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Brown versus Board of Education
In 1951 when, Oliver Brown, an African American minister and welder, called upon the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for legal assistance after the city's school board refused to enroll his daughter in an all-white school. After delays and rehearing in December of 1953, the Supreme Court finally reached a unanimous decision on May 17, 1954, when it ruled that the segregation of public school systems was unconstitutional. -
Emmett Till murder
On August 24 Till, along with several friends to travel. The youth reportedly whistled and made advances toward a white woman when he entered Grocery Market. Three days later Till's body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River. An all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, the husband and half-brother of Till's accuser, for Till's murder, prompting African Americans in Northern cities to stage rallies and demonstrations for racial justice. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Local authorities in Montgomery, Alabama, arrested Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, when she refused to vacate her seat in the white section of a city bus on December 1, 1955.members of the city's black community formed the Montgomery Improvement Association on December 4, 1955, and launched a community-wide boycott to compel the system's integration. On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision and ruled the segregated system unconstitutional. -
Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, Washington, D.C.
a crowd of over thirty thousand nonviolent demonstrators, from more than thirty states, gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. In addition to celebrating the three-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to end segregation in public education. Prayer Pilgrimage also dramatized and politicized the failure of most southern states to work toward or implement the court-ordered desegregation of their schools. The pilgrimage was organized by Philip Randolph. -
Little Rock Central High School Integration
The desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, gained national attention on September 3, 1957, when Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating the high school. This school with an enrollment of approximately two thousand white students. Despite suffering from constant torment and discrimination from theirclassmates,students still completed the school year at Central High School. -
Civil Right Act of 1957
On September 9, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Originally proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the Act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights. But, perhaps most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 signaled a growing federal commitment to the cause of civil rights. Video:https://youtu.be/iaFxm6PAXPI -
Temple Bombing (Atlanta, Ga.)
In the early hours of October 12, 1958, fifty sticks of dynamite exploded in a recessed entranceway at the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, Atlanta's oldest and most prominent synagogue, more commonly known as "the Temple." The incident was but the most recent in a string of bombings throughout the nation affecting churches and synagogues associated with the Civil Rights movement. -
Sit-ins: Greensboro, N.C.
On February 1, 1960 four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College students staged a sit-in at the store's segregated lunch counter. Upon taking their seats at the "whites-only" lunch counter.They were denied service and asked to leave by the store's manager. By February 5, the number of active participants in the Greensboro sit-in movement swelled to more than three hundred. They tries to put their effort in the civil right movement. -
Sit-ins: Nashville, Tenn.
During the late winter months of 1959, Lawson and the Nashville Student Movement, an organization comprised of students from the city's four African American colleges, made plans to launch a large-scale sit-in campaign targeting segregated restaurants and department stores in the city's downtown commercial district. city officials and local businesses agreed to desegregate Nashville's public facilities on May 10, 1960. -
New Orleans school integration
Two years following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Federal District Court Judge, J. Skelly Wright, ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to design an effective plan for the desegregation of New Orleans' public schools. The ruling aroused significant local opposition, however, and parents, school board members, city leaders, and elected officials moved to secure state legislation to overturn Wright's decision. -
Freedom Rides
On May 4, 1961, an interracial group of student activists under the auspices of the Congress of Racial Equality departed Washington D.C. by bus to test local compliance throughout the Deep South with two Supreme Court rulings banning segregated accommodations on interstate buses and in bus terminals that served interstate routes. a group of freedom riders traveled to test the ruling. which would later be regarded as one of the most significant developments of the civil rights era. -
NAACP convention in Atlanta
In July 1962, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held its annual convention in Atlanta. Delegates called for an increased federal commitment to Civil Rights reform, and approved plans to intensify civil rights campaigns in large cities outside the South. Video: https://youtu.be/MgPxCRc8dl0 -
Sedition Trial, Americus, Ga.
Members of Sumter's black community welcomed their arrival, and by July the three activists enjoyed sufficient support to lead large-scale direct action protests in the county seat of Americus. Although the charges were ultimately dropped when they were released from prison the following November, their detention significantly retarded Civil Rights protest in Americus where large-scale demonstrations did not resume until summer 1965. -
University of Alabama Integration
On May 16, 1963, a federal district court in Alabama ordered the University of Alabama to admit African American students Vivien Malone and James Hood during its summer session. The court's decision virtually ensured a showdown between federal authorities and Alabama Governor George Wallace who had made a campaign promise a year earlier to prevent the school's integration even if it required that he stand in the schoolhouse door. Wallace earned a reputation for white resistance. -
March on Washington
On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million Americans from across the United States converged on the nation's capitol in what was to become a defining moment in the Civil Rights movement. Some people before Martin Luther King took his place at the podium and delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Even though the March on Washington succeeded in both dramatizing and politicizing the need to secure federal legislation banning segregation and racial discrimination. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson just a few hours after House approval on July 2, 1964. The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools.
Video:https://youtu.be/6x0l_vkjozc -
New York Race Riots
The riots began in Harlem, New York following the shooting of 14 years old James Powell by a white off-duty police officer on July 18, 1964. Charging that the incident was an act of police brutality, an estimated eight thousand Harlem residents took to streets and launched a large-scale riot. Racial injustice and growing civil unrest existing in northern cities and served as a powerful indicator of the urgent need for social and economic reforms for black communities outside of the South. -
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Nobel Prize
In 1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his dynamic leadership of the Civil Rights movement and steadfast commitment to achieving racial justice through nonviolent action. At the age of thirty-five, King became the youngest man, and only the second African American, to receive the prestigious award. -
SCOPE project
Under the direction of WWII veteran Hosea Williams, SCOPE sought to build upon the momentum of the Medgar Evers led NAACP in Mississippi, 1964 Freedom Summer, as well as the voting rights stuggle that culminated in the Selma-Montgomery March. The project placed nearly five hundred predominantly white college students in nearly one hundred predominantly black rural and urban areas in Southern states. -
Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike
Longstanding tensions between disgruntled African American sanitation workers and Memphis city officials erupted on February 12, 1968 when nearly one thousand workers refused to report to work demanding higher wages, safer working conditions. They despite organizing city-wide boycotts, sit-ins, and daily marches, the city's sanitation workers were initially unable to secure concessions from municipal officials,
