AIM # 59: How did the Civil Rights Movement Begin?

In the 1950s television was introduced which quickly became the major source of American’s information & entertainment. The TV age changed US culture by further unifying the nation & giving everyone immediate access to news, sporting events, & entertainment.

TV’s popularity led to the closing of many small local movie theaters, the folding of many daily newspapers, the decline of downtown areas, & the temporary decline of the movie industry. In the late 1970’s the introduction of video recorders, computerized special effects, & the growth of huge suburban multiplexes revived the movie industry. Many movie studios survived by producing TV shows.

For most of the 20^th century blacks made little progress in improving their economic condition or civil rights until the development of the civil rights movement in the late 1950’s. The Supreme Court’s historic “ Brown vs. Topeka Kansas Board of Education “ decision of 1954, ended the 1896 “ separate but equal “ provision of the “Plessy vs. Ferguson “ decision. The Brown decision ended public school segregation.

Communities all over the US had to begin integrating their schools. Communities began bussing children to different schools to meet the Court’s integration order. This bussing angered many white parents who didn’t want their children bussed out of their neighborhoods, while others didn’t want their kids going to school with blacks or having black kids come into their schools or neighborhoods. Slowly, with a great deal of anger & some violence, US schools slowly integrated.

Blacks, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, began to boycott segregated southern facilities & businesses and began voter registration drives to get more blacks registered to vote. King created an awareness for the need for civil rights reform & legislation. King maintained that these actions be non-violent, & that blacks should not react violently to provocation & violence by whites. Dr. King believed that the races could live peacefully together and that progress would be made through the legislative process rather than through violence.

HOMEWORK: Tomorrow, or the next time we meet, we will see a video on the Civil Rights movement, then the next day have a test on Chapt. 29. After we review the test you will read pgs. 672 - #2 on pg.629 & do the vocab. on pg. 673.