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Brown Vs. Board of Education
Brown Vs. Board of Education was a trial case against segregation presented by Thurgood Marshall in Topeka, Kansas. The case stated that segregation in schools was unconstitutional because of the worse conditions in Black schools compared to white schools. The court vote was 9-0 to end segregation in schools. -
The murder of Emmett Till
While visiting his relatives in Mississippi, Till went to the Bryant store with his cousins, and may have whistled at Carolyn Bryant. Her husband, Roy Bryant, and brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, kidnapped and brutally murdered Till, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River. This holds significance because it was one of the first well documented cases of racial violence, and the first one where the person who did it was held accountable despite being white. -
Rosa Parks and The Montgomery Bus Boycott
A black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, and was fined and arrested. Other people of color were outraged at this, and began to boycott, walking instead of riding the bus. In Montgomery, Alabama colored people made up most of the sales for bus riders, so the bus companies began to lose money. -
Martin Luther King Jr. I Have a Dream Speech
King begins his speech by reminding his audience that it has been over a century since the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law, ending slavery in America. But even though Black Americans are technically free from slavery, they are not free in any larger sense—the “chains of discrimination” and the “manacles of segregation” continue to define the Black experience in America. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). 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. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting