OBJECTIVE – Examine three of the many struggle faced by the Civil Rights Movement on its quest for equality.

DISCUSSION – Even though many battle had been won by the Civil Rights Movement numerous hurdles still lay in the way of true equality.  Many individuals contributed to the overall cause but the story of a few stand out. 

            Even though public schools had been desegregated by the Brown v. Board of Education  ruling the task of being the first black students to go into an all white school would be daunting.  In 1957 at Little Rock High School nine students were selected to be the first to join the all white school.  The Story that follows is the experience of one of those students.

Crisis in Little Rock

Primary Source – When 16-year-old Elizabeth Eckford left for Little Rock ’s Central High School in September 1957, she did not know that the governor had ordered the National Guard to keep her and eight other black students from entering the all-white school. This is Eckford’s account of her first day at an integrated school.

Before I left home Mother called us into the living room. She said we should have a word of prayer. Then I caught the bus and got off a block from the school. I saw a large crowd of people standing across the street from the soldiers guarding Central. As I walked on, the crowd suddenly got very quiet. Superintendent Blossom had told us to enter by the front door. I looked at all the people and thought, “Maybe I will be safer if I walk down the block to the front entrance behind the guards.”

            At the corner I tried to pass through the long line of guards around the school so as to enter the grounds behind them. One of the guards pointed across the street. So I pointed in the same direction and asked whether he meant for me to cross the street and walk down. He nodded “yes.” So, I walked across the street conscious of the crowd that stood there, but they moved away from me.

            For a moment all I could hear was the shuffling of their feet. Then someone shouted, “Here she comes, get ready!” I moved away from the crowd on the sidewalk and into the street. . . .

            The crowd moved in closer and then began to follow me, calling me names. I still wasn’t afraid. Just a little bit nervous. Then my knees started to shake all of a sudden and I wondered whether I could make it to the center entrance a block away. It was the longest block I ever walked in my whole life.

            Even so, I still wasn’t too scared because all the time I kept thinking that the guards would protect me.

            When I got right in front of the school, I went up to a guard again. But this time he just looked straight ahead and didn’t move to let me pass him. I didn’t know what to do. Then I looked and saw that the path leading to the front entrance was a little further ahead. So I walked until I was right in front of the path to the front door.

            I stood looking at the school—it looked so big!

Just then the guards let some white students go through.

            The crowd was quiet. I guess they were waiting to see what was going to happen. When I was able to steady my knees, I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in. He too didn’t move. When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet and then the other guards closed in and they raised their bayonets.

            They glared at me with a mean look and I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me.

            They moved closer and closer. Somebody started yelling, “Lynch her! Lynch her!”

            I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the mob—someone who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.

            They came closer, shouting, “No nigger bitch is going to get in our school. Get out of here!”

            I turned back to the guards but their faces told me I wouldn’t get help from them. Then I looked down the block and saw a bench at the bus stop. I thought, “If I can only get there I will be safe.” I don’t know why the bench seemed a safe place. . . .

            When I finally got there, I don’t think I could have gone another step. I sat down and the mob crowded up and began shouting all over again. Someone hollered, “Drag her over to this tree! Let’s take care of the nigger.” Just then a white man sat down beside me, put his arm around me and patted my shoulder. He raised my chin and said, “Don’t let them see you cry.”

            Then, a white lady—she was very nice—she came over to me on the bench. She spoke to me but I don’t remember now what she said. She put me on the bus and sat next to me. . . . [T]he next thing I remember I was standing in front of the School for the Blind, where Mother works.

from William Loren Katz, Eyewitness: The Negro in

American History (New York: Pitman, 1967), 492–494.

Rosa Parks was a woman who put herself on the line to improve the lives of her fellow man.  Her boldness in challenging the segregated busing system of Montgomery , Alabama provided the spark that mobilized a community and eventually a nation.  The Story that follows is a short synopsis of Mrs. Park’s participation in the Civil Rights Movement.

Rosa Parks

AMERICAN LIVES - Taking a Historic Stand by Sitting

“I didn’t have any special fear. It was more of a relief to know . . . that I wasn’t alone. If I was going to be fearful, it would have been as far back as I can remember, not just that separate incident.”—Rosa Parks, recalling her emotions during the Montgomery bus boycott, 1988

Rosa Parks (b. 1913) has been called the mother of the civil rights movement. Her quiet act of defiance against segregation on the buses of Montgomery , Alabama , started a wave of protest in the 1950s—and launched the career of Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Rosa McCauley had a difficult early life, as her parents separated and her small family struggled to live. She juggled school with work to help her family. At age 19, she married Raymond Parks, who had been active in efforts to register African Americans to vote. For the next 20 years, she worked a variety of jobs. Beginning in 1943, she was a secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). When she could, Parks protested segregation laws. She refused to use drinking fountains or elevators set aside for African Americans. She often walked home from work rather than take segregated buses.

            However, on December 1, 1955 , she was tired and took the bus. A white man got on the bus that day after the section reserved for whites was full. Parks and three other African Americans were told by the bus driver to give up their seats. Parks refused. “I don’t think I should have to,” she said. “Why do you push us around so?” The bus driver summoned police, and Parks was arrested.

            Edgar Daniel Nixon—head of the local NAACP—and two lawyers paid a bond to secure Parks’s release. Then Nixon asked if she would agree to appeal the case in order to challenge the segregation law. Her mother and husband feared for her safety, but she agreed to go ahead—if it will “do some good.” Meanwhile, other activists in Montgomery seized on Parks’s act of defiance. The Women’s Political Council had been ready for months to call for a boycott of the city bus line for its segregation and rude treatment of African-American passengers. Notified of Parks’s arrest, Jo Ann Robinson of the WPC issued thousands of fliers calling for the city’s blacks to boycott the bus line on December 5—the day of Parks’s trial.

            The boycott worked, and that night African

Americans met to discuss whether to continue it. At the meeting, a newly arrived minister—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—spoke and energized the crowd. The people decided to continue the boycott and named King as their leader. The boycott lasted more than a year. It ended when the Supreme Court ruled that the segregated city buses violated the rights of African Americans. With this success,

King had begun his brilliant career as America ’s chief civil rights leader.

            Life for Parks became difficult, however. She lost her job, and her husband was unable to work after suffering a nervous breakdown. They were plagued by threatening phone calls. Even after the boycott ended, no one would hire Parks. A year after the boycott ended, the Parkses moved to Detroit , where they had family. Rosa Parks made a living as a seamstress and also helped the local office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1965 she joined the staff of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Detroit .

            Over the years Parks has delivered speeches to raise money for the NAACP. In 1969 a street was named for her in Detroit . She has received many awards—most notably the 1984 Eleanor Roosevelt Women of Courage Award. In 1989 she attended the White House ceremony for the 25th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, where she was acknowledged by President Bush.