Hate Crime Prevention Art Contest

Sponsored by Allstate Foundation and OCA-National

A collaborative project of OCA-New York, South Asian Youth Action! and Chinatown Youth Initiatives

Calling all New York City High School Students!  Bring out the artist and activist in you to send a message that HATE CRIMES WILL NOT BE TOLERATED, win up to $2000 in prize money and get the opportunity to have your art work displayed!

What exactly is a Hate Crime? (Crime + Bias=Hate Crime)

“Generally speaking, a hate crime is a criminal offense committed against a person or property, which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability.”

-OCA Community Action Guide

MESSAGE:  Using one of the below themes, create a work of art that will challenge yourself and all those who view your art to address how hate crimes can be prevented.

THEME 1:  Melting Pot vs. Mosaic – Can we all be equal but different and still exist in a mosaic?  Despite our cultural differences, what do you feel ties everyone together?

THEME 2:   Not Tolerance, but Appreciation – Should people just “tolerate” differences, or appreciate them?   

GUIDELINES:

n      Open to all high school students in New York City

n      All participants MUST be present at art opening on August 2, 2007, 5pm at the Asian American Arts Centre, 26 Bowery in Manhattan, during which time winners will be announced

n      All Submissions must be RECEIVED BY July 25, 2007 at the following location:

Frances Yen

Asian American for Equality Community Center

111 Norfolk Street, Ground Floor

New York, NY  10002

Attn:  Hate Crimes Prevention Art Contest

n      All artwork must not be larger than 25 X 36 inches, and can include the following mediums:

n      All art work must be on a flat surface, no more than 2 inches thick

n      All art work will be displayed on walls, so cannot be too heavy or delicate

n      No sharp objects permitted (razors, glass, knives, nails, etc)

n      The sponsoring organizations are not responsible for any damage to art work

n      All art work is permanently the property of OCA-New York

n      All art work must be submitted with a completed submission form (on back)

Questions? Concerns? Please contact lizouyang@aol.com

Hate Crime Prevention Art Contest

Sponsored by Allstate Foundation and OCA-National

A collaborative project of OCA-New York, South Asian Youth Action! And Chinatown Youth Initiative

ART SUBMISSION FORM

This form MUST BE SUBMITTED with the art work.  All art work not submitted with this form will be deemed ineligible.

NAME:            _______________________________________________________________

AGE:               ___________________               YEAR IN SCHOOL:              _______________

HIGH SCHOOL:            __________________________________________________________

ADDRESS:               __________________________________________________________

EMAIL:                       __________________________________________________________

PHONE:                     __________________________________________________________

TITLE OF ART WORK:            ____________________________________________________

MEDIUM OF ART WORK:

        Sketch

        Drawing

        Painting

        Computer Graphic

        Collage

        Poetry

        Photography

        Multiple Mediums

I, ____________________________________ (print name) hereby submit the attached art work.  I understand that this piece of artwork is now property of OCA-New York and will not be returned to me.

________________________________                                            _________________________

Signature                                                                                           Date

Sa-I-Gu (April 29th in Korean) symbolizes the social meltdown and havoc when Los Angeles erupted after four cops were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King in 1992. In New York City, Korean Americans also faced organized boycotts and other actions.  Sa-I-Gu was part of an era of heightened race tensions and distrust of our government when underserved communities suffering from institutional inequity vented their anger towards each other. 

Our community forum will revisit Sa-I-Gu fifteen years later and discuss the current status of government accountability, inter-community development, and civic engagement. 

Panelists include: 

> Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Film Producer

> Joel Magalian, Executive Director of Asociacion Tepeyac

> Grace Lyu-Volckhausen, Human Rights Commissioner

> J. Edward Lee, COO of ImaginAsian Entertainment

> Angela Perry, National Urban Fellows, Inc.

> Moderated by John Choe, Chief of Staff to NYC Councilman John Liu

WHEN:   August 1, 2007, 6 PM Screenings of Sa-I-Gu and Wet Sand, 7:30 PM Panel Discussion

WHERE:  The ImaginAsian Theater

        239 East 59th Street, New York, NY (between 2nd and 3rd Ave)

WHAT:   Screening of Sa-I-Gu, a documentary by Christine Choy, Elaine Kim and Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, followed by a panel discussion.

