the south: boycott continued in conjunction with the sit-ins. / : Summer 1961

Vocabulary: Sit-ins: a form of civil disobedience in which demonstrators occupy a seat and refuse to move

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: The wave of student sit-ins in the south in the summer of 1960 was the catalyst for a new student-based civil rights group called SNCC. The original founders of SNCC followed Dr. King and Ghandi's methods of . However, SNCC, over time, split from Dr. King and the principles of nonviolence. A majority of SNCC workers were beaten and thrown in prison at least once during their work with the organization. As a result, once strict guidelines of nonviolence were relaxed and members were unofficially permitted to carry guns for self defense. However, the principle was still adhered to publicly, as it remained an effective means of protest. Eventually whites began to understand the tactic, and nonviolence became less powerful. Whites began to realize SNCC's peaceful responses to violent oppression were key to gaining support for their cause.

If there was no more public violence for SNCC to rise above, SNCC's message would be weakened. Thus, protesters were no longer beaten publicly. Instead they were attacked and beaten behind closed doors where newspaper reporters and television cameras could not reach. As southern whites intended, discrete violent oppression began to destroy the image of martyr that SNCC had carefully constructed through nonviolent protest. During this time, SNCC stopped sponsoring regular seminars on nonviolence and continued them only infrequently until 1964.

Freedom Rides: During the Freedom Rides, SNCC members rode buses through the deep southern states where discrimination and segregation were most prominent. The strategy consisted of an interracial group that would board buses destined for the South. The whites would sit in the back and the blacks in the front. At rest stops, the whites would go into blacks-only areas and vice versa. "This was not civil disobedience, really," explained CORE director , "because we [were] merely doing what the Supreme Court said we had a right to do." But the Freedom Riders expected to meet resistance. "We felt we could count on the racists of the South to create a crisis so that the federal government would be compelled to enforce the law," said Farmer. "When we began the ride I think all of us were prepared for as much violence as could be thrown at us. We were prepared for the possibility of death."

Discussion Questions: 1. Why were the students willing to risk so much, including going to jail, to sit at an integrated lunch counter?

2. At EMS, in what ways are the cafeteria and morning meeting segregated? Do you feel like you can sit anywhere?

**on Friday we will have a Mix-It-Up cafeteria day, where students will have assigned seats.

In a 2002 Mix It Up survey: • A majority of students said that schools were "quick to put people into categories." • 40% admitted that they had rejected someone from another group. • 1/3 said it's hard to become friends with people in different groups. Social boundaries like these can create divisions and misunderstandings in our schools and communities. By working to cross these barriers, students can help create environments with less conflict and fewer instances of bullying, harassment and violence.

In 2002, more than 200,000 students across the country took a step toward breaking down the boundaries, when they participated in the first Mix It Up at Lunch Day. They sat somewhere new, with someone new in their school cafeterias.

Mix It Up is a program of the Teaching Tolerance project from the Southern Poverty Law Center. For more information, go to http://www.tolerance.org/teens/about.jsp

Day 4: No Easy Walk

Add to the Timeline: : April 3, 1963 Dr. King goes to jail in Birmingham: April 12, 1963 March on Washington: September 15, 1963 Bombing of the 16th St. Baptist Church: August 28, 1963

Vocabulary: Children's Campaign: a strategy used by the SCLC in Birmingham to have children participate in nonviolent civil disobedience and fill the jails instead of adults. Adults had bills to pay, where high school children did not. On May 2, children, ranging in age from six to eighteen, gathered in Kelly Ingram Park, across the street from Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Around 1:00, fifty teenagers left the church and headed for downtown, singing "." They were arrested and placed in police vans. Another group left the church, and they were also put in vans. Another group left, and another. Soon the police began stuffing the protesters in school buses because there were no more vans. Three hours later, there were 959 children in jail. The jails were absolutely packed.

The next day, over a thousand more children stayed out of school and went to Kelly Ingram Park. was determined not to let them get downtown, but he had no space left in his jails. He brought firefighters out and ordered them to turn hoses on the children. Most ran away, but one group refused to budge. The firefighters turned even more powerful hoses on them, hoses that shot streams of water strong enough to break bones.

