This page is designed to provide resources for history/social studies and ELA teachers who are teaching about Civil Rights, civic engagement and participation, protest movements, and the forms and styles of poetry.
Topics on the Page
Learning Resources about Poetry and Civil Rights
Langston Hughes, Poet, Playwright and Civil Rights Activist
Music and Poetry
Historical Background on The Long Civil Rights Movement
Stories of Resistance and Struggle
- Transportation Protests: Those Who Refused to Give Up Their Seats
- Frederick Douglass, 1844
- Elizabeth Jennings, 1954
- Ida B. Wells, 1883
- Irene Morgan, 1944
- Jackie Robinson, 1944
- Claudette Colvin, 1955
- Aurelia, Browder, 1955
- Georgia Gilmore and Montgomery Bus Boycott
Learning Resources
The Poetry of the Civil Rights Movement from the Poetry Foundation
Poems of the Civil Rights Movement
Spoken Word & Poetry for Civil Rights
African American Protest Poetry from Freedom's Story: Teaching African American Literature & History
10 Poems About Racism and Discrimination
Langston Hughes
Poems by Langston Hughes
https://www.crmvet.org/poetry/fhughes.htm
Langston Hughes Historical Biography Wiki Page
Langston Hughes, Poet, Playwright, and Civil Rights Activist
Music and Poetry
30 Times Black Music Changed the World
Historical Background on the Long Civil Rights Movement
Analyze the origins, goals and goals of the African American Civil Rights Movement.
Civil Rights Movement History, 1951-1968
Stories of Resistance & Struggle: Transportation Protests: Those Who Refused to Give Up Their Seats
Background material at Transportation Protests: 1841 to 1992 from Teaching for Change
Fredrick Douglass 1841
In 1841, Frederick Douglass and his friend James N. Buffum entered a train car reserved for white passengers in Lynn, Massachusetts. When the conductor ordered them to leave the car, they refused. Douglass’ and Buffum’s actions led to similar incidents on the Eastern Railroad.
What to the Slave Is The Fourth of July? (July 5, 1852)
Elizabeth Jennings 1854
Here is a description of the event, July 16, 1854 from Zinn Education Project
- 24-year-old schoolteacher Elizabeth Jennings Graham successfully challenged racist streetcar policies in New York City.
- She boarded a bus without the “Colored Persons Allowed” sign. The New York Tribune described what happened next:
- “She got upon one of the Company’s cars on the Sabbath, to ride to church. The conductor undertook to get her off, first alleging the car was full; when that was shown to be false, he pretended the other passengers were displeased at her presence; but (when) she insisted on her rights, he took hold of her by force to expel her. She resisted.”
- Jennings was represented by a 24-year-old lawyer named Chester A. Arthur—he who would go on to become the 21st president upon the death of James A. Garfield in 1881.
- Judge William Rockwell of the Brooklyn Circuit Court ruled in the Black schoolteacher’s favor. She was awarded damages of $225.00 (about $10,000 today) and $22.50 in costs.
- By 1861, all of the city’s street and rail cars were desegregated
America's First Freedom Rider
Ida B. Wells 1883
- In 1883, Ida B. Wells traveled by train from Memphis to Woodstock, Tennessee, where she was working as a teacher. The conductor asked Wells to move to a different car because of her race
- The court decided in her favor and ordered the railroad company to pay damages, which they did.
- But they also appealed the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1885, which decided in favor of the railroad company, reversing the earlier decision.
Standing Up by Sitting Down, Tennessee State Museum
Ida B. Wells: The Daring Life of a Crusading Journalist, Philip Dray (2021)
Irene Morgan Kirkaldy 1944
- On a July morning in 1944, Kirkaldy, recovering from a miscarriage, boarded a Greyhound bus in Gloucester, Virginia, to return to her home in Baltimore.
- She selected a seat in a section of the back of the bus designated for black passengers. A half hour into the trip, a white couple boarded the crowded bus and the bus driver, under authority given to him by Jim Crow laws and segregation practices, demanded that Kirkaldy give up her seat.
- Raised by a religious family that discouraged questioning authority, Kirkaldy decided that her rights outweighed her obedience and she refused to give up her seat.
- The bus driver drove directly to a local jail and a sheriff's deputy boarded the bus and handed her a warrant for her arrest. Kirkaldy tore up the warrant and kicked the officer when he tried to grab her.
On June 3, 1946, in Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in interstate travel was unconstitutional as "an undue burden on commerce."
The court ruled that forcing passengers to change seats or sections every time they crossed state lines was unconstitutional.
The court did not rule that segregated transportation within the state was unconstitutional.
- Led to the later civil rights bus protests known as the Freedom Riders.
Jackie Robinson 1944
- In 1944, the future Hall of Fame Baseball Player and then Army Lieutenant Jackie Robinson faced court martial for refusing to give up his seat and move to the back of a bus
- He was acquitted of all charges
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Robinson's Letter to the Assistant to the Secretary of War (July 16, 1944)
Jim Crow, Meet Lieutenant Robinson, National Archives
United States v. 2LT Jack R. Robinson, National World War II Museum
Claudette Colvin 1955
- Nine months before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin (she was in the 11th grade) did the same and was arrested for violating segregation law, disorderly conduct, and assault.
- She should have been taken into juvenile detention, but instead she was locked up, without a chance to phone her family, in the city jail.
- Later Colvin said: "I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other—saying, 'Sit down girl!' I was glued to my seat."
Before Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin, NPR (March 15, 2009)
Aurelia Browder 1955
- Aurelia Browder, like so many other black residents of Montgomery, was mistreated on a city bus. According to her testimony in the civil case, she was forced by the bus driver “to get up and stand to let a white man and a white lady sit down.”
- Three other plaintiffs, Mary Louise Smith, Claudette Colvin and Susie McDonald, had reported similar mistreatment.
- In a 2-1 decision, issued on June 5, a lower court ruled that “the enforced segregation of black and white passengers on motor buses … violates the Constitution and laws of the United States,” specifically the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
- November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision in Browderv. Gayle, legally ending racial segregation on public transportation in the state of Alabama.
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Boycotts, Strikes and Marches: Protests of the Civil Rights Era
Rosa's Bus: The Ride to Civil Rights
- The story of the Bus Boycott from the point of view of Bus #2857
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Pies from Nowhere: How Georgia Gilmore Sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- A cook at the National Lunch Company in Montgomery, she organized a group of women who cooked and baked to fund raise for gas and cars to provide transportation for those boycotting the city buses.
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