Civil Rights Gone Wrong

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynnell L. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
First Century ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Boston Public Schools ◽  
Children's Book ◽  
Historical Moment

On May 14, 2014, three white Boston city councilors refused to vote to approve a resolution honoring the sixtieth anniversary of Brown v. the Board of Education because, as one remarked, “I didn’t want to get into a debate regarding forced busing in Boston.” Against the recent national proliferation of celebrations of civil rights milestones and legislation, the controversy surrounding the fortieth anniversary of the court decision that mandated busing to desegregate Boston public schools speaks volumes about the historical memory of Boston’s civil rights movement. Two highly acclaimed contemporary works of children’s literature set during or inspired by Boston’s desegregation busing plan reflect and respond to the ongoing battle over the history and memory of Boston’s civil rights movement and its enduring racial legacy: Busing Brewster, an illustrated children’s book for young readers, written by Richard Michelson and illustrated by R. G. Roth; and Gold Dust, a middle-grade novel for adolescents by Chris Lynch. Both works offer representations of an overtly racist past, produced in a historical moment when prevailing ideologies of color blindness and postracialism suggest not only that racism is passé, but that any attempt to redress past racism that takes race into account is itself racist and unjust. Busing Brewster and Gold Dust offer equivocal reflections on urban decline and racial transformations at the turn of the twenty-first century. Both works have as much to tell us about the historical memory of Boston’s desegregation efforts as they do about contemporary understandings of race and social justice.

Civil Rights and the Private School Movement in Mississippi, 1964–1971

2002 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael W. Fuquay
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Private School ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Massive Resistance ◽  
Housing Discrimination ◽  
Civil Rights Act

The signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was heralded as a tremendous victory for the civil rights movement, the fulfillment of a decade-long struggle to enforce the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Along with measures against job and housing discrimination, the Civil Rights Act included provisions specifically designed to overcome the white South's massive resistance campaign and enforce school desegregation. Despite the continued intransigence of segregationists, these measures proved successful and white public schools across the South opened their doors to black children. With segregationists in retreat and the Voting Rights Act on the horizon, this was a time of celebration for civil rights activists. But this was not the end of the story.

James Baldwin

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American History ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
First Century ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Twenty First Century

The book is devoted to the works of James Baldwin, one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. The authors examine his most important contributions – including novels, essays, short stories, poetry, and media appearances – in the wider context of American history. They demonstrate the lasting importance of his oeuvre, which was central to the Civil Rights Movement and continues to be relevant at the dawn of the twenty-first century and the Black Lives Matter era.

Introduction

Troublemakers ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kathryn Schumaker
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The introductionexplains how and why student protest became common in the United States in the late 1960s and places these protests in the context of shifts in the history of education and in broader social movements, including the civil rights movement, the Chicano Movement, and black power activism. The introduction also situates students’ rights within the context of children’s rights more broadly, explaining the legal principles that justified age discrimination and excluded children and students from the basic protections of American constitutional law. The introduction identifies the two decades between the 1960s and 1980s as a constitutional moment that revolutionized the relationship of students to the state. It also connects students’ rights litigation to the issue of school desegregation and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.

Championships and Civil Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-146
Author(s):  
Derrick E. White
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Black College ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Predominately White Institutions ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Predominately White ◽  
Racial Change ◽  
White Institutions

This chapter explores how Black college football and FAMU reckoned with the civil rights movement. Gaither preferred interracial cooperation rather than direct action as a means for racial change. The civil rights movement, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education, and including the bus boycotts of the mid-1950s and the sit-ins of the early 1960s, undermined Gaither’s reputation with activists. Gaither’s opposition to immediate desegregation not only was an attempt to hold on to his powerful football program but also showed an understanding of how integration would perpetuate athletic dominance by predominately white institutions. Gaither’s experiences with structural racism in building Bragg Stadium provided an alternative perspective to the civil rights movement.

A Chink in the Armor: The Black-Led Struggle for School Desegregation in Arlington, Virginia, and the End of Massive Resistance

2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
James McGrath Morris
Keyword(s):  
Public School ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Student ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
School Integration ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Massive Resistance ◽  
Segregated Schools ◽  
White School

As it had for countless other children in Arlington, Virginia, the idyll days of summer had come to end for eleven-year-old Edward Leslie Hamm Jr. on the morning of 5 September 1957. After donning a pair of clean khaki pants and a freshly pressed, short-sleeved white shirt, Hamm was heading back to the classroom along with twenty-one thousand other students in this Northern Virginia community. That alone was enough to put a pit in any child's stomach. But for Hamm the day possessed an added dimension. Instead of riding a bus for forty-five minutes to the Negro school six miles across the county, his parents were dispatching him, along with two other black pupils, to challenge the continued exclusion of blacks from the all-white school, one mile from their isolated exclusively black neighborhood. A full three years after Brown v. Board of Education, not a single black student had yet attended a white public school in Virginia, seen by many observers as the frontline state of resistance to school integration. The three children were nervous and took no comfort in thinking of themselves among a vanguard of the civil rights movement. “I wasn't into an integration thing,” recalled George Tyrone Nelson, who was fourteen at the time and among the trio challenging the segregated schools that day.

scholarly journals “Hell Is Popping Here in South Carolina”: Orangeburg County Black Teachers and Their Community in the Immediate Post-Brown Era

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-62
Author(s):  
Candace Cunningham
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Teachers ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Training School ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Equal Education ◽  
Long Civil Rights Movement

When the South Carolina legislature created the anti-NAACP oath in 1956, teachers across the state lost their positions. But it was the dismissal of twenty-one teachers at the Elloree Training School that captured the attention of the NAACP and Black media outlets. In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, South Carolina's Black and White communities went head-to-head in the battle over White supremacy versus expanded civil rights. The desegregation movement in 1955 and 1956 placed Black teachers’ activism in the spotlight—activism that mirrored what was happening in their community. This largely unknown episode of civil rights activism demonstrates that Black teachers were willing to serve not only as behind-the-scenes supporters in the equal education struggle but as frontline activists. Furthermore, it shows that South Carolina was an integral site of the long civil rights movement.

