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Brown vs Board
Brown v. Board of Education, case in which, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9–0) that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions. The decision declared that separate educational facilities for white and African American students were inherently unequal. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. -
Emmet Till
In August 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy allegedly flirted with a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged they were free to go thanks to a white judge. -
Rosa Parks
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of going to the back of the bus, which was designated for African Americans, she sat in the front. When the bus started to fill up with white passengers, the bus driver asked Parks to move. She refused. Her resistance set in motion one of the largest social movements in history, the Montgomery Bus Boycott. -
SCLC
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, often referred to as the SCLC, was one of the most significant participants in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The organization still advocates on issues of social justice. Although it has been influential in other southern states, this national organization has always been based in Atlanta, and Georgia has been the home of many of its founders and leaders. -
Little Rock 9
Little Rock Nine, group of African American high-school students who challenged racial segregation in the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas. The group—consisting of Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, and Thelma Mothershed—became the centre of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, especially in the South. -
Freedom Riders
436 individuals in 60 separate freedom rides. Started in Washington DC. Went to south to desecrate bus stations, diners, and hotels. Arrived in Aniston Alabama. Tires slashed, fire bombed, buses burned and bating, town after town. -
March of Washington
On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered in the nation’s capital for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march was the brainchild of longtime civil rights activist and labor leader A. Philip Randolph. With the support of the gifted organizer Bayard Rustin, the march was a collaboration of all factions of the civil rights movement. -
Civil rights act of 1964
The civil rights act of 1964 enabled the federal government to prevent racial discrimination and segregation based on race, color, religion or national origin in a number of areas including private businesses and public facilities. -
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was a minister, a leader in the civil rights movement and a supporter of Black nationalism. He urged his fellow Black Americans to protect themselves against white aggression “by any means necessary,” a stance that often put him at odds with the nonviolent teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. His charisma and oratory skills helped him achieve national prominence in the Nation of Islam, a belief system that merged Islam with Black nationalism. -
Selma
Black marchers wanted to walk 54 miles to Montgomery to register to vote. At the edmon bridge troopers brutally beat them -
Voting Rights
Just eight days after Martin Luther King, Jr. led a peaceful civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced his intention to pass a federal Voting Rights Act to ensure that no federal, state, or local government could in any way impede people from voting because of their race or ethnicity. He signed the Voting Rights Act into law later that year, banning racial discriminatory practices in voting, including literacy tests.