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Brown vs board
Brown v. Board of Education 1954 was a landmark Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. This decision overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that had established the "separate but equal" doctrine, allowing segregation as long as facilities were deemed equal. The case was brought forward by a group of African American plaintiffs, including Oliver Brown, who challenged the inequities of segregated schooling. -
Emmett till
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago who was brutally lynched in 1955 while visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi. Till was accused of flirting with or making advances toward a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, though there was no evidence to support this claim. After Till was kidnapped, beaten, and shot, his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River. His mother, Mamie Till, made the courageous decision to have an open-casket funeral, exposing the horrific violence. -
Rosa parks
Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist whose act of defiance in 1955 became a pivotal moment in the struggle against racial segregation in the United States. On December 1, Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, violating the city's segregation laws. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which lasted for over a year and led to a Supreme Court. -
Southern Christian leadership conference
The SCLC was an organization linked to the black churches. 60 black ministers were pivotal in organizing civil right activism. Martin Luther King Jr was elected President. They focused its non violent strategy on citizenship, schools and efforts to desegregate individual cities. It played key roles in the March on Washington in 1963 and the Voting Rights Campaign and March to Montgomery in 1965.