Zusammenfassung der Ressource
The NAACP - Key cases (Brown vs Board of Education) and strategy
- Who were they?
- Founded in 1909
- Multi - racial group of civil rights campaigners
- Headed by W.E.B. Dubois
- Created to fight for the rights of black people
- Oppose discrimination and racial hatred
- Middle to upper class blacks
- National Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People
- Between 1939 - 1942 membership
grew from 50,000 to 450,000
- Best known for campaigning court cases which challenged
legal basis of segregation
- Also involved with non-violent direct action and
other initiatives to empower African Americans.
- E.g. Louisiana Progressive Voters League aimed to
encourage black voting registration - sub section of
NAACP
- Why did they go to court?
- Believed they could use the legal
system to end segregation
- American Constitution attempts to
protect the rights of individuals thorough
the separation of powers
- Challenge 'Jim Crow' laws
- Appeals to Fourteenth Amendment
- Everyone born in the USA
has full citizenship rights
- Appeals to Fifteenth Amendment
- All citizens have the right to vote
- Provided funds and experienced
lawyers - Thurgood Marshall
- Support the court cases of individual black men and women who
were prepared to take the authorities to court
- Examples
- Smith vs. Allwright
1944 - 1950
- Lonnie E. Smith challenged these laws
and the case was taken to the Supreme
Court
- Black people could only vote in Congressional
elections, not primary elections
- White primaries were part of
politics in many southern states
- Court case ruled that Texan white primary
primary was illegal due to the 15th
Amendment
- This ruling applied to the whole of America - hence white primaries
were outlawed everywhere
- Morgan vs. Virginia
1946
- Challenged segregation on interstate buses
- 1944 - Irene Morgan was fined $100 for refusing to give
up her seat for a white man
- Morgan argued that transport segregation violated her
constitutional rights
- Case was taken to Supreme Court
with Thurgood Marshall's backing
- In 1946, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on interstate
buses was illegal
- Non-violent resistance
1945 - 55
- Organised a series of protests in Louisiana (in the South)
- 1947 - Picketed New Orleans' four biggest
department stores for refusing to allow black
customers to try on hats.
- 1951 - tried same tactic in Alexandra in protest of the local black school closing
so black children could work in the cotton fields during the cotton harvest.
- 1953 - organised a boycott of a newly built school in Lafayette,
protesting that its facilities were obviously worse than those at the
local white school.