The announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Abraham Lincoln in January 1963 freed all the slaves who were held in the Southern states. This ushered in a new era where the subjugation and stigmatization of the blacks would end. However, this was far from what was expected, as one century later, the blacks would form the Civil Rights movements to fight for their rights against white-dominated mainstream society. The 1960s saw the engagement of blacks in protests and acts of civil unrest that sought to dismantle the Jim Craw segregation laws that upheld racial discrimination. This paper seeks to explore the participation of the blacks in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, and Little Rock Nine in Central High School in Arkansas.
Discussion
One of the issues that have been in the limelight for a long time in America is the segregation of students in public schools. This followed the enforcement of the Jim Crow laws that promoted racial discrimination. The crisis in Little Rock was instigated by the ruling made by the Brown vs. Board case in 1954. In the case, Brown argued that the “separate but equal” doctrine laid down in the constitution promoted inequality in the public education sector (Perry & Perry, 2015). In the same year, the board of Little Rock instructed the superintendent to develop a desegregation plan. The plan created stated that Little Rock would immediately enforce desegregation in high school and junior high school by 1957. The strategy, however, changed in 1955 when the board approved desegregation in only Central High School. Further, the school would only admit several black students. Based on the existing plan, elementary and junior schools would be desegregated years later.
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Little Rock's approach was consistent with the Supreme Court's decision that did not require public schools to enforce immediate and complete desegregation. Arkansas had supported this requirement as issued by the Supreme Court. In 1957, the Little Rock Nine were denied entrance into Central High School by the Arkansas National Guard as ordered by Governor Orval Faubus (Perry & Perry, 2015). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) won a lawsuit against the governor, and the state was advised to remove the troops from the school. As the Little Nine entered the school in September 1957, they faced mob violence from the white students, forcing the president to send 101st Airborne Division and placed the Arkansas National Guard under the control of the federal government. For months, the students endured threats and harassment from the whites and the community.
In December 1955, Rosa Parks, a black woman from Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger as required by the segregation laws in the city. At the time, Parks was a member of the NAACP and a dedicated civil rights activist. Subsequently, Parks was arrested and jailed for challenging the segregation laws set. Following these events, the NAACP staged the Montgomery Bus Boycott on December 5, the same year where most black residents failed to use the public bus system (Morowski, McCormick & Speaker, 2015). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was chosen as the leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), which organized the boycott activities. The MIA members used the opportunity to stage a long-term boycott that sought to eliminate the segregation policy in the city's bus system. The blacks refused to ride on the public buses if their demands were not met. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for 382 days, ended when the Supreme Court determined that segregation in the bus system was unconstitutional. Consequently, the city's bus system was ordered to desegregate.
This paper has evaluated two events that challenged the segregation system that undermined the blacks in the US. In the Little Rock Nine, the nine students, under the NAACP leadership, filed a lawsuit against the state of Arkansas due to the racial segregation in Central High School. After the students won the lawsuit, the federal government had to intervene to protect them from threats from fellow students and the community. On the other hand, the Montgomery Bus Boycott led to eliminating the segregation laws in the bus system in Alabama. The findings of this study indicate the success of the two events organized by the Civil Rights Movements in abolishing racial segregation in public institutions in America.
References
Morowski, D. L., McCormick, T. M. & Speaker, M. (2015). The Montgomery Bus Boycott: Utilizing primary sources and identifying multiple perspectives. Social Studies and the Young Learner. 27(3): 26-30.
Perry, R. K. & Perry, D. L. (2015). Sacrifice: profiles of the Little Rock Nine: In: The Little Rock Crisis. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137521347_4
