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Brown v Board of Education, Dec 9, 1952 – May 17, 1954
Brown v Board of Education was a case brought all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws keeping segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are technically equal in quality. -
White Citizens Council
The White Citizens Council was a collection of groups of white supremacists and racially extreme rights organizations in the United States. They were majorly concentrated in the South to combat racial integration of schools and such. The first was formed in 1954 in response to the Board of Educations decision in allowing school integration with African Americans. This group differed from ones like the KKK because they tried to economically and socially hurt African Americans in the south. -
Brown v Board of Education II Argued April 11–14, 1955 and Decided May 31, 1955
Brown v Board of Education II is based off of the first one a year earlier, but in Brown II, it was more of a lets get a move on type of deal with desegregating. Furthermore the Supreme Court also set out rules about what schools needed to do to de-segregate quickly. -
Lynching of Emmett Till
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955. He was visiting family in the south where racial norms and such things were much different then his home in Chicago. He was at a store with some friends when they dared him to talk to the pretty white woman behind the counter since he was such a big shot with girls in the north. While leaving he said something like "bye baby" and was murdered by her husband and his brother later that night by being drowned. -
Rosa Parks Arrested
Rosa Parks is a well known lady for not giving up her seat when a white man asked for it. She was arrested for breaking the Alabama law that stated "a African American must relinquish their seat if a bus is full, she was also seated in the "white" seating at the front of the bus. She was arrested on December 1st, 1955, which sparked the bus boycott movement. A movement where the African American residents of Montgomery chose to walk instead of take the bus for anything for a whopping 381 days. -
Martin Luther King House Bombing
On September 30, 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.'s house was bombed by white supremacists in retaliation for the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. What made this even more incredible was that apparently minutes after his house being destroyed, MLK started preaching non violence saying "I want you to love our enemies" to supporters at the scene. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott, Dec 5, 1955 – Dec 20, 1956
This action set some speed on Civil Rights in the south. A woman name Rosa Parks rode the bus and sat in the white section, when she wouldn't give it up she was arrested for disobeying a law that said "a African american has to relinquish their seat if the bus is full". The bus wasn't full so she told the guy to sit somewhere else. This led to a 381 day bus boycott by almost all of the African Americans in Montgomery Alabama. Which led to the city giving up, ending segregation on buses. -
Bombing of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
Civil rights activist Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth was a pastor at the Bethel Baptist Church. A 16-stick dynamite blast destroyed his home and caused damage to his church next door. So the assassination failed and white supremacists would attempt to murder Shuttlesworth four more times in the coming years. Crazily, In an attack in 1957 a white mob brutally beat Shuttlesworth with chains and bats and stabbed his wife after the couple attempted to enroll their daughters in an all-white high school. -
SCLC Founded
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C) was a African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, had a large role in the American civil rights movement, with MLK being a well known leader and advocate for Civil Rights. The SCLC was made right after the successful bus boycott in Montgomery by M.I.A. Some of the big things the group participated in was THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON, SELMA VOTING RIGHTS CAMPAIGN, AND POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN. The group did so much and part of the "Big Five". -
Eisenhower sends in Federal Troops
The problem ocurred at Central High School in Arkansas because 9 African American students were trying to attend like they had been told because it was a newly integrated school. But the Governor Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to surround Central High School to keep the nine students from entering the school, so President Eisenhower ordered the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to insure the safety of the "Little Rock Nine" and that the rulings of the Supreme Court were upheld. -
SNCC Formed
The S.N.C.C. was a civil rights/political organization formed by Black college students who wanted to overturning segregation in the South by encouraging and giving young Blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement in the U.S. What they majorly focused on was in and throughout 1964 and 1965, the S.N.C.C. organized voter registration efforts in and around Selma, Alabama. Other things they helped with were the Freedom Rides, March on Washington, and the Mississippi Freedom Summer. -
Greensboro sit ins - February 1, 1960 - July 25, 1960
