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The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
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The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.
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The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement.
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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.
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Linda Brown, an 8-year-old girl living in Topeka, Kansas, has to travel by bus to a distant school for African-American students, despite living within walking distance from an elementary school that is only for white children. This is due to segregation policies in the school districts. Linda Brown’s father sues the state school board of Topeka. The United States Supreme Court agrees to hear this case.
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In Monteagle, Tennessee, the Highlander Folk School in runs various workshops to teach how to organize protests for people like union organizer. The school invites civil rights workers.
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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.
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On August 28, a 14-year-old African-American boy, Emmett Till, from Chicago, is murdered near Money, Mississippi, because he allegedly whistled at a white woman
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On December 5, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is elected by the Montgomery Improvement Association as the president to lead the boycott.
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Due to a court order, the University of Alabama accepts Autherine Lucy, its first African-American student, but manages to finds legal ways of preventing her attendance to the University.
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Martin Luther King assists in founding the SCLC, or the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in January of that year. The purpose of the organization is to fight for civil rights, and Martin Luther King is elected as the organization’s first president.
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On September 2, 1957, Governor Orval Faubus announced that he would call in the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the African-American students' entry to Central High, claiming this action was for the students' own protection.
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In a 7-2 decision handed down on December 5 by the Supreme Court in the case Boynton v. Virginia case, the court rules that segregation on vehicles that travel between states is unlawful and unconstitutional because it is in violation of the Interstate Commerce Act.
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On February 1, four African-American men who were students at North Carolina Agriculture and Technical College, visit Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they sit down at a whites-only lunch counter to order coffee. Although they are denied service, the four men sit politely and silently at the counter until the store closes. This starts the series of Greensboro sit-ins and also triggers similar protests in the South.
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On May 4, seven African American men and six white activists who are known as the Freedom Riders, leave Washington, D.C. and travel through the rigidly segregated Deep South, with the goal to test Boynton v. Virginia.
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The Supreme Court rules on September 10 that the University of Mississippi has to admit, James Meredith, an African-American veteran and student.
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On May 14, the Freedom Riders who two separate groups, are attacked outside Birmingham, Alabama and Anniston, Alabama. A mob throws a firebomb into the Anniston bus. In Birmingham, members of the Ku Klux Klan attack the bus after making earlier arrangements with local law enforcement to have 15 minutes alone with the bus.
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On May 29, President Kennedy makes an announcement ordering the Interstate Commerce Commission to create and enforce stricter fines and regulations for facilities and buses that will not to integrate.
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The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
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Freedom Summer was a 1964 voter registration project in Mississippi, part of a larger effort by civil rights groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to expand black voting in the South.
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The desegregation of Boston public schools (1974–1988) was a period in which the Boston Public Schools were under court control to desegregate through a system of busing students.