The Jim Crow Laws and Racism in United States History (7 page)

Attorneys presented their cases again in
Brown
in late 1953. Warren realized that
Brown
v.
Board of Education
would be one of the most important decisions in American history. He wanted the vote to be unanimous.

The 1950s, after the end of World War II, was a strange time in American politics. Now that the United States was facing off with its Cold War opponent, the Communist Soviet Union, appearances were important. For years, the Soviets and other governments around the world had used the racial tension and violence in the United States as part of their argument that the United States was inferior to other nations. It was especially important to many American politicians at the time of the
Brown
case for the United States to look as if it were making progress in improving racial relations.

Gradually, Chief Justice Warren won over reluctant justices.

Little Rock

On May 12, 1954, the Supreme Court gave its unanimous decision. It struck down the notion of separate but equal in the field of education. But making the decision was only the first part of dismantling inequalities that had existed for centuries. How would the integration of schools be enforced?

One thing was certain: The judges would not oversee desegregation themselves. School districts would handle desegregation individually.

In 1955, the Court made its second announcement on the
Brown
case. This decision, sometimes referred to as
Brown II
, called on districts to integrate their schools with “all deliberate speed.”
⁶
This vague phrase produced varying results. Baltimore, Maryland; St. Louis, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; and Wilmington, Delaware; desegregated their schools within a year. Little Rock, Arkansas, desegregated, too—but only after an ugly episode that gripped the nation.

In Little Rock, “deliberate speed” meant waiting more than two years for formerly all-white schools to admit blacks. Even then, the integration was far from total. Only one school—working-class Central High School—would be integrated. And only nine black students would join the white students there.

Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Elizabeth Eckford, Thilma Mothershed, Gloria Ray, Melba Patillo, Ernest Green, Terrance Roberts, and Minnijean Brown were chosen as the black students who would integrate Central High. They eagerly waited for the first day of school on September 3, 1957.

Many whites failed to share their enthusiasm. Some filed a petition in an Arkansas court to prevent desegregation. It appeared that the school opening would not proceed peacefully.

Orval Faubus had won election as Arkansas governor in 1954. By local standards, he was a moderate. Many Southern politicians boasted about how they intended to keep segregation. At first, Faubus avoided such talk. He won re-election in 1956. But another election would come in 1958, and he knew what the most vocal voters wanted. Before the school year began, he declared that he would not force integration on the people of Arkansas, whom, he said, did not want it.

On August 29, Faubus appeared before a local court and issued an order forbidding desegregation. He declared that “blood will run in the streets” if blacks tried to enter Central High School.
⁷
A federal district court, however, ordered the desegregation to take place.

Defiantly, Governor Faubus ordered hundreds of Arkansas National Guard troops to keep the black students out of the school. When the students arrived, the troops turned them away.

Federal Judge Ronald Davies ordered Governor Faubus to allow the nine black students to enter the high school. Faubus refused. The Little Rock school board spoke to the governor on the students’ behalf. Still, Faubus refused to help the blacks. Davies set September 20 as the date for a hearing on his order. The United States Department of Justice gave a report on the side of the students.

This was no small incident that was taking place. Reporters from major newspapers covered the unsuccessful attempt at integration. More important, television cameras brought the spectacle into living rooms across the country. Viewers in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago saw American citizens being refused a basic right because of their race.

Among those aware of these events was President Dwight David Eisenhower. The president was not a firm civil rights supporter. However, Governor Faubus was disobeying a court order. As a former soldier, Eisenhower was a firm believer in following orders. Eisenhower met with Faubus on September 14 in Newport, Rhode Island. Faubus said he would keep the National Guard on duty, but would admit the black students to school. After the meeting, he went back on that promise. On September 20, Faubus ordered the National Guard removed from Central High School.

With the National Guard gone, the nine black students entered the high school through a side door. When the white mob discovered the students’ presence, members began attacking the Little Rock police, who were guarding the building.

Eisenhower could not ignore this disturbance. He placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal control and ordered them back to Central High School. He also ordered the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, to Little Rock.

Surrounded by soldiers, the students could at last go to school in safety. One of them, Melba Patillo, recalled:

As we neared the school, I could hear the roar of a helicopter directly overhead. Our convoy was joined by more jeeps. . . . Closer to the school, we saw more soldiers and many more hostile white people with scowls on their faces, lining the sidewalk and shaking their fists. But for the first time I wasn’t afraid of them.
⁸

The black students entered the school and stayed there all day without incident. By October 14, Eisenhower had ordered the removal of half of the federal troops. On October 23, students entered the school without military escorts. Eisenhower ordered the paratroopers removed in late November, although the National Guard stayed there for the rest of the school year. Although the black students endured continuous insults and humiliations, only one failed to stay for the entire school year.

Governor Faubus ordered Central High School closed for the 1958–1959 school year. White students went to private schools and blacks returned to all-black schools. In June 1959, a United States district court voided that plan. Central High School reopened in September, and black students entered without incident.

The end of the Little Rock crisis did not end all school segregation. Twelve years after the
Brown
decision, some school districts still had not let African Americans enter all-white schools. Mississippi and Alabama admitted black students to state universities only after President John F. Kennedy had called out National Guard troops. But Little Rock was a milestone. The federal government showed that it would use force if necessary to protect the educational rights of students, regardless of race.

Chapter 8

“IF NOT US, WHO?”

