Browse Cases

Showing 51-73 of 73 results

Jacksonville students sit-in for integrated lunch counters, 1960

Country
United States
Time period
August 13, 1960 to November 5, 1960
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
8 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Alison Roseberry-Polier, 30/01/2011

Jacksonville, Florida, in 1960 was a city with a population of about 372,600, located in the northeast corner of the state. Of that population, nearly 100,000, or 27%, were African Americans—one of the highest urban concentrations of African Americans in the South. However, despite this high population, a legal mandate segregated the lunch-counters of various downtown department stores. Mayor Haydon Burns endorsed the segregation, telling storeowners not to integrate, despite the fact that they were not all adverse to integration.

Rock Hill, South Carolina, students sit-in for U.S. civil rights, 1960

Country
United States
Time period
12 February, 1960 to March, 1961
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
6 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Sophia Naylor, 31/1/2010

In 1955, before the sit-in campaign in Rock Hill, South Carolina even began, Rock Hill’s St. Anne School desegregated in compliance with the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling. In 1957, Rev. Cecil Ivory (who would later become a leader in the sit-in campaign), led a bus boycott that put the Rock Hill bus company out of business. Sit-ins elsewhere, including in nearby Charlotte (see “University students campaign for racial integration in Charlotte, NC, 1960”), helped start Rock Hill’s own sit-in campaign. Sit-in protests lasted throughout the entire year.

New Orleans citizens boycott for U.S. civil rights, 1960-61

Country
United States
Time period
April, 1960 to late, 1961
Classification
Change
Cluster
Economic Justice
Human Rights
National/Ethnic Identity
Total points
7 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Zein Nakhoda, 31/01/2010

In 1960, almost 40% of New Orleans' population was African American. The city's main shopping avenue was Canal Street, where all stores were white-owned, predominantly Christian, had segregated facilities, and didn't serve blacks at lunch counters. The second busiest shopping avenue was Dryades Street, where the stores were also white-owned, but store patrons were almost all black. Blacks could use the facilities, but were not employed in the stores aside from an occasional janitor.

Freedom Riders end racial segregation in Southern U.S. public transit, 1961

Country
United States
Time period
4 May, 1961 to 1 November, 1961
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
10 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Gavin Musynske 12/09, edited with additional material by George Lakey 9/9/11

In 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) conducted a “Journey of Reconciliation” to direct attention toward racial segregation in public transportation in the Southern U.S.A. Although this initial freedom ride campaign was not regarded as a great success during its time, it inspired the 1961 Freedom Rides that fueled the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

CORE's Route 40 Project: Maryland campaign for desegregation and U.S. Civil Rights, 1961

Country
United States
Time period
Summer, 1961 to November, 1961
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
8 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Ashley Banks, 31/01/2011

In 1960 and 1961, the Washington, D.C., area experienced an increase in diplomatic representatives from Africa, causing tension and emphasizing the issue of segregation in the area. Visiting African diplomats were exposed to segregation in many restaurants, facilities, and other public accommodations, particularly along Route 40 - a primary means of travel between the embassies in Washington D.C. and the United Nations headquarters in New York - where nearly all of the restaurants and facilities were only open to white customers.

The Albany Movement campaigns for full integration in Georgia (Fall 1961- Summer 1962)

Country
United States
Time period
Mid-November, 1961 to Summer, 1962
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
2 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Anthony Phalen, 06/11/2009

Up until 1961, the extent of the civil rights movement in Albany, Georgia had been limited to small student groups refusing to obey segregation laws; however, with the arrival of a prominent civil rights group the community would be energized. Albany, Georgia was chosen by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to conduct voter registration drives and SNCC arrived in September 1961 to begin the challenging process of mobilizing support and excitement around their cause.

University students campaign for racial integration in Charlotte, NC, 1960

Country
United States
Time period
February 9, 1960 to July 9, 1960
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
National/Ethnic Identity
Total points
9 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Samantha Bennett 28/01/2011

During a period of five months in the spring of 1960, students and adults in Charlotte, North Carolina, participated in the sit-in movement to protest segregation. It was an attempt to end racial segregation in the public facilities in the city of Charlotte. The city government was the opposition.

