1.
National Register of Historic Places
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The National Register of Historic Places is the United States federal governments official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation. The passage of the National Historic Preservation Act in 1966 established the National Register, of the more than one million properties on the National Register,80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts, each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings. For most of its history the National Register has been administered by the National Park Service and its goals are to help property owners and interest groups, such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, coordinate, identify, and protect historic sites in the United States. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties, protection of the property is not guaranteed. During the nomination process, the property is evaluated in terms of the four criteria for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, the application of those criteria has been the subject of criticism by academics of history and preservation, as well as the public and politicians. Occasionally, historic sites outside the proper, but associated with the United States are also listed. Properties can be nominated in a variety of forms, including individual properties, historic districts, the Register categorizes general listings into one of five types of properties, district, site, structure, building, or object. National Register Historic Districts are defined geographical areas consisting of contributing and non-contributing properties, some properties are added automatically to the National Register when they become administered by the National Park Service. These include National Historic Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Historical Parks, National Military Parks/Battlefields, National Memorials, on October 15,1966, the Historic Preservation Act created the National Register of Historic Places and the corresponding State Historic Preservation Offices. Initially, the National Register consisted of the National Historic Landmarks designated before the Registers creation, approval of the act, which was amended in 1980 and 1992, represented the first time the United States had a broad-based historic preservation policy. To administer the newly created National Register of Historic Places, the National Park Service of the U. S. Department of the Interior, hartzog, Jr. established an administrative division named the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Hartzog charged OAHP with creating the National Register program mandated by the 1966 law, ernest Connally was the Offices first director. Within OAHP new divisions were created to deal with the National Register, the first official Keeper of the Register was William J. Murtagh, an architectural historian. During the Registers earliest years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, organization was lax and SHPOs were small, understaffed, and underfunded. A few years later in 1979, the NPS history programs affiliated with both the U. S. National Parks system and the National Register were categorized formally into two Assistant Directorates. Established were the Assistant Directorate for Archeology and Historic Preservation and the Assistant Directorate for Park Historic Preservation, from 1978 until 1981, the main agency for the National Register was the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service of the United States Department of the Interior. In February 1983, the two assistant directorates were merged to promote efficiency and recognize the interdependency of their programs, jerry L. Rogers was selected to direct this newly merged associate directorate
2.
National Historic Landmark
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A National Historic Landmark is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Of over 85,000 places listed on the countrys National Register of Historic Places, a National Historic Landmark District may include contributing properties that are buildings, structures, sites or objects, and it may include non-contributing properties. Contributing properties may or may not also be separately listed, prior to 1935, efforts to preserve cultural heritage of national importance were made by piecemeal efforts of the United States Congress. The first National Historic Site designation was made for the Salem Maritime National Historic Site on March 17,1938. In 1960, the National Park Service took on the administration of the data gathered under this legislation. Because listings often triggered local preservation laws, legislation in 1980 amended the procedures to require owner agreement to the designations. On October 9,1960,92 properties were announced as designated NHLs by Secretary of the Interior Fred A. Seaton, more than 2,500 NHLs have been designated. Most, but not all, are in the United States, there are NHLs in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Three states account for nearly 25 percent of the nations NHLs, three cities within these states all separately have more NHLs than 40 of the 50 states. In fact, New York City alone has more NHLs than all but five states, Virginia, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, there are 74 NHLs in the District of Columbia. Some NHLs are in U. S. commonwealths and territories, associated states, and foreign states. There are 15 in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and other U. S. commonwealths and territories,5 in U. S. -associated states such as Micronesia, over 100 ships or shipwrecks have been designated as NHLs. About half of the National Historic Landmarks are privately owned, the National Historic Landmarks Program relies on suggestions for new designations from the National Park Service, which also assists in maintaining the landmarks. A friends group of owners and managers, the National Historic Landmark Stewards Association, works to preserve, protect, if not already listed on the National Register of Historic Places, an NHL is automatically added to the Register upon designation. About three percent of Register listings are NHLs, american Water Landmark List of U. S
3.
Montgomery, Alabama
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Montgomery /mɒntˈɡʌməri/ is the capital of the U. S. state of Alabama and is the county seat of Montgomery County. Named for Richard Montgomery, it is located on the Alabama River, as of the 2013 Census, Montgomery has a population of 201,332. It is the second-largest city in Alabama, after Birmingham, and is the 115th largest in the United States, the Montgomery Metropolitan Statistical Area had a 2010 estimated population of 374,536. It is the fourth-largest in the state and 136th among United States metropolitan areas, the city was incorporated in 1819 as a merger of two towns situated along the Alabama River. In February 1861, Montgomery was selected as the first capital of the Confederate States of America, until the seat of government moved to Richmond, Virginia, in May of that year. During the mid-20th century, Montgomery was a center of events and protests in the Civil Rights Movement, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Two ships of the United States Navy have been named after the city, Montgomery has also been recognized nationally for its downtown revitalization and new urbanism projects. It was one of the first cities in the nation to implement Smart Code Zoning, prior to European colonization, the east bank of the Alabama River was inhabited by the Alibamu tribe of Native Americans. The Alibamu and the Coushatta, who lived on the west side of the river, were descended from the Mississippian culture. This civilization had numerous chiefdoms throughout the Midwest and South along the Mississippi and its tributaries and its largest location was at Cahokia, in present-day Illinois east of St. Louis. The historic tribes spoke mutually intelligible Muskogean languages, which were closely related, present-day Montgomery is built on the site of two Alibamu towns, Ikanatchati, meaning red earth, and Towassa, built on a bluff called Chunnaanaauga Chatty. The first Europeans to travel through central Alabama were Hernando de Soto and his expedition, the next recorded European encounter occurred more than a century later, when an English expedition from Carolina went down the Alabama River in 1697. The first permanent European settler in the Montgomery area was James McQueen and he married a high-status woman in the Coushatta or Alabama tribe. Their mixed-race children were considered Muskogean, as both tribes had a system of property and descent. The children were considered born into their mothers clan. In 1785, Abraham Mordecai, a war veteran from a Sephardic Jewish family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Coushatta and Alabama had gradually moved south and west in the tidal plain. By the time Mordecai arrived, Creek had migrated into and settled in the area, as they were moving away from Cherokee, when her people had to cede most of their lands after the 1813-14 Creek War, she joined them in removal to Indian Territory. Mordecai brought the first cotton gin to Alabama, the Upper Creek were able to discourage most European-American immigration until after the conclusion of the Creek War
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Baptists