Please contact Ron Kim for info and RSVP: 917-363-4853, ron@grooted.org

Click here to join the discussion on the roots of Sa-I-Gu

--- 

ORGANIZERS: Korean American League for Civic Action and grooted.org 

CO-SPONSORS: APA's for Progress and ImaginAsian Theater

PARTNERS: Korean American Youth Foundation, Museum of Chinese Americans, Korean American Voters' Council, Korean American Empowerment Council, Korean Americans for Political Advancement 

APAs are the fastest growing minority group in the states and as a result of certain changes and overall xenophobic to racist sentiments, Asian American students are experiencing more hatred.  Below is a good article on this dilemma:

 

HEADLINE: Asian-American students suffer beatingsacross country: Teens seen as brainy, unlikely to fight back

BYLINE: Erin Texeira, The Chicago Sun-Times

DATELINE: NEW YORK

BODY:


NEW YORK -- Eighteen-year-old Chen Tsu was waiting on a Brooklyn subway platform after school when four high school classmates approached him and demanded cash. He showed them his empty pockets, but they attacked him anyway, taking turns pummeling his face.

He was scared and injured -- bruised and swollen for several days -- but hardly surprised.

At his school, Lafayette High in Brooklyn, Chinese immigrant students like him are harassed and bullied so routinely that school officials agreed to a Department of Justice consent decree to curb alleged ''severe and pervasive harassment directed at Asian-American students by their classmates.''

Since then, the Justice Department credits Lafayette officials with addressing the problem -- but the case is far from isolated.

Nationwide, Asian students say they're often beaten, threatened and called ethnic slurs by other young people, and school safety data suggest that the problem may be worsening.

Youth advocates say these Asian teens, stereotyped as high-achieving students who rarely fight back, have for years borne the brunt of ethnic tension as Asian communities expand and neighborhoods become more racially diverse.

TEACHER HIDES CHINESE BOY

''We suspect that in areas that have rapidly growing populations of Asian-Americans, there often times is a sort of culture clashing,'' said Aimee Baldillo of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. Youth harassment is ''something we see everywhere in different pockets of the U.S. where there's a large influx.''

In the last five years, Census data show, Asians -- mostly Chinese -- have grown from 5 percent to nearly 10 percent of Brooklyn residents. In the Bensonhurst neighborhood, historically home to Italian and Jewish families, more than 20 percent of residents now are Asian. Those changes have escalated ethnic tension on campuses such as Lafayette High, according to Khin Mai Aung, staff attorney at the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is advocating for Lafayette students.

''The schools are the one place where everyone is forced to come together,'' Aung said.

Brooklyn's changes mirror Asian growth nationally. Between 1980 and 2000, the number of Asians and Pacific Islanders grew from 3.7 million to nearly 12 million. After Latinos, Asians are the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group.

Stories of Asian youth being bullied and worse are common. In recent years:

-A Chinese middle schooler in San Francisco was mercilessly taunted until his teacher hid him in her classroom at lunchtime.

-Three Korean-American students were beaten so badly near their Queens high school that they skipped school for weeks and begged to be transferred.

-A 16-year-old from Vietnam was killed last year in a massive brawl in Boston.

Some lawmakers have responded. The New York City Council, after hearing hours of testimony from Asian youth, last year passed a bill to track bullying and train educators on prevention. Also last year, California Assemblywoman Judy Chu won passage of a new law to allow hate crimes victims more time -- up to three years -- to file civil suits; the bill was inspired by a 2003 San Francisco incident in which five Asian teens were attacked by a mob of youths.

SCHOOL CLAIMS EXAGGERATION

In August, the Oakland-based Asian Pacific Islander Youth Violence Prevention Center organized a first-ever conference on the subject in Sacramento. Isami Arifuku, assistant director of the center, said she expected about 200 participants but nearly double that number attended.

Experts offer several broad explanations for the bullying problem.

In the broadest strokes, Baldillo said, Asian youth are sometimes small in stature and often adhere to cultural mores urging them to avoid confrontation and focus on academics. Many don't report bullying because they fear repercussions or don't want to embarrass their families, she added.

