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Brown vs. Board of Education
In an unanimous agreement, the Supreme Court said that separate places could never be equal, and abolished slavery in schools. This overruled the previous decision made in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. https://www.archives.gov/files/education/lessons/brown-v-board/images/dissenting-opinion-19.gif This is a primary source document from the case that indicates the court's decision. -
Emmett Till Lynching
Emmett Till was a 14 year old African American teenager who was lynched. This was because of a false accusation of flirting with a white woman. -
Roza Parks
In Montgomery, Alabama, Roza Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger. Her small act of defiance inspired people across the country, and caused the Montgomery Bus Boycott. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
In the Montgomery Bus Boycott, African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott began on the day of Parks’ court hearing and lasted 381 days. -
Little Rock Nine
This was a controversial school integration which caused a lot of chaos. The day of the event, Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating the high school. President Dwight D. Eisenhower retaliated by removing the Guard from Faubus' control, and ordering one thousand troops from the United States Army 101st Airborne Division to oversee the integration. -
Sit-ins
This movement was started by four African American college students. They went to a lunch counter, and when service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be served. This inspired activists, and the movement spread to Greensboro and Nashville. -
Martin Luther King jr. Speech
Civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In his speech, he calls for an end to racism in the United States and for civil and economic rights. -
Birmingham Church Bombing
The Birmingham Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism. The church was targeted because it was a significant religious center for the city’s black population and a routine meeting place for civil rights organizers. The day of the event, 200 church members were in the building–many attending Sunday school classes before the start of the 11 am service–when the bomb hit the church’s east side, spraying mortar and bricks from the front of the church and caving in its interior walls. -
JFK assasination
President Kennedy was murdered while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas at 12:30 PM. This was a significant event because he was a great president who provided federal support for the growing civil rights movement. -
Selma to Montgomery March
In the beginning, a large group of marchers turned around when state troopers blocked the road ahead of them. They eventually regrouped and continued on. At the end of the march, which ended on March 21, nearly 50,000 supporters–black and white–met the marchers in Montgomery, where they gathered in front of the state capitol to hear King and other speakers including Ralph Bunch address the crowd.