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Other tenets of Baptist churches include soul competency, salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone as the rule of faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation. Baptists recognize two ministerial offices, elders and deacons, Baptist churches are widely considered to be Protestant churches, though some Baptists disavow this identity. Historians trace the earliest church labeled Baptist back to 1609 in Amsterdam, in accordance with his reading of the New Testament, he rejected baptism of infants and instituted baptism only of believing adults. Baptist practice spread to England, where the General Baptists considered Christs atonement to extend to all people, while the Particular Baptists believed that it extended only to the elect. Thomas Helwys formulated a distinctively Baptist request that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, Helwys died in prison as a consequence of the religious persecution of English dissenters under King James I. In 1638, Roger Williams established the first Baptist congregation in the North American colonies, in the mid-18th century, the First Great Awakening contributed to Baptist growth in both New England and the South. Baptist missionaries have spread their church to every continent, the largest Baptist denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention, with the membership of associated churches totaling more than 15 million. Modern Baptist churches trace their history to the English Separatist movement in the century after the rise of the original Protestant denominations and this view of Baptist origins has the most historical support and is the most widely accepted. Adherents to this position consider the influence of Anabaptists upon early Baptists to be minimal and it was a time of considerable political and religious turmoil. Both individuals and churches were willing to give up their theological roots if they became convinced that a more biblical truth had been discovered, during the Protestant Reformation, the Church of England separated from the Roman Catholic Church. There were some Christians who were not content with the achievements of the mainstream Protestant Reformation, there also were Christians who were disappointed that the Church of England had not made corrections of what some considered to be errors and abuses. Of those most critical of the Churchs direction, some chose to stay and they became known as Puritans and are described by Gourley as cousins of the English Separatists. Others decided they must leave the Church because of their dissatisfaction, historians trace the earliest Baptist church back to 1609 in Amsterdam, with John Smyth as its pastor. Three years earlier, while a Fellow of Christs College, Cambridge, reared in the Church of England, he became Puritan, English Separatist, and then a Baptist Separatist, and ended his days working with the Mennonites. He began meeting in England with 60–70 English Separatists, in the face of great danger, Smyth and his lay supporter, Thomas Helwys, together with those they led, broke with the other English exiles because Smyth and Helwys were convinced they should be baptized as believers. In 1609 Smyth first baptized himself and then baptized the others, in 1609, while still there, Smyth wrote a tract titled The Character of the Beast, or The False Constitution of the Church. In it he expressed two propositions, first, infants are not to be baptized, and second, Antichristians converted are to be admitted into the true Church by baptism. Hence, his conviction was that a church should consist only of regenerate believers who have been baptized on a personal confession of faith
6.
Church (building)
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A church building, often simply called a church, is a building used for Christian religious activities, particularly worship services. The term in its sense is most often used by Christians to refer to their religious buildings. In traditional Christian architecture, the church is arranged in the shape of a Christian cross. When viewed from plan view the longest part of a cross is represented by the aisle, towers or domes are often added with the intention of directing the eye of the viewer towards the heavens and inspiring church visitors. The earliest identified Christian church was a church founded between 233 and 256. During the 11th through 14th centuries, a wave of building of cathedrals, a cathedral is a church, usually Roman Catholic, Anglican, Oriental Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox, housing the seat of a bishop. In standard Greek usage, the word ecclesia was retained to signify both a specific edifice of Christian worship, and the overall community of the faithful. This usage was retained in Latin and the languages derived from Latin, as well as in the Celtic languages. In the Germanic and some Slavic languages, the word kyriak-ós/-ē/-ón was adopted instead, in Old English the sequence of derivation started as cirice, then churche, and eventually church in its current pronunciation. German Kirche, Scottish kirk, Russian церковь, etc. are all similarly derived, according to the New Testament, the earliest Christians did not build church buildings. Instead, they gathered in homes or in Jewish worship places like the Second Temple or synagogues, the earliest archeologically identified Christian church is a house church, the Dura-Europos church, founded between 233 and 256. During the 11th through 14th centuries, a wave of building of cathedrals, in addition to being a place of worship, the cathedral or parish church was used by the community in other ways. It could serve as a place for guilds or a hall for banquets. Mystery plays were performed in cathedrals, and cathedrals might also be used for fairs. The church could be used as a place to thresh and store grain, a common architecture for churches is the shape of a cross. These churches also often have a dome or other large vaulted space in the interior to represent or draw attention to the heavens. Other common shapes for churches include a circle, to represent eternity, or an octagon or similar star shape, another common feature is the spire, a tall tower on the west end of the church or over the crossing. The Latin word basilica was used to describe a Roman public building
7.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
8.
World Heritage Site
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties
9.
Martin Luther King Jr.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, with the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous I Have a Dream speech, on October 14,1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery marches, in the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech titled Beyond Vietnam. In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D. C. to be called the Poor Peoples Campaign, Kings death was followed by riots in many U. S. cities. Ray, who fled the country, was arrested two months later at London Heathrow Airport, King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states beginning in 1971, hundreds of streets in the U. S. have been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also renamed for him. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, King was born on January 15,1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams King. It was during this time he chose to be called Martin Luther King in honor of the German reformer Martin Luther, King had Irish ancestry through his paternal great-grandfather, as well as African ancestry. King was a child, between an older sister, Willie Christine King, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams King. King sang with his choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of the movie Gone with the Wind. His mother was an accomplished organist and choir leader, and she took him to various churches to sing and he received attention for singing I Want to Be More and More Like Jesus. King later became a member of the choir in his church. King said that his father regularly whipped him until he was fifteen, King saw his fathers proud and fearless protests against segregation, such as King Sr. When King was a child, he befriended a boy whose father owned a business near his familys home. When the boys were six, they started school, King had to attend a school for African Americans, King lost his friend because the childs father no longer wanted the boys to play together. King suffered from depression throughout much of his life, in his adolescent years, he initially felt resentment against whites due to the racial humiliation that he, his family, and his neighbors often had to endure in the segregated South
10.
Montgomery bus boycott
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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. Many important figures in the Civil Rights Movement took part in the boycott, including Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. the local background for the Montgomery bus boycott lies in growing abuse and humiliation of the black passengers by white bus drivers due to three main reasons. First, drivers increasingly abused passengers due to their own frustrations over labor disputes, third, the 1954 Brown decision also resulted in increased animosity of bus drivers towards blacks -- many of whom joined the White Citizens Councils. On February 25,1953, the Baton Rouge, Louisiana city-parish council passed Ordinance 222, however, the ordinance was largely unenforced by the city bus drivers. The drivers later went on strike after city authorities refused to arrest Rev. T. J, Jemison for sitting in a front row. Four days after the strike began, Louisiana Attorney General and former Baton Rouge mayor Fred S. LeBlanc declared the ordinance unconstitutional under Louisiana state law and this led Rev. Jemison to organize what historians believe to be the first bus boycott of the civil rights movement. The boycott ended after eight days when an agreement was reached to only retain the first two front and back rows as racially reserved seating areas. On March 2,1955, Colvin was handcuffed, arrested, at the time, Colvin was an active member in the NAACP Youth Council, a group to which Rosa Parks served as Advisor. Colvins legal case formed the core of Browder v. Gayle, but neither the Supreme Courts Morgan ruling nor the ICCs Keys ruling addressed the matter of Jim Crow travel within the individual states. Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, the ten front seats were reserved for whites at all times, the ten back seats were supposed to be reserved for blacks at all times. The middle section of the bus consisted of sixteen unreserved seats for whites, whites filled the middle seats from the front to back, and blacks filled seats from the back to front until the bus was full. If other black people boarded the bus, they were required to stand, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white person, she was sitting in the first line of the middle section. Often when boarding the buses, black people were required to pay at the front, get off, occasionally, bus drivers would drive away before black passengers were able to reboard. National City Lines owned the Montgomery Bus Line at the time of the Montgomery bus boycott, Rosa Parks was a seamstress by profession, she was also the secretary for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP. Twelve years before her history-making arrest, Parks was stopped from boarding a city bus by driver James F. Blake, Parks vowed never again to ride a bus driven by Blake. As a member of the NAACP, Parks was an investigator assigned to cases of sexual assault, in 1945, she was sent to Abbeville, Alabama, to investigate the gang rape of Recy Taylor. The protest that arose around the Taylor case was the first instance of a civil rights protest. In 1955, Parks completed a course in Race Relations at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee where nonviolent civil disobedience had been discussed as a tactic, on December 1,1955, Parks was sitting in the frontmost row for black people
11.
