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Howard University's law school becomes the country's first black law school.
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The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War.
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Reconstruction ends in the South. Federal attempts to provide some basic civil rights for African Americans quickly erode.
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Booker T. Washington founds the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. The school becomes one of the leading schools of higher learning for African Americans, and stresses the practical application of knowledge. In 1896, George Washington Carver begins teaching there as director of the department of agricultural research, gaining an international reputation for his agricultural advances.
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Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal".[1]
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W.E.B. DuBois demands immediate racial equality and opposes all laws that treats blacks as different from others. Leads to creation of NAACP in 1909
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President Truman signs Executive Order 9981.
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Topeka case where the Supreme Court bans segregation in all public schools in the United States.
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Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, is murdered for whistling at a white woman.
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In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat for a white man, causing a bus boycott by the Black community.
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The Montgomery bus system desegregates.
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The Little Rock Central High school board votes on school integration.
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Student volunteers called “freedom riders” begin testing state laws prohibiting segregation on buses and railways stations.
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5000 federal troops are sent by Pres. Kennedy to allow Meredith to register for classes. Riots result in 2 deaths and hundreds of injuries
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Head of Mississippi NAACP is shot outside his home on the same night that Pres. Kennedy addresses the nation on race, asking "Are we to say to the world...that this is a land of the free except for Negroes"
