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Plessy V. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for blacks. -
The Integration of Major League Baseball
Baseball Integration, 1947-1986. In early 2007 major league baseball marked the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first season with the Dodgers, bringing an end to a sixty-year ban on black players in the major leagues. -
The Integration of the Armed Forces
Executive Order 9981: Desegregation of the Armed Forces (1948) ... On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, committing the government to integrating the segregated military. -
Sweatt V. Painter
In 1946, Heman Marion Sweatt, a black man, applied for admission to the University of Texas Law School. State law restricted access to the university to whites, and Sweatt's application was automatically rejected because of his race. When Sweatt asked the state courts to order his admission, the university attempted to provide separate but equal facilities for black law students. -
Brown V. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all. -
The Bus Boycott of Montgomery, Alabama
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil-rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. -
The Integration of Little Rock High School
The desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, gained national attention on September 3, 1957, when Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating the high school. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, Pub.L. 85–315, 71 Stat. 634, enacted September 9, 1957, a federal voting rights bill, was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. -
The Freedom Rides of 1960
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. -
The Greensboro Four
Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain,Ezell Blair, Jr. and David Richmond (The Greensboro Four) entered the F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, N.C., around 4:30 p.m. and purchased merchandise at several counters.They sat down at the store's "whites only" lunch counter and ordered coffee,and were denied service, ignored and then asked to leave. They remained seated at the counter until the store closed early at 5 p.m. -
The Twenty-Fourth Amendment
The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. -
The integration of the University of Mississippi
On September 30, 1962, riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school. -
The Integration of the university of Alabama
The staunch conservative demonstrated his loyalty to the cause on June 11, 1963, when black students Vivian Malone and James A. Hood showed up at the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa to attend class. In what historians often refer to as the "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door," the governor literally stood in the doorway as federal authorities tried to allow the students to enter. -
The March on Washington
The March on Washington was a massive protest march that occurred in August 1963, when some 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Also known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the event aimed to draw attention to continuing challenges and inequalities faced by African Americans a century after emancipation. It was also the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s now-iconic “I Have A Dream” speech. -
The Assassination of John kennedy
Assassination of John F. Kennedy, mortal shooting of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. His accused killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had embraced Marxism and defected for a time to the Soviet Union. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. -
The Assassination of Malcolm X
When Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, many Americans viewed his killing as simply the result of an ongoing feud between him and the Nation of Islam. He had publicly left the Nation of Islam in March 1964, and as the months wore on the animus between Malcolm's camp and the Nation of Islam grew increasingly caustic, with bitter denunciations coming from both sides. A week before he was killed, Malcolm's home -- owned by the Nation of Islam. -
The March on Selma, Alabama
Selma March, also called Selma to Montgomery March, political march from Selma, Alabama, to the state’s capital, Montgomery, that occurred March 21–25, 1965. Led by Martin Luther King, Jr., the march was the culminating event of several tumultuous weeks during which demonstrators twice attempted to march but were stopped, once violently, by local police. As many as 25,000 people participated in the roughly 50-mile (80-km) march. -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968 at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m.