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Creation of the NAACP
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was one of the earliest and most influential civil rights organization in the United States. During its early years, the NAACP focused on legal strategies designed to confront the critical civil rights issues of the day. They called for federal anti-lynching laws and coordinated a series of challenges to state-sponsored segregation which led to “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional -
Scottsboro Boys
Nine black teenagers accused of raping two White American women on a train in Alabama. This is a great example of the justice that blacks got in the segregation era. Norris vs Alabama outcme needs diversity or race in a jury. -
Jackie Robinson Breaks the Color Barrier
The first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers. This is important because it opened up and made it easier for later black activists. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), now acknowledged as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the 20th century, unanimously held that the racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
The Murder og Emmitt Till
Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was beaten and shot to death by two white men. These men then threw the Till's mutilated body into the Tallahatchie River. He was killed for whistling at a white woman. Later, Roy Bryant, whose wife Carolyn was the white woman at the store, and his half brother, J. W. Milam, were tried for Till's murder and acquitted by a jury of 12 white men. This is another great example of the unjust justice system for blacks. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. The boycott of public buses by blacks in Montgomery began on the day of Parks' court hearing and lasted 381 days. -
The Little Rock 9
Black students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. This tested a landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. In the end the military had to take them to school. -
Ruby Bridges desegregate elementary school
This little girl was the first black girl to go to elementary school. This was a new freedom for blacks. -
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Written in response to eight white local clergy who criticized his work and ideas as unwise and wrong, the letter is King's explanation of the importance of civil rights protesting. It can be seen as one of the best justifications of nonviolence as a political strategy ever articulated. -
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. This was important for helping equal protection and the 14th amendment. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
Malcolm X was shot before he was about to deliver a speech about his new organization called the Organization of Afro-American Unity. His death brought about the black panthers. -
Creation of the Black Panthers
It was a Black political organization; originally known as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The BPP originated in Oakland, California, by founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. It was important because it was the most violent organization for black rights. -
Thurgood Marshall Named Supreme Court Justice
President Lyndon Johnson appoints U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. He is the first African American in history to sit on America’s highest court. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and mortally wounded as he stood on the second-floor balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, This was important because he was the main public figure to end segregation. -
Election of Barak Obama
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected president of the United States over Senator John McCain of Arizona. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to that office.
