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On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower court's ruling that bus segregation violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, which led to the successful end of the bus boycott on December 20, 1956. -
In a closely contested election, Democratic Senator John F. Kennedy defeated the incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, the Republican nominee. This was the first election in which 50 states participated, marking the first participation of Alaska and Hawaii, and the last in which the District of Columbia did not -
On September 22, 1961, after six months of protests, arrests, and press conferences by the Freedom Riders, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) finally outlawed discriminatory seating practices on interstate bus transit and ordered the removal of "whites only" signs from interstate bus terminals by November 1. -
In 1962, a federal appeals court ordered the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, an African-American student. Upon his arrival, a mob of more than 2,000 white people rioted; two people were killed. -
African American activist A. Philip Randolph had been fighting for equality since he founded a union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, in 1925. In 1941, he planned a march on Washington to demand jobs for African Americans in the booming wartime economy. That protest was called off after President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to ban discrimination by defense industries or government. -
Support for a federal Civil Rights Act was one of the goals of the 1963 March on Washington. President John F. Kennedy had introduced the bill before his assassination. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, signed it into law on July 2, 1964. It achieved many of the aims of a Reconstruction-era law, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which was passed but soon overturned. -
In the presidential election of 1964, incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson soundly defeated Republican Barry Goldwater. After defeating the more progressive Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican nomination, Goldwater won electoral votes from only his home state of Arizona and the five states of the Deep South. Yet Goldwater's nomination marked a conservative shift within the party. -
Johnson spoke this speech with integrity trying to conquer these racial discriminations and get the Voting Rights Act passed. He stressed that accomplishing equal citizenship takes more than just legal right. He wanted to ensure everyone that they were given an opportunity to escape poverty. -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. -
The Report became an instant bestseller, and more than two million Americans bought copies of the 426-page document. Its primary finding was that the riots resulted from Black frustration at the lack of economic opportunity and the manner in which they were treated by white society, especially by the police. -
This was the first presidential election after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which had resulted in growing restoration of the franchise for racial minorities, especially in the South, where most had been disenfranchised since the turn of the century. -
Attica, New York, U.S. Prisoners revolted to seek better living conditions and political rights, claiming that they were treated as beasts. On September 9, 1971, 1,281 of the approximately 2,200 men incarcerated in the Attica Correctional Facility rioted and took control of the prison, taking 42 staff hostage. -
The National Black Political Convention, or the Gary Convention, was held on March 10–12, 1972 in Gary, Indiana. The convention gathered around ten thousand African-Americans to discuss and advocate for black communities that undergo significant economic and social crisis. -
On June 21, 1974, Judge Wendell Arthur Garrity Jr. found the Committee's efforts to preserve segregation unconstitutional. To address longstanding segregation, Garrity required the system to desegregate its schools, busing white students to black schools and black students to white schools across the city. -
In Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1978), the Court ruled unconstitutional a university's use of racial "quotas" in its admissions process, but held that affirmative action programs could be constitutional in some circumstances.