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Brown vs. Board of Education
State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. -
Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a city bus, and the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. -
Emmett Till Murder
When 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 after being abducted. -
The Little Rock Nine and Integration
The "Little Rock Nine," as the nine teens came to be known, were to be the first African American students to enter Little Rock's Central High School. Three years earlier, the Little Rock school board pledged to desegregate its schools. -
Greensboro Woolworth's Sit-ins
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 sit-in movement soon spread to college towns -
Freedom Rides
C.O.R.E and the Fellowship of Reconciliation organized an interracial bus ride across the state lines to test a Supreme Court decision that declare segregation on interstate buses unconstitutional. -
MLK’s Letter From Birmingham Jail
Imprisoned, Martin Luther King wrote an open letter now known as “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” A good defense of the Birmingham protest campaign that is now regarded as one of the greatest texts of the civil rights movement. It was a passive movement, as King was not up for violence as a solution and did not believe in such. -
March on Washington
250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Also known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the event aimed to draw attention to continuing challenges, inequalities, and advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. -
Birmingham Baptist Church Bombing
A bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church. Church members prepared for Sunday services and a racially motivated attack killed four young girls, injured between 14 and 22 other people. This has shocked the U.S. -
24th Amendment
Citizens in a few states had to pay a fee to vote in a national election. This fee was called a poll tax. the United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting poll taxes in elections for federal officials. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This has prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Provisions of this Civil Rights Act do not allow discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. -
“Bloody Sunday”/Selma to Montgomery March
The marches were three protest marches, along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. 600 persons civil rights demonstration ends in violence when marchers are attacked and beaten by white state troopers and sheriff's deputies. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This Act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson sought to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. -
Loving v. Virginia
A landmark case of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.