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Founded in 1866, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party's Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal–the reestablis
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In 1890, Louisiana passed a law that said that Blacks and Whites have to be separated while riding a train within the state. If a Black person were to be seen in a white car they could be fined $25 or be imprisoned for 20 days.
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In 1892, a 30-year old shoemaker named Homer Plessy was arrested for sitting in a car for only white people on the East Louisiana Railroad. He had refused to move to a black car. Even though he was seven-eighths white and only one-eighth black, he was put in jail. The Louisiana law stated that if you had any black ancestors, you were considered black. Because of this, Plessy was required to sit in the "colored" or "black" car.
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Ends segregation in railroad dining cars.
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Ends segregation in Army for sure
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Regional Council of Negro Leadership is founded
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Anti-dicrimination committe is established.
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Sarah Keys become the first person to challenge segregation laws on buses.
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Supreme Court rules in favor of that people of idfferent race have equal protection.
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Brown v. Education supreme court rules against separate but equal laws in schools.
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It was sixty-four years before the "separate but equal" law, started by Plessy v. Ferguson, was finally ruled against by the United States Supreme Court. In the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, it was ruled that separate was not equal in the public school system of Topeka, Kansas. After the Brown vs. Board of Education case, across the United States, it became illegal for Blacks and Whites to be required to go to separate schools.
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Non-discrimination is enforced in public employment.
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A fourteen year old boy is kidnapped, beaten and murdered when he whistled at a white woman.
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Rosa Parks is arrested and starts the Montgomery Bus Boycott
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Bus Boycott starts in Tallahasssee Florida
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ACMHR is founded
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(Little Rock, Ark.) Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine."
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Little Rock Crisis
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(Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter.
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Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.
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(Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech
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(Birmingham, Ala.) Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black youths
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(Neshoba Country, Miss.) The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in a dam. They had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the KKK who murdered them.
