Today’s Schedule – 05/05/10
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28.3 Vocab, Timeline Check & Standards
28.3 PPT: The Struggle Intensifies
Movie: Mississippi Burning
HW:
– 28.4 Vocab and Timeline - TOMORROW
– Email Ms. Hayden Website Address – TONIGHT
– Supreme Court Case Analysis – FRIDAY
• Warm-Up: What would you be willing to put up
with to protect the freedoms of someone other
than yourself?
Sit-Ins
• Perfected by CORE
• Would sit in a public place and wait to be
served
• Forced business owners to decide between
disruption or potential loss of business
• By 1960 70,000 people had participated and
3,600 had served jail time
Freedom Rides
• CORE and SNCC would test whether
businesses were upholding the Supreme Court
decision in Boynton v. the State of Virginia in
its decision that interstate buses and all
according services desegregate
Violence Against Freedom Riders
• First freedom ride left D.C. on May 4, 1961
• Encountered minor problems until it reached
Anniston, AL were a mob surrounded one bus,
slashed the bus tires, held the door shut and
threw a firebomb into the bus
• Although all escaped many were brutally beaten
• Horrified by photographs of the event, Attorney
General Robert Kennedy pledged federal support
to the protestors
Integration of the University of
Mississippi “Ole Miss”
• In 1961 James Meredith applied to transfer
from a state college to Ole Miss and was
denied
• With the help of the NAACP he filed a lawsuit
against the college on the grounds that he was
denied admission based on his race
• The Supreme Court upheld his position
• Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett refused to
comply with the Supreme Court’s decision
• President JFK responded by sending in Federal
Marshalls although the violence continued and
resulted in the two deaths
• JFK then ordered soldiers in to restore order
• Meredith was ultimately admitted to Ole Miss
and required the continued assistance of
Federal Marshalls to ensure his safety
Protests in Birmingham, Alabama
• Birmingham was 40% African
American but considered by
Martin Luther King, Jr. to be the
most segregated city in
America
• In Spring of 1963 he planned a
series of nonviolent protests in
the city
• Birmingham’s police
commissioner “Bull” Connor
was determined that the city
remain segregated
• Protest marches and sit-ins began
• City officials obtained a court injunction stating
that the protestors cease actions on the grounds
that they were parading without a permit
• King risked civil disobedience by continuing the
protests and was arrested
• When criticized by fellow white clergymen for
actions King wrote his infamous “Letter from
Birmingham Jail”
• In his letter King disputed claims that his
actions were ill timed claiming that African
Americans had been told for too long to wait
for justice and equality
• Later in the same year it was decided that
youths should join protest marches in
Birmingham
• Bull Connor directed the arrest of more than
900 youths using response tactics such as high
pressure hoses, attack dogs and police beatings
• The public was shocked by images from the
march
• Eventually an interracial committee was
established to help desegregate the city