-
Brown v. Board of Education Topeka, Kansas
"On May 17, 1954, the Court unanimously ruled that "separate but equal" public schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional. The Brown case served as a catalyst for the modern civil rights movement, inspiring education reform everywhere and forming the legal means of challenging segregation in all areas of society."
http://www.civilrights.org/education/brown/?referrer=https://www.google.com/ -
Emmett Till murdered.
"Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, on August 24, 1955, when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store. Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in the head."
http://www.biography.com/people/emmett-till-507515 -
Central High School- Little Rock, Arkansas-school desegregation
"On 4 September 1957, the first day of school at Central High, a white mob gathered in front of the school, and Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering.
http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_little_rock_school_desegregation_1957/ -
Greensboro, NC: Woolworth Sit-Ins
"On Feb. 1, 1960, four students from all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime with the intention of ordering lunch."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18615556 -
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. arrested; Letter from Birmingham Jail
"On the day of his arrest, a group of clergymen wrote an open letter in which they called for the community to renounce protest tactics that caused unrest in the community, to do so in court and “not in the streets.” It was that letter that prompted King to draft, on this day, April 16, the famous document known as Letter From a Birmingham Jail."
http://time.com/3773914/mlk-birmingham-jail/ -
Medgar Evers murdered.
"He and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. At 12:40 a.m. on June 12, 1963, Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson. He died less than a hour later at a nearby hospital."
http://www.biography.com/people/medgar-evers-9542324#tragic-death-and-aftermath -
Congress passes Civil Rights Act.
"The House of Representatives debated H.R. 7152 for nine days, rejecting nearly 100 amendments designed to weaken the bill. It passed the House on February 10, 1964 after 70 days of public hearings, appearances by 275 witnesses, and 5,792 pages of published testimony."
https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/1964-civil-rights-act.htm -
Watts Riots
"In the predominantly black Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, racial tension reaches a breaking point after two white policemen scuffle with a black motorist suspected of drunken driving. A crowd of spectators gathered near the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street to watch the arrest and soon grew angry by what they believed to be yet another incident of racially motivated abuse by the police."
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/watts-riot-begins -
Stokley Carmichael "Black Power" speech
"In 1966, he used the phrase "black power" at a rally in Mississippi. It caught the nation's attention, but it meant different things to different people. Many whites who heard the phrase were uneasy, Joseph says. "They assumed that black power meant being anti-white and really sort of violent, foreboding."
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/03/10/287320160/stokely-carmichael-a-philosopher-behind-the-black-power-movement -
Black Panthers founded
"The Black Panthers were formed in California in 1966 and they played a short but important part in the civil rights movement. The Black Panthers believed that the non-violent campaign of Martin Luther King had failed and any promised changes to their lifestyle via the ‘traditional’ civil rights movement, would take too long to be implemented or simply not introduced."
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/the-civil-rights-movement-in-america-1945-to-1968/the-black-panthers/
