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Social Change. Change is happening in the Southeastern United States. Whites are loosing control and are loosing their hold on segregation, so they turn to violence. Social Change.
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Social Change Change is happening in the Southeastern United States. Whites are loosing control and are loosing their hold on segregation, so they turn to violence.
Social Change • After the war, MS changed. A stronger middle class started forming with many soldiers coming back from war and going to college. • People began living in suburbs and subdivisions. • Vacuum cleaners and frozen foods made life easier and also replaced the black maids who had been used before. • The split between what had been sharecropper and land owner, disappeared.
Segregation and Integration • 1896-Plessy vs Ferguson case legally established a “separate but equal concept.” The concept allowed for facilities to be separate, as long as they were equal. • During the 1940’s and 1950’s it became evident to southerners that soon,this concept was no longer going to be legal. • Governor Hugh White of MS decided he would improve black schools instead of “force” integration.
Gov. Hugh White’s Plan • Raise black teacher pay. • Build black schools to match white schools. • Asked for black teachers support, they refused. • He was shocked they wanted integration.
Brown vs Board of Education • 1954 • The Supreme Court ruled that the “separate but equal concept” was unconstitutional. • 1955-Government decided that all schools must integrate with “all deliberate speed.” • Immediately there was a white resistance movement. • White Citizens Council-formed to protect segregation. (Delta)
Civil Rights Movement • During this time, many IGNORANT whites (not all whites) were very much aware that the segregation they wanted to keep, was not going to hold up. • What we know as the Civil Rights movement is a time period when African Americans used NON VIOLENCE resistance and ideas to gain equality in the South. • Many different things happened, whites became more violent, while blacks attempted to remain non violent. • These are some of those events that happened in MISSISSIPPI…
Emmett Till • 1955 • 14 year old black boy from Chicago. • In MS visiting his cousins and he was accused of “wolf whistled” at a white woman in a store on a dare from his cousin. • Two men (the woman’s husband and brother) kidnapped him. • Beat him, killed him, and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River. • Emmett’s mother wanted an open casket, so the world could see what happened to her child.
Killers Roy Bryant J. W. Milam
Trial • They later bragged and admitted their guilt in a national magazine. • Made white Mississippians look terrible. • Milam and Bryant spend about an hour in the court room before they were released on no charges by an all white jury.
Crisis at Ole Miss • 1962 James Meredith, a black college student, was refused as he tried to enroll at Ole Miss. • President JFK sent federal Marshalls to MS to help Meredith register. • Later at an Ole Miss football game, the president of the college started a riot of whites demanding Meredith not be allowed in. • National Guard had to be sent in.
Crisis at Ole Miss Civil rights monument at Ole Miss James Meredith
Medgar Evers • Beckwith was put on trial but released by a “hung jury.” • Medgar Evers widow took this as an improvement. • For some white men in an all white jury to be willing to put a white man behind bars, was an improvement in MS. • 1963 • Medgar Evers was leader of the MS NAACP branch. • He was shot and killed on his front porch by Byron de La Beckwith a white supremacist.
Medgar Evers Medgar evers Medgar evers
Medgar Evers Byron de la beckwith Home
Convicted 31 years later 1994 Trueknowledge.com Trueknowledge.com 0 years old 2001 age 80
Organizations to end Segregation SNCC NAACP • National Association for the Advancement of Colored People • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Sit-Ins • Demonstrations where groups enter public places and refuse to leave. • These pictures would circulate the nation, making southern whites look moronic. • These pictures encouraged white college students to come and help blacks in the south!
Freedom Summer-1964 • 1,000 college students from up north boarded busses and road south to help African Americans get registered to vote. • These white students would live in black homes, go to black churches. • Their presence brought MUCH hostility from whites. They did not want interference. • By August-4 people had died, 80 beaten, thousands had been arrested. • 67 homes, churches, buildings had been burned or bombed.
Neshoba CountyMichael Schwerner, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman • Went to Neshoba County to investigate a burned church. They were arrested and let go only to be chased down and killed. • FBI later located the bodies after paying off an informant.
Neshoba County Sheriff Law2.umkc.edu
Freedom Summer • AT THIS POINT..Most white Mississippians did not agree with this violence. They were actually getting tired of being the “bad guys” of the country. • Also remember, a lot of this violence is now happening in small, backwood towns in MS where the police and small town mayors were involved. • They did resent the Civil Rights workers coming and interfering with their state.
Freedom Summer HATTIESBURG MCCOMB
Freedom Summer Freedom schools Trying to register to vote
School Integration • Schools in MS did not integrate until the 1970’s. • This is 20 years after Brown vs Board of Education. • Private schools developed for people who would not allow their children to go to school with black students “white flight”. • People feared violence, but it was usually all talk. • Discrimination for black principals, almost always made vice principals.
