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School Segregation
In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court rules unanimously against school segregation, overturning its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white person, triggering a successful, year-long African American boycott of the bus system. -
Southern Christian Leadership School
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference establishes and adopts nonviolent mass action as its cornerstone strategy to gain civil rights and opportunities for blacks. Working initially in the South under the leadership of Martin Luther King, by the mid 1960's King enlarges the organization's focus to address racism in the North. -
President Johnson
President Johnson announces the "Great Society" with "abundance and liberty for all", and declares a "War on Poverty." Congress authorizes the Civil Rights Act, the most far-reaching legislation in U.S. history to ensure the right to vote, guarantee access to public accommodations, and the withdrawal of federal funds to any program administered in a discriminatory way. -
Voting rights act
Selma, Ala. voting rights campaign. Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, participating in a march led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is killed by Alabama state troopers as he attempts to prevent the troopers from beating his mother and grandfather. Selma to Montgomery march. The Voting Rights Act passes and is signed into law on August 6, effectively ending literacy tests and a host of other obstacles used to disenfranchise African American and other minority citizens. Malcolm X, the fiery -
Nation Organization for Women
National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded to fight politically for full equality between the sexes. Stokely Carmichael, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, first uses the phrase "black power" during a voter registration drive in Mississippi. The phrase - and its many different interpretations by African Americans and whites - divides the civil rights movement. -
Interracial Marriage
In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled that prohibiting interracial marriage was unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time were forced to revise their laws. -
President Nixon
President Nixon's "Philadelphia Order" presented "goals and timetables" for reaching equal employment opportunity in construction trades. It was extended in 1970 to non-construction federal contractors. -
Supreme Court
The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education upheld busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools. Although largely unwelcome (and sometimes violently opposed) in local school districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities such as Charlotte, Boston, and Denver continued until the late 1990s. -
President Ronald Reagans Veto
Overriding President Ronald Reagan's veto, Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which expanded the reach of nondiscrimination laws within private institutions receiving federal funds. -
Bake Case
In the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5?4) upheld the University of Michigan Law School's policy, which ruled race could be one of factors colleges consider when selecting students because it furthered "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." -
Georgia
In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court upheld a court-drawn redistricting plan that reduced the number of majority-minority Georgia congressional districts from three to one. The cases of Abrams v. Johnson and the U.S. v. Johnson marked the second time the Court had been asked to rule on the constitutionality of Georgia's congressional redistricting plan drawn pursuant to the 1990 Census. A deciding factor for the justices was the fact that Reps. Sanford Bishop Jr. and Cynthia McKinney, bo