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The Ku Klux Klan
From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan's goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by southern blacks after the Civil War. -
Second Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1875 sometimes called Enforcement Act or Force Act, was a United States federal law enacted during the Reconstruction Era to guarantee African Americans equal treatment in public accommodations, public transportation, and to prohibit exclusion from jury service. -
Plessey v Ferguson
This 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case upheld the constitutionality of segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. It stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana law. -
Anne Moody
Anne Moody was an African-American author who wrote about her experiences growing up poor and black in rural Mississippi, her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement through the NAACP, CORE and SNCC. -
Committee on Civil Rights
The President's Committee on Civil Rights (PCCR) was established by Executive Order 9808 by Harry Truman who was the President of the United States at the time. -
Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson made history in 1947 when he broke baseball’s color barrier to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was a talented player, and won the National League Rookie of the Year award his first season, and helped the Dodgers to the National League championship. -
Brown v. Borad of Education Topeka Kansas
Brown v. Board of Education 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. -
Governer Orval Faubus
Governer Faubus was the democratic Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967, famously known for his vigorous stand against the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Martin Luther King Jr. organized the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955, which began a chain reaction of similar boycotts throughout the South. -
Elizabeth Eckford
Elizabeth Eckford is one of the Little Rock Nine, which was a group of African- American who were the first black students ever to attend classes at Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. -
Samuel O' Quinn
Samuel O’Qqinn was ambushed and killed. Mr. O'Quinn was derided by some local whites for being uppity. He was shot after joining the NAACP. -
Black Power movement at its peak
The progress made by African Americans in the 1950s and early 1960s at achieving their civil rights was compromised by violence. Frankly, many young blacks rejected the courage and patience displayed by Dr. Martin Luther King in his non-violent response to injustice in American society. -
Clyde Kennard
Clyde Kennard was attempting to become the first African American to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now the University of Southern Mississippi) when he was wrongfully convicted as an accessory to a burglary of $25 worth of chicken feed from a farmer's co-op. -
James Meredith
James Meredith is a civil rights activist who became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962. -
Arrest of Martin Luther King in Alabama
Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and sent to jail because he and others were protesting the treatment of blacks in Birmingham, Alabama. -
A. Phillip Randolph
A. Philip Randolph was a trailblazing leader, organizer and social activist who championed equitable labor rights for African-American communities during the 20th century. -
First Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States 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. -
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. -
Black Panthers
In late October 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party In formulating a new politics, they drew on their experiences working with a variety of Black Power organizations. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King, Jr., was an American clergyman and civil rights leader who was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on Thursday, April 4, 1968, at the age of 39.
