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The Brown Case
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Murder of Emmet Till
Emmet Till was brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. The woman’s husband and her brother made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil-rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. -
Little Rock
Nine african -american students enrolled at Little Rock Central High School, which until then had been all white. -
The Sit-Ins
Four African American college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the local Woolworths store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for coffee. When service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be served. -
Freedom Riders
The Freedom Riders originally consisted of a group of 13 activists who fought for civil rights and against the segregation in interstate bus terminals in the American South. The Freedom Riders were met with very violent treatment from white protesters. However, they managed to gain a lot of international attention. The group grew and hundreds more Freedom Riders joined their cause, with similar protests. -
The Birmingham Campaign
On 3 April the desegregation campaign was launched with a series of mass meetings, direct actions, lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants. -
March on Washington
On August 28, 1963, an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 people gathered peaceably in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. The crowd was uplifted by the address given by Martin Luther King, Jr., that came to be known as the 'I Have a Dream' speech, in which he emphasised his faith that all men, someday, would be brothers. -
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, attempting to put an end to segregation in public places and to ban employment discrimination. It was first proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from the southern members of Congress but was later signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. -
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act aimed to overcome the legal barriers that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.