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Brown vs. Board of Education
The Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. This signaled the end of legalized racial segregation in the schools of the United States, overruling the "separate but equal" principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. -
Emmett Till Murder
On August 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. Emmett Till's murder was a spark in the upsurge of activism and resistance that became known as the Civil Rights movement. -
Rosa Parks & the 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. Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955, after she refused to give up her seat on a crowded bus to a white passenger. -
The Little Rock Nine and Integration
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
Greensboro Woolworth's Sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The Greensboro Sit-In was a critical turning point in Black history and American history, bringing the fight for civil rights to the national stage. -
Freedom Rides
Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. They called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. -
MLK’s Letter From Birmingham Jail
“A Letter From Birmingham Jail” responding to the criticism demonstrated by eight prominent white clergy man. This letter has been found important through out history because it expresses King's feelings toward the unjust events and it is an example of a well-written argument. -
March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as simply the March on Washington or The Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. -
Birmingham Baptist Church Bombing
On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church as church members prepared for Sunday services. The racially motivated attack killed four young girls and shocked the nation. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the nation's benchmark civil rights legislation, and it continues to resonate in America. -
24th Amendment
The Twenty-fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. -
“Bloody Sunday”/Selma to Montgomery March
On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. -
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. -
Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia is considered one of the most significant legal decisions of the civil rights era. By declaring Virginia's anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ended prohibitions on interracial marriage and dealt a major blow to segregation.