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Plessy vs. Ferguson
Plessy v FergusonThe court upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating racially segregated but equal railroad carriages. Which ruled that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution dealt with political and not social equality. Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote the majority opinion, stating that "separate but equal" laws did not imply the inferiority of one race to another. -
ESSAY Pt. 1
Rosa parks was a woman with brilliant stature. She was basically the face of the Montgomer bus boycott. Thousands of blacks refused to ride the bus in order to win their rights and desegregate things.
One reason people rioted out against is because the story of Emmett Till. He was in Mississippi visiting family. He was kidnapped, beaten, and shot. He was then tied to a cotton gin and thrown into the Mississippi river. The police eventually recovered his body and returned him to his mother. -
ESSAY Pt. 2
Emmett's mother wanted an open casket to show to the public what the "white people" did to his son and what they would do to black people.
200,000 people attended the march on Washington. This event happedned at the Lincoln Memorial. They all gather to listen to Martin Luther Kings famous "I have a dream" speech. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
Linda Brown was denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka because she was black. an opinion by recently appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, broke with long tradition and unanimously overruled the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, holding for the first time that de jure segregation in the public schools violated the principle of equal protection under the law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Emmett Till
Emmett TillFourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later admit in a Look magazine interview about the murder. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Bus boycottMartin Luther King Jr. organized the Montgomery bus boycott. This began a chain of reactions of boycotts throughout the south. In 1956, the Supreme Court voted to end segregated busing. -
Little Rock Nine
Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students. The U.S. National guard protected the nine while they were in school and helped them get where they needed to go safely. -
Sit-Ins
Sit inFour African American college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the local WOOLWORTH'S store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for coffee. They then were asked to move. When service was refused they sat patiently and waited to be served. They recieved many threats and much intimidation. -
SNCC
a U.S. civil-rights organization formed by students and active esp. during the 1960s, whose aim was to achieve political and economic equality for blacks through local and regional action groups. -
James Meredith
James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops. -
MLK writes letter from Birmingham, Alabama Jail
Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws. -
Medgar Evers
Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. Thirty years later he is convicted for murdering Evers. -
March On Washington
About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. -
Civil Right Act of 1964
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation. -
Selma
Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media. -
Civil Rights Act of 1991
After two years of debates, vetoes, and threatened vetoes, President Bush reverses himself and signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991, strengthening existing civil rights laws and providing for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination. -
EVIDENCE
