CIVIL RIGHTS IN HISTORY
CRP Bulletin/Noticiero recognizes significant people and landmark events in civil rights history.
2013 MARKS…
THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Keys v. Denver School District No. 1, which recognized the rights of Latino students in Colorado to desegregated schooling and remedies, the same kinds of rights Black students in the South previously gained through other court decisions. The Court mandated the desegregation of the entire school district -- comprised of inner city and suburban schools -- even though only the suburban schools were found to be intentionally segregated through race-conscious manipulation of student assignments. For the country, the Keyes decision extended mandatory desegregation to the North and to whole districts, not just single schools (Orfield & Eaton, 1996).
- Claudette Colvin
THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY of Rosa Parks' birth (February 4, 1913). Her legacy lives on in many ways, especially through Claudette Colvin — “The Other Rosa Parks” — who was arrested at the age of fifteen for refusing to give up her seat to a white person while traveling from school on a Montgomery city bus (March 2, 1955), nine months before Rosa Parks did the same. Claudette challenged the Montgomery, Alabama bus segregation laws and was a plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle (1956).
THE 150TH BIRTHDAY (September 23, 1863) of Mary Church Terrell, the daughter of former slaves and one of the first African-American women to earn a bachelor’s and master’s degree. Terrell is recognized as a political activist, an educator and a suffragist. She was involved in the women’s rights movement as well as the suffrage movement and spoke publicly for all American women to have the right to vote. In 1896, she contributed to the establishment of the National Association of Colored Women and the National Association of College Women. Throughout her life, Terrell diligently fought for equality and engaged in work to eliminate gender and race discrimination.
