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How Does Education Affect The Civil Rights Movement

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The Civil Rights Movement was a movement to end racial segregation and inequity against African-Americans. At this time blacks were fighting for their rights as citizens and human beings. Activist such as Martin Luther King to Daisy Bates have had a long lasting impact on the movement and it has changed the lives of many people during that time until now. Racial issues still appear today, but there has been progression since the decade of the movement. One thing we forget about is the children who were fighting to make a change that the older generations were not able to achieve. Many young people felt the racial tension that was occurring at that time. They were influenced by family members and activist to fight for freedom because they had …show more content…

This was due to the segregation that was occurring, which resulted in unequal education. According to James Collins, “...classes for "slow learning" and "retarded" children to be located in schools with 80 percent or higher black enrollment. At the same time, 85 percent and 69 percent of the classes for "mentally superior" children at the elementary and secondary levels, respectively, were in schools that were at least 75 percent white.” This shows how white and black children have not treated the same academically. There was an overwhelming amount of black children put in lower classes just because of their race. “African American students, parents, citizens' groups, and teachers often complained that black students were treated unfairly” (Collins). Many people were trying to get the education system to see that the education was not equal such as through the education reform. This all changed after the Brown vs. Board of Education case, which called for the school districts to integrate. Blacks were able to go to predominantly all white schools. When this happened, Daisy Bates decided to put nine black high school students in an all-white school and this was called Little Rock Nine (Timmons). When the teens went to school, “They were faced with a crowd of angry white students and adults” (Timmons). They didn’t want them to even step foot into the building. They were just kids …show more content…

“In the fall of 1963, four African-American girls were killed when the KKK set off a bomb in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham” (Jameadows). This was after the Children's Crusade march that affected people all over the world. When they found out this happened, it only helped to advance the Civil Rights Movement. Emmett Till, a boy who was murdered because he allegedly whistled at white women, also made more awareness to the situation at hand. The children called themselves the Emmett Till generation, where they would change the world and make a difference for the generations to come. The tragic stories of children killed at the time of movement, impacted people to fix the problem so that it wouldn’t happen

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