Language barriers also exacerbate the situation. ''I have to hear, '[Expletive] Chinese!' at least three times a day, and they always say it to people who look weaker and don't speak English,'' said Rita Zeng, a senior at Lafayette High.

School officials say some reports were exaggerated. But ''the problems there went back many, many years,'' said Michael Best, general counsel for New York City schools. Since signing the consent decree in June, he said, ''the situation at the school in our view is very, very different.'' 

Read below for an article about a recent attack against a Sikh student and for more information and/or if you want to support the student, please contact the directors of the Sikh Coalition:  Neha Kaur, Advocacy Director (212) 729-6141 or Amardeep Singh, Executive Director (917) 628-0091

Sikhs: Schools turn blind eye to bias

 By Michael Y. Park

Special to amNewYork

June 5, 2007

An alleged bias attack against a Sikh student at a Queens high school has civil-rights groups and city councilmen pointing fingers directly at Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

On May 25, 17-year-old Umair Ahmed dragged 15-year-old Vacher Harpal, a practicing Sikh, into a bathroom at Newtown High School in Elmhurst, where Ahmed used scissors to cut Harpal's hair to the neckline while a younger boy stood watch at the door, according to police.

A key religious tenet of Sikhism is that males keep their hair unshorn. Ahmed and the other boy are Muslim.

Queens prosecutors used hate-crime statutes to charge Ahmed with unlawful imprisonment, aggravated harassment and menacing, as well as harassment and criminal possession of a weapon. Ahmed could face up to seven years in prison. No one else was charged.

But politicians and activists said prosecution wasn't enough and said the Department of Education needs a systematic overhaul of the way it handles bias.

"The Department of Education is as guilty as these boys in that bathroom for what happened," Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) said at a news conference Monday at the Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan.

Several civil-rights groups, representing Sikhs, South Asians and Muslims among others, said bias attacks against minorities have only gotten worse since 9/11.

"Almost half -- half! -- of our Sikh children face harassment," Sikh Coalition executive director Amardeep Singh said. "That is unacceptable."

Singh, Liu and councilmen David Weprin (D-Queens Village), Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) and Hiram Montserrat (D-Corona) blamed Klein for failing to follow through on the Dignity for All Students Act, which the council passed in 2004 and calls for cultural-sensitivity training for school staff and for data to be collected on bias-based harassment.

In an e-mailed statement, a spokeswoman for Klein said that the criticism was unfounded, and that the department takes discrimination and harassment very seriously.

"School leaders have worked to create a safe and nurturing environment for all students," Dina Paul Parks wrote. "They have supported the student and his family and met with representatives from the Sikh Coalition the day after the incident. Their leadership has brought the school community together and will ensure that it continues to move forward in a spirit of unity."

According to a report released Monday by the Sikh Coalition, 58.4 percent of Sikh students in New York City public schools have been physically harassed because of their religion, and 30.2 percent of complaints to school staff are ignored.

According to Singh, Harpal had complained of harassment by other students five times before the May 25 incident but administrators did nothing or little about it.

Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.

http://www.petitiononline.com/mtahate1/petition.html

http://pacificcitizen.org/content/2007/national/apr6-stom-mta.htm

http://www.falloutcentral.com/news/2007/04/17/podcast-episode-interview-with-john-leo-directory-of-community-relations-for-the-chinatown-partnership-new-york-city/

http://antiessentialistspeaksup.wordpress.com/2007/04/13/update-on-marie-stefanie-martinez/

http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/2007/04/marie-stefanie-martinez.html

http://voxexmachina.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/another-update-on-marie-stefanie-martinez/

http://www.aamovement.net/hatecrime/2007-9/martinez.html

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/37901/Teenage-Pinay-na-binugbog-sa-NY-umaani-ng-suporta

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03212007/news/regionalnews/girl__14__nabbed_in_student_bus_beating_regionalnews_erika_martinez_and_leela_de_kretser.htm

http://www.falloutcentral.com/news/2007/03/20/girl-beaten-on-nyc-bus-for-looking-chinese/

http://www.falloutcentral.com/news/2007/04/12/no-word-from-the-mta-about-the-case-of-marie-stefanie-martinez-but/

