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The landmark 1954 Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, resulted in a unanimous decision that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The Court ruled that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," effectively overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and providing a major legal catalyst for the broader Civil Rights Movement. -
At some point around August 28, he was kidnapped, beaten, shot in the head, had a large metal fan tied to his neck with barbed wire, and was thrown into the Tallahatchie River. His body was soon recovered, and an investigation was opened. -
Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott -
nine African American students who attempted to integrate Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in 1957 following the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling -
a series of nonviolent protests that began on February 1, 1960, when four Black students from North Carolina AT sat at the "whites-only" lunch counter at a Greensboro, NC, Woolworth's store after being refused service -
a series of civil rights protests in 1961 where interracial activists rode buses into the segregated American South to challenge the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions that ruled segregation in interstate bus travel unconstitutional -
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in April 1963 from a jail cell where he was imprisoned for nonviolent protesting against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. The letter is a response to a public statement by eight white clergymen who criticized his actions as "unwise and untimely," calling for patience and reliance on the legal system instead of direct action. -
a peaceful 1963 protest where an estimated 250,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. to advocate for civil and economic rights for African Americans -
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism on September 15, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young African American girls and became a pivotal, galvanizing moment in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. The city had earned the nickname "Bombingham" due to frequent racial bombings, but this attack's targeting of children in a place of worship shocked the nation and the world