Alabama State Capitol
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The Alabama State Capitol, listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the First Confederate Capitol, is the state capitol building for Alabama. It is located on Capitol Hill, originally Goat Hill, in Montgomery and it was declared a National Historic Landmark on December 19,1960. Alabama has had five capitals during its history. The first was the capital in St. Stephens in 1817, followed by the state convention in Huntsville in 1819. It was then moved to Tuscaloosa in 1826, until coming to rest in Montgomery in 1846, the current structure is the states fourth purpose-built capitol building, with the first at Cahaba, the second at Tuscaloosa, and the last two in Montgomery. The first capitol building in Montgomery, located where the current building stands, the current building was completed in 1851, although additional wings were added over the course of the following 140 years. Meeting in the Senate Chamber, the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States was drawn up by the Montgomery Convention on February 4,1861, the convention also adopted the Permanent Constitution here on March 11,1861. Architecturally, the building is Greek Revival in style with some Beaux-Arts influences, the central core of the building, as well as the east wing to the rear of the structure, is three-stories over a below-grade basement. The north and south wings are two-stories over a raised basement, the front facade that is seen today is approximately 350 feet wide and 119 feet tall from ground level to the top of the lantern on the dome. The first capitol building to be built in Montgomery was designed by Stephen Decatur Button of Philadelphia, andrew Dexter, one of Montgomerys founders, kept a prime piece of property empty in anticipation of the capital eventually being moved to Montgomery from Tuscaloosa. This property, atop what was known as Goat Hill due to its use as a pasture, was chosen as the site for the new capitol building. Construction began in 1846, with the new building presented to the state on December 6,1847, Button credited much of his architectural inspiration to Minard Lafevers Beauties of Modern Architecture. Buttons building was stuccoed brick, with two stories set over a rusticated raised basement. A two story portico with six Composite columns, topped by a broad pediment, was centered on the middle five bays of the front elevation. A central dome,40 feet in diameter, sat directly on a ring at the main roof level behind the portico. The dome was crowned with an elaborate lantern patterned after the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates and this first capitol building burned on December 14,1849, little more than two years after its completion. The ruins were cleared by March 1850, with a new building soon to follow, the current capitol building was built from 1850 to 1851, with Barachias Holt as supervising architect. Holt, originally from Exeter, Maine, was a mechanic by trade
12.
African Americans
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African Americans are an ethnic group of Americans with total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. The term may also be used to only those individuals who are descended from enslaved Africans. As a compound adjective the term is usually hyphenated as African-American, Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of 73. 2–80. 9% West African, 18–24% European, according to US Census Bureau data, African immigrants generally do not self-identify as African American. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants identify instead with their own respective ethnicities, immigrants from some Caribbean, Central American and South American nations and their descendants may or may not also self-identify with the term. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second-class citizens. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited U. S. citizenship to whites only, in 2008, Barack Obama became the first African American to be elected President of the United States. The first African slaves arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic, the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence they had come. The first recorded Africans in British North America were 20 and odd negroes who came to Jamestown, as English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. Typically, young men or women would sign a contract of indenture in exchange for transportation to the New World, the landowner received 50 acres of land from the state for each servant purchased from a ships captain. An indentured servant would work for years without wages. The status of indentured servants in early Virginia and Maryland was similar to slavery, servants could be bought, sold, or leased and they could be physically beaten for disobedience or running away. Africans could legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom and they raised families, married other Africans and sometimes intermarried with Native Americans or English settlers. By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards and purchased indentured servants of their own. In 1640, the Virginia General Court recorded the earliest documentation of slavery when they sentenced John Punch. One of Dutch African arrivals, Anthony Johnson, would own one of the first black slaves, John Casor
13.
Alabama State University
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Alabama State University, founded 1867, is a historically black university located in Montgomery, Alabama. ASU is a member-school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Alabama State University founded in 1867 as the Lincoln Normal School of Marion in Marion. In December 1873, the State Board accepted the transfer of title to the school after an act was passed authorizing the state to fund a Normal School. Thus, in 1874, this predecessor of Alabama State University became Americas first state-supported educational institution for blacks and this began ASU’s history as a “Teacher’s College. ”In 1878, the second president, William Paterson, was appointed. He is honored as a founder of Alabama State University and was the president for 37 of the first 48 years of its existence, Paterson was instrumental in the move from Marion to Montgomery in 1887. In the decades that followed Lincoln Normal School became a junior college, in 1929 it became State Teachers College, Alabama State College for Negroes in 1948 and Alabama State College in 1954. In 1969, the State Board of Education, then the body of the university, approved a name change. Today, WVAS has grown to 80,000 watts and enjoys a listenership that spans 18 counties, in recent years, the station has also begun streaming its broadcast via the Web, connecting a global audience to the university. WAPR-FM88. 3—Selma – The signal reaches the region known colloquially as the Black Belt, about 13 counties in the west central and central parts of Alabama, the university experienced some tension with the state government in 2013 and 2014. In December 2012, university president Joseph Silver resigned after six months in the job. The audit was ordered to investigate Silvers claims that he was forced to resign because he questioned suspicious contracts at the university. During the November 4th hearing Alabama State University Board of Trustees voted 8–6 to place University President Dr. Gwendolyn Boyd on paid leave for failure to maintain confidence of the board. A public hearing was held on November 14 and December 16,2016 where Boyd responded to the charges, finally, after deliberating for six hours, the Alabama State University Board of trustees voted 8–6 to terminate Boyds employment contract. Board chairman Ralph Ruggs assembled a committee to conduct a nationwide search for Boyd’s replacement. Trustee Angela McKenzie will head the committee, Alabama State University has more than 6,000 students from more than 42 states and over twenty countries. Alabama State University has eight degree-granting colleges, schools, or divisions, in addition, the university offers the W. E. B. DuBois Honors Program for undergraduate students who meet the performance criteria. ASU undergraduate students who complete the program will receive a STEM related bachelors degree from ASU
14.
