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Plessey v. Ferguson
Homer Plessy was thrown in jail for sitting in the white car of the East Louisiana Railroad. When Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, segregating common carriers, a black civil rights group decided to take on the law in court. The United States supreme court decided that it was legal to have seperate but equal accomindations.
pbs.com -
NAACP
The NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. The NAACP was formed in response to the continuing practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield Illinois. The NAACP played a big part in the desegregation of the United States.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
MLK was a clergyman who became the face of the civil rights movment he was asked to lead the montgomery bus boycott. he also won the nobel peace prize. He wrote and spoke the "I Have a Dream" speech. (nobelprize.org) -
Brown v. Board of Education
Up until this time the segergation of schools was legal. It was actually made up of five cases; Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Briggs v. Elliot, Davis v. Board of Education of Prince Edward County, Boiling v. Sharpe, and Gebhart v. Ethel. It was a unanimous decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
uscourts.gov -
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
started by the arrest of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery bus boycott was a protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. It lasted 13 months. MLK had the idea. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist. She is famous for not surrendering her seat on a Montomery, Alabama bus. This started the Monetgomery Bus Boycott -
The SCLC
Following the Montgomery Bus Boycott victory, MLK invited 60 other black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer Church in Atlanta. they discussed a way to get civil rights peacfully. Out of two meetings came a new organization with MLK as its president. (sclcnational.org) -
The Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine were the nine black students involved in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. When they entered the school in 1957, it sparked a nationwide crisis when Arkansas governor, ignoring a federal court order, called the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the Nine from entering. President Eisenhower responded by federalizing the National Guard and sending in the Army to escort the Nine.
encyclopediaofarkansas.net -
sit-ins
sit ins were a way of peacfully advocating for civil rights. black and whit people would sit in white resturants until arrested. people would spill thing on people sitting, black or white. -
The SNCC
On February 1, 1960, a group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina where they had been denied service. This sparked a wave of other sit-ins in college towns across the South. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was created on the campus of Shaw University two months later to coordinate these sit-ins. -
Freedom Riders
The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C. on two public buses going to the South. They intended to test the Supreme Court's ruling in Boynton v. Virginia, which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional. -
Thurgood Marshall
He was the first African-American member of the U.S. Supreme Court. Thurgood served on the court from 1967 until 1991. Marshall worked as a lawyer for the NAACP and helped win the 1954 case, Brown v. Board of Education.
americaslibrary.gov
