• Engelsk
  • Uddannelse: STX
  • Karakter: 10 tal
  • Ord: 1442

Indholdsfortegnelse
In the 50s and 60s, American Students Faced Violence and Death to Demand Racial Equality
- the Bus Boycott
- Sit-ins
- the March on Washington
- Freedom Summer
Comprehension:
Vocabulary:
Grammar Activities
- Step 1
- Step 2

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Uddrag
In 1954, the majority of schools in the U.S. were racially segregated. According to legal rulings, as long as schools were “equal”, they could be separate for Blacks and Whites.

Linda Brown lived two city streets from a local school in Topeka Kansas, but because she was black, she had to travel 21 blocks to an all-black school.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) decided to use her as an example of why the law should be changed.

The Supreme Court decided that “separate but equal” was unconstitutional. The decision was supposed to take effect immediately.

But the immediate result, particularly in the South, was the formation of White Citizens Councils to prevent desegregation.

In 1957, these groups came to Arkansas to stop nine black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High School.

When the governor of Arkansas refused to do anything about the mobs threatening the students, President Eisenhower had to send troops to protect them.

One of the nine students, Melba Pattillo, was 15. She had a soldier as her bodyguard as she went to class. Still, white pupils attacked her.

One boy threw acid at her and damaged her eyes. Another boy put a knife to her face. The teachers, she said, never tried to stop anyone hurting her.

She stayed one year at Central High. Governor Faubus closed all the schools in Little Rock for the next year. Melba and the other black students went to live with families in other parts of America to continue their education.

The Bus Boycott
Schools were not the only places that were segregated.

Blacks and Whites had separate seats on buses and in cinemas, could not sit at the same lunch counters or eat in the same restaurants, or use the same toilets or water fountains.

Then in 1955 (two years before black students entered Little Rock’s high school), Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. She was arrested.