March on Washington: Over 250,000 people from all across the nation gathered in Washington DC to show President Kennedy that his proposed Civil Rights bill had widespread support. People made and heard speeches and sang Civil Rights songs. In front of the capital is where Dr. King made his famous, "" speech.

Civil Rights Bill: In 1957, President Johnson passed a watered-down version of the Civil Rights Act that did little to encourage black people to vote. The seeds of the Civil Rights bill of 1964 were sown in the Kennedy era although it was Johnson who pushed the act through after Kennedy's assassination. The controversial 1964 Civil Rights Act included the following: • it gave federal government the right to end segregation in the South • it prohibited segregation in public places. A public place was anywhere that received any form of federal (tax) funding (most places). This stopped lawyers homing in on the private places issue. This act tried to cover every aspect that some lawyer might use to avoid implementing this act. • an Equal Employment Commission was created • federal funding would not be given to segregated schools (note that these had been banned in 1954, ten years previous!) • any company that wanted federal business (the biggest spender of money in American business) had to have a pro-civil rights charter. Any segregationist company that applied for a federal contact would not get it.

SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference): Martin Luther King, , , and created the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. The purpose of the organization was to help coordinate nonviolent protest, such as sit-ins, voter registration drives, and other civil rights events. The SCLC remained consistent in its tactics of nonviolence.

Discussion Questions: 1. What are some differences between SNCC and SCLC? While both organizations started out committed to nonviolent tactics, SNCC becomes impatient. The head of SNCC in 1966, criticizes Dr. King's methods of nonviolence. The message of SNCC becomes one of black power and "black is beautiful".

2. What's one line of Martin Luther King's speech that you remember?

3. How do charismatic leaders help or hinder a movement? Why was Martin Luther King an affective leader?

4. What types of leadership styles do you like most?

5. Do you agree or disagree with having children go to jail as they did in the Children's Campaign?

Day 5: Promised Land

Timeline: Sanitation Worker's Strike Begins: February 12, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination: April 4, 1968 Resurrection City is built: May 1968 Robert Kennedy is assassinated: June 5, 1968

Vocabulary:

Poor People's Campaign: As Civil Rights leaders and the movement matures, they begin to understand that Civil Rights is not just about race, but about poverty and/or class. The Poor People's Campaign was the movement King was working on before he was assassinated where he combined working for the Civil Rights of African Americans with the rights of poor people from all races and ethnicities.

Strike: a groups refusal to work in protest of pay, or working conditions. Most strikes are coordinated by unions--organizations of workers. Strikes put pressure on owners or management by slowing down or completely halting production or services.

Assassination: murder of a public figure. A killing by violent attack.

Resurrection City: A tactic of the Poor People's Campaign to have poor people from across the nation form a tent village on the mall in Washington. The camp-in never successfully articulates the needs of the poor or the demands for remedies.

Discussion Questions: 1. The Civil Rights Movement changes to not be just about rights for African Americans, but to include poor people from all races and ethnicities. What problems would a Civil Rights campaign address today? This is a good lead in question for the next few weeks… civil rights campaigns today include gay/lesbian rights, women's rights, poor people, children, farmworkers, people in prison… the list goes on and on.

2. After Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy are assassinated, how do you think the movement changes or continues? No one can exactly say when the Civil Rights era ends, but after the assassinations, there are great changes in strategies and tactics of Civil Rights organizations. Civil disobedience is used less and organizations focus on getting people of color in political offices and on economic rights for the poor and people of color. Riots in urban cities, continuing poverty, and few tangible successes in Civil Rights areas characterize the years following the assassination of King and Kennedy.

3. What does King's speech, "I have been to the mountaintop. I have been to the promised land and we will get there someday," mean to you?

Add to the Map

Day 1:

Montgomery, Alabama

Day 2:

Little Rock, Arkansas New Orleans, Louisiana University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi

Day 3:

Nashville, Tennessee Birmingham, Alabama Greensboro, North Carolina Anniston, Alabama

Day 4:

Washington D.C.

Day 5

Memphis, Tennessee Atlanta, Georgia