How Did Education Influence The Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement focuses mostly on black people, but one aspect of the civil rights movement was education. Before, the civil war black people weren't expected to do anything but be slaves. They weren't allowed to better themselves, such as by learning how to read or write. Teaching an African American became a crime after Nat Turner led the only effective, sustained slave rebellion in August 1831(history.com) .Some still dared to educate themselves risking their lives. One civil rights activist that dared to learn how to read is Fredrick Douglas. He learned from his slaves owners wife and as white people feared he became nothing but greatness from there by telling his life story. After the Civil War they learned anyway they could but, it still wasn't easy because of lack of updated supplies. African American children learned from teachers and older family members learned from them. In one classroom, a six­ year-old girl sat alongside her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother, who was over seventy-five years old. All of them were learning to read for the first time( ncpedia.org.) Groups of African American students like “Little Rock Nine” began to enter

Whites started to fight back with violence by burning schools and targeting black students and teachers. One white man was reported to have “attempted to set a savage dog” upon one female teacher from the North ncpedia.orgl. They also started riots in front of schools causing parents to take their kids out of school. In The New York Times, one woman was described as follows: “tears flowed down her face, [and] her body shook in uncontrollable spasms” (Students Unhurt 18). In addition to this hysterical woman, chants such as “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate” (1) echoed around the school. This tendency of some whites to overreact with hysteria made integration particularly difficult