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Brown v. Board of Education decision
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Linda Brown, and ended segregation in the schools. This decision overturned the Supreme Court's previous ruling that "seperate but equal was ok" in Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896. The American South vigorously opposed this decision and many states refused to obey the law. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama decided to boycott the buses in Montgomery after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to leave her seat for a white man. The boycott lasted for 381 days, resulting in thousands of African Americans having to walk everywhere. This boycott led to the 1956 Supreme Court ruling that segregation on the buses of Montgomery is unconstitutional. -
Little Rock Nine
The federal government issued troops to escort nine black students to help desegregate Little Rock High School in Arkansas. This is the first time since the Reconstruction era that the federal government has used troops to uphold African American civil rights. Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, did not receive the call that told her not to come to school the first day, because her family didn't have a phone. She came to school and was spit at, harrassed and called names. -
Freedom Riders - Anniston, AL
In 1961, CORE sent two buses to the American South to see if desegregation was actually happening in the South. When the Freedom Riders bus got to Anniston, Alabama, they were brutally beaten. An angry mob of white people descended on the bus, slashed its tires, and forced it to stop. The whites threw a bomb onto the bus and forced the doors shut. While all of the Freedom Riders got off the bus before the bomb blew up, they were still brutally beaten by the white mob. -
MLK "I have a dream" speech
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in front of 250,000 people in Washington D.C. The crowd consisted of white people as well as black people, and it stretched more than a square mile. MLK did not intially intend to give the "I have a dream" speech. He was already done with his formal speech, and the "I have a dream" part was just him speaking from his heart. Two weeks following this speech, there was a bombing in a Birmingham church which killed four little girls.