Baton Rouge students sit-in for U.S. civil rights (Southern University 16), 1960

Country
United States
Time period
March 28, 1960 to April, 1960
Classification
Change
Cluster
Democracy
Human Rights
Total points
3 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Arielle Bernhardt, 28/01/2010

Throughout most of the U.S. civil rights campaigns of the 1950s, Baton Rouge, Louisiana remained quiet. The city of “broad avenues and tree-lined streets” (Sinclair 1998) remained fully segregated despite movements towards desegregation in neighboring states. However, at the beginning of 1960, when university students staged sit-ins at lunch counters across the south, students at Baton Rouge’s Southern University took notice. Southern University, a black university on the edge of the city, became home to the main civil rights campaign in Baton Rouge.

Students protest segregation in Columbia, South Carolina, 1960-1961

Country
United States
Time period
February, 1960 to April, 1961
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
National/Ethnic Identity
Total points
4.5 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Elowyn Corby, 30/01/2011

By the beginning of the 1960s the Civil Rights Movement had taken hold of the United States, where black Americans had been treated unjustly since they first arrived in the nation.  During the Civil Rights Movement, black communities all throughout the US South rose up in protest against the segregationist policies that kept them in systematically separate and insufficient living arrangements, a world away from the “separate but equal” treatment promised them by the 14 amendment and its interpretation in the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson.

Peace campaigners act for civil rights in Albany, GA, 1963-1964

Country
United States
Time period
December 23, 1963 to February 24, 1964
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Peace
Total points
9 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Anthony Phalen, 06/11/2009

In 1963 a long-distance peace march demanding U.S. foreign policy change got caught in the wave of civil rights campaigns in the southern United States. Beginning on May 26, 1963, the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), a racially integrated group of social activists left Quebec City, Canada on their Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace to protest the United States' policy toward Cuba. 

Baltimore students demonstrate to integrate Northwood Theater, 1963

Country
United States
Time period
15 February, 1963 to 22 February, 1963
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
10 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Anjali Cadambi, 13/09/2011

On Friday, February 15, 1963, the student-led Civic Interest Group (CIG) began a demonstration against Northwood Theater in Baltimore, Maryland. The ultimately successful demonstration took place in the context of a longer history of protests against the cinema’s white-only policy. Students, mostly from Morgan State College, had picketed the Theater many times over the course of the previous eight years. Student demonstrations organized by student council occurred annually.

Jackson, Tennessee students campaign for U.S. civil rights, 1960-1961

Country
United States
Time period
13 October, 1960 to 1961
Classification
Change
Cluster
Democracy
Human Rights
Total points
7 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Alexa Ross, 12/09/2010

In the United States of America, the 1950s saw the emergence of key individuals in the building of the civil rights movement. The struggle for African Americans against their country’s institutionalized racism was highlighted by moments like Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. A preacher by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke of nonviolence in his people’s fight for equality. But at the turn of the decade, the civil rights movement trended a different way.

African Americans sit-in against segregation at Royal Ice Cream Parlor in Durham, N.C., 1957

Country
United States
Time period
23 June, 1957 to 15 July, 1958
Classification
Change
Cluster
Democracy
Human Rights
Total points
1 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Elena Ruyter 01/10/2011

In the 1950’s, Durham North Carolina was like most cities in the South: hot and segregated. At the time, the civil rights movement was already polarizing the nation, with the Montgomery bus boycotts in 1955 bringing to prominence such names as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks (see “African Americans boycott buses for integration in Montgomery, Alabama, U.S., 1955-1956”). In Mississippi, the brutal murder of Emmett Till that same year became an archetype of the horrendous nature of southern racism at its most cruel. Amidst the violence and racial tension, Martin Luther King Jr.

Montgomery, Alabama students sit-in for U.S. Civil Rights, 1960

Country
United States
Time period
February, 1960 to Fall, 1960
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
National/Ethnic Identity
Total points
1 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Matthew Turner, 11/09/2011

The Montgomery, Alabama sit-ins took place during the era of Jim Crow laws in the southern United States. The first of the Supreme Court rulings against these laws – which are symbolized by the phrase “Separate but Equal” – took place in 1954, in the form of Brown v. Board of Education; in this ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that separate education facilities based on race were inherently discriminatory, putting minorities at a disadvantage compared to their white counterparts.

African Americans campaign for desegregation of department store eating facilities in Kansas City, Missouri, 1958-59

Country
United States
Time period
September, 1958 to February, 1959
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
10 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Blaine O'Neill, 12/09/2010

By 1955 in Kansas City, most public facilities and privately owned businesses were desegregated. However, a report by William Gremley of the Human Relations Commission (HRC) identified the problem and criticized the practice of segregated eating establishments as harmful to race relations, unethical, and unattractive to prospective conventions and foreign dignitaries. In March 1957, Gremley attempted to address this issue and meet with William G. Austin, manager of the KC Merchants' Association, but Austin never followed through.

