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The amendment that freed all slaves in the United States. This forbid any state from depriving a citizen of his/her rights.
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In 1890 Louisiana passed a law requiring railroads to provide seperate (but equal) cars for the whites and colored people. When Homer Plessy (who was only 1/8th African American) was told he had to go to the colored car (which was obviously worse than the whites car) he took it to the Supreme Court. They ruled that segregation was fine as long as the facilities were "equal".
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The father of Linda Brown (eight years old) charged the board of education in Topeka, Kansas with violating her rights. The Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of schools was unconstitutional because it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. The idea was that no seperation woulld ever be equal.
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Emmet Till was a young colored man (14) who was assaulted, violated and killed by two white males for speaking to one of the men's partner in a store. When the case was presented it was obvious that they had killed him yet the trial was so heavily outnumbered that the two men walked free. His mother decided on an open casket despite the obvious mutilation done to her son's body to show the world the damage done to her son.
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Rosa Parks ignited a 381-day bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama by refusing to get up for a white man and ultimately being arrested for it. The boycott was led by Martin Luther King Jr. This is regareded as the first large-scale demonstration of segregation seen across the nation.
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More than 200,000 Americans gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The event was designed to shine light on the political and social challenges African Americans were facing. This is where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I Have A Dream" speech.
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