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Martin Luther king JR. assassination
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hit by a sniper's bullet. King had been standing on the balcony in front of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when, without warning, he was shot. The .30-caliber rifle bullet entered King's right cheek, traveled through his neck, and finally stopped at his shoulder blade. King was immediately taken to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Civil War
On June 16, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln made one of his rare wartime departures from Washington. He spoke in Philadelphia at a fund-raising fair for the United States Sanitary Commission, a national soldiers' aid society. The preceding six weeks had seen the bloodiest fighting in the Civil War so far, at the carnage-strewn Virginia battlefields of The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. "War, at the best, is terrible," Lincoln told the crowd, "and this war of ours, in its -
13th Amendment
On this day in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, officially ending the institution of slavery, is ratified. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." With these words, the single greatest change wrought by the Civil War was officially noted in the Constitution. -
15th amendment
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote by declaring that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Although it passed Congress on February 26, 1869, and was ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment would not be fully realized for almost a century. Through the use of poll taxes, literacy -
Rosa Parks bus boycott
Made famous by Rosa Parks’ refusal to give her seat to a white man, the Montgomery bus boycott was one of the defining events of the civil rights movement. Beginning in 1955, the 13-month nonviolent protest by the black citizens of Montgomery aimed to desegregate the city's public bus system, Montgomery City Lines. Its success led to a November 1956 Supreme Court decision overturning segregated transportation that was legalized by the 1896Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, an area left untouched by the -
African American Civil Rights Movement
The American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) was a biblically based movement that had significant social and political consequences for the United States. Black clergymen such as the Reverends Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Joseph Lowery, Wyatt T. Walker, Fred Shuttles worth, and numerous others relied on religious faith strategically applied to solve America's obstinate racial problems. Black Christian leaders and their white allies joined together to challenge the immoral system o -
Emmett till murder
Emmett Till Murdered (1955): Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, was visiting his relatives in Mississippi when he was snatched from his great-uncle's home on the night of August 28. He was then beaten, shot in the head, and then thrown into Tallahatchie River. His body was found three days later. Ostensibly, the murderers killed Till because he whistled at a white woman. -
I Have A Dream
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.
But one hundred years later, we must f -
Missouri compromise
When the issue of Missouri statehood was first considered by the U. S. House of Representatives in 1819, New York Congressman James Tallmadge introduced an amendment that provided that the further introduction of slaves into Missouri should be forbidden, and that all children of slave parents born in the state after its admission should be free at the age of 25.
