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Keys v. Carolina Coach Co.
Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company is a 1955 civil rights case where the Interstate Commerce Commission, in response to a bus segregation complaint, interpreted the non-discrimination language of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 as banning the segregation of black passengers in buses traveling across state lines. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the racial segregation policy on Montgomery, Alabama's public transit system. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement. the movement lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for her refusal to surrender her seat to a white person -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first federal civil rights legislation since 1875, was signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and led to the integration of public schools, involving U.S. paratroopers. -
The Greensboro sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests from February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworths store. This led to the F. W. Woolworth Company department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. While not the first sit-in of the civil rights movement. the Greensboro sit-ins were the best-known sit-ins of the civil rights movement. They are considered a catalyst to the subsequent sit-in movement, in which 70,000 people participated. -
Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court -
Albany Campaign
The Albany Movement was a desegregation and voters' rights coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. This movement was founded by local black leaders and ministers, as well as members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating. The groups were assisted by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). It was meant to draw attention to the brutally enforced racial segregation practices in Southwest Georgia. -
Birmingham Movement
The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham Confrontation, was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. It was Led by Martin Luther King Jr -
Freedom Summer
In June 1964, American civil rights activists launched the Mississippi Freedom Summer campaign to register African-American voters in Mississippi, a state where voting was largely prohibited due to voter registration barriers and Jim Crow laws. The project established Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
Malcolm X, an African American Muslim minister and civil rights activist, was shot multiple times and killed in Manhattan in 1965. Three Nation of Islam members, Muhammad Abdul Aziz, Khalil Islam, and Thomas Hagan, were charged and convicted, but later exonerated in November 2021. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent civil rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested in 1968 and charged with the crime. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. Ray made attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and be tried by a jury but was unsuccessful. -
James Meredith’s March Against Fear
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education was a 1971 Supreme Court case that ruled that busing students to promote integration in public schools was an appropriate remedy for racial imbalance, even when it resulted from geographic proximity selection rather than deliberate race assignment, ensuring equal educational opportunities for all students. -
Shirley Chisolm’s Presidential Campaign
Shirley Anita Chisholm was an American politician who became the first black woman to be elected to the United States Congress in 1968. She represented New York's 12th congressional district for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major party nomination for President and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. -
University of California Regents vs. Bakke
The Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was a 1978 Supreme Court decision that ruled that affirmative action, allowing race to be a factor in college admission policy, was unconstitutional. The court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats reserved for minority students, were impermissible. -
Emmett Till’s Murder
Emmett Till Murder was a 14-year-old African American youth who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, he was brutally murdered when he was abducted when they found his body his mother wanted to do an open casket to show the world of what they did to him and the murdered walked free with no charges