"Eyes on the Prize": "Awakenings" Quiz

Answer: Brown v. Board of Education

"By the early 1950s, change was in the air. Thousands of black soldiers who had fought to liberate Europe from the grip of Nazi fascism and racism in World War II, returned home determined to fight bigotry and injustice. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP)* legal victory in Brown v. Board of Education helped to legitimize the emerging struggle: this decision overturned an 1896 Supreme Court ruling known as Plessy v. Ferguson which legalized 'separate but equal' facilities and services for blacks and whites. The 1954 ruling, in effect, challenged all Americans to live up to the Constitutional vision of a society that promised 'liberty and justice for all.'"
-This quote from the film is located at www.facinghistory.org
The primary elements of Brown v. Board of Education were overturned in July of 2007 by the Supreme Court.

Answer: Emmett Till

Till, a 14 year old boy from Chicago, was brutally beaten to death for speaking "disrespectfully" to a white woman while visiting his uncle in Money, Mississippi. His body was tossed into a river, and the events that followed united the black community and changed the world.

Answer: Dar He

Mose Wright was Till's uncle. He testified that Till's murderers came to his house and took the boy away into the night. He took the stand and for the first time in Jim Crow history, he accused a white man of murder.

Answer: Jet

The photos captivated Blacks all over America. Mamie Till-Mobley's decision to publish the images of her son's tortured body made Emmett Till a powerful symbol of racial violence in the South.

Answer: They were found "Not Guilty."

After the trial, the murderers proudly sold a detailed account of the murder to "Look" magazine. They never saw the inside of a jail cell.

Answer: Secretary

She was secretary of the Montgomery Branch of the NAACP, but was on her way home from her other job as a seamstress.

Answer: 26

King was very young and was chosen because he was new to the community, had no baggage, and the city fathers hadn't had a chance to intimidate him. Time would prove that choice to be right beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

Answer: a mighty stream

In one of King's most famous speeches, on December 5, 1955, more than 5,000 people showed up at the Holt Street Baptist Church to hear King give the speech that laid out the plan for the Montgomery bus boycott and a new vision for American democracy, here is the climax of that speech:
"My friends, I want it to be known that we're going to work with grim and firm determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong, we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, then the Supreme Court of this Nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer and never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness
like a mighty stream."
This was MLK's first great speech and gave notice to the world that a powerful new voice had arrived.

Answer: E.D. Nixon

Nixon had attempted several times to create a test case on Montgomery buses, but finally found the perfect person with Rosa Parks. He decided that a boycott was the way to make the desired change. He created a separate organization to lead the boycott and named it the Montgomery Improvement Association.

He also helped to name Martin Luther King as its leader. He created a system of alternative travel to get people around during the boycott, but very few people remember his name.

Answer: One year, 15 days

After a one day test boycott, the blacks of Montgomery dug in for the long haul and set up an alternative system of travel. Black taxi drivers charged a fare equal to the cost to ride the bus, but when word of this reached city officials, the order went out to fine any cab driver who charged a rider less than 45 cents. Private motor vehicles were used in a kind of carpool, some people got around other ways like walking, cycling, riding mules or driving horse-drawn buggies.

Some people hitchhiked, but almost no blacks rode buses until they could sit where they chose to sit, and on December 20, 1956, victory was in hand.

The boycott of the buses had lasted for 381 days. This was the beginning of the direct action that changed the way blacks were allowed to live in this country.