The Greensboro sit-ins were nonviolent protests in February to July of 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store which is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, in Greensboro, North Carolina. They took place with four people: Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr, and David Richmond because they wanted the F.W. Woolworth Company department store to desegregate its facility and serve them. So they went in everyday and asked for service and got denied, until July 25th, 1960. -
Freedom Rides May 4, 1961 – Dec 10, 1961
The freedom rides were a series of trips of buses with African Americans and whites who were fighting for Civil Rights in the south. A bus would load up and travel to different bus terminals in and around the south to get them desegregated by standing and taking up space. They would also use the tactic of non-violent protesting by sitting in at diners and taking up seats. Sometimes they would get beat up but they would just simply take it to show how bad racial discrimination was in the south. -
White mob attacks federal marshals in Montgomery
The White Mob Attacks occurred during a freedom ride through Montgomery, Alabama. The freedom bus was attacked by a mob of something like three hundred people. They were surrounded and brutally attacked with baseball bats, bike chains and anything else they could find. Because of this 400 U.S. federal marshals were sent to Montgomery by Robert Kennedy to keep peace and protect the bus during the freedom ride. -
Bailey v Patterson June 9, 1961 - February 26, 1962
This one was very difficult, but from my understanding there were some African Americans trying to get a Mississippi law revised of its statutes that were made in 1942. Furthermore this seemed to be a big deal because the companies like greyhound lines and others were very polite and sucking up to the judges to try and not get charged with anything, and keep their law safe from integration. The verdict was the judge abstained the statutes being constitutional or unconstitutional. -
Albany Georgia “failure” November 17th, 1961 - August 10th, 1962
Although the Albany Movement is deemed by some as a failure because of Kings arrests and eventual leaving of Albany, and also its unsuccessful attempt at desegregating public spaces in Southwest Georgia. People such as King most directly involved in the Movement tend to disagree, pretty much saying it was a beneficial lesson in strategy and tactics for the leaders of the civil rights movement. They also said it was a key component to the movement future's in other areas of the Deep South. -
MLK goes to a Birmingham jail
Well during the Birmingham protests including marches and sit ins, MLK was thrown in jail on April 10, by Circuit Judge W. A. Jenkins. He charged MLK with "parading, demonstrating, boycotting, trespassing and picketing." Leaders of the campaign announced they would disobey the ruling. On April 12, King was roughly arrested with Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, and other marchers, while thousands of African Americans dressed for Good Friday looked on. -
Kennedy sends in Federal Troops
On June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy used National Guard troops and deployed them to a University in Alabama to force its desegregation. He had to do this because James Meredith decided to exercise his constitutional rights and apply to the University of Mississippi. James did this to put pressure on the Kennedy administration to enforce civil rights for African Americans. The Governor didn't want James to be allowed in because of problems but ended up causing more problems for himself. -
Equal Pay Act
The Equal Pay Act pretty much says that men and women have to be given equal pay for equal work at the same place. To clarify the jobs don't need to be identical, but they must be "substantially" equal. It is more job content, not the job title that determines whether jobs are substantially equal. -
Assassination of Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers was a very accomplished man. He started out fighting in WWII, then became a Civil Rights activist in Mississippi, and then he became the state's field secretary for the NAACP in November of 1954! -
March on Washington “I have a Dream”
The March on Washington campaigning for Jobs and Freedom was on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. Also M.L.K delivered his forever famous "I have a dream speech" in front of the Lincoln memorial to around 250,000 people, and in his amazing speech he says he wants an end to come to racism. -
Bombing of a church in Birmingham (The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing)
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act committed by the KKK. It was a white supremacist terrorism that happened on a Sunday morning at the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963. Four men in the 16th group of the KKK were suspected of bombing the church, killing four American girls. -
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
J.F.K was the 35th president of the United States of America serving from 1961 - 1963. I remember he had to make a lot of important decisions because it was the height of the cold war and the Cuban revolution. Before his time servings president he graduated Harvard in 1940 and went and fought in the pacific theater. I also remember he was a representative for Massachusetts in 1947-1953 and a Senate member in 1953-1960. In all he was a crazy accomplished guy who was taken to early. -
XXIV (24th) Amendment
