Forced Segregation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Forced Segregation - Essay Example By confronting the injustice and potential violence, African-Americans organized in a courageous effort to claim their constitutional rights as guaranteed and backed by the US government. The same year that the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education over 100 lawmakers across the South signed the Southern Manifesto, which opposed integrated schools. State legislatures further cut off funding to any public school that allowed integration. African-Americans used this affront to their dignity to organize a concerted effort against the South's segregationist policies. On New Years Day in 1959, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized a march to condemn racial inequality. After a prayer meeting in Richmond VA. 800 members marched on the Capitol where they passed a resolution calling for an end to Virginia's public school crisis (The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia). Two weeks later the law that removed financial support for integrated schools was overturned and led to a massive integration movement. The US Government had supported the integration of public education since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. However, at that time there was little political will to enforce the amendment. Racist extremist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) ruled the rural south through intimidation and terror.