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Robinson's debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, marked a watershed moment in baseball history. An Associated Press reporter asked Jackie Robinson whether he had any butterflies as he prepared to play as the first Black player in modern baseball history on Opening Day 75 years ago this Friday. "Not one," Robinson said, a smirk on his face. "I wish I could say I did because that would provide me an alibi if I didn't do well." But I'm not going to be able to use that as an excuse." -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a historic Supreme Court case from 1954 in which the justices unanimously held that racial segregation of pupils in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case in the civil rights movement, establishing the precedent that "separate but equal" education and other services were in fact unequal. -
On a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955, Rosa refused to give up her seat to a white man. The front of a Montgomery bus was allocated for white inhabitants, while the seats behind them were intended for black citizens. all of the seats in the designated "white" area were taken, and a white man was left without a seat. the driver instructed the passengers in the first four seats in the "colored" part to stand. The other three followed suit. Parks, however, did not. -
After Rosa Park's arrest, E.D. Nixon was present when Parks was released on bond later that evening afterword of her detention had traveled swiftly. On the day of Parks' trial, Monday, December 5, Montgomery's Black population would stage a bus boycott. By midnight, 35,000 mimeographed fliers had been distributed to Black schoolchildren. Nixon and a few clergymen saw an opportunity and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to handle the boycott. -
The Supreme Court decided that bus segregation was unconstitutional on November 13, 1956; the boycott ended on December 20, a day after the printed decision from the Court arrived in Montgomery. Parks became recognized as "the mother of the civil rights movement" after losing her job and being harassed for the entire year. the main mission of the boycott was to fight against segragtion. -
Many southern states made voting difficult for African-Americans. They frequently asked potential voters of color to complete inaccurate and nearly impossible-to-pass reading tests. President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, into law on September 9, 1957. It made it possible for anyone who attempted to prevent someone from voting to face criminal charges. A commission to investigate voter fraud was also established. -
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who took part in bus travels across the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. In Alabama, South Carolina, and other Southern states, Freedom Riders attempted to use "whites-only" facilities and lunch tables at bus terminals. Along their paths, the groups were met with arresting police officers as well as brutal violence from white protestors, but they also garnered international attention to the civil rights movement. -
At the end of the summer of 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, some 250,000 people showed up. the people marched to draw attention to continuing challenges and inequalities faced by African Americans. this event was right after the "I Had Dream" speech by Martin Luther King. -
on August 28, 1963, a civil rights leader Name Martin Luther King Jr. was giving a speech famously named the "I Had a Dream" speech. the speech was held at the Lincoln Memorial with some 250,000 listeners. This speech was about how Martin had a dream that every man woman and child should be equal and should not be oppressed for anything because we were all human. Shortly after the March of Washington took place. -
Some 600 people went six blocks to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which bridged the Alabama River and led out of Selma, led by Hosea Williams, one of King's SCLC lieutenants, and Lewis. The marchers were met by a group of sheriff's deputies, deputized "posse men" (some on horseback), and scores of state troopers at the bridge's eastern end. The savage assault was captured on tape and broadcast to millions of Americans. -
Montgomery to Selma March, a political march that took place from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, Alabama, on March 21–25, 1965. The march, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., was the culmination of three stormy weeks in which activists attempted to march twice but were halted by local police, once violently. -
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, expanding on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The new law outlawed all voter literacy tests and gave federal inspectors access to certain voting districts. It also gave the attorney general the authority to challenge state and local poll taxes. As a result, in the 1966 case Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections, poll taxes were deemed unlawful. -
The Fair Housing Act was signed into law on April 11, 1968, just days after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. It prohibited discrimination in housing based on race, gender, national origin, or religion. It was also the final piece of civil rights legislation passed. Civil rights activists and thousands of demonstrators of all races worked together to pass legislation that ended segregation, voter suppression, and discriminatory job and housing policies.