Pastor
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A pastor is usually an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, the term may be abbreviated to Pr or Ps, a pastor also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. The word pastor derives from the Latin noun pastor which means shepherd and relates to the Latin verb pascere - to lead to pasture, set to grazing, cause to eat. The term pastor also relates to the role of elder within the New Testament, many Protestant churches call their ministers pastors. Present-day usage of the word is rooted in the Biblical image of shepherding, the Hebrew Bible uses the Hebrew word רעה. English-language translations of the New Testament usually render the Greek noun ποιμήν as shepherd, the two words occur a total of 29 times in the New Testament, most frequently referring to Jesus. For example, Jesus called himself the Good Shepherd in John 10,11, the same words in the familiar Christmas story refer to literal shepherds. 1 Corinthians 9,7 - Paul says, of himself and the apostles, in the United States, the term pastor is used by Catholics for what in other English-speaking countries is called a parish priest. The Latin term used in the Code of Canon Law is parochus, the parish priest is the proper clergyman in charge of the congregation of the parish entrusted to him. Many Protestants use the term pastor as a title or as a job title, United Methodists, for example, ordain to the office of deacon and elder, each of whom can use the title of pastor depending upon their job description. These pastors may be lay people, seminary students, or seminary graduates in the ordination process, and cannot exercise any functions of clergy outside the charge where they are appointed. The use of the pastor can also be regional in some denominations, including some parts of the Methodist, Presbyterian, Seventh-day Adventist, American Churches of Christ. The use of the pastor to refer to the common Protestant title of modern times dates to the days of John Calvin. Both men, and other Reformers, seem to have revived the term to replace the Catholic priest in the minds of their followers, the pastor was considered to have a role separate from the board of presbyters. In some Lutheran churches, ordained clergy are called priests, while in others the term pastor is preferred, ordained clergy are called priests in the Episcopal Church, as in all other branches of the Anglican Communion. Bercot, David W. Will The Real Heretics Please Stand Up, newAdvent. org, The Catholic Encyclopedias entry on the term pastor. LifeWay. com, Articles to help the pastor in the roles of preacher, missionary, leader, shepherd, and person
15.
Carol M. Highsmith
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Carol M. Highsmith is an American photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed in all the states of the United States, as well as the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. She photographs the entire American vista in all 50 US states as a record of the early 21st Century, Highsmith is donating her lifes work of more than 100,000 images, royalty-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare, one-person archive. In 2013, Peatross told the San Diego Union-Tribune newspaper, is not only taking photographs but creating a permanent record of the country and its people for the common good. On April 28,2013, the CBS television news magazine CBS This Morning featured Highsmiths work in a segment titled. CBS Correspondent Martha Teichner told in her report, Highsmith is at work on a project photographing all 50 states. Her pictures, thousands of them, are going to the Library of Congress and are being made free for anyone to use. The CBS Sunday Morning report continued, Highsmiths images also capture a disappearing America, Two weeks after she photographed Big Tex, the mascot of the Texas State Fair, he burned down. Her photograph of the New York skyline, just before 9/11, is also in the Library of Congress, CBS included more than 30 of Carols images in the online version of its report. In its December 2007 issue, the Library of Congresss Information Bulletin included a Conversation with Carol Highsmith, in the article, Jeremy Adamson, the director of Collections and Services at the library, said, Highsmiths color images are certainly of the highest technical and artistic quality. But more importantly, she has the ability to identify, focus on and capture for posterity the essential features of our social landscape and physical environment. A photograph by Carol Highsmith is a document of rare precision and beauty, revealing with exacting clarity the look and feel of people, Highsmith also photographed, and her publishing company, Chelsea Publishing, Inc. Early in her career, Highsmith photographed interior and exterior architecture and she photographed ordinary people and everyday sites as well as soaring architecture, natural landscapes, national parks and monuments, Civil War battlefields, and engineering marvels. In early 2002, Crescent Books published World Trade Center, Tribute and Remembrance, about the 2001 September 11 attacks in New York and she had taken aerial photographs of the Twin Towers two months before they fell. That same year, Highsmith and Landphair collaborated on Deep in the Heart and they also produced The Mount Washington, A Century of Grandeur, on the White Mountains resort. Highsmith collaborated with architectural writer Dixie Legler on Historic Bridges of Maryland, in 2007, Highsmith photographed, and author Ryan Coonerty described,52 monuments and other public sites in a National Geographic book Etched in Stone. Entitled California, it was published by Chelsea Publishing, Inc. and this archive, Carol M. Highsmiths America, Documenting the 21st Century, includes 1,000 images taken across the country. The collection emphasizes what Highsmith calls Disappearing America, including 200 shots taken along U. S. Route 66 in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. The more she travels across the country, the more convinced she is about the need to capture in photographs a rapidly changing America, the America I knew is disappearing at lightning speed, observed
16.
National Park Service
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It was created on August 25,1916, by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act and is an agency of the United States Department of the Interior. As of 2014, the NPS employs 21,651 employees who oversee 417 units, the National Park Service celebrated its centennial in 2016. National parks and national monuments in the United States were originally individually managed under the auspices of the Department of the Interior, the movement for an independent agency to oversee these federal lands was spearheaded by business magnate and conservationist Stephen Mather, as well as J. Horace McFarland. With the help of journalist Robert Sterling Yard, Mather ran a publicity campaign for the Department of the Interior and they wrote numerous articles that praised the scenic and historic qualities of the parks and their possibilities for educational, inspirational, and recreational benefits. This campaign resulted in the creation of a National Park Service, Mather became the first director of the newly formed NPS. On March 3,1933, President Herbert Hoover signed the Reorganization Act of 1933, the act would allow the President to reorganize the executive branch of the United States government. It wasnt until later that summer when the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Roosevelt agreed and issued two Executive orders to make it happen. In 1951, Conrad Wirth became director of the National Park Service, the demand for parks after the end of the World War II had left the parks overburdened with demands that could not be met. In 1952, with the support of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, he began Mission 66, New parks were added to preserve unique resources and existing park facilities were upgraded and expanded. In 1966, as the Park Service turned 50 years old, emphasis began to turn from just saving great and wonderful scenery, Director George Hartzog began the process with the creation of the National Lakeshores and then National Recreation Areas. Since its inception in 1916, the National Park Service has managed each of the United States national parks, Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the United States. In 1872, there was no government to manage it. Yosemite National Park began as a park, the land for the park was donated by the federal government to the state of California in 1864 for perpetual conservation. Yosemite was later returned to federal ownership, at first, each national park was managed independently, with varying degrees of success. In Yellowstone, the staff was replaced by the U. S. Army in 1886. Due to the irregularities in managing these national treasures, Stephen Mather petitioned the government to improve the situation. In response, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane challenged him to lobby for creating a new agency, Mather was successful with the ratification of the National Park Service Organic Act in 1916. Later, the agency was given authority over other protected areas, the National Park System includes all properties managed by the National Park Service
17.