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03182007/news/regionalnews/girls_bloody_beating_regionalnews_dan_mangan________and_leela_de_kretser.htm

http://www.reappropriate.com/?p=646

http://www.carrollgardenscourier.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18116913&BRD=2384&PAG=461&dept_id=560114&rfi=6

http://www.philippinenews.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=760f4b57120f76d796d6a0763788cf94

Bus attack vs. Pinay HS girl sparks anti-hate crime drive The Filipino Express

 Apr 2, 2007 / Apr 8, 2007

HEADLINE: Bus attack vs. Pinay HS girl sparks anti-hate crime drive
 
ABSTRACT

The petition accused the bus driver of "neglecting his moral and ethical duty to ensure the safety of MTA riders and punctuated his negligent conduct by allegedly advising Ms. [Martinez], who was still wearing her Catholic school uniform, to 'go talk to a priest' after the assault."

"If the bus operator is found to have permitted the assault to have taken place and informed Ms. Martinez to 'go talk to a priest', MTA should subject the bus operator to termination from his position," the letter said.

"When we got on they were al ready whispering and making noises and everything," Martinez said. "They were like 'I'm not letting you past' and everything. They were laughing."

FULL TEXT

NEW YORK CITY - Spurred by the recent assault against a Filipina high school student in Queens, a petition-signing campaign was launched demanding an investigation into the incident and to demand punishment for authorities who failed to stop the attack.

The letter of petition is addressed to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, NY Police Department Hate Crimes Task Force Commanding Officer Inspector Michael Osgood and MTA Bus President Tom Savage.

The New York Post reported on March 16 that 17 year old Filipina high school student, Marie Stefanie Marti nez was assaulted in New York by a group of teenagers on a MTA B82 bus due to their perception that she looked "Chinese" even though she is of Filipino descent.

Ms. Martinez was punched, kicked, and subjected to slurs in what can be categorized as a hate crime based on her attackers animosity towards her perceived ethnicity.

Reportedly, the MTA bus operator who witnessed the assault did nothing to intervene during the course of the assault on Ms. Martinez.

The petition accused the bus driver of "neglecting his moral and ethical duty to ensure the safety of MTA riders and punctuated his negligent conduct by allegedly advising Ms. Martinez, who was still wearing her Catholic school uniform, to 'go talk to a priest' after the assault."

The petition is asking the MTA and NYPD to "conduct a vigorous full and complete investigation into the incident ensuring that any violations found of any applicable hate crimes statutes are fully applied."

It also called for the bus operator to "be subjected to discipline commensurate to the action of permitting riders to commit a hate crime on a MTA rider."

"If the bus operator is found to have permitted the assault to have taken place and informed Ms. Martinez to 'go talk to a priest', MTA should subject the bus operator to termination from his position," the letter said.

The petition letter could be accessed via the internet athttp://www.petitiononline. com/mtahate1/petition.html.

As of Thursday afternoon, March 29, close of 2,200 persons have signed the petition.

Martinez, 17 told the New York Post that she was attacked by a group of 10 black teenagers shortly after stepping on to the B82 bus at 3:30 p.m. Friday.

"I'm just so glad the kids didn't have a weapon. If they did, I could have died if they stabbed me with a pen or something," said Martinez, from the Philippines.

The brazen beating began as the bus pulled away from Ocean Avenue and Kings Highway, where Martinez boarded with her pal, Sherell.

"When we got on they were al ready whispering and making noises and everything," Martinez said. "They were like 'I'm not letting you past' and everything. They were laughing."

The scared schoolgirl said she was laughed at when she tried to defend herself, with the bullies mocking her accent.

"They were pulling my hair, pulling my hair, opening my book bag!" she said. "I said, 'Leave me alone. I'm not doing anything to you.'

"That's when they started to crowd around me. The boy punched me twice in my face and my mouth."

Martinez said she was ultimately saved by a man in his 30s, who pulled her from the group.

The honors student then told the driver what happened, and he shockingly said to go to talk to a priest.

She instead opted to file a report at the 63rd Precinct.
 