Fayette County, TN, African Americans form tent city for U.S. voting rights, 1960-1962

Country
United States
Time period
June, 1959 to July, 1962
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
National/Ethnic Identity
Economic Justice
Democracy
Total points
9 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Kate Aronoff, 11/09/2011

While the U.S. Supreme Court had already ruled against denying citizens from participation in elections, de facto racism in the country’s South kept countless African Americans from casting votes well into the 20th century. Despite the fact that African Americans represented roughly 70% of Fayette County, Tennessee’s population in 1960, before 1959 fewer than a dozen had voted. In contrast to other southern states, Tennessee had none of the poll taxes or literacy tests that would formally restrict voting. James F.

African Americans of Florida Parishes, Louisiana, demand civil rights protection, 1967

Country
United States
Time period
July, 1967 to August, 1967
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
5.5 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Walker Stole, 11/9/2011

Despite passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, several outrageous incidents over the following two years demonstrated the double standard of justice for blacks and whites. Blacks were brutally attacked, murdered, and targeted in an attempted church burning, all of which resulted either in no prosecution or acquittal by an all-white jury. In 1967, the Florida Parishes of Louisiana still remained an active stronghold for the Ku Klux Klan.

Black activists, determined to carry on with their struggle for equality, decided to march straight through Klan territory.

Louisville NAACP and CORE activists campaign for open accommodations, Kentucky, 1961

Country
United States
Time period
February, 1961 to June, 1961
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
National/Ethnic Identity
Total points
10 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Hannah Lehmann, 11/09/2011

In the late 1950s, Louisville, Kentucky, became known as a regional leader in race relations due to the passage of peaceful school integration laws in 1956. Although laws targeting segregation had been passed, Louisville’s public accommodations continued to be segregated. This persistence of inequality between the African Americans and the European Americans spurred much protest in the black community, especially among youth.

Baltimore students sit-in for U.S. civil rights, 1960

Country
United States
Time period
March, 1960 to April, 1960
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
Total points
8 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Summer Miller-Walfish, 13/09/2010

Young people powered a major part of the civil rights movement in the United States. In particular, sit-ins proved to be a powerful tool that students across the country utilized. One of the biggest student sit-ins took place in Baltimore in 1960. The goal of the sit-in was to desegregate department store restaurants. Despite only lasting three weeks, the campaign was very successful.

Black citizens boycott white merchants for U.S. voting rights, Tuskegee, Alabama, 1957-1961

Country
United States
Time period
25 June, 1957 to February, 1961
Classification
Change
Defense
Cluster
Democracy
Human Rights
National/Ethnic Identity
Total points
8 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Thomas Fortuna 11/09/2011

In 1957, in an effort to frustrate increasing black voter registration and the threat of losing a white voter majority, Alabama state senator Sam Engelhardt sponsored Act 140, which proposed to transform the Tuskegee City boundaries from a square into a twenty-eight sided shape resembling a “seahorse” that included every single one of the 600 white voters and excluded all but 5 of the 400 black voters.

CORE activists practice nonviolent action at Miami lunch counters, 1959

Country
United States
Time period
5 September, 1959 to 25 September, 1959
Classification
Change
Cluster
Economic Justice
Human Rights
Total points
6 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Pauline Blount, 29/09/2011

By the late 1950s, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was nearly two decades old, and had grown to successfully organize a national network of interracial, nonviolent direct-action cells working towards integration and civil rights for African Americans.  CORE’s interracial approach stemmed from their assertion that the race problem is a human, social problem applicable to all people.  Their incredible growth between 1957 and 1959 stemmed not only from the added support of Dr.

Baltimore, MD, students sit-in to integrate Read's drug stores, USA, 1955

Country
United States
Time period
January 20, 1955 to January 20, 1955
Classification
Change
Cluster
Human Rights
National/Ethnic Identity
Total points
9 out of 10 points
Name of researcher, and date dd/mm/yyyy
Nancy Liu, 11/09/2011

A Read’s Drug Store was built at the corner of Howard and Lexington Streets in 1934, when it was first praised as a local landmark and the modern flagship store for the chain. The store was located at the center of the downtown shopping district and the business grew as Read’s drug store expanded throughout downtown Baltimore and surrounding regions.