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On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy boarded a car of the East Louisiana Railroad that was designated for use by white patrons only. Although Plessy was born a free person and was one-eighth black and seven-eighths white, under a Louisiana law enacted in 1890, he was classified as Black, and thus required to sit in the "colored" car. When, in an act of planned disobedience, Plessy refused to leave the white car and move to the colored car, he was arrested and jailed.
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After his parole in 1952, he became one of the Nation's leaders and chief spokesmen. For nearly a dozen years, he was the public face of the Nation of Islam. Tension between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, head of the Nation of Islam, led to Malcolm X's departure from the organization in March 1964.
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Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms and restaurants for whites and blacks. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board d of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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Martin Luther King, Jr.'s main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, and he has become a human rights icon.King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career.
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many historically significant figures of the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and others, as listed below.
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Further organizing was done at a meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 14, 1957. The organization shortened its name to Southern Leadership Conference, established an Executive Board of Directors, and elected officers, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as President, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy as Financial Secretary-Treasurer, Rev. C. K. Steele of Tallahassee, Florida as Vice President, Rev. T. J. Jemison of Baton Rouge, Louisiana as Secretary, and Attorney I. M. Augustine of New Orlea
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The Little Rock Nine were a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
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The Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary organization established to promote Black Power, and by extension self-defense for blacks. It was active in the United States from the mid-1960s into the 1970s. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international fame through their deep involvement in the Black Power movement and in US politics of the 1960s and 70s.
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Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael, also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party.
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Transport segregation continued in some parts of the Deep South, so in 1961, a civil rights group, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) began to organize Freedom Rides. After three days of training in non-violent techniques, black and white volunteers sat next to each other as they travelled through the Deep South.
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'De facto' racial discrimination or segregation in the USA during the fifties and sixties was simply discrimination that was not segregation by law. Jim Crow Laws, which were enacted in the 1870s, brought legal racial segregation against African Americans residing in the Southeastern USA. These laws were legally ended in 1964 by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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Freedom Summer was a highly publicized campaign in the Deep South to register blacks to vote during the summer of 1964.
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one of the major historic events in 20th Century American history, the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Wind through the streets of Selma; pass through countryside where marchers spent the night on their way to Montgomery.
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965, grew out of both public protest and private political negotiation. Starting in 1961, CORE joined SCLC in staging nonviolent demonstrations in Georgia, and Birmingham. They hoped to attract national media attention and pressure the U.S. government to protect Black's constitutional rights.The combination of public revulsion to the violence and Johnson's political skills stimulated Congress to pass the voting rights bill on August 5, 1965.
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President Lyndon Johnson formed an 11-member National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in July 1967 to explain the riots that plagued cities each summer since 1964 and to provide recommendations for the future. The Commission’s 1968 report, informally known as the Kerner Report, concluded that the nation was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”
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April 4, 1968, a shot rang out. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, now lay sprawled on the balcony's floor. A gaping wound covered a large portion of his jaw and neck. A great man who had spent thirteen years of his life dedicating himself to nonviolent protest had been felled by a sniper's bullet.
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On April 11, 1968 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and as of 1974, gender; as of 1988, the act protects the disabled and families with children. It also provided protection for civil rights workers.
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The Supreme Court first approved of de jure segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), holding that legislatively mandated segregation in transportation did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as long as the facilities were separate but equal.