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13th Amendment
- This abolished slavery in the United States
- It provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.".
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14th Amendment
-All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. -
15th Amendment
-African American males who were citizens of the United States had a right to vote. -
Plessy vs. Ferguson
-The Court ruled seven to one against Plessy and thus established as constitutional the concept of “separate but equal.”
-This concept was a springboard for what was called the “Jim Crow” system.
- The Jim Crow laws made segregation not merely acceptable but mandatory. -
19th Amendment
- This gave women the right to vote if they were a citizen.
- This gave women a higher role in society not just men.
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Executive Order of 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.
- This allowed equal oppurtunities to all the men who served for the United States. -
Brown V. Board of Education
-This was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional.
-The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation.
-This gave African American children the same oppurtunities as the white children in education. -
Montgomery Bus Buycott
- It was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. -The boycott caused crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's black population who were the main source of income.
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Rosa Parks Refuses to Give up her Seat
-Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.
-This act started the buycott on the bus system in Montgomery, Alabama.
-She was later arrested for this act and considered the "Mother of the CIvil RIghts movement". -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
-Congress's first civil rights legislation since the end of Reconstruction, established the U.S. Justice Department as a guarantor of the right to vote.
- The act was a presidential response to the political divisions that followed the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ending official racial segregation in the public schools. -
24th Amendment
-This prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
-This outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation.
-It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
-It eliminated various devices, such as literacy tests, that had traditionally been used to restrict voting by black people.
-It authorized the enrollment of voters by federal registrars in states where fewer than fifty percent of the eligible voters were registered or voted. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
-This provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin.
