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Brown Vs. Board of Education
The Plessy v. Ferguson case let separate but equal facilities happen. In Topeka, Kansas a group of 13 parents filed a class-action law suit against the Board of Education of Topeka Schools, that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The reversal of the “separate but equal" rule of the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision that had been on the books since 1890, The Supreme Court ruled that segregation in schools is unconstitutional. -
Rosa Parks Gets Arrested for Refusing to Give up her Bus Seat
Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. Later that day the Montgomery bus boycott started. -
Supreme Court outlaws bus segregation.
On Nov. 13, 1956, the Supreme Court affirmed a ruling that found the segregated bus laws in Montgomery, Ala., to be unconstitutional.
Browder v. Gayle Ends Bus Segregation
The city of Montgomery, Ala., like many Southern cities, had laws enforcing racial segregation in many public places. The Montgomery bus system forced blacks to sit at the back of the bus and, if all the seats were taken, give up their seats to whites -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
On September 9, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957. This It established the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, and empowered federal officials to prosecute individuals that conspired to deny or abridge another citizen?s right to vote. perhaps most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 signaled a growing federal commitment to the cause of civil rights. -
Events at Little Rock, Arkansas
Governor Orval Faubus announced that he would call in the National Guard to prevent the African-American students’ entry to Central High, claiming this action was for the students’ own protection. In a televised address, Faubus insisted that violence and bloodshed might break out if black students were allowed to enter the school. Later on the Mother’s League held a sunrise service at the school as a protest against integration. The federal government sent 1,000 soldiers to protect the kids. -
Mack Charles Parker is Lynched
was an African-American victim of lynching in the United States. He was accused of raping a pregnant white woman in northern Pearl River County, Mississippi. Three days before he was to stand trial, Parker was kidnapped from his jail cell in the Pearl River County Courthouse by a mob, beaten and shot. His body was found in the Pearl River, 20 miles west of Poplarville, 10 days later -
Attack of Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961. They were organized by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Freedom rides were participated by African Americans and whites -
Medgar Evers Assassinated
Medgar Wiley Evers was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi who worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi and gain social justice and voting rights. He was assassinated on June 12th, 1963, was shot in the back while walking up to his house. His two small children witnessed his murder. -
The March On Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the March on Washington, or The Great March on Washington, was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and demanded civil and economic rights for African Americans. This is where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic I have a dream speech. -
Virgil Lamar Ware
Virgil was Hit in the chest and face, the 13-year-old Ware died on the Docena-Sandusky Road on the outskirts of Birmingham. In addition to the young women killed in the bombing, Ware's September 15, 1963 death followed that of Johnny Robinson, who had been killed by a policeman a short time earlier. 16 year old Larry Lee sims was charged with second degree murder -
Freedom summer
Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi, which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
On July 2nd, 1963 President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The word "sex" was added at the last moment. -
The March to Selma
The marches were part of the Voting Rights Movement underway in Selma, Alabama. By highlighting racial injustice in the South, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the Civil Rights Movement. Activists publicized the three protest marches to walk the 54-mile highway from Selma to the Alabama state capital of Montgomery as showing the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote. -
Thurgood Marshall first black Supreme Court Justice
hurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. This caused white riots -
Three students killed
the shooting two nights after an effort by students from an almost all all-black college to bowl at the city's only bowling alley. The owner refused. Tensions rose and violence erupted. When it ended, nine students and one city policeman received hospital treatment for injuries. College faculty and administrators at the scene witnessed at least two instances where a female student was held by one officer and clubbed by another. In total, 28 students were injured and three were dead. -
Martin Luther King Jr assassionation
In the last years of his life, King faced mounting criticism from young African-American activists who favored a more confrontational approach to seeking change. These young radicals stuck closer to the ideals of the black nationalist leader Malcolm X (himself assassinated in 1965), who had condemned King’s advocacy of non-violence as “criminal” in the face of the continuing repression suffered by African Americans. He was assassinated because of black hating whites. -
James Meredith
In late September 1962, after a legal battle, an African-American man named James Meredith attempted to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Chaos briefly broke out on the Ole Miss campus, with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many others arrested, after the Kennedy administration called out some 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce order.
