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Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine.
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The brutal lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Mississippi, and the acquittal of his killers, shocked the nation and galvanized the Civil Rights Movement by exposing the violence of racism.
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Sparked by Rosa Parks’ arrest, Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, boycotted city buses for over a year, leading to a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.
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Nine Black students integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, under federal troop protection, testing the enforcement of school desegregation.
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Four Black college students began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking a wave of nonviolent protests across the South.
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Interracial activists known as Freedom Riders rode buses into the segregated South to challenge non-enforcement of Supreme Court rulings against segregated interstate travel, facing violent resistance.
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Activists in Birmingham, Alabama, led mass demonstrations against segregation, enduring police brutality that drew national attention and accelerated civil rights legislation.
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250,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., for a massive civil rights rally where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, demanding jobs and freedom.
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Hundreds of volunteers, many of them students, went to Mississippi to register Black voters and establish Freedom Schools, facing violence and intimidation.
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This landmark federal law outlawed segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
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Civil rights activists marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to demand voting rights, facing brutal police violence on “Bloody Sunday” and helping prompt passage of the Voting Rights Act.
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This federal law banned discriminatory voting practices like literacy tests, dramatically increasing Black voter registration in the South.