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The Civil Rights Movement in America
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Plessy v. Ferguson
On June 7, 1892, Homer Adolph Plessy was removed fom the East Louisiana Railroad train and arrested by Dectivive C.C. Cain at the corner of Royal and Press St. He was charged with violating the 1890 Louisiana Separate Car Act that separated railroad passengers by race. Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal" -
Sweatt v. Painter
Petitioner was denied admission to the state supported University of Texas Law School, solely because he is a Negro and state law forbids the admission of Negroes to that Law School. He was offered, but he refused, enrollment in a separate law school newly established by the State for Negroes. U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation -
Brown v. Board of Education
The plaintiffs in Brown asserted that this system of racial separation, while masquerading as providing separate but equal treatment of both white and black Americans, instead perpetuated inferior accommodations, services, and treatment for black Americans. The Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson -
Emmett Till
Emmett Louis Till was an African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks was tired after spending the day at work as a department store seamstress. She stepped onto the bus for the ride home and sat in the fifth row. In Montgomery, Alabama, when a bus became full, the seats nearer the front were given to white passengers. Montgomery bus driver James Blake ordered Parks and three other African Americans seated nearby to move. After Parks refused to move, she was arrested and fined $10. The chain of events triggered by her arrest changed the United States. -
Southern Chirstian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement. Basic decisions made by the founders at these early meeting included the adoption of nonviolent mass action as the cornerstone of strategy, affiliation of local community organizations , and a determination to make the SCLC movement open to all. -
Little Rock Central
On 4 September 1957, the first day of school at Central High, a white mob gathered in front of the school, and Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering. President Eisenhower intervened and sent troops to escort the 9 african american kids into the school. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative ActionAffirmative action was first created from Executive Order 10925, which was signed by President John F. Kennedy. Requires that government employers "not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin" -
March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the March on Washington, or The Great March on Washington, was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and demanded civil and economic rights for African Americans. 200,000 civil rights supporters of all races and ethic groups joined in the fight. -
"I Have A Dream" Speech
Martin Luther King Jr. and the "I Have a Dream Speech" On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., delivered a speech to a massive group of civil rights marchers gathered around the Lincoln memorial in Washington DC. The culmination of this event was the influential. The words of Martin Luther King, Jr. influenced the Federal government to take more direct actions to more fully realize racial equality. -
24th Amendment
Not long ago, citizens in some states had to pay a fee to vote in a national election. This fee was called a poll tax. On January 23, 1964, the United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials. -
Freedom Summer
On june 21, 1964, voting rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, who had come here to investigate the buring of Mt. Zion Church, were murdered. Victims of a Klan conspiracy, their deths procoked national outrage and led to the first successful federal prosecution of a civil rights case in Mississippi. It was an attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi, which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. -
Civil Rights Act
It was an act that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (known as "public accommodations"). -
Heart of Atlanta v. United States
The owner, Moreton Rolleston, of a motel refused to rent rooms to black patrons and filed suit in federal court, arguing that the requirements of the act exceeded the authority granted to Congress over interstate commerce. U.S. Congress could use the power granted to it by the Constitution's Commerce Clause to force private businesses to abide by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
Voting Rights Act
This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting.
