By: Sarah Kroth | The LGBTQIAAP community is, arguably, the “next” major civil rights movement in the US. While there is currently a large focus on marriage equality in political platforms, but this often pushes the spotlight off other pressing LGBT equality issues. The “Alphabet Soup” A major misconception about gay rights is that there is only the LGBT groups, but that’s only a partial … Continue reading LGBT Issues
By: Sarah Kroth | One of the most popular tourist attractions in Sarasota had once been a spot of contention for Sarasota civil rights activists. In October 1955 the local NAACP chapter, headed by its President Neil Humphrey, organized visits to Lido Beach in protest of the City Commission’s refusal to either open a beach for solely African American use, or integrate the Whites Only … Continue reading Beach Integration
By: Sarah Kroth | A relationship often overlooked, Jewish American and African American relations have evolved from good, to bad, to good once more. Several prominent Rabbis were outspoken abolitionists, including August Bondi and Rabbi David Einhorn, and the African American slaves found comfort and solidarity in Jewish culture. Around the turn of the 20th century, African Americans started to migrate North, that European Jews … Continue reading The Jewish and Black Dynamic
By: Sarah Kroth | Plessy vs. Ferguson (163 U.S. 537) was a 1896 Supreme Court case that tested the legality of the new “separate but equal” laws in the South, and probed the meaning behind the Fourteenth Amendment. Homer Plessy, the African American defendant, was a part of the Citizens’ Committee to Test the Constitutionality of the Separate Car Law, which set out to test the … Continue reading Plessy vs. Ferguson
By: Sarah Kroth | Thurgood Marshall is most well-known as the defense lawyer for the historic Brown vs. Board case. Brown vs. Board of Education was the landmark Supreme Court case decreeing segregation in schools unconstitutional. In 1951 a group of parents, including Oliver and Linda Brown whom the case is named for, in Topeka, Kansas, at the urging of the NAACP, enrolled their children in the … Continue reading Brown vs. The Board of Education
By: Sarah Kroth | 1909 NAACP is founded 1925 Ku Klux Klan’s first national demonstration in Washington, D.C. 1948 Truman desegregates the military 1954 Brown v. Board desegregates public schools 1955 Rosa Parks begins the Montgomery Bus Boycott 1957 JFK sends federal troops to integrate University of Mississippi, segregation ruled unconstitutional in all transport facility, military fully integrated 1960 The first lunch counter sit-in begins in Greensboro, North Carolina 1961 Freedom Rides begin 1962 JFK sends federal … Continue reading Civil Rights Timeline
The name Jim Crow originates from a stock vaudevillian character performed by a white man in black-face. Jim Crow Laws were laws that discriminated against African Americans in public places after the ratification of the fourteenth amendment. In the 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases, just 5 years after the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the Supreme Court effectively opened the door for the legality of Jim Crow laws … Continue reading Jim Crow Laws
FST Stage Directions 