Lynching in the United States
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Lynching is the practice of murder by extrajudicial action. Lynchings in the United States rose in number after the American Civil War in the late 1800s, following the emancipation of slaves, Lynchings most frequently targeted African American men and women in the South. They were most frequent from 1890 to the 1920s, with a peak in 1892, starting with large mob actions attended by hundreds or thousands of watchers, lynchings in the 20th century began to be conducted secretly by small groups of people. Lynchings were also common in the Old West, where Native Americans, Mexican Americans, after the Reconstruction era, most of the South was dominated politically by Democrats. Lynchings enforced white supremacy and intimidated blacks by racial terrorism, the rate of lynchings in the South has been strongly associated with economic strains, although the causal nature of this link is unclear. Low cotton prices, inflation, and economic stress are associated with higher frequencies of lynching, constitutional rights to freedmen after the American Civil War was resisted by many white Southerners. Some blamed the freedmen for their own wartime hardships, and post-war economic losses, during Reconstruction, freedmen and whites working for civil rights were attacked and sometimes lynched. Black voting was suppressed by violence, White Democrats regained control of state legislatures in 1876, and a national compromise resulted in the removal of federal troops from the South in 1877. In later decades, violence continued around elections until blacks were disenfranchised by the states across the South from 1890 to 1908, Whites enacted segregation and Jim Crow laws to enforce blacks second-class status. During this period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Florida led the nation in lynchings per capita from 1900-1930. Georgia led the nation in lynchings from 1900-1931 with 302 incidents, Lynchings peaked in many areas when it was time for landowners to settle accounts with sharecroppers. There is no count of recorded lynchings which claims to be precise, and numbers vary depending on the source, years considered, and definition used in defining an incident. A five-year study published in 2015 by the Equal Justice Initiative found that nearly 3,959 black men, women, over this period Georgias 586 lynchings led all states. African Americans mounted resistance to lynchings in numerous ways, intellectuals and journalists encouraged public education, actively protesting and lobbying against lynch mob violence and government complicity. Anti-lynching plays and literary works were produced, African-American womens clubs raised funds and conducted petition drives, letter campaigns, meetings and demonstrations to highlight the issues and combat lynching. From 1910 to 1930 particularly, more blacks migrated from counties with high numbers of lynchings, from 1882 to 1968, nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, and three passed the House. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 petitioned Congress to pass a federal law, none succeeded in gaining passage, blocked by the Solid South - the delegation of white Southerners in the Senate. During the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Movement, black activists were attacked and murdered throughout the South, in 1964 three Mississippi civil rights workers were murdered, galvanizing public support for passage of civil rights legislation that year and the next
18.
Brown v. Board of Education
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The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17,1954, the Warren Courts unanimous decision stated that educational facilities are inherently unequal. As a result, de jure segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and was a victory of the Civil Rights Movement. For much of the sixty years preceding the Brown case, race relations in the United States had been dominated by racial segregation, racial segregation in education varied widely from the 17 states that required racial segregation to the 16 in which it was prohibited. Brown was influenced by UNESCOs 1950 Statement, signed by a variety of internationally renowned scholars. This declaration denounced previous attempts at scientifically justifying racism as well as morally condemning racism, another work that the Supreme Court cited was Gunnar Myrdals An American Dilemma, The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. Myrdal had been a signatory of the UNESCO declaration, the research performed by the educational psychologists Kenneth B. Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark also influenced the Courts decision. The Clarks doll test studies presented substantial arguments to the Supreme Court about how segregation affected black schoolchildrens mental status, the plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children. The suit called for the district to reverse its policy of racial segregation. The plaintiffs had been recruited by the leadership of the Topeka NAACP, notable among the Topeka NAACP leaders were the chairman McKinley Burnett, Charles Scott, one of three serving as legal counsel for the chapter, and Lucinda Todd. The named plaintiff, Oliver L. Brown, was a parent, a welder in the shops of the Santa Fe Railroad, an assistant pastor at his church. He was convinced to join the lawsuit by Scott, a childhood friend, as directed by the NAACP leadership, the parents each attempted to enroll their children in the closest neighborhood school in the fall of 1951. They were each refused enrollment and directed to the segregated schools, linda Brown Thompson later recalled the experience in a 2004 PBS documentary. Like I say, we lived in a neighborhood and I had all of these playmates of different nationalities. And so when I found out that day that I might be able to go to their school, I was just thrilled, you know. And I remember walking over to Sumner school with my dad that day and going up the steps of the school, and I remember going inside and my dad spoke with someone and then he went into the inner office with the principal and they left me out. To sit outside with the secretary, and while he was in the inner office, I could hear voices and hear his voice raised, you know, as the conversation went on
19.
Bolling v. Sharpe
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Bolling v. Sharpe,347 U. S.497, is a landmark United States Supreme Court case which deals with civil rights, specifically, segregation in the District of Columbias public schools. The Bolling decision was supplemented in 1955 with the second Brown opinion, in Bolling, the Court observed that the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution lacked an Equal Protection Clause, as in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court held, however, that the concepts of Equal Protection, the school board denied the petition and the school opened, admitting only whites. When the court dismissed the claim, the case was granted a writ of certiorari by the Supreme Court, the lead attorney for Bolling was George Edward Chalmer Hayes. The court, led by newly confirmed Chief Justice Earl Warren decided unanimously in favor of the plaintiffs, thus setting up the theory of reverse incorporation. While equal protection is a more explicit safeguard against discrimination, the Court stated that discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process. The Court concluded, racial segregation in the schools of the District of Columbia is a denial of the due process of law guaranteed by the 5th Amendment. The Court restored both Bolling and Brown to the docket until they could reconvene to discuss how to implement the decisions. Some scholars have argued that the Courts decision in Bolling should have reached on other grounds. For example, Judge Michael W. McConnell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit wrote that Congress never required that the schools of the District of Columbia be segregated. According to that rationale, the segregation of schools in Washington D. C. was unauthorized, Sharpe is very difficult to reconcile with the text of the Constitution. For this reason, you know that among constitutional scholars of all stripes Bolling is one of the most controversial, list of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 347 Primus, Richard A. Bolling Alone. Text of Bolling v. Sharpe,347 U. S.497 is available from, Findlaw Justia LII
20.
