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Civil Rights Movement

By dbooze
  • Plessy vs. Ferguson

    Plessy vs. Ferguson

    The Supreme Court decision that legalized segregation in 1896 The Plessy v. Ferguson decision upheld the principle of racial segregation over the next half-century. The ruling provided legal justification for segregation on trains and buses, and in public facilities such as hotels, theaters, and schools.
  • The Tuskegee Airmen

    The Tuskegee Airmen

    It helped set the pattern for direct action protests popularized by civil rights activists in later decades.
  • Integration of Major League Baseball

    Integration of Major League Baseball

    After MLB's integration, the Negro National League managed to play only one more season. This was the result of both players leaving to play in Minor and Major League Baseball and the growing interest of the African-American community in MLB as the result of integration.
  • The Integration of the Armed Forces

    The Integration of the Armed Forces

    It signaled the end of racial discrimination in the U.S. defense industry, but the armed forces generally hewed to a policy of segregation throughout the duration of World War II.
  • Sweatt v. Painter

    Sweatt v. Painter

    The Supreme Court decision that desegregated schools in 1954 successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation
  • Board v. Board of Education

    Board v. Board of Education

    The Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, and declared that racial segregation in public schools violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
  • Death of Emmit Till

    Death of Emmit Till

    Till's murder was seen as a catalyst for the next phase of the civil rights movement. In December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott began in Alabama and lasted more than a year, resulting eventually in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional.
  • Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Called "the mother of the civil rights movement," Rosa Parks invigorated the struggle for racial equality when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.
  • The Integration of Little Rock High School

    The Integration of Little Rock High School

    In 1957, nine ordinary teenagers walked out of their homes and stepped up to the front lines in the battle for civil rights for all Americans. The media coined the name “Little Rock Nine" to identify the first African American students to desegregate Little Rock Central High School.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1957

    Civil Rights Act of 1957

    The result was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The new act established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote.
  • The Greensboro Four Lunch Counter Sit-In

    The Greensboro Four Lunch Counter Sit-In

    Soon dining facilities across the South were being integrated, and by July 1960 the lunch counter at the Greensboro Woolworth's was serving Black patrons. The Greensboro sit-in provided a template for nonviolent resistance and marked an early success for the civil rights movement.
  • The Freedom Rides by Freedom Riders of 1961

    The Freedom Rides by Freedom Riders of 1961

    Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregation of public buses was unconstitutional, foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement began the Freedom Rides. The Freedom Riders rode interstate buses across the South and drew national attention to their cause because of the violence that often erupted against them.
  • The 24th Amendment

    The 24th Amendment

    Not long ago, citizens in some states had to pay a fee to vote in a national election. This fee was called a poll tax. On January 23, 1964, the United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials.
  • The Integration of the University of Mississippi

    The Integration of the University of Mississippi

    On September 30, 1962, riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school.
  • The Integration of the University of Alabama

    The Integration of the University of Alabama

    The legacy of Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door is two-fold. It is an enduring stain on Alabama's education record and a sad testament to the treatment of its own people. It also served as a turning point for the state and its first steps toward racial equality.
  • The March on Washington & "I Have a Dream" Speech by MLK

    The March on Washington & "I Have a Dream" Speech by MLK

    The act of congress bans discrimination in employment
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    The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. At the march, final speaker Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism.
  • The Assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas,Texas

    The Assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas,Texas

    The assassination was actually very helpful to the cause of civil rights because it put Lyndon B. Johnson as president. LBJ was very supportive of civil rights and was very good at pushing bills through congress.
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1964

    The Civil Rights Act of 1964

    The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the nation's benchmark civil rights legislation, and it continues to resonate in America.
  • The Assassination of Malcolm X

    The Assassination of Malcolm X

    His martyrdom, ideas, and speeches contributed to the development of Black nationalist ideology and the Black Power movement and helped to popularize the values of autonomy and independence among African Americans in the 1960s and '70s.
  • The Selma to Montgomery March:"Bloody Sunday"

    The Selma to Montgomery March:"Bloody Sunday"

    They were protesting continued violence and civil rights discrimination — and to bring attention to the need for Federal voting rights legislation that would ensure African-Americans couldn't be denied the right to vote in any state. News and images of the violent response from Alabama State Troopers spread in.
  • The Voting Rights Act of 1965

    The Voting Rights Act of 1965

    It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. This “act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” was signed into law 95 years after the amendment was ratified.
  • The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Mephis,Tennessee

    The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Mephis,Tennessee

    His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among Black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era.
  • The Voting Rights Act of 1968

    The Voting Rights Act of 1968

    The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and since 1974, sex. Since 1988, the act protects people with disabilities and families with children.