LOAD-DATE: April 29, 2007

I don’t think we can talk about hate crime until we know the roots of contemporary hatred, and we should begin by looking at the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s.  I found this great article by Robert J. Norrell that recaps the civil rights era:

Civil Rights Movement in the United States

Civil Rights Movement in the United States, political, legal, and social struggle by black Americans to gain full citizenship rights and to achieve racial equality. The civil rights movement was first and foremost a challenge to segregation, the system of laws and customs separating blacks and whites that whites used to control blacks after slavery was abolished in the 1860s. During the civil rights movement, individuals and civil rights organizations challenged segregation and discrimination with a variety of activities, including protest marches, boycotts, and refusal to abide by segregation laws. Many believe that the movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and ended with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, though there is debate about when it began and whether it has ended yet. The civil rights movement has also been called the Black Freedom Movement, the Negro Revolution, and the Second Reconstruction.

Segregation was an attempt by white Southerners to separate the races in every sphere of life and to achieve supremacy over blacks. Segregation was often called the Jim Crow system, after a minstrel show character from the 1830s who was an old, crippled, black slave who embodied negative stereotypes of blacks. Segregation became common in Southern states following the end of Reconstruction in 1877. During Reconstruction, which followed the Civil War (1861-1865), Republican governments in the Southern states were run by blacks, Northerners, and some sympathetic Southerners. The Reconstruction governments had passed laws opening up economic and political opportunities for blacks. By 1877 the Democratic Party had gained control of government in the Southern states, and these Southern Democrats wanted to reverse black advances made during Reconstruction. To that end, they began to pass local and state laws that specified certain places “For Whites Only” and others for “Colored.” Blacks had separate schools, transportation, restaurants, and parks, many of which were poorly funded and inferior to those of whites. Over the next 75 years, Jim Crow signs went up to separate the races in every possible place.

The system of segregation also included the denial of voting rights, known as disfranchisement. Between 1890 and 1910 all Southern states passed laws imposing requirements for voting that were used to prevent blacks from voting, in spite of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which had been designed to protect black voting rights. These requirements included: the ability to read and write, which disqualified the many blacks who had not had access to education; property ownership, something few blacks were able to acquire; and paying a poll tax, which was too great a burden on most Southern blacks, who were very poor. As a final insult, the few blacks who made it over all these hurdles could not vote in the Democratic primaries that chose the candidates because they were open only to whites in most Southern states.

Because blacks could not vote, they were virtually powerless to prevent whites from segregating all aspects of Southern life. They could do little to stop discrimination in public accommodations, education, economic opportunities, or housing. The ability to struggle for equality was even undermined by the prevalent Jim Crow signs, which constantly reminded blacks of their inferior status in Southern society. Segregation was an all encompassing system.

Conditions for blacks in Northern states were somewhat better, though up to 1910 only about 10 percent of blacks lived in the North, and prior to World War II (1939-1945), very few blacks lived in the West. Blacks were usually free to vote in the North, but there were so few blacks that their voices were barely heard. Segregated facilities were not as common in the North, but blacks were usually denied entrance to the best hotels and restaurants. Schools in New England were usually integrated, but those in the Midwest generally were not. Perhaps the most difficult part of Northern life was the intense economic discrimination against blacks. They had to compete with large numbers of recent European immigrants for job opportunities and almost always lost.

Blacks fought against discrimination whenever possible. In the late 1800s blacks sued in court to stop separate seating in railroad cars, states' disfranchisement of voters, and denial of access to schools and restaurants. One of the cases against segregated rail travel was Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that “separate but equal” accommodations were constitutional. In fact, separate was almost never equal, but the Plessy doctrine provided constitutional protection for segregation for the next 50 years.

To protest segregation, blacks created new national organizations. The National Afro-American League was formed in 1890; the Niagara Movement in 1905; and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. In 1910 the National Urban League was created to help blacks make the transition to urban, industrial life.

The NAACP became one of the most important black protest organizations of the 20th century. It relied mainly on a legal strategy that challenged segregation and discrimination in courts to obtain equal treatment for blacks. An early leader of the NAACP was the historian and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, who starting in 1910 made powerful arguments in favor of protesting segregation as editor of the NAACP magazine, The Crisis. NAACP lawyers won court victories over voter disfranchisement in 1915 and residential segregation in 1917, but failed to have lynching outlawed by the Congress of the United States in the 1920s and 1930s. These cases laid the foundation for a legal and social challenge to segregation although they did little to change everyday life. In 1935 Charles H. Houston, the NAACP's chief legal counsel, won the first Supreme Court case argued by exclusively black counsel representing the NAACP. This win invigorated the NAACP's legal efforts against segregation, mainly by convincing courts that segregated facilities, especially schools, were not equal. In 1939 the NAACP created a separate organization called the NAACP Legal Defense Fund that had a nonprofit, tax-exempt status that was denied to the NAACP because it lobbied the U.S. Congress. Houston's chief aide and later his successor, Thurgood Marshall, a brilliant young lawyer who would become a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, began to challenge segregation as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

