Highlights of the Civil Rights Movement
1954 Brown v. Board of Education—segregation in public schools found to be illegal by this landmark Supreme Court ruling
1955 Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and the bus boycott in Alabama begins Emmett Till murdered in Mississippi
1957 Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas, integrated by the “Little Rock Nine”
1959 Sit-ins at lunch counters 1961 Segregation of interstate bus terminals ruled unconstitutional
Freedom Riders attacked James Meredith is the first Black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi
1962 Civil Rights Movement formally organized 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes the seminal “Letter from Birmingham
Jail,” in which he argues that people have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws March on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1964 Killing of Charles Moore and Henry Dee Civil Rights Act passed
1965 Malcolm X assassinated 1965–1968 Over 100 race riots in American cities 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., assassinated 1991 Beating of Rodney King 1992 Major race riots in Los Angeles 1995 Million Man March 2007 Parents v. Seattle Schools and Meredith v. Jefferson Schools
Jena, Louisiana—Black high school students held for beating a White student and tried as adults
2008 James Ford Seale convicted and sentenced to three life prison terms for his role in the Moore/Dee murders in 1964 Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) introduces the Civil Rights Act of 2008 that includes provisions that ensure federal funds are not used to subsidize discrimination, holding employers accountable for age discrimination and improving accountability for other violations of civil rights and workers’ rights
2009 In the Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano, a lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven where firefighter tests to determine promotions were discarded, the Supreme Court ruled (5–4) in favor of the firefighters, saying New Haven’s “action in discarding the tests was a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964”
Source: Brunner, B. and Haney, E., Civil Rights Timeline: Milestones in the modern civil rights movement. © 2000–2012. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
270 ■ Chapter 11
It is hard to believe that more than a half-century has passed since the teenage students known today as the “Little Rock Nine” integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas (Figure 11–5). I vividly remember the scenes on television in 1957 of 9 brave teenagers, my age at the time, trying to enter the school, the cadre of hostile, angry White people spitting at them and hollering epitaphs, and the heavily armed soldiers protecting the teens. These images seared my consciousness and left an indelible imprint on my life. The activities that I accomplished each day—getting up in the morning, walking to school, attending classes, being with my friends, and so forth—were completely disrupted for the students. I remember thinking that this was not Europe; this was not Armenia or Spain, or Russia, or Germany; this was happening in “my backyard,” in the United States. People who could be my neighbors violated everything that I had been taught about human dignity and respect. Two years later, my “little sister” in nursing school was one of the Little Rock Nine—I learned firsthand the damage this event wrought on her life and, I believe, on the lives of all of us. Central High School had acquired a most personal mean- ing. As I write this chapter in 2011, celebrations are being held nationally to recognize and honor the integration of Central High School and the Little Rock Nine. Ostensibly, Central High School and many other schools were in- tegrated, the practices of separate water fountains and “back of the bus” were over and life moved on.
■ Traditional Definitions of HEALTH and ILLNESS According to Jacques (1976), the traditional definition of HEALTH stems from the African belief about life and the nature of being. To the African, life was a process rather than a state. The nature of a person was viewed in terms of energy force rather than matter. All things, whether living or dead, were be- lieved to influence one another. Therefore, one had the power to influence one’s destiny and that of others through the use of behavior, whether proper or otherwise, as well as through knowledge of the person and the world. When