-
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
The landmark case declaring that "separate educational facilities are unequal" in which Brown v. Board decision helped break the back of state-sponsored segregation, and provided a spark to the American civil rights movement. -
Murder of Emmett Till
While visiting family in Mississippi, 14 y/o Emmett Till was murdered for flirting with a white woman. His white murderers were not charged, so his mother decided to have an open casket funeral so the world could see what murderes had done to her son. Jet, published a photo of Emmett’s body, and the media picked up the story. The Emmett Till murder trial brought to light the brutality of Jim Crow segregation in the South and was an early impetus of the African American civil rights movement. -
Period: to
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The first large demonstration against segregation in the U.S. 4 days before the boycott, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to yield her seat to a white man on a bus. She was arrested and fined. The boycott of public buses by blacks began on the day of Parks’ court hearing. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system, and one of the leaders of the boycott, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a leader of the American civil rights movement. -
Founding of SCLC
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and played an important role in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The SCLC was an organization primarily comprised of southern African American church leaders, dedicated to combating racism through nonviolent group protests. -
Integeration of Little Rock, AK Schools
Nine black students enrolled at all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The court had mandated that all public schools in the country be integrated, but on September 4,1957, the Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called in the state National Guard to bar the black students’ entry into the school. Later in the month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the “Little Rock Nine” into the school, and they started their first day of classes on September 25. -
Civil Rights Act
– Signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights. It also created a six-member U.S. Civil Rights Commission charged with investigating allegations of voter infringement. But, most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 signaled a growing federal commitment to the cause of civil rights. -
Cooper v. Aaron
was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which held that the states are bound by the Court's decisions and must enforce them even if the states disagreed with them. -
MLK visits India
Following the success of the boycott in 1956, King contemplated traveling to India to deepen his understanding of Gandhian principles. King’s trip to India had a profound influence on his understanding of nonviolent resistance and his commitment to America’s struggle for civil rights