Zoe Camp Williams AAST 201, Section 003, Fall 2019 First Month Reflection 09/19/19 African American Studies School integration was a big part of the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1950s, the NAACP brought those demands to the Supreme Court. In 1954, Brown V. Board stated that segregated schools were ruled unconstitutional and overturned the “Separate but equal” approach. African American attendance at the schools was a test of Brown v. Board of Education. Autherine Lucy was the first black to attend the University of Alabama. When administrators found out her race, she was denied admittance but reenrolled in 1956 after a threeyear court battle. Mob violence on campus resulted in her suspension for “protection.” Another test was The Little Rock Nine. They were a group of nine black students who enrolled at Central High School in 1957. There were numerous amounts of riots after the whites found out African Americans were attending their formally all-white school. It got so bad to the point where all nine students had to be escorted from class to class by members of the U.S Army. I learned about James Meredith, an African American male who enrolled at the University of Mississippi. Chaos broke out when he attended and ended with hundred of people wounded and/or arrested. That situation also got bad and resulted in John F. Kennedy sending Federal Marshals and National Guardsmen. What I found interesting so far was that Rosa Parks was not the first to refuse to give up her seat to a white passenger. All my life, we were taught that Rosa Parks was the first African America to refuse, but it was really Claudette Colvin. She was arres ted at 15 in Montgomery, Al for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. History was focused more on Rosa Parks, which was nine months after Colvin. Colvin received little notice and not a lot of people know she was the first. “It felt like Sojourner Truth was on one side pushing me down, and Harriet Tubman was on the other side of me pushing me down. I couldn't get up,” said Colvin, in an interview I watched. I realized that White people do not care about what age we are, they only care about our skin color. In 1955, an African American boy named Emmett Till was brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman in the corner store. He was only 14 years old when he died. Bryant and Milam, Till’s murders. Made him carry a 75lb cotton gin fan to the Tallahatchie River, made him undress, gouged his eyes, shot him in the head, tied his body to the cotton gin with barbed wire, and threw his body in river. It was said that his body was so disfigured that his great uncle, Moses Wright, could only identify the body by his initialed ring. The jury issued a verdict of “not guilty.” While doing more research about Till, I ran across another story of a young, African American boy who goes by the name, George Stinney Jr. Stinney was also a 14-year-old boy, but he lived in South Carolina. In 1944, he was accused of murdering two white girls and was forced into confession. He was the youngest person to be put to death by an electric chair. The trial was only two hours and he was immediately sentenced to death row. He was interrogated for hours in a locked room with no witnesses or attorney. Racism is still going on today, and it will never end. Every day it is shown in media how we are wrongfully treated due to our skin tone, something we can’t control. I look forward to learning new things in this African American Studies class because obviously I haven’t been taught the things I should’ve known, especially being an African American. I want to be knowledgeable about my history and how to face reality living with black skin.
