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Brown vs. Board of Education
- Board of Education of Topeka, case in which, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9–0) that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits the states from denying equal protection of the laws to any person within their jurisdictions
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Emmett Till Murder
- 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.
- Board of Education mandated the end of racial segregation in public schools, Till's death provided an important catalyst for the American civil rights movement.
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Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus Boycott
- A civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. ... Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. - Her actions inspired the leaders of the local Black community to organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
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The Little Rock Nine and Integration
- The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school. - The Little Rock Nine became an integral part of the fight for equal opportunity in American education when they dared to challenge public school segregation by enrolling at the all-white Central High School in 1957.
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Greensboro Woolworth's Sit-ins
- Four African American college students sat down at a lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, and politely asked for service. Their request was refused. When asked to leave, they remained in their seats.
- Its use of nonviolence inspired the Freedom Riders and others to take up the cause of integration in the South, furthering the cause of equal rights in the United States.
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Freedom Rides
May 4 - December 10
- A series of political protests against segregation by Blacks and whites who rode buses together through the American South in 1961. In 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in interstate bus travel
- The violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. 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
- Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in response to criticism of the nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama in April 1963. ... Beyond that, he argues that he is in Birmingham “because injustice is here,” and like the Apostle Paul and other early Christians, he must answer the call for aid
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March on Washington
- The March on Washington was a massive protest march that over 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.- On 28 August 1963, more than 200,000 demonstrators took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation's capital. The march was successful in pressuring the administration of John F. Kennedy to initiate a strong federal civil rights bill in Congress.
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Birmingham Baptist Church Bombing
- 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.
- The bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which previously served as a central meeting place and staging ground for Civil Rights activities, was intended to stall the progression of the Civil Rights movement; however, the tragedy had the opposite effect, galvanizing support and propelling the movement forward
- 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.
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24th Amendment
- The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
- The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. ... The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.
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“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.
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Voting Rights Act of 1965
- It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. ... This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified.
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Loving v. Virginia
Loving v. Virginia was a Supreme Court case that struck down state laws banning interracial marriage in the United States. The plaintiffs in the case were Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and Black woman whose marriage was deemed illegal according to Virginia state law.