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Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement. It also helped establish the precedent “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not actually equal at all.
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest when African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama. They did this to protest segregated seating. Four days earlier, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man.
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The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine black students who enrolled at an all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. Governor Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to block the black students’ entry into the high school. Later that month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school. This drew attention to the civil rights movement.
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Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides. Freedom Rides were bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. These Freedom Riders tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters at bus stations in certain Southern states. The groups were confronted by arresting police officers (and horrific violence from white protestors) along their routes. -
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States labor law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex. It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program. -
The March on Washington was a massive protest march that occurred in August 1963. 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was the event that was aimed to draw attention to continuing challenges and inequalities faced by African Americans a century after emancipation.
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On September 15, 1963, at the 16th Street Baptist Church a bomb exploded. The church members were getting prepared for Sunday services as this incident occurred. The racially motivated attack killed four young girls and shocked the nation. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. This is also considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.
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The March if Selma was a political march from Selma, Alabama, to the state's capital, Montgomery. These events became a landmark in the American civil rights movement. It also directly led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
The National Organization for Women was founded by a group of activists who wanted to end sex discrimination. Today, the organization remains as a cornerstone of the women's rights movement. -
On April 4, 1968, just after 6pm, Martin Luther King, Jr. was fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was later pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. -
The Fair Housing Act the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Fair Housing Act also prohibits discrimination regarding race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. -
The Stonewall Riots began in the early hours of June 28, 1969, when New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club located in Greenwich Village in New York City. The raid sparked a riot among bar patrons and neighborhood residents as police roughly hauled employees and patrons out of the bar. This eventually lead to six days of protests and violent clashes with law enforcement outside the bar on Christopher Street. -
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is a federal law which states, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance." -
14 year old Emmett Till went to visit his family in Mississippi was brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.