Briggs v. Elliott
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Briggs v. Elliott,342 U. S.350, on appeal from the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, challenged school segregation in Summerton, South Carolina. Following the Brown decision, the court issued a decree striking down the school segregation law in South Carolina as unconstitutional. At the time Brown reached the U. S. Supreme Court, South Carolina law required incomplete segregation. Section 5377 of the Code of Laws of South Carolina of 1942 read, no one questioned that the Clarendon County schools were unequal. The case began in 1947 as a request to provide bus transportation, in addition to having separate and very inferior facilities, black children had to walk to school, sometimes many miles. In the neighboring Jordan community, some children walked as many as 18 miles round-trip to school each day, Elliott refused, saying black citizens did not pay enough taxes to warrant a bus and that asking white taxpayers to fund that burden would be unfair. In 1949 the NAACP agreed to provide funding and sponsor a case that would go beyond transportation, the first step was to craft a local petition for educational equality. This was done by Rev. Joseph Armstrong De Laine and Modjeska Monteith Simkins, Simkins organized a national charitable effort for the relief of the oppressed blacks of Clarendon County. Eventually, more than 100 Clarendon residents signed the petition, named first in the suit, Harry Briggs, a service station attendant, and Eliza Briggs, a maid, became the main named plaintiffs. The case would ordinarily have come up before Judge Julius Waring of the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina, however, Judge Waring recommended to Thurgood Marshall that the case be expanded from an equalization case into a desegregation case. By expanding the case, Waring and Marshall both expected the plaintiffs to lose the case 2-1 and for the case to end up in the Supreme Court. As predicted, a panel found segregation lawful by a vote of 2-1. The panel also granted an injunction to equalize the uncontested inferiority of the used by African American students. Under tests performed by Clark, black students in segregated schools were shown a white doll, when a majority of black students indicated their preference for the white doll, Clark concluded that segregated schooling decreased black self-esteem. In 1952 the Supreme Court heard the case and returned it to the court for rehearing after Clarendon County school officials sent a report on progress in making facilities equal. In March the district court again heard the case, the Court found that progress had been made towards equality. Thurgood Marshall argued that this may be true, but that the issue was that as long as separation existed. So the case was appealed back up to the Supreme Court in May, the case was then consolidated with several other school desegregation cases into Brown v. Board of Education
21.
Gebhart v. Belton
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Gebhart v. Belton,33 Del. Ch.144,87 A. 2d 862, affd,91 A. 2d 137, was a case decided by the Delaware Court of Chancery in 1952 and affirmed by the Delaware Supreme Court in the same year. In the remaining Brown cases, Federal District Courts all found segregation constitutional, the unusual status of Gebhart arose in large part because of Delawares unique legal and historical position. At the time of the litigation, Delaware was one of 17 states with a school system. Furthermore, a 1935 state education law required, The schools provided shall be of two kinds, those for children and those for colored children. The State Board of Education shall establish schools for children of people called Moors or Indians, despite this optimistic language, African-American schools in Delaware were generally decrepit, with poor facilities, substandard curricula, and shoddy construction. Without substantial financial support provided by Wilmingtons Du Pont family of chemical fame, as opposed to legal remedies, which usually involve awarding money as damages, equity—as expressed in the maxims of equity, regards as done that which ought to be done. As a result, cases brought in equity generally seek relief which cannot be awarded as a sum of money, Gebhart involved two separate actions which were consolidated for the purposes of trial. Belton v. Gebhart was brought by Ethel Belton and six other parents of eight African-American high-school students who lived in Claymont, howard High School was Delawares sole business and college-preparatory school for African-American students, and served the entire state of Delaware. Bulah v. Gebhart was brought by Sarah Bulah, a resident of the town of Hockessin. Mrs. Bulahs daughter, Shirley, had been denied admission to the modern,29, and instead was compelled to attend a one-room colored school, Hockessin School No. 107, which, though very near School No,29, had vastly inferior facilities and construction. Moreover, Shirley Bulah was required to walk to every day. Mrs. Bulah had attempted to obtain transportation for Shirley on that bus, Redding was the first African-American attorney in the history of Delaware and had developed a notable civil-rights practice in his years before the bar. Frequently, he would be out by families unable to afford his services. Presiding over the Gebhart trial was Chancellor Collins J. Seitz, in 1946, at the age of 35, Seitz had been appointed to the Court of Chancery, making him the youngest judge in the history of Delaware. For example, the school in Hockessin was valued at only $6,250.00. Initially, Chancellor Seitz noted that the separate but equal law had already adopted by the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v. That, however. The answer to question is often much more difficult than appears, because many of the factors to be compared are just not susceptible of mathematical evaluation
22.
Emmett Till
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Emmett Louis Till was an African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi at the age of 14 after being falsely accused of flirting with a white woman. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement, near Chicago, and was visiting relatives in Money, a small town in the Mississippi Delta region. He spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the proprietor of a small grocery store there. Several nights later, Bryants husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam went armed to Tills great-uncles house and they took him away and beat and mutilated him before fatally shooting him and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Tills body was discovered and retrieved from the river, Tills body was returned to Chicago. His mother, who had raised him, insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing. The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Tills bloated, mutilated body and her decision focused attention not only on American racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy. S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the lack of civil rights in Mississippi. In September 1955, Bryant and Milam were acquitted by a jury of Tills kidnapping. Protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam publicly admitted in an early 1956 interview with Look magazine that they had killed Till, problems identifying Till had affected the trial, possibly contributing to Bryants and Milams acquittals. In 2004 the case was reopened by the United States Department of Justice. As part of the investigation, the body was exhumed and autopsied and he was reburied in a new casket, which is the standard practice in cases of body exhumation. His original casket was donated to the Smithsonian Institution and it is displayed in the National Museum of African American History, the trial of Bryant and Milam attracted a vast amount of press attention. Tills murder is noted as a pivotal catalyst to the phase of the Civil Rights Movement. In December 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began in Alabama and lasted more than a year, in a 2008 interview, first made public in 2017, Carolyn Bryant disclosed that she had fabricated her testimony that Till had made verbal or physical advances towards her. Events surrounding Emmett Tills life and death, according to historians, some writers have suggested that almost every story about Mississippi returns to Till, or the Delta region in which he died, in some spiritual, homing way. An Emmett Till Memorial Commission was established in the early 21st century, the Sumner County Courthouse was restored and includes the Emmett Till Interpretive Center
23.
