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Little Rock Arkansas - Little Rock nine.
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine Black students who enrolled into a full-white Central High School in Little Rock on September 1957. Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education. On the first day of school, Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to block the Black students’ entry into the high school. The event drew national attention to the civil rights movement. -
De jure
De jure segregation forced the separation of races by law and was a combined form of the Slave Code, Black Codes and Jim Crow laws -
Jim Crows laws
The "Jim Crow" law was a series of segregation and disenfranchisement laws, it was a formal, racial separation system that dominated many generations of the American South beginning in the 1890s. The laws affected almost every aspect of daily life, mandating segregation of schools, parks, libraries, drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, trains, and restaurants. "Whites Only" and "Colored" signs were constant reminders of the enforced racial order. -
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Civil and Human Rights in Australia
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Stolen Generation.
The Stolen Generation was the result of the Policy of Assimilation. The policy removed Aboriginal children from their families and placed them inside camps where many were beaten or sexually abused. Those who survived this hardship were then named the Stolen Generation. -
Aborigines Protection Act
In 1915 changes were made to the Aborigines Protection Act of 1909
The policy gave New South Wales Board for the Protection of Aborigines the power to take any Aboriginal child from their family at any time, for any reason. Similar policies were brought in by Australia’s other states and territories.
Tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were taken from their families under these laws. They are now known as the Stolen Generations. -
Strikes and Walkouts
The foundation of this event was the 1936 Native Administration Act, which racially restricted aboriginal workers in their workplace, and also treated them as slaves. To protest these racial segregation policies, On 1 May 1946, hundreds of Aboriginal workers walked away from their employers at over 25 pastoral stations. Also conducting a strike of over 800 Aboriginals. -
Day of Mourning & 10 point plan
On 26 January 1938. A group of Aboriginal people decided to respond by holding an Aboriginal Day of Mourning to protest the violence, dispossession and discrimination that Aboriginal people had experienced since 1788. It was the first national gathering of Indigenous people protesting against their treatment.
In summary, the ten-point plan was the essence of which was the broadening of power to the federal and state governments to extinguish native title. -
Importance on non-violent protests - Mahatma Ghandi - Martin Luther King
In 1950, King heard a talk by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, the president of Howard University spoke about the life and teachings of Gandhi. Gandhi’s stress on love and nonviolence inspired King to the method for social reform that he had been seeking. The nonviolent protest brought great success to the Freedom Rides, not only did they claim moral high ground but in many situations, it could deliver better results than either violent confrontation or slow changes through established legal acts. -
Policy of Assimilation
The assimilation policy was a policy to rescind the policy of protectionism and ultimately destroy the Aboriginal society. This was done by absorbing Aboriginal people into white society through the process of removing children from their families. -
Brown Vs Board of Education
On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren established an accordant ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned public schools were reported with racial segregation and considered to be a violation of the 14th Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. This decisions served as a major catalyst for the expanding civil rights movement during the decade of the 1950s. -
Rosa Parks and Montgomery bus boycott
Montgomery bus boycott was a protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, conducted by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery’s segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional. -
Greensboro sit-ins
In 1960 four Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Greensboro walked into the F. W. Woolworth store and quietly sat down at the lunch counter. This was known as the Greensboro sit-in. It was an act of protest against the segregation of lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina. Its success led to a wider sit-in movement. -
Electoral act amendment
The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962, gives all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the option to enrol and vote in federal elections. Enrolment was not compulsory for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, unlike other Australians. -
Beginning of land rights movement
The beginning of the land rights movement happened in 1963 when the Yolgnu people from Yirrkala in northern territory presented the Australian Parliament with a bark petition, to protest the removal of land on which Aboriginal people of Yirrkala maintained a significant connection to the site of the land for thousands of years. The protest was rejected by the court unjustly because the Yolgnu people’s relationship to the land didn’t fit the European concept of ‘property’. -
Martin Luther King arrested and jailed
On October 30, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy were arrested and later jailed in Birmingham because they led peaceful protests against unconstitutional bans on race mixing in Birmingham in 1963. Their protest march breached a state judge's injunction to the city of Birmingham, which was banning all anti-segregation protest activity. During the eight days of jail time, Dr.King wrote his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail." -
March on Washington - (I have a dream speech)
On August 28 1963, 250,000 people marched in Washington, D.C. for Jobs and Freedom to demand an end to segregation. Following the march a speech was made by Martin Luther King, Jr, which outlined the long history of racial injustice in America and encouraged his audience to remind their countries to take responsibility for their founding promises of freedom, justice, and equality. -
President Johnson signs Civil rights Act of 1964
On June 6, 1963, President John F. Kennedy proposed to Congress consider civil rights legislation that would address most of the civil rights issues. Despite Kennedy’s assassination in November of 1963, his proposal built parts in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law immediately after it was passed by Congress on July 2, 1964.
The act forbidden segregation in businesses and banned discriminatory employment. Ultimately ending segregation in any public places. -
Freedom Rides
Inspired by the Freedom rights in the US, a group of students at the University of Sydney led by Charles Perkins formed the Student Action For Aborigines (SAFA). Their mission was to stop the marginalisation of Aboriginal people in New South Wales towns and highlight the racial segregation in New South Wales. -
Wave Hill Walk-Off
On 23 August 1966, 200 Gurindji stockmen, domestic workers and their families initiated strike action at Wave Hill station in the Northern Territory, when they all walked off the Wave Hill station and refused to keep working for the owner. Disputes over wages and land ownership lasted for seven years. -
Referendum
The referendum happened in 1967 to ensure that Aborigines could be counted as a part of the Australian population in an official count. The referendum was a massive success because it was a landslide, 91% of Australians agreed to the referendum. -
The Mabo case
On 3 June 1992, the High Court of Australia recognised that a group of Torres Strait Islanders, led by Eddie Mabo, held ownership of Murray Island. In acknowledging the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their land, the court also held that native title existed for all Indigenous people. -
Road to reconciliation - Redfern Speech
On December the 10th 1992, a famous speech was made by the ex-prim minster of Australia Paul Keating challenged the established views of history held by many settler colonial Australians and outlined the outrageous acts done against Australia's Indigenous peoples in the course of colonial takeover of their country. Also marking the start of reconciliation. -
Bringing them home report
On 26 May 1997 the landmark Bringing Them Home report was showed in Federal Parliament the report documented the experiences of Stolen Generations members and highlighted that many issues facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities were strongly associated with the forced removal of children and the failure to recover. -
National Apology
The journey to National Apology began with the Bringing Them Home report. The investigated result revealed the brutal consequences of force removal. An apology was needed. So, on 13 February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, particularly to the Stolen Generations whose lives had been ruined by past government policies of forced child removal and assimilation.