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Brown v. Board of Education
The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimously ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that public school segregation was unconstitutional and paved the way for desegregation. The decision overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that said "separate educational facilities were inherently unequal." It resulted in a victory for Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case and later returned to the Supreme Court as the nation's first African-American Supreme Court justice. -
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest, the Montgomery black community launched a bus boycott that lasted over a year until the buses desegregated. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association was instrumental in leading the boycott. -
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Little Rock Nine
Integration was easier said than done at the formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. Nine black students, who became known as the "Little Rock Nine," were blocked from entering the school on the orders of Arkansas Governor Orval Fabus. President Eisenhower sent federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, but a federal judge granted an injunction against the governor's use of National Guard troops to prevent integration. -
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Sit-in
4 black university students from N.C. A&T University began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro. Although they were refused service, they were allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggered similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. 6 months later, 4 protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter. Student sit-ins would be an effective tactic throughout the South in integrating parks, swimming pools, theaters, and other public facilities. -
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March in Washington
More than 250,000 people join in the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listened as Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. It gave motivations to other racial minorities and others who is against segregation. -
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Birmingham Demonstrations
Four young girls, Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins, attending Sunday school were killed when a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupted in Birmingham, Ala., leading to the deaths of two more black youth. -
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Freedom Riders
One of the first two groups of "Freedom Riders," as they are called, encountered its first problem two weeks later when a mob in Alabama sets the riders' bus on fire. The program continued and by the end of the summer, more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white, participated.