The Twenty-fourth Amendment in the Constitution of the United States of America is very important in Civil Rights. Its super important because it prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning or restricting the right to vote in federal elections in using a poll tax or other types of tax. The 24th Amendment was passed on January 1st, 1964. -
Freedom Summer, June 1964 - August 1964
Freedom Summer was a string of violent riots to expand voter rights. Freedom Summer was caused by people realizing in 1962 only 5.3% of African Americans were registered to vote in Mississippi. Hence it was a huge deal, so they tried to pretty much get as many people as they could to register and vote in Mississippi to make it a little more fair. -
Killing of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner
Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were civil rights workers who were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 1964 during the Civil Rights Movement. Chaney started his Civil Rights career in 1963 by joining C.O.R.E, and I learned Schwerner was just hated Civil Rights worker because he was relentless with his work. Andrew Goodman met Chaney in C.O.R.E when he joined and also had a close relationship with Alger Hiss. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was civil rights and labor law that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements like poll taxing, and racial segregation in schools, the workplace/jobs, and public accommodations like counter service, bathrooms and fountains. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist during 1954-1965. He is best known for his black racial advocacy which was seen as aggressive and opposite of MLK's strategies. He was the vocal spokesperson of the Nation of Islam. Growing up Malcolm X engaged in illicit activities, eventually being sentenced to ten years in prison in 1946. Towards the end of his work with the Nation of Islam in 1964 Malcolm got sent death threats until he was assassinated in 1965. -
Selma to Montgomery March
In 1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. and the S.C.L.C. decided to make Selma Alabama the focus of a black voter registration campaign. MLK was hoping to help draw international attention to the events that followed. They chose his town because only about 300 of the 15,000 eligible African American voters had voted. And so this March came from MLK wanting to protest for Jimmie Lee Jacksons death by a officer during a protest. So on March 7th 600 people went 54 miles from Selma to the Montgomery. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is obviously legislation that was passed that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. for example it stopped common things in the south like literacy tests and poll taxing, that limited African Americans from voting by requiring them to pass or pay (the way I remember it). -
Black Panthers Formed
The Black Panther Party thought as aggressive, was originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, it was a game changing political organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland California. Some things it addressed were food injustice, and community health clinics. It also provided means for education and treatment of diseases including sickle cell anemia, tuberculosis, and later HIV/AIDS. With all this great stuff they did, they still had many firefights with police. -
Loving v Virginia
This case was about a mixed couple marrying each other who were convicted to be sent to a prison. They brought it to Supreme Court and the Court issued a unanimous decision in the Lovings' favor and overturned their convictions. The Court struck down Virginia's anti-miscegenation law, ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. Virginia had argued that it was not a violation because the punishment was the same and equally burdened" both whites and non-whites. -
Minneapolis Riots
The Minneapolis riots happened on the night of July 19th that spurred from racial tension in North Minneapolis. The event began somewhere on Plymouth Avenue in a series of assaults, and vandalism like burning buildings and shops! The violence lasted for three nights and is kind of part of other race-related riots and demonstrations in cities across the U.S. during 1967 which was nicknamed the “long hot summer.” -
Detroit Riots Jul 23, 1967 – Jul 28, 1967
The 1967 Detroit Riot, or 12th Street Riot, was the worst riot in the "Long, hot summer of 1967". It started and had mainly confrontations between black residents and the Detroit Police Department, but it began in the early morning hours of Sunday July 23, 1967, in Detroit, Michigan. I learned the fighting came from under waged workers and mostly poverty in Detroit, and during the 5 day riot there was mass burning and destruction of over 2,000 buildings! -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American activist who became one of the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He is also popular for his I have a dream speech during the March on Washington in 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
Assassination of Robert “Bobby” Kennedy
Robert Francis Kennedy, JFK's brother was a American politician and lawyer who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from 1961 to 1964. He also served as a U.S. Senator from New York from 1965 until his assassination on June 6th, 1968. For Civil Rights tid bit Kennedy went out of his way to help the freedom riders stay safe during an attack,but later asked them to stop because he didn't want them to be used as a topic of leverage against him in his meeting with Khrushchev.