Little Rock Nine
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The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the U. S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas,347 U. S.483, on May 17,1954. Tied to the 14th Amendment, the decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, after the decision, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People attempted to register black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, the city of Arkansas, the Little Rock School Board agreed to comply with the high courts ruling. Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the board on May 24,1955. The plan would be implemented during the fall of the 1957 school year, by 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance. Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High School, one of the plans created during attempts to desegregate the schools of Little Rock was by school superintendent Virgil Blossom. The initial approach proposed substantial integration beginning quickly and extending to all grades within a matter of many years and this original proposal was scrapped and replaced with one that more closely met a set of minimum standards worked out in attorney Richard B. This finalized plan would start in September 1957 and would integrate one high school, the second phase of the plan would take place in 1960 and would open up a few junior high schools to a few black children. The final stage would involve limited desegregation of the grade schools at an unspecified time. This plan was met with varied reactions from the NAACP branch of Little Rock, militant members like the Bateses opposed the plan on the grounds that it was vague, indefinite, slow-moving and indicative of an intent to stall further on public integration. This view was short lived, however, changes were made to the plan, the most detrimental being a new transfer system that would allow students to move out of the attendance zone to which they were assigned. The unaltered Blossom Plan had gerrymandered school districts to guarantee a black majority at Horace Mann High and a white majority at Hall High. This meant that, even though black students lived closer to Central, the altered plan gave white students the choice of not attending Horace Mann, but didnt give black students the option of attending Hall. This new Blossom Plan did not sit well with the NAACP and after failed negotiations with the school board and this lawsuit, along with a number of other factors contributed to the Little Rock School Crisis of 1957. Several segregationist councils threatened to hold protests at Central High and physically block the black students from entering the school, Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to support the segregationists on September 4,1957. The sight of a line of soldiers blocking out the students made national headlines, regarding the accompanying crowd, one of the nine students, Elizabeth Eckford, recalled, They moved closer and closer
24.
Biloxi wade-ins
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The Biloxi wade-ins were three protests that occurred on the beaches of Biloxi, Mississippi, between 1959 and 1963. The demonstrations were led by Dr. Gilbert R. Mason, the effort to keep the beaches segregated was supported by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. On May 14,1959, Gilbert R. Mason, Sr. a physician in Biloxi and they were ordered to leave by a city policeman, who told them that Negroes dont come to the sand beach. Mason and his compatriot, Murray J. Saucier, Jr. went to the station to discover what law they had broken. They were told that the police couldnt show them the law until the next day, when they returned to the station on the following day, Biloxi mayor Laz Quave told them If you go back down there were going to arrest you. Thats all there is to it, Masons 1959 demonstration has been called Mississippis first public assault on racial barriers in its 15-year civil rights struggle. In June 1959, Masons friend Dr. Felix H. Dunn wrote to the Harrison County Board of Supervisors, asking What laws, if any, prohibit the use of the beach facilities by Negro citizens. The Board presidents response was that property owners along the beach owned both the beach and water from the line extending out 1500 feet. In October 1959 Mason and two other residents petitioned the board to allow unrestrained use of the beach. A supervisor asked the group whether they would be satisfied with the use of a portion of the beach. On April 17,1960, Mason returned to the beach and was arrested as a repeat offender, Dunn was also taken to the station but not charged. The second protest occurred a week later, on April 24,1960 with 125 gathering before violence erupted in what has become known as Bloody Sunday or The Bloody Wade-in, the New York Times called this event The worst racial riot in Mississippi history. Shots were fired, rocks were thrown, and there was fighting in the streets over the entire weekend, ten people were shot and a large number were injured in fights. Gilbert Mason was arrested and convicted of disturbing the peace for his role in the protest, Biloxi police recruited a mob of white citizens and took no action to prevent their violence against protesters. Masons office was firebombed later that night, on May 17,1960, the U. S. Justice Department sued the city of Biloxi for denying African-Americans access to the publicly funded beaches. The city delayed the hearing to such an extent that Biloxi black leaders decided to stage another protest in 1963 in order to them to file suit in the Harrison County courts. The final protest occurred on June 23,1963, following the assassination of Medgar Evers, the protest had been postponed for two weeks to allow participants time to mourn Everss murder and protesters placed black flags in the sand in his memory during the demonstration. Biloxi police arrested 71 protestors, of whom 68 were black, over 2000 white residents held a counterprotest, in which Gilbert Masons car was vandalized and finally overturned
25.
Greensboro sit-ins
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While not the first sit-in of the Civil Rights Movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, and also the most well-known sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement. These sit-ins led to increased national sentiment at a period in US history. The primary event took place at the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth store, now the International Civil Rights Center, while the Greensboro sit-in was the most influential and significant sit-in of the Civil Rights Movement, it was not the first. In August 1939, black attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker organized a sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria, Virginia, in 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality sponsored sit-ins in Chicago, as they did in St. Louis in 1949 and Baltimore in 1952. A1958 sit-in in Wichita, Kansas also was successful, days before the Woolworth sit-ins, the Greensboro Four were debating on which way would be the best to get the medias attention. They were Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr. all were young black students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. They were inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and his practice of non-violent protest, and wanted to change the segregational policies of Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plan was simple, but effective, the four men would occupy seats at the local Woolworth, ask to be served, and they would repeat this process day in and day out, for as long as it would take. Their thinking was that, if they could attract attention to the issue. On February 1,1960, at 4, 30pm, the four sat down at the counter inside the Woolworth store at 132 South Elm Street in Greensboro. Following store policy, staff refused to serve the men at the whites only counter. However, the four freshmen stayed until the store closed that night, the next day, more than twenty black students, recruited from other campus groups, joined the sit-in. Students from Bennett College, a college for women in Greensboro. White customers heckled the black students, who read books and studied to keep busy, newspaper reporters and a TV videographer covered the second day, and others in the community learned of the protests. On the third day, more than 60 people came to the Woolworth store, a statement issued by Woolworth national headquarters said that the company would abide by local custom and maintain its segregation policy. On the fourth day, more than 300 people took part, organizers agreed to expand the sit-in protests to include the lunch counter at Greensboros Kress store. As early as one week after the Greensboro sit-ins began, students in other North Carolina towns launched their own, winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte, and out-of-state towns such as Lexington, Kentucky all saw protests. Most of these protests were peaceful, but there were instances of violence, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, tensions rose between blacks and whites and fights broke out
26.
Nashville sit-ins
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The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10,1960, were part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The sit-in campaign, coordinated by the Nashville Student Movement and Nashville Christian Leadership Council, was notable for its early success, over the course of the campaign, sit-ins were staged at numerous stores in Nashvilles central business district. Sit-in participants, who consisted mainly of college students as well as some white students who oppose segregation, were often verbally or physically attacked by white onlookers. Despite their refusal to retaliate, over 150 students were arrested for refusing to vacate store lunch counters when ordered to do so by police. At trial, the students were represented by a group of 13 lawyers, on April 19, Loobys home was bombed, however, neither he nor his wife was injured. Later that day, nearly 4000 people marched to City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West about the escalating violence, when asked if he believed the lunch counters in Nashville should be desegregated, West agreed that they should. After subsequent negotiations between the owners and protest leaders, an agreement was reached during the first week of May. On May 10, six downtown stores began serving customers at their lunch counters for the first time. Many of the organizers of the Nashville sit-ins went on to important leaders in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1896, the United States Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of separate and this decision led to the proliferation of Jim Crow laws throughout the United States. These laws mandated segregation in all spheres of public life and allowed racial discrimination to flourish across the country. In Nashville, like most Southern cities, African Americans were severely disadvantaged under the system of Jim Crow segregation, the Nashville Christian Leadership Council, was founded by the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith, pastor of First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill. Smith believed that White Americans would be sympathetic to desegregation if African Americans obtained their rights through peaceful demonstration rather than through the judicial system. From March 26 to March 28,1958, the NCLC held the first of many workshops on using nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation and these workshops were led by James Lawson, who had studied the principles of nonviolent resistance while working as a missionary in India. The workshops were attended by students from Fisk University, Tennessee A&I, American Baptist Theological Seminary. During these workshops it was decided that the first target for the actions would be downtown lunch counters. At the time, African Americans were allowed to shop in stores but were not allowed to eat in the stores restaurants. The group felt that the counters were a good objective because they were highly visible, easily accessible
27.
