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the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they’d once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field
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the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school
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boycott was made after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery to a white male passenger.The next day, Martin Luther King proposed a citywide boycott against racial segregation on the public transportation. African Americans stopped using the system and would walk or get rides instead it was very effective.In June 1956, a federal court ruled that the laws in place to keep buses segregated were unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually agreed.
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four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina they refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter without being served.Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth’s lunch counter where they’d first stood their ground
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the Chicago Freedom Movement, was formed to protest segregated housing, educational deficiencies, and employment and health disparities based on racism. The movement included multiple rallies, marches and boycotts to address the variety of issues facing black Chicago residents. By Jan. 7, 1966, King announced plans to get involved in the Chicago Freedom Movement, and on Aug. 5, 1966, King led a march near Marquette Park in a white neighborhood.
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seven Black and six white activists mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional
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This was the largest political rally for human rights ever in the United States. An estimated 200,000 to 300,000 participants converged on the Mall in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963, to protest for jobs and freedom for African Americans. King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The March on Washington is credited with helping pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964
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Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who spoke the struggle facing Black Americans and the need for continued action and nonviolent resistance“I have a dream,”King intoned his faith that one day white and Black people would stand together as equals, and there would be harmony between the races.I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character
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the Birmingham campaign was to end discriminatory economic policies in the Alabama city against African American residents. They faced deep financial disparities and violent reprisal when addressing racial issues. The campaign included a boycott of certain businesses that hired only white people or maintained segregated restrooms. Protesters used nonviolent tactics such as marches and sit-ins with the goal of getting arrested so that the city jail would become crowded.
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white students in the so-called “Freedom Summer” would bring increased visibility to their efforts. When three volunteers Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white New Yorkers, and James Chaney, a Black Mississippian disappeared on their way back from investigating the burning of an African American church by the Ku Klux Klan. After a massive FBI investigation their bodies were discovered on August 4 buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, in Neshoba County, Mississippi.
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Martin Luther King Jr. beginning in the late 1950s, the civil rights movement had begun to gain serious momentum in the United States by 1960.John F. Kennedy made passage of new civil rights legislation part of his presidential campaign platform; he won more than 70 percent of the African American vote. Congress was debating Kennedy’s civil rights reform bill when he was killed by an assassin’s bullet in Dallas, Texas in November 1963. It was left to Lyndon Johnson to push the Civil Rights Act
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Early 1965, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference made Selma, Alabama, the focus of its efforts to register Black voters in the South.Alabama’s governor, George Wallace, was a notorious opponent of desegregation, and the local county sheriff had led a steadfast opposition to Black voter registration drives:Only 2 percent of Selma’s eligible Black voters had managed to register. In February, an Alabama state trooper shot a young African American demonstrator
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When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions. It also allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966
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the violent beatings state troopers inflicted on protesters as they attempted to march peacefully from Selma, Ala., to the state capital, Montgomery.The march was aimed at fighting the lack of voting rights for African Americans.Approximately 600 protesters were to travel from Selma on U.S. Highway 80 to the state capital on March 7, 1965, led by John Lewis, then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Rev. Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
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The Black Power movement. According to then chairman Stokely Carmichael, who first popularized the term “Black power” in 1966, the traditional civil rights movement and its emphasis on nonviolence,did not go far enough, and the federal legislation it had achieved failed to address the economic and social disadvantages facing Black Americans.Black Power was a form of both self-definition and self-defense for African Americans; it called on them to stop looking to the institutions of white America
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Many groups and individuals vehemently opposed the Vietnam War in the massive peace movement of the 1960s and '70s. King compared the antiwar movement to the civil rights movement and denounced U.S. involvement in a series of speeches, rallies and demonstrations. His first public speech against the war, called “Beyond Vietnam,” was delivered in April 1967 in front of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York.
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The goal of the Poor People’s Campaign was to gain more economic and human rights for poor Americans from all backgrounds. A multicultural movement, the campaign included Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans and whites along with African Americans. A march on Washington was planned for April 22, 1968, but when King was assassinated on April 4, the movement was shaken and the march postponed.
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On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally. On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room’s balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through additional civil rights laws.
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Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King’s assassination the housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion.The last legislation enacted during the civil rights era. The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans.The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.
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when she was elected to the House from her Brooklyn district. Though she failed to win a primary, Chisholm received more than 150 votes at the Democratic National Convention. She claimed she never expected to win the nomination.“I’ve always met more discrimination being a woman than being Black. When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being Black. Men are men.”
