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Murder of Emmett Till
The kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till is famous as a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black teenager from Chicago, was visiting family in a small town in Mississippi during the summer of 1955. Till was lynched for allegedely whistling at a white woman. -
Rosa Parks
Called "the mother of the civil rights movement," Rosa Parks invigorated the struggle for racial equality when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955 launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott by 17,000 black citizens. -
SCLC
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement. -
Little Rock 9
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 by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
Brown Vs. Board of education
In Brown v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court found that "separate facilities are inherently unequal." Congress has subsequently regarded Brown as equally important in prohibiting segregation on the basis of disability. -
Greensboro siting
The option that best describes the result of the Greensboro sit-ins is the desegregation of Woolworth lunch counters and the spread of sit-ins. The Greensboro sit-ins were non-violent protests led by four college students in 1960 at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina -
Freedom rides
The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. -
March on Washington
March on Washington, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963, that was attended by an estimated 250,000 people to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress. -
Civil rights act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. -
Selma
On March 7, 1965, when then-25-year-old activist John Lewis led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama and faced brutal attacks by oncoming state troopers, footage of the violence collectively shocked the nation and galvanized the fight against racial injustice. -
Voting rights act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. -
Malcom X
Malcolm X, an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement, was shot multiple times and died from his wounds in Manhattan, New York City on February 21, 1965 at age 39. -
Martin Luther King Jr 1968
Shortly after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and mortally wounded as he stood on the second-floor balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. at St.