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Benjamin Roberts, a free black man, tries to enroll his daughter to the neighborhood public school, but she is denied entry due to her race. Roberts and abolitionist lawyer, Charles Summers, sue the city. Their argument is that black schools have worse resources than white schools. In 1849, Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rule that Roberts did not prove that the black school was worse than the white school.
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U.S. Supreme Court, rules that blacks either free, or slaves, cannot be citizens of the United States, and therefor cannot sue in federal court.
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President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in the confederacy.
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The 14th ammendment granted process and equal protection under the law to African Americans.
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Segragation laws known as Jim Crow laws, grow in the south. These laws were meant to segragate blacks and whites.
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.
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Brown vs. The Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas, ruled that segragation in public schools is unconstitutional. This paved the way for desegragation.
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Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section", to a white passenger. This started the bus boycott, which lasted a year, and ended with desegragated buses.
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9 Students in Little Rock, Arkansas, went to a formerly all-white school. Many people felt very strongly against it, and there was a mob of angry white people at the school, while the students attended. The President had to order 1,000 paratroopers and 10,000 National Guardsmen to the school.
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4 African-American college students in North Carolina sat down at a lunch counter at J.W. Woolworth's and politley asked for service, but were denied. When asked to leave, they stayed seated. More and more protesters joined them throughout the week, and eventually, the same 4 students, were served at the same Woolworth's counter.
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Over 250,000 people joined the March on Washington, gathering at the Lincoln Memorial, the crowd listened to Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
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President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, destroying the Jim Crow laws in the South, making it illegal to segragate races in schools, housing, and hiring. Despite these laws, many people still segragated based on race.
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The bodies' of 3 Civil Rights workers- 2 white, 1 black-, were found in a dam. They had been working to register black voters, and later went to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested on speeding charges, they were in jail for several hours, and released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them.
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Human Rights activist, Malcolm X is assassinated.
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African-Americans marched to Mountgomrey to support voting rights, but were stopped by the police, who attacked the peaceful protesters with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips. This event is known as Bloody Sunday.
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Many Southern states did not allow interacial marriage, until June 12, 1967, when the Supreme Court deemed that the laws were unconstitutional.
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Martin Luther King Jr., is shot outside of his hotel, and dies at the age of 39.
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Today, Civil Rights are not as much of an issue as 100 years ago. Most people in America have learned to accept people for their differences, and let that help them, become a better, more accepting person.
