Civil Rights

• Segregation and Discrimination

  • Jim Crow Laws - segregation in all public places.
  • Segregation Laws - allowed to segregate races but only if 'separate but equal'.
  • Black Americans couldn't vote in the South due to, literacy tests, taxes, and the 'grandfather' clause.
  • Black American were often poorer and lived in ghettos in the North.
• Brown vs Topeka


  1954
• Linda Brown


  Applied to move schools to the white school close to her, because the black school was much further away and the route was dangerous
• The local school board refused Linda Brown's application
• NAACP took the case to the Supreme Court


  1. Supreme Court passed a law to desegregate schools

  2. Segregation in education was unconstitutional
• In 1957 there were still over 2 million black Americans in segregated schools
• Many schools just closed down, refusing to integrate them
• This lead to many people receiving no education or attending an extremely crowded school
• Many people lost jobs
• Death of Emmett Till, 1955

  • Emmett Till was brutally murdered (in the South) after flirting with a white shopkeeper.
  • He was taken up to the North for an open casket funeral, where there were many photographers and people. The situation gained publicity as many were horrified by the cruel state Emmett was in.
  • The murderers were tried but not convicted as the jury was all white.
  • However the situation did bring attention to the extreme racism that was occurring in the South, convincing many people to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement.