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The Plessy v. Ferguson case allowed separate but egual facilities. In topeka Kansas, a young African American girl was denied admission to her neighborhood school. Her parents, with help from the NAACP, sued the school board. The Brown v. Board case ruled that segregation in public schools was unsonstitutional and it violated the fourteenth amendment. Therefore, the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation.
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Killed for leading a voter registration drive.
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Murdered for organizing black voters.
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Murdered for speaking to a white woman.
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Nightriders slay John who was opposed to school improvements.
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Rosa was on her way home from work and she sat down on the bus behind the white section. All of the seats were filled and a white man walked on the bus. The bus driver noticed the man was standing and he ordered Rosa and three other African Americans to get up and let the man sit down. The other African Americans got up but Rosa refused. The bus driver called the police and they took Rosa into custody. Rosa challenged segregation in court and her actions launched the modern civil rights movement
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The Montgomery bus boycott begins.
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The Supreme Court banned segregated seating on Montgomery buses.
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Klansmen killed Willie in Montgomery, Alabama.
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Congress passed the first civil rights law since Reconstruction. The Civil Rights Act was intended to protect African American's right to vote. It's final form was weaker than this but still brought the government into the civil rights debate. It created a civil rights division in the Department of Justice and created the United States Commission on Civil Rights to investigate the denial of voting rights. The passing of the bill started a campaign to register 2 million African American voters.
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The school board in Little Rock won a court order to admit nine African Americans to an all white high school.The governor ordered the National Guard to prevent the students from going to shcool. Mobs and riots broke out to protest against the students for going to school. All of the violence convinced President Eisenhower to send troops to the school which allowed the students to enter safely and they remained there the rest of the year.
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Mack Charles was taken from jail and lynched.
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Black students stage a sit-in at a "whites only" lucnh counter in North Carolina.
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The Supreme Court outlaws segregation in bus terminals.
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Freedom Riders are teams of African Americans and whites that travelled to the South to bring attention to the refusal of integrating bus terminals. Freedom Riders were organized by the NAACP, SNCC (student nonviolent coordinating committee) and CORE. Freedom Riders consisted of African Americans and some whites, whoever believed in protecting the rights of African Americans and banishing segregation.
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Herbert Lee was killed by a white legislator
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The groups joined together to launch voter registration drive.
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Ducksworth was taken from a bus and killed by police.
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When James Merideth attempted to enroll at Ole Miss the governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, blocked his path. He said that they would "never surrender to the evil and illegal forces of tyranny."Even though Merideth had a court order directing them to register him, they did not. President Kennedy sent 500 federal marshalls to get James to Ole Miss but mobs and riots broke out. This forced Kennedy to send more troops to the campus which ensured his safety and Merideth graduated later that year.
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Paul Guihard, a french reporter, was killed during an Ole Miss riot in Oxford, Mississippi
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William was slain during his one-man march against segregation in Alabama.
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The police attacked the marching children with dogs and fire hoses.
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The Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, stands in a schoolhouse door in an attempt to stop university integration.
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The Civil Rights Leader was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi. He was a member of the NAACP and travelled a lot to encourage poor African Americans to register to vote and join the civil rights movement. One day he was getting out of his car in the driveway, and Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the KKK, shot and killed him. Byron however, was able to escape justice.
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The March on Washington was a way to build more public support for the civil rights movement and to push Congress to pass the civil rights bill. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. Around 250,000 Americans marched on Washington.
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Virgil Lamar Ware was killed during a wave of racist violence in Birmingham, Alabama.
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Addie Mae Collins, Denise Mcnair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were all killed in the bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
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Poll tax was outlawed in all federal elections.
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Louis Allen was assassinated in Liberty Mississippi. She was a witness to the murder of a civil rights worker.
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Bruce was killed while protesting the constructuion of a segregated school.
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Henry Hezehiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore were killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
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Freedom Summer brought 1,000 young civil rights volunteers to Mississippi.
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James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were abducted and killed my members of the Ku Klux Klan.
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President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after Congress passed it. It gave the government power to prevent racial discrimination in some places and made segregation illegal in most public places. It gave the attorney general more power to bring lawsuits for school desegregation. The act established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which monitors job discrimination.
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Lemuel Penn was killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan while driving north in Colbert, Georgia.
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Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights marcher, was killed by a state trooper in Marion, Alabama.
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The troopers beat back marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
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Reverend James Reeb was beaten to death after volunteering to march in Selma, Alabama.
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Viola Gregg Liuzzo was killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan while transporting marchers in Alabama.
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Thousands of people completed the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March. The march was organized to obtain and secure voting rights for African Americans. They were met with armed white citizens who viciously attacked them. President Johnson saw the horrible things that were happening and proposed a new voting rights law soon after the march was completed.
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Oneal Moore, a black deputy, was killed by nightriders in Varnado, Louisiana.
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Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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Willie was killed by nightriders in Anniston, Alabama.
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Jonathan Daniels was killed by a deputy in Hayneville, Alabama.
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Samuel Younge Jr. was killed in dispute in Tuskegee, Alabama.
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Vernon Dahmer was killed in a Ku Klux Klan bombing in Hattiesburg Mississippi.
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Ben was killed by members of the KKK in Natchez, Mississippi.
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Nightriders killed Clarence in Bogalusa, Louisiana.
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Wharlest Jackson was killed after receiving a promotion to a 'white' job.
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Benjamin Brown, a civil rights worker, was killed when police fired on protestors in Jackson, Mississippi.
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Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the first black Supreme Court Justice. He was an attorney and the NAACP's cheif counsel and director of its Legal Defense and Education Fund. I think this event was so monumental because it showed the civil rights era was making progress since he got a rather important job. This provided hope for other African Americans and would start to convince other businesses to accept them as quality workers.
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Samuel Hammond Jr, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith were killed when patrolmen fired on protestors in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went to Memphis Tennessee to support a strike. Dr. King was on his balcony when he was assassinated by a sniper. This caused mourning and riots to break out in more than 100 cities. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Dr. King's death made a large impact because he fought for what he and others believed in, equality. Some African Americans and whites stood together to fight segregation, and in a way, his death brought them closer together.