When World War I (1914-1918) began, blacks enlisted to fight for their country. However, black soldiers were segregated, denied the opportunity to be leaders, and were subjected to racism within the armed forces. During the war, hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks migrated northward in 1916 and 1917 to take advantage of job openings in Northern cities created by the war. This great migration of Southern blacks continued into the 1950s. Along with the great migration, blacks in both the North and South became increasingly urbanized during the 20th century. In 1890, about 85 percent of all Southern blacks lived in rural areas; by 1960 that percentage had decreased to about 42 percent. In the North, about 95 percent of all blacks lived in urban areas in 1960. The combination of the great migration and the urbanization of blacks resulted in black communities in the North that had a strong political presence. The black communities began to exert pressure on politicians, voting for those who supported civil rights. These Northern black communities, and the politicians that they elected, helped Southern blacks struggling against segregation by using political influence and money.

The Great Depression of the 1930s increased black protests against discrimination, especially in Northern cities. Blacks protested the refusal of white-owned businesses in all-black neighborhoods to hire black salespersons. Using the slogan “Don't Buy Where You Can't Work,” these campaigns persuaded blacks to boycott those businesses and revealed a new militancy. During the same years, blacks organized school boycotts in Northern cities to protest discriminatory treatment of black children.

The black protest activities of the 1930s were encouraged by the expanding role of government in the economy and society. During the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt the federal government created federal programs, such as Social Security, to assure the welfare of individual citizens. Roosevelt himself was not an outspoken supporter of black rights, but his wife Eleanor became an open advocate for fairness to blacks, as did other leaders in the administration. The Roosevelt Administration opened federal jobs to blacks and turned the federal judiciary away from its preoccupation with protecting the freedom of business corporations and toward the protection of individual rights, especially those of the poor and minority groups. Beginning with his appointment of Hugo Black to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1937, Roosevelt chose judges who favored black rights. As early as 1938, the courts displayed a new attitude toward black rights; that year the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Missouri was obligated to provide access to a public law school for blacks just as it provided for whites—a new emphasis on the equal part of the Plessy doctrine. Blacks sensed that the national government might again be their ally, as it had been during the Civil War.

When World War II began in Europe in 1939, blacks demanded better treatment than they had experienced in World War I. Black newspaper editors insisted during 1939 and 1940 that black support for this war effort would depend on fair treatment. They demanded that black soldiers be trained in all military roles and that black civilians have equal opportunities to work in war industries at home.

In 1941 A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union whose members were mainly black railroad workers, planned a March on Washington to demand that the federal government require defense contractors to hire blacks on an equal basis with whites. To forestall the march, President Roosevelt issued an executive order to that effect and created the federal Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to enforce it. The FEPC did not prevent discrimination in war industries, but it did provide a lesson to blacks about how the threat of protest could result in new federal commitments to civil rights.

During World War II, blacks composed about one-eighth of the U.S. armed forces, which matched their presence in the general population. Although a disproportionately high number of blacks were put in noncombat, support positions in the military, many did fight. The Army Air Corps trained blacks as pilots in a controversial segregated arrangement in Tuskegee, Alabama. During the war, all the armed services moved toward equal treatment of blacks, though none flatly rejected segregation.

In the early war years, hundreds of thousands of blacks left Southern farms for war jobs in Northern and Western cities. In fact more blacks migrated to the North and the West during World War II than had left during the previous war. Although there was racial tension and conflict in their new homes, blacks were free of the worst racial oppression, and they enjoyed much larger incomes. After the war blacks in the North and West used their economic and political influence to support civil rights for Southern blacks.

Blacks continued to work against discrimination during the war, challenging voting registrars in Southern courthouses and suing school boards for equal educational provisions. The membership of the NAACP grew from 50,000 to about 500,000. In 1944 the NAACP won a major victory in Smith v. Allwright, which outlawed the white primary. A new organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), was founded in 1942 to challenge segregation in public accommodations in the North.

