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In August 1955 two Mississippians bludgeon and kill Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, for whistling at a white woman; their acquittal and boasting of the atrocity spur the civil rights cause. Milam, kidnapped and brutally murdered Till, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River -
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. -
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 9, 1957. -
Cooper v. Aaron, 358 U.S. 1, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that denied the school board of Little Rock, Arkansas the right to delay racial desegregation for 30 months. -
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store—now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum—in Greensboro, North Carolina -
The Albany Movement was a desegregation and voters' rights coalition formed in Albany, Georgia, in November 1961. This movement was founded by local black leaders and ministers, as well as members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. -
The Birmingham campaign, also known as the Birmingham movement or Birmingham confrontation, was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. -
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. -
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case dealing with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. -
Chisholm began exploring her candidacy in July 1971 and formally announced her presidential bid on January 25, 1972, in a Baptist church in her district in Brooklyn. There, she called for a "bloodless revolution" at the forthcoming Democratic nominating convention for the 1972 U.S. presidential election. -
Aaron finished his career with a record 755 career home runs, and the Atlanta Braves' Turner Field now has a statue that immortalizes his record-breaking home run. -
On July 12, 1976, Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. As Americans sensed a fracturing of American life in the 1970s, Jordan called for Americans to commit themselves to a “national community” and the “common good.” Jordan began by noting she was the first black woman to ever deliver a keynote address at a major party convention and that such a thing would have been almost impossible even a decade earlier. -
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke is a 1978 Supreme Court case which held that a university's admissions criteria which used race as a definite and exclusive basis for an admission decision violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.