Gradually, attitudes changed. For the most part, it was blacks, not whites, who led the change. In the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans throughout the South protested their conditions. Many whites fought any move toward reform. “They viewed that anything they gave us would be viewed as just a start,” claimed Montgomery, Alabama, activist Jo Ann Robinson. “And you know, they were probably right.”
¹

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks was a slender, reserved, forty-two-year-old woman. She hardly seemed to be the material from which legends are made. But Rosa Parks was the right woman in the right place at the right time.

Rosa Parks probably did not feel like a hero on December 1, 1955. She worked as a seamstress at a downtown department store in Montgomery, Alabama. She altered clothing and ran a steam press. Parks had been on her feet all day. She was exhausted as she waited for her ride home on the Cleveland Avenue bus.

Four fifths of Montgomery bus riders were blacks. However, the local bus company reserved the first ten rows of seats for whites. If whites filled their seats, blacks had to give up their own.

The Cleveland Avenue bus was full that Thursday afternoon. Soon, white passengers filled the first rows of seats. Parks and three other blacks were seated in the first row behind the white section. A white man wanted to sit down. Bus driver J. F. Blake ordered all the blacks in the first black row to leave their seats. Rosa Parks remained seated.

“When the driver saw me still sitting, he asked if I was going to stand up, and I said, ‘No, I’m not,’” she said later. “And then he said, ‘Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to call the police and have you arrested.’ I said, ‘You may do that.’”
²

An observer of the arrest called Edgar Nixon, the city’s most notable black leader. Nixon had known Rosa Parks for years. He headed the local NAACP chapter, where Parks served as a volunteer secretary.

Parks’s arrest might not have surprised Nixon. After all, black bus riders had complained for years of hassles by white drivers. When the person arrested was Rosa Parks, Nixon figured it was time for action. If the black community could rally around anyone, it was Rosa Parks. “She was decent,” Nixon said. “She was committed. . . . You had to respect her as a lady. . . . [W]hen she did something, people just figured it was the right thing to do.”
³

That night, Nixon discussed the case with Parks and her family. They decided to organize a one-day boycott of the Montgomery bus line. They called attorney Fred Gray, who then called Jo Ann Robinson. She met with three friends at Alabama State College. The four of them spent most of the night producing thirty-five thousand leaflets to be distributed throughout Montgomery’s black neighborhoods. The leaflets asked all blacks not to ride city buses on Monday, December 5.

Transportation boycotts by blacks were nothing new in the South. Ever since the 1880s, African Americans who resented white treatment had tried protests. However, they lacked alternative forms of transportation. Most boycotts lasted a few weeks at most, then fizzled. This time, conditions were different. Many black Montgomery residents had cars, taxis, or other means of travel. They also had organization, which was lacking in previous generations.

More than a hundred black leaders met at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church on Friday, December 2. They looked at the boycott not as a one-day event, but as a possible long-term war. They asked black taxi drivers to give free or highly discounted rides. They mapped out routes and figured out drop-off and pick-up points for passengers.

Boycott leaders spent the weekend contacting almost every black resident in the city. Montgomery’s black ministers agreed to speak to their congregations on Sunday morning. Some ministers toured the city’s bars and nightclubs on Saturday night, talking to those who might not be churchgoers.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the young minister of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, looked out his window early Monday morning. The normally crowded bus was empty. That scene repeated itself throughout the city. Black residents of Montgomery were staying off the buses.

Meanwhile, Rosa Parks went to the city court. She paid a fourteen-dollar fine but appealed the case. More than five hundred of her supporters accompanied her.

Boycott leaders called for a meeting that evening at Holt Street Baptist Church. Thousands of people attended. Ministers and congregations agreed that the boycott must continue. At this meeting, they organized the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). Martin Luther King, Jr., was chosen as the new group’s leader.

Mayor W. A. Gayle did not appear to be worried after the boycott’s first day. He predicted, “Comes the first rainy day and the Negroes will be back on the buses.”
⁴

“A Stick-togetherness”

Rainy days passed. Cold days passed. Instead of wearying of the boycott, black protesters became stronger. “There was a stick-togetherness that drew them like a magnet,” Jo Ann Robinson recalled.
⁵

The boycott was remarkably successful. The bus company had lost so many riders that it asked for permission to double its fares. More than the bus line suffered. The boycott began in December, the busiest shopping month of the year. Many blacks who boycotted the buses also stayed away from downtown, white-owned stores. Those stores made $2 million less than during the previous holiday season.

Some wealthy whites indirectly supported the protest by transporting their maids or domestic workers, who refused to take the bus.

Some whites fought back. Rosa Parks and her husband lost their jobs. The city ordered taxis to stop giving free rides. This kept most boycotters from taking the cabs. When cars started carrying people to and from work for a fifteen-cent gas fee, police stopped the drivers of those cars and arrested them for operating a taxi without a license.

The MIA responded by organizing a volunteer car pool. Cars picked up riders without charging a fee. The MIA paid gasoline and mechanical expenses. Churches bought several cars with MIA funds and used them exclusively for the boycott. Volunteer dispatchers sent cars where they were needed. Each day, 325 cars picked up riders at 48 dispatch points. Even the Montgomery police department admired the operation.

The boycott cost money. The MIA spent about $4,000 per week. It got money from church collections and bake sales. As news of the boycott’s success spread, donations came in from around the country.