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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. It 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. Ferguson case. -
Emmett Till Murder
Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, when he was accused of harassing but was talking "fresh" a local white woman. Several days later, relatives of the woman abducted Till, brutally beating and killing him before disposing of his body in a nearby river. -
Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man, and this led to 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 Little Rock Nine and Integration
The first day of classes at Central High, Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to block the Black students' entry into the high school. -
Greensboro Woolworth's Sit-ins
Four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats. -
Freedom Rides
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. -
MLK’s Letter From Birmingham Jail
On the letter It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. -
March on Washington
There was a quarter of a million people rallied in Washington, D.C. to demand an end to segregation, fair wages and economic justice, voting rights, education, and long overdue civil rights protections. -
Birmingham Baptist Church Bombing
A bombing happened 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. -
24th Amendment
Banned poll tax -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. -
“Bloody Sunday”/Selma to Montgomery March
A series of three marches that took place in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. These marches were organized to protest the blocking of Black Americans' right to vote by the systematic racist structure of the Jim Crow South. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
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
A landmark civil rights decision 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.