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Emancipation Proclamation Signed
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Civil War Ends
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Plessy v. Ferguson
Supreme Court decision that claimed segregation was legal as long as the racially separate services were equal in quality. (Of course, the services for black Americans were almost always inferior, but people always found ways to get away with it.) -
NAACP founded
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People an organization that had been fighting for black Americans' rights since 1909. -
World War I Ends
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World War II Ends
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Brown v. Board
In 1951, 13 parents banded together and sued the local board of education in Topeka, Kansas, demanding that the board members end segregation in their children's schools. The courts in Kansas all refused to grant the parents' request. So the parents appealed to the Supreme Court in 1953, and their case was called Brown v. Board of Education. The issue was whether or not Plessy v. Ferguson was the correct decision, and whether segregation violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution -
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American Civil rights movement
a widespread movement to guarantee equal rights for black Americans -
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Massive Resistance
two years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Byrd said the following about federal orders to desegregate: "If we can organize the Southern States for massive resistance to this order, I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South." In counties where federal or state courts had ordered schools to desegregate, the entire public school system was shut down -
Little Rock Nine
In 1957, nine black students called the Little Rock Nine were attempting to enroll in a previously all-white high school in Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas. -
Alaska and Hawaii Become States
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George Wallace's quote
"In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." -
Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
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the University of Alabama conflict
Still segregated, three black students refused to be intimidated and insisted on attending. When they showed up to register, George Wallace personally blocked their way and delivered a speech about "states rights" he said "The unwelcomed unwanted, unwarranted and forceinduced intrusion upon the campus of the University.. of the might of the Central Government offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government" -
American Astronauts Land on the Moon
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Berlin Wall Fall
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Barack Obama is elected
First African‐American President Elected