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Enslaved Africans were forcibly brought to the Americas via the Transatlantic Slave Trade between the 16th and 19th centuries. Of the estimated 12.5 million Africans transported across the Atlantic, only about 388,000 were shipped directly to the US with the majority going to the Caribbean and South America. Enslaved people were forced to work, primarily on plantations cultivating crops like tobacco and later cotton, and their forced labor was fundamental to the colonial economy. -
he American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve African American slavery, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. -
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) also commonly shortened to the Klan, is an American Protestant-led white supremacist, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction in the devastated South. Various historians have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist group. They have historically resorted to terrorism, violence and acts of intimidation to impose their criteria and oppress their victims, of African Americans, Jews, and Catholics. -
The 13th Amendment is a U.S. constitutional amendment that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for a crime. It was ratified on December 6, 1865, and was a direct result of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation to create a permanent, nationwide end to slavery. The amendment also repealed parts of the original Constitution that had protected slavery. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, was a decision of the US Supreme Court which ruled that US state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and hence are unconstitutional, even if the segregated facilities are presumed to be equal. -
The Montgomery bus boycott was caused by the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, but it was the culmination of years of frustration over racial segregation and mistreatment on public buses. -
The Freedom Rides were a series of nonviolent protests in 1961 where Black and white activists rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern US to challenge the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions that ruled segregated public buses unconstitutional. Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the riders faced extreme violence, which garnered national attention and ultimately prompted the federal government to enforce desegregation in interstate travel facilities. -
dvocating for the civil and economic rights of African Americans and other marginalized groups. Organized by civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, it is most famous for Martin Luther King Jr.'s iconic "I Have a Dream" speech, which called for an end to racial discrimination and segregation and demanded the passage of strong civil rights legislation. The march helped pressure the U.S. government to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
This act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. It was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark U.S. federal statute that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965. Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections.