Civil Rights - Jim Crow Fights Back | 3

American History Tellers

Wondery

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, History, Education For Kids

4.7 • 18.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2018

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

After the Brown V. Board of Education ruling, civil rights activists had legal standing to desegregate schools. But doing so proved dangerous. The first black students to step into newly integrated schools faced extreme hostility from whites who felt Jim Crow society was under attack.

The segregationists defied federal court orders. When National Guard troops sent by President Eisenhower forced the issue, white supremacists changed tactics, patiently and cruely wielding political and economic influence against activists. And when even those measures proved not enough to stop integration, some communities abandoned public education altogether, for whites and blacks. Closing all schools, they felt, was better than integrating them.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, prime members, you can listen to American History Tellers add free on Amazon Music,
0:05.6	download the app today.
0:09.0	Imagine it's September, 1957.
0:20.7	You're a brick mason in Little Rock, Arkansas.
0:23.8	It's the start of the school year and as usual you're seeing your daughter off on her
0:27.0	first day.
0:28.2	Today is different than any of the others you've shared.
0:31.6	This time she's headed to a new school with a new weight on her shoulders.
0:35.8	She's one of a small group of black students integrating all white central high school.
0:41.5	She and the other students have just set off together, walking toward the campus with
0:45.0	a few chaperones.
0:46.0	Your wife turns to you.
0:47.7	Do you think she'll be alright?
0:49.0	I do.
0:50.0	Just try not to worry.
0:51.5	Be proud of her.
0:52.8	I don't quite know how it happened but we raised a crusader.
0:55.6	I just want her to be safe.
0:57.5	I wish they would have let us go with them.
0:59.6	You heard what the superintendent said at the meeting yesterday.
1:02.6	Us being there might make things worse and she's not alone.
1:06.4	You look down the block as they continue walking down Park Street in two tight columns.
	...

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