Civil Rights Act of 1960
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It extended the life of the Civil Rights Commission, previously limited to two years, to oversee registration and voting practices. The act was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by the late 1950s, the Civil Rights Movement had been pressuring Congress to enact legislation to protect the constitutional civil rights of African Americans. The first major piece of civil rights legislation passed by Congress was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, while enforcing the voting rights of African Americans set out in the Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, the act had several loopholes. Southern states continued to discriminate against African Americans in application of voter registration and electoral laws, in segregation of school and public facilities, the new legislation was proposed by President Dwight D. Toward the end of his presidency, President Eisenhower supported civil rights legislation. R,8601, began in the House of Representatives under jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee. The chairman of the committee, Congressman Emmanuel Celler of New York, was known to be a supporter of the civil rights movement. The bill was approved by the Judiciary Committee, but the Rules Committee attacked the Judiciary Committee to prevent the bill coming to the floor of the House of Representatives. The bill was introduced to the House on March 10,1960, the voter referees plan was part of a House amendment to the original bill to substitute Representative Robert Kastenmeiers enrollment officers plan. After several amendments, the House of Representatives approved the bill on March 24,1960 by a vote of 311-109,179 Democrats and 132 Republicans voted Aye.93 Democrats,15 Republicans, and 1 Independent Democrat voted Nay.2 Democrats and 1 Republican voted present. The Senates Judiciary Committee also faced attempts to dislodge the bill, after amendments in the Senate, H. R.8601 was approved by the Senate on April 8,1960 by a vote of 71-18. The House of Representatives approved the Senate amendments on April 21,1960 by a vote of 295-288, no Republican Senators voted against the Bill. Title I amended Chapter 17 of title 18 of the United States Code,18 U. S. C, §1509, outlawed obstruction of court orders. If convicted, one could be fined no more than $1,000 and/or imprisoned for no more than one year. Title II outlawed fleeing a state for damaging or destroying a building or property, illegal possession or use of explosives, section 201 amended Chapter 49 of title 18. The amendment outlaws interstate or international movement to avoid prosecution for damaging or destroying any building or structure, the section also outlaws flight to avoid testimony in a case relating to such an offense. If convicted, one could be fined no more than $5,000 and/or imprisoned for no more than five years, section 203 amended Chapter 39 of title 18. The amendment dealt with the use or possession of explosives. The section outlaws transportation or possession of any explosive with intent to damage a building or property, the section also makes the conveying of false information or threats to damage or destroy any building or property illegal
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Gomillion v. Lightfoot
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Gomillion v. Lightfoot,364 U. S.339, was a United States Supreme Court decision that found an electoral district with boundaries created to disenfranchise blacks violated the Fifteenth Amendment. The city was the location of the Tuskegee Institute, a black college. In terms of population, African Americans outnumbered whites in the city by a four-to-one margin. Local white residents lobbied the Alabama legislature to redefine the boundaries of the city, Charles G. Gomillion, a professor at Tuskegee, and other African Americans protested, community activists mounted a boycott against white-owned businesses in the city. The act was written by state legislator Engelhardt, who was secretary of the White Citizens Council of Alabama. This ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, as head of Tuskegee, Booker T. Washington had promoted blacks advancing by education and self-improvement, with the expectation of being accepted by whites when they showed they were deserving. Some members of the faculty realized that possessing advanced degrees ultimately provided them no different status among the citys white establishment. Gomillion and his attorneys appealed the case to the US Supreme Court, the defendant team was led by James J. Carter. In this landmark voting rights case, the Supreme Court ruled on whether Act 140 of the Alabama legislature violated the Fifteenth Amendment, Alabama passed Act 140 in 1957, which changed the boundaries of the city of Tuskegee, Alabama. It had previously been a square but the legislature redrew it as a 28-sided figure, excluding all but a handful of potential African-American voters, among those excluded were the entire educated, professional faculty of the Tuskegee University and doctors and staff of the Tuskegee Veterans Administration Hospital. Justice Whitaker concurred but he said in his opinion that he believed the law should have struck down under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It established the principle of one man, one vote under the Equal Protection Clause and this case should be examined under the Equal Protection Clause, not the 15th Amendment. Just because someone has been redistricted to vote in another district does not automatically mean his rights have been denied and it is not a right to vote in a particular jurisdiction. But in this case, completely fencing African-American citizens out of a district is an unlawful segregation of black citizens and a clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The case was returned to the court, in 1961, under the direction of Judge Johnson, the gerrymandering was reversed. In the 1980 case Mobile v. Congress effectively negated Bolden in 1982 when it amended Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,42 U. S. C, an Interview with Charles G. Gomillion. The Negro Voter in the South, journal of Negro Education 26, 281-86. Gomillion v. Lightfoot,364 U. S.339, norrell, Robert J. Reaping the Whirlwind, The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee, New York, Alfred A. Knopf,1985
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Boynton v. Virginia
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Boynton v. Virginia,364 U. S.454 was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The case overturned a judgment convicting an African American law student for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal which was whites only. It moreover held that bus transportation was sufficiently related to commerce to allow the United States federal government to regulate it to forbid racial discrimination in the industry. The majority opinion was written by Justice Hugo Black, on petition for certiorari to this Court, he raised only the constitutional questions. Although the courts made no findings of fact, the evidence in this case shows such a situation here. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court, petitioner, a Negro law student, bought a Trailways bus ticket from Washington, D. C. to Montgomery, Alabama. He boarded a bus at 8 p. m. which arrived at Richmond, Virginia, when the bus pulled up at the Richmond Trailways Bus Terminal, the bus driver announced a forty-minute stopover there. Petitioner got off the bus and went into the bus terminal to get something to eat, in the station, he found a restaurant in which one part was used to serve white people and one to serve Negroes. Disregarding this division, petitioner sat down on a stool in the white section, a waitress asked him to move over to the other section where there were facilities to serve colored people. Petitioner told her he was a bus passenger, refused to move. The waitress then brought the Assistant Manager, who instructed petitioner to leave the white portion of the restaurant, list of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 364 Barnes, Catherine A. Journey from Jim Crow, The Desegregation of Southern Transit, Columbia University Press,1983, freedom Riders,1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, Oxford University Press,2006. Works related to Boynton v. Virginia at Wikisource Full text of the courtesy of Findlaw. com
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