LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Civil Rights Movement: United States
built 272 days ago
In this Civil Rights movement lesson plan from the Alabama Department of Archives & History students read Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and other documents relating to King's incarceration in a Birmingham jail in April, 1963. Students are then asked to write a press release to be sent to each newspaper, radio station and television station in Alabama which will explain what happened in Birmingham. High School level resource.
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Out of the civil rights movement came many civil rights laws and favorable Supreme Court decisions extending rights and privileges to all United States citizens regardless of color, race, or national origin. In 1957, the Civil Rights Office of the Federal Department of Justice was established to enforce newly created civil rights laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in public schools, places of accommodation, and employment on the basis of color, race, and national origin. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited various methods used to prevent blacks from voting. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination in the selling, rental, and financing of homes. The Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988 and the Civil Rights Act of 1991 strengthened civil rights protections and provided damages for those who have been injured by civil rights violations.
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Landmark judicial decisions and a now famous bus boycott resulted in the civil rights movement gaining unprecedented strength and momentum in southern states in the 1950s. In 1954, with Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP arguing on behalf of the plaintiffs, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that the segregation of public facilities was unconstitutional. In 1955, the Court ordered the desegregation of public schools, though it did not set a deadline for this process. Three years after Brown, nearly all southern schools remained segregated. The NAACP decided to push the federal government to enforce the 1955 Supreme Court order to desegregate public schools, focusing on an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. In September 1957, nine black teenagers enrolled in Central High School.
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Although the southern civil rights movement first hit the national headlines in the 1950s and 1960s, the struggle for racial equality in America had begun long before. Indeed, resistance to institutionalized white supremacy dates back to the formal establishment of segregation in the late nineteenth century. Community leaders in Savannah and Atlanta protested the segregation of public transport at the turn of the century, and individual and community acts of resistance to white domination abounded across the state even during the height of lynching and repression. Atlanta washerwomen, for example, joined together to strike for better pay, and black homes often contained guns to fight off the Ku Klux Klan.
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In Thursday's civil rights news, MSNBC reports some prominent civil rights leaders expressed their opposition to President Bush's visit to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s grave today on the occasion of what would have been his 75th birthday. They believe the visit was merely an attempt to boost fundraising. During his visit, President Bush was booed by the crowd, and two people were arrested during a wreath-laying ceremony. Dr. King's widow, Corretta Scott King, declined to comment.... The Cleveland Jewish News reports on the ruling earlier this week by federal judge Ronald Lee Gilman that held the dispaly of Ten Commandment monuments in public schools to violate the constitutional separation of church and state. The Adams County Ministerial Association had erected the monuments and the suit opposing the monuments was filed by the Ohio chapter of the ACLU.
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Despite these problems, the civil rights movement had forever changed the face of U.S. law and politics. It had led to legislation that gave greater protection to the rights of minorities. It had ... greatly changed the role of the judiciary in U.S. government, as the Supreme Court had become more active in its defense of individual rights, often in response to litigation and demonstrations initiated by those in the movement. In this respect, the Court and the civil rights movement had great influence on each other, with each reacting to and encouraging the efforts of the other. Likewise, the federal government had, even if hesitatingly, enforced the rights of a persecuted minority in the face of vigorous opposition from the southern states.
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