The English-Only Movement in the US and the World in the Twenty-First Century

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 192-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Pac
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
English Only ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
The Us ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
1960S And 1970S

AbstractIn this article, I examine the English-only movement in the United States and other countries in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Elaborating on research on the hegemony of English, this examination demonstrates English-only ideology, both linguistic and visual, as a primary means of restricting language and ethnic minorities’ access not only in the US, but also globally. First, I will present English as a social construction of the Anglo-Saxon elites in the process of the subordination of other language groups throughout American history up to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Second, I will briefly introduce the legislation of the Civil Rights Movement to show that language access increased the political presence of language minorities. Third, I will discuss the reemergence of the English-only movement appealing to nationalist sentiments in order to diminish language and ethnic minorities’ rising political presence in the US in the twenty-first century. Fourth, I will examine the spread of English-only ideology within the context of global capitalism, led by the US, in order to show forced compliance to the superiority of English by various diverse social groups on the global level.

scholarly journals Oratio: Address to Commemorate the 2013 Martin Luther King Day at the Law Faculty, University of Michigan

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Karthy Govender
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
University Of Michigan ◽  
Indian Government ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Private Power ◽  
The Usa

The paper commences by considering the similarity between Dr King, MK Gandhi and Nelson Mandela and argues that they are high mimetic figures who inspire us to be better. Their legacy and memory operate as a yardstick by which we can evaluate the conduct of those exercising public and private power over us. Each remains dominant in his respective society decades after passing on or leaving public life, and the paper suggests that very little societal value is had by deconstructing their lives and judging facets of their lives through the prism of latter day morality. We gain more by leaving their high mimetic status undisturbed.  There is a clear link between their various struggles with King being heavily influenced by the writings and thinking of Gandhi, who commenced his career as a liberation activist in South Africa. King was instrumental in commencing the discourse on economic sanctions to force the Apartheid government to change and the Indian government had a long and committed relationship with the ANC. The second half of the paper turns to an analysis of how Dr King's legacy impacted directly and indirectly on developments in South Africa.  One of the key objectives of the Civil Rights movement in the USA was to attain substantive equality and to improve the quality of life of all. The paper then turns to assessing the extent to which democratic South Africa has achieved these objectives and concludes that the picture is mixed. Important pioneering changes such as enabling gays and lesbians to marry have taught important lessons about taking rights seriously. However, despite important advancements, neither poverty nor inequality has been appreciably reduced. One of the major failures has been the inability to provide appropriate, effective and relevant education to African children in public schools. Effectively educating previously disadvantaged persons represents one of the few means at our disposal of reducing inequality and breaking the cycle of poverty.  Fortunately, there is a general awareness in the country that something needs to be done about this crisis urgently. The paper notes comments by President Zuma that the level of wealth in white households is six times that of black households. The critique is that comments of this nature do not demonstrate an acknowledgment by the ANC that, after 19 years in power, they must also accept responsibility for statistics such as this. 

scholarly journals W. E. B. Du Bois on Brown v. Board of Education

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-31
Author(s):  
Stanley O. Gaines
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Political Contributions ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
The 1960S

The 1960s have been described as the “civil rights decade” in American history. Few scholar-activists have been identified as strongly with the legal, social, economic, and political changes culminating in the 1960s as has African American historian, sociologist, psychologist W. E. B. Du Bois. Inexplicably, in 2003, the 100-year anniversary of Du Bois' classic, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), came and went with little fanfare within or outside of academia. However, in 2004, the 50-year anniversary of the initial U. S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) presents an opportunity for ethnic studies in general, and Black studies in particular, to acknowledge the intellectual and political contributions of Du Bois to the civil rights movement in the United States. In the post-Civil Rights Era, some authors have suggested that Du Bois opposed the initial Brown v. Board of Education (1954) ruling. In contrast, I observe in the present paper that Du Bois (1957) opposed the U. S. Supreme Court's subsequent (1955) ruling that invoked the much-criticized term “with all deliberate speed,” rather than the initial (1954) ruling that rendered the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional. Moreover, I contend that Du Bois' own values and attitudes were fully consistent with his position on the (1954, 1955) decisions.

The Upheaval: Interposition and Moderation

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kyle Day
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
Montgomery Bus Boycott ◽  
Socioeconomic Changes ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Bus Boycott

This chapter narrates the dramatic socioeconomic changes occurring in the former states of the Confederacy after World War II. The changes culminated with the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, as well as the early events in the American Civil Rights Movement, including the Emmitt Till Lynching and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The chapter then analyses the response of white southerners to these transformative events. The white South’s response channelled into two recognized programs. Southern leaders either outright refused to implement Brown, which became known as Interposition or, called for a gradual or piecemeal implementation, which became known as moderation.

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