Cotton Fields to Skyscrapers (Part 4)
Reinventing Charlotte and the Carolina Piedmont in the New South (African Americans and their allies organize to force change in the South.)
We Shall
Overcome, 1940s -1970s
In Part 4, we consider how, during the civil rights movement, many North Carolinians
helped to end segregation through individual and group activism,
using tactics such as sit-ins and boycotts. The sit-in movement
spread from Greensboro, and Charlotte led the nation in school
integration through a practice called busing. The invention of the
television aided in broadcasting both the challenges and triumphs civil rights
activists experienced during their fight for equality and brought
the struggle to people's attention like never before.
Livingroom/TV in 1950sLevine Museum of the New South
The television highlights the important role mainstream media played in broadcasting the struggles of African Americans into white homes across the country.
We Shall Overcome, 1940s-70sLevine Museum of the New South
Separate but equal during the Jim Crow era never was really equal. Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950s.
Lunch CounterLevine Museum of the New South
Lunch counters were targeted by local college and high school students to protest discrimination in restaurants and diners. Charlotte had the second largest sit-in movement in the country.
School BusLevine Museum of the New South
In 1971, the Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, decided that busing was a good method to achieve school desegregation and ordered the Charlotte school board to create a tangible plan.
