Nonviolence was the key to tactical victories won in this era. And the Constitution of the United States was the anchor that provided guarantees that non-violent tactics were legally defensible to provide the gains necessary. People were willing to violate local laws because they believed they answered to a higher law, the Constitution. Students should become aware of the hardships faced by people who were willing to risk job and home and even life to win the prize of justice, self-respect and fair treatment. What gains were made during this decade of marches, meetings, jailings, sit-ins and freedom rides?
My unit presents five themes, in the context of barriers to overcome: A. SOCIAL BARRIERS.

Racial prejudices and fears that led to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan; fears of black-white race-mixing, culminating in the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. Why did the Till case become a national scandal? Tills mother said, The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of all of us.

B. EDUCATIONAL BARRIERS.

Implementation of the Brown decision in Little Rock produced heroes and villains like Orval Faubus, Daisy Bates and Thurgood Marshall. What was it like for Mrs. Bates after she was struck by a rock thrown through her living room window with a note, Stone this time. Dynamite next?
The confrontation achieved historic proportions when President Eisenhower reluctantly brought in federal troops to protect the Little Rock Nine after rioting had occurred outside the school. Watching those students being escorted by rifle-toting soldiers through the front door of the high school is a scene few can forget. C. POLITICAL AND LEGAL BARRIERS.

The tactics developed by civil rights activists sit-ins and freedom rides proved effective in breaking these barriers down. What of the price? Beginning at a Woolworths lunch counter in Greensboro in February 1958, sit-ins soon spread to fifteen cities in four other states. In Nashville things got violent and courts there upheld the segregation statutes. National attention focused on the movement. In 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed, with a resulting shift in power from the older, more conservative legal approach to a more direct challenge to confront the enemy where he was.
POLITICAL AND LEGAL BARRIERS (con’t).

Victory in Nashville in 1960 promoted sit-ins in over one hundred Southern cities.
Freedom Rides began a year later, following a Supreme Court decision to integrate interstate bus terminals. Freedom Riders were mauled in Birmingham and Montgomery in May, 1961, which resulted in President Kennedy sending federal marshals to Alabama. Arrests followed. So did black voter registration drives throughout the South. The political education process continued. D. HATE BARRIERS.

Martin Luther King went to Birmingham in 1963, calling it the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Improving conditions notwithstanding, King engineered a campaign which resulted in massive demonstrations and arrests. King courageously decided to ignore a court order and went to jail himself. Almost one thousand children were arrested. Bull Connors fire hoses and snarling police dogs produced unforgettable pictures to the nation and the world.
Later, in June, George Wallace capitulated at the University of Alabama and the same month, President Kennedy introduced a civil rights bill in Congress. To help ensure political victory, a March on Washington followed two months later, a glorious day in the long continuing fight for equality. E. MISSISSIPPI.

Students will study the events that led to the murders of NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers and three civil rights workers, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner in 1964, the same year the Civil Rights bill was signed into law by President Johnson. That same year saw the birth of the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a challenge to Mississippis regular Democratic Party, which had excluded blacks from membership. After Freedom Summer in Mississippi, Ross Barnett, and Ole Miss would never be the same again!