During the war, black newspapers campaigned for a Double V, victories over both fascism in Europe and racism at home. The war experience gave about one million blacks the opportunity to fight racism in Europe and Asia, a fact that black veterans would remember during the struggle against racism at home after the war. Perhaps just as important, almost ten times that many white Americans witnessed the patriotic service of black Americans. Many of them would object to the continued denial of civil rights to the men and women beside whom they had fought.

After World War II the momentum for racial change continued. Black soldiers returned home with determination to have full civil rights. President Harry Truman ordered the final desegregation of the armed forces in 1948. He also committed to a domestic civil rights policy favoring voting rights and equal employment, but the U.S. Congress rejected his proposals.

In the postwar years, the NAACP's legal strategy for civil rights continued to succeed. Led by Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund challenged and overturned many forms of discrimination, but their main thrust was equal educational opportunities. For example, in Sweat v. Painter (1950), the Supreme Court decided that the University of Texas had to integrate its law school. Marshall and the Defense Fund worked with Southern plaintiffs to challenge the Plessy doctrine directly, arguing in effect that separate was inherently unequal. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on five cases that challenged elementary- and secondary-school segregation, and in May 1954 issued its landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that stated that racially segregated education was unconstitutional.

White Southerners received the Brown decision first with shock and, in some instances, with expressions of goodwill. By 1955, however, white opposition in the South had grown into massive resistance, a strategy to persuade all whites to resist compliance with the desegregation orders. It was believed that if enough people refused to cooperate with the federal court order, it could not be enforced. Tactics included firing school employees who showed willingness to seek integration, closing public schools rather than desegregating, and boycotting all public education that was integrated. The White Citizens Council was formed and led opposition to school desegregation all over the South. The Citizens Council called for economic coercion of blacks who favored integrated schools, such as firing them from jobs, and the creation of private, all-white schools.

Virtually no schools in the South were desegregated in the first years after the Brown decision. One county in Virginia did indeed close its public schools. In Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, Governor Orval Faubus defied a federal court order to admit nine black students to Central High School, and President Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to enforce desegregation. The event was covered by the national media, and the fate of the Little Rock Nine, the students attempting to integrate the school, dramatized the seriousness of the school desegregation issue to many Americans. Although not all school desegregation was as dramatic as in Little Rock, the desegregation process did proceed—gradually. Frequently schools were desegregated only in theory, because racially segregated neighborhoods led to segregated schools. To overcome this problem, some school districts in the 1970s tried busing students to schools outside of their neighborhoods.

As desegregation progressed, the membership of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) grew. The KKK used violence or threats against anyone who was suspected of favoring desegregation or black civil rights. Klan terror, including intimidation and murder, was widespread in the South in the 1950s and 1960s, though Klan activities were not always reported in the media. One terrorist act that did receive national attention was the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy slain in Mississippi by whites who believed he had flirted with a white woman. The trial and acquittal of the men accused of Till's murder were covered in the national media, demonstrating the continuing racial bigotry of Southern whites.

Despite the threats and violence, the struggle quickly moved beyond school desegregation to challenge segregation in other areas. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a member of the Montgomery, Alabama, branch of the NAACP, was told to give up her seat on a city bus to a white person. When Parks refused to move, she was arrested. The local NAACP, led by Edgar D. Nixon, recognized that the arrest of Parks might rally local blacks to protest segregated buses. Montgomery's black community had long been angry about their mistreatment on city buses where white drivers were often rude and abusive. The community had previously considered a boycott of the buses, and almost overnight one was organized. The Montgomery bus boycott was an immediate success, with virtually unanimous support from the 50,000 blacks in Montgomery. It lasted for more than a year and dramatized to the American public the determination of blacks in the South to end segregation. In November 1956 the Supreme Court upheld a federal court decision that ruled the bus segregation unconstitutional. The decision went into effect December 20, 1956, and the black community of Montgomery ended its boycott the next day.

A young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., was president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organization that directed the boycott. The protest made King a national figure. His eloquent appeals to Christian brotherhood and American idealism created a positive impression on people both inside and outside the South. King became the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) when it was founded