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Supreme Court decision declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional
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14-year-old Black boy lynched in Mississippi; his killers were acquitted
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Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat; boycott led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Nine Black students integrated Central High School in Arkansas; met with violent resistance
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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed to organize youth-led civil rights activism
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First Black student to integrate the University of Mississippi, amid riots and protests
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Over 250,000 people rallied for civil rights; MLK delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech
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Peaceful protests in Birmingham met with violent police force; images shocked the nation
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Law that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
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Peaceful protesters marching for voting rights were attacked in events like “Bloody Sunday”
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Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn announces her entry for Democratic nomination for the presidency, at the Concord Baptist Church in Chicago
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In 1975, President Ford issued a Message on the Observance of Black History Week urging all
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accusing UC Davis of “reverse discrimination.”
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Washington became the first African American to be elected as the city's mayor at the age of 60. He served as mayor from April 29, 1983, until his untimely death in 1987.
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In his 1984 presidential run, Jackson sought to unite a multiracial, multicultural group of Americans.
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On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th president of the United States; he is the first African American to hold that office. The product of an interracial marriage—his father grew up in a small village in Kenya, his mother in Kansas—Obama grew up in Hawaii but discovered his civic calling in Chicago, where he worked for several years as a community organizer on the city’s largely Black South Side.
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The movement swelled to a critical juncture on May 25, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic when 46-year-old George Floyd died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by police officer Derek Chauvin.
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In January 2021, Kamala Harris became the first woman and first woman of color to become vice president of the United States. Then-candidate Joe Biden had nominated Harris in August 2020 during the Democratic party’s “remote” national convention. Harris, whose mother immigrated to the United States from India and whose father immigrated from Jamaica, was the first person of African or Asian descent to become a major party’s vice presidential candidate—and the first to win the office.