Age of Segregation White Supremacy Essay

Indeed, Billingsley asserts, the black church has been "and is" for blacks in America "the mother of our culture, the champion of our freedom," and the "hallmark" of blacks' "civilization" (Billingsley, 1992, p. 223).

Resistance to racism and segregation also came in many small acts through bold and courageous moves by individuals. In Farmville, Virginia, for example, in 1935, Barbara Johns organized students in Robert Russa Moton High School to go on strike to protest terrible school facilities for black students (Wormser, p. 178). She was a tobacco worker in the fields, a minister's niece, a good speaker and she was seemingly very influenced by her uncle Vernon Johns' preaching. This is how enthusiasm for change is passed from one person to the next - Reverend Johns was known for "exhorting and chastising" his congregation for their "complacency and docility" (Wormser, 178). Barbara Johns was moved by her uncle's rousing rhetoric, and she organized a strike - bringing in the NAACP to back up the students - and in the end a lawsuit was launched based on the need for integration and equal school facilities.That litigation, in concert with other integration lawsuits, ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court as Brown v. Board of Education. And so, a small movement for a better school in Virginia for black students became a landmark High Court decision that is among the most pivotal cases in the history of the African-American push for equality and justice.

Works Cited

Billingsley, Andrew. (1992). Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Enduring Legacy of African-

American Families. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Book, Robert. (2004). Race, Water, and Foreign Policy: The Tennessee Valley

Authority's Global Agenda Meets "Jim Crow." Diplomatic History, 28(1), 55-81.

McCluskey, Audrey T. (1999). Representing the Race: Mary McLeod Bethune and the Press in the Jim Crow Era. The Western Journal of Black Studies, 23(4), 236-250.

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