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Emmett TIll
Emmett Till, a Chicago resident, was visiting his relatives in Money Mississippi when he was accused of harassing a woman. The fourteen year old boy was kidnapped by the woman's relatives and brutally beaten and killed. His body was disposed in a nearby river. His mother chose to have an open casket funeral with her son's body on display for five days. Thousands of people came to to see Emmett. This moment provided an important catalyst for the civil rights movement. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott is when African Americans refused to ride the city buses in Montgomery, Alabama in protest of its segregated seating. This boycott took place from December 5th 1955 to December 20th 1956. It is regarded as one of the first large scale demonstration against segregation in the United States. The boycott began in the case when Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for refusing to give up her bus seat. The boycott began on the day of her hearing. The boycott lasted 381 days. -
Little Rock 9
Nine black high school students enrolled at a formerly all-white central highs school in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957 after the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in public schools were unconstitutional. The first day of classes, the Governor of Arkansas called in the state National Guard to prevent the black students from entering the school. The president sent in federal troops to escort "the little rock nine" into the school. -
Youth Movement: SNCC and Sit-Ins
The Youth played a large part in the Civil Rights movement. The SNCC stands for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. It was formed to give younger blacks more of a voice in the civil rights movements. They were more radical and took actions unlike the youth that participated in sit ins to protest against racial segregation. They would sit quietly and wait to be served. When a person was arrested for the demonstration. Another student would take its place. -
Freedom Riders
A group of 13 black and white civil rights activists launched the freedom rides, a series of bus trips throughout the south to protest segregation in interstate bus terminals. They attempted to integrate facilities at the bus terminals. Black freedom riders would try to use non colored services at the facilities. They encountered lots of violence from white protesters but drew great amounts of national and international attention for their cause. . -
James Meredith and Ole Miss
In late September 1962, after a legal battle, an African American man named James Meredith attempted to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Chaos broke out with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many arrested. The President call for 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce orders. Meredith repeatedly applied to Ole Miss where he kept getting rejected. He filed a lawsuit against the school and won the court case in September 1962. -
The Philosophy of Non-Violence: Letters from a Birmingham Jail
Civil Rights Martin Luther King Jr,, was imprisoned in an Alabama prison cell and completed one of the most influential texts in the Civil Rights Movement. The letter appeared in countless publications across the country. This letter was where he used one of his famous phrases "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Although this letter was supposed a response to the racist religious leaders who published the newspaper, it was intended for a national audience all along. -
Project C and Children's March
In spring of 1963, activists in Birmingham, Alabama launched one of the most influential campaigns known as Project C, or the Birmingham Campaign. It was a series of lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall and boycotts on downtown merchants to protest the segregation laws in the city. The Children's movement is when thousands of children were trained to use tactics of non violence to protest segregation peacefully. -
March on Washington
On August 28th, 1963 more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington D.C for a political rally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedoms. This event was to shed light on the political and social challenges that African Americans faced throughout the country. This march was an important moment in the civil rights movement and is where Martin Luther King had his "I Have a Dream." -
Freedom Summer
Civil Rights Organizations (CORE and SNCC), organized a voter registration drive, known as the Mississippi Summer Project, or Freedom Summer. it was to to increase the voter registration in Mississippi. They faced constant abuse and harassment form Mississippi's white populations. The events of the Freedom Summer deepened the division between those in the civil rights movement who still believed in in sit-ins and those that were more radical. -
Civil Rights Act
It outlawed discrimination based on race, sex, religion or national origin. This act was a huge success for all races across the United States and was a large step to equality for the African Americans. -
Malcom X
Malcom X was a strong advocate for the civil rights. However, unlike Martin Luther King, Martin X urged his followers to take action against the white aggressors. His death popularized his ideas and laid foundation for the Black Power Movement in the late 1960s and the 1970s. -
Selma to Montgomery March
In early 1965, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference made Selma, Alabama, the focus of its efforts to register black voters in the South. The march from Selma to Montgomery were met with violent resistance. It took three days to reach Montgomery. It helped raise awareness of the difficulty faced by black voters in the South. -
Voting Rights Act
This act was signed on by President Lyndon Johnson. It was aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
