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Plessey V. Ferguson
On July 1982, Homer Plessey was jailed for delibratly sitting on the "white" car in a railroad. The case went to the United States Supreme Court. Lawyers stated that Seperate Car Act violated the 13th and 14th ammendments. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case and segragation constitutional. -
NAACP
NAACP stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Color People. Born from the race riots of 1908 in Abraham Lincoln which demonstrated the need for a civil rights organization. The NAACP became a becon for civil rights and still is active today. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Case was named after 8 year old Linda Brown, a black girl who had to cross Topeka Kansas just to attend a color school. Issue was brought to the courts on if racial segragation of children in schools deprives minority kids of equal protection of law under 14th ammendment. Supreme Court unanimously agreed to end segragation in schools. -
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
On December 1 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white passanger. She was arrested and fined. Her defiance helped spark the Motgomery Bus Boycott. -
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and SCLC
On January 10 , 1957, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr invited 60 African American ministers and leaders to a meeting. They founded SCLC or Souther Christian Leadership Conference. The organization was active in getting civil rights for African Americans and is still around today. -
Sit Ins
One of the first sit ins occured at the Royal Ice Cream Parlor on June 23, 1957 to protest segragation. Several others happened through out the civil rights movement. This was a non-violent protest. Protesters where could risk being arrested, yelled at, and sometimes beaten. -
Little Rock Nine
A group of brave African American students who intregrated Arkansas capital city's Central High School in September 1957. They were: Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford, Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Melba Pattillo, Gloria Ray, Terrence Roberts, Jefferson Thomas, and Carlotta Walls. They were beaten by white mobs and suffered while the National Guard refused to help. On May 29 Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate from the school. -
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or SNCC started as a civil rights group founded in the 60's. It began as a student meetings lead by Ella Baker at Shaw University. SNCC played a major role in organizing sit ins, the freedom ride and voter registration. -
Freedom Rides
The freedom riders where civil rights activists who embarked on a integrated bus journey into the segragated and hateful southern states. They where violently attacked by white mob groups. The mob beatings in Montgomery where extremely brutal. The police allowed the violence to go on and the ambulance refused to take care of the wounded. -
James Meredith
James Meredith was a civil rights hero. In 1962 he became the first African American student to attend the segragated University of Mississippi. Encouraged by President Kennedy's inaugural address, Meredith decided to exercise his constitutional rights and apply to the University of Mississippi. He was a writer and political adviser. -
Medgar Evers
In late 1954 Evers' was named the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi. In this position, he helped organize boycotts and set up new local chapters of the NAACP. Evers was targeted by white supremacists. He was assassinated on June 12, 1963, he was 37 years old. -
March on Washington
The civil rights march on Washington was one of the largest political rally for human rights held in the United States so far. There was 200,000 to 300,000 people present. It was here that Dr. King delievered his historical "I Have A Dream" speach. -
Freedom Summers
Also known as the Mississippi Summer Project, the freedom summer was a attempt to regester as many African American voters as possiable. Four civil rights workers where murdered, at least three Mississippi blacks were murdered because of their support for the civil rights movement, four people were critically wounded, eighty Freedom Summer workers were beaten, one-thousand and sixty-two people were arrested (volunteers and locals), and thirty-seven churches were bombed or burned. -
Civil RIghts Act of 1964
The civil rights act was a huge landmark in the civil rights movement. It outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and also women. -
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was the first African American ever to serve on the Supreme Court. He worked as a Assosiate Justice from 1967 to 1991. He was originally a lawyer and well known for his victory in Brown v. Board of Education.
