1. Taking a Stand!
A look at Protest and
Demonstrations during the Civil
Rights Movement
Brian Henry and Ashley Reisinger
Longwood University

2. Related SOL Objective
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USII.9 The student will demonstrate knowledge of the key
domestic and international issues during the second half of
the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries by
a) examining the Civil Rights Movement and the changing
role of women;
b) describing the development of new technologies in
communication, entertainment, and business and their
impact on American life;
c) identifying representative citizens from the time period
who have influenced America
scientifically, culturally, academically, and economically;
d) examining American foreign policy, immigration, the
global environment, and other emerging issues.

3. Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement took place in the
United States and was at its peak from 1955 to
1968. This was a movement to end the racial
discrimination of blacks in the United States of
America

4. Claudette Colvin, March 1955
• At the age of fifteen she refused to give up her seat
on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama for a white
person. Colvin was one of the first to really publicly
challenge the law of segregation, and she ended up
getting arrested. She was charged for violating
segregation laws.
• This took place nine months before the Rosa Parks
demonstration

5. Emmitt Till, August 1955
• Was an African-American boy who was murdered in
Mississippi at the age of fourteen
• He was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped
in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a
white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy
Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by
an all-white jury
• Many view the murder of Till and the court ruling of
the suspects to be the start of the Civil Rights
Movement.

6. Rosa Parks, December 1955
• Parks refused to obey bus driver James F.
Blake's order that she give up her seat in the
colored section to a white passenger, after the
white section was filled
• Called “The First Lady Of the Civil Rights
Movement” by the US Congress

7. Discussion Question
• Why do you think Rosa Parks is more known
then Claudette Colvin?

8. Answer
• For a long time, Montgomery's black
leaders did not publicize Colvin's
pioneering effort because she was a
teenager and became pregnant while
unmarried. Given the social norms of the
time and her youth, the members of the
NAACP worried she wouldn’t be a good
representative

9. Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dec. 1955Dec. 1956
• Blacks boycotted the city buses
• Boycott started after Rosa Parks arrest for refusal to give up
seat on bus
• Ended when the federal ruling of Browder v. Gayle, took
effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that
declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring
segregated buses to be unconstitutional

10. Little Rock Nine, September 1957
• Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence
Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray
Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed, and Melba PattilloBeals were
the nine students who enrolled at Little Rock Central High
School
• These students were initially prevented from entering the
racially segregated school by OrvalFaubus, the Governor of
Arkansas. They then attended after President Eisenhower sent
troops to escort the Little Rock Nine into school

11. Greensboro Four, February 1960
• Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, Jr., and David
Richmond
• These men sat at the counter of Woolworth’s until closing, to
protest segregation
• The next day, twenty people took part in the sit ins. The
number of participants continued to grow until many of the
businesses ended their policies on segregated lunch counters.

12. Freedom Riders, May 1961
• Civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the
segregated southern United States in 1961 to challenge the
non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court
decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia and
Boynton v. Virginia, which ruled that segregated public buses
were unconstitutional
• Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, and
violating state and local Jim Crow laws, along with other
alleged offenses, but they often first let white mobs attack
them without intervention.

13. Birmingham Campaign, 1963
• A movement organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
to bring attention to the integration efforts of the black Americans in
Birmingham, Alabama. Led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The campaign used a variety of nonviolent methods of
confrontation, including sit-ins at libraries and lunch counters, kneel-ins by
black visitors at white churches, and a march to the county building to
mark the beginning of a voter-registration drive
• Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor
uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of
brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in
gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.

14. Discussion Question
• The Birmingham campaign was a nonviolent
campaign that was met with violence from the
police. Why do you think it was so important
that the protesters stayed violence free?

15. March on Washington, August 1963
• It took place in Washington, D.C. Thousands of Americans
headed to Washington on Tuesday August 27, 1963. On
Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing
in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have
a Dream“
• Estimates of the number of participants varied from 200,000
to 300,000.Observers estimated that 75–80% of the marchers
were black

16. Selma to Montgomery March, March
1965
• Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but
are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty
marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs
against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the
media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the
voting rights act five months later

17. Events in Virginia

18. Barbara Johns, April 1951
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Farmville, VA
A 16-year-old student named Barbara Rose Johns covertly organized a student
strike. She forged notes to teachers telling them to bring their students to the
auditorium for a special announcement. When the school's students showed
up, Johns took the stage and persuaded the school to strike to protest poor school
conditions. Over 450 students walked out and marched to the homes of members
of the school board, who refused to see them. Thus began a two-week protest
The school did not have a gymnasium, cafeteria or teachers' restrooms. Teachers
and students did not have desks or blackboards, and due to overcrowding, some
students had to take classes in an immobilized, decrepit school bus parked outside
the main school building. The all-white school board denied their plea for more
funding

19. Sit-Ins Across Virginia, 1960
• Following the Greensboro Four sit-in, the
number of sit-in in Virginia rapidly increased
• Feb. 11, 1960 Hampton, Va. Hampton
University
• Feb. 20, 1960 Richmond, Va.
• Feb. 26, 1960 Petersburg, Va.
• March 26, 1960 Lynchburg, Va.
• April 12, 1960 Norfolk, Va.

20. Farmville Kneel-In, July 1963
• Six adults and seventeen students were arrested on
July 28, 1963, for attempting to desegregate
downtown Farmville churches. The protests came
just a month before the March on Washington and
Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech

21. Discussion Question
• What do you think is the best form of protest?

22. Work Consulted
• Civil Rights Era Timeline.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/timeline/civil_01.html. PBS.
Arlington, VA.
• Civil Right Demonstrations. http://www.sitinmovement.org/index.asp.
International Civil Rights Center and Museum Greensboro, NC.