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1992 Los Angeles Race Riots
n the early evening of 3 June 1943, just as the sun set over a city darkened by a blackout, about 50 sailors stationed at the Naval Reserve Training School in Los Angeles stormed through the mostly Mexican American neighborhoods that lay between the school and downtown L.A. Their actions that night, which consisted mostly of stripping zoot suits off young civilian men, set off more than a week of rioting as thousands of military personnel poured into Los Angeles from the surrounding bases and at -
Executive Order 9981
is an executive order issued on July 26, 1948 by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished racial discrimination in the United States Armed Forces and eventually led to the end of segregation in the services. -
Little Rock Nine
Little Rock Nine were a group of 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. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
It was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional -
Emmett Till
Emmett Till StoryStanding as one of the most-heinous, race-motivated crimes in America’s history, the kidnapping and savage lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till (pictured) in Mississippi still stirs embers of anger in the minds of many who have endured racism and injustice. Considered a transformative moment in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, Till’s death shocked a nation and still resonates deeply in the minds of Mississippians and others abroad. -
SCLC
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed in 1957 just after the Montgomery Bus Boycott had ended. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s (SCLC) main aim was to advance the cause of civil rights in America but in a non-violent manner. From its inception in 1957, its president was Martin Luther King – a post he held until his murder in 1968. -
Woolworth sit-ins
On February 1, 1960,at 4:30pm four students sat down at the lunch counter inside the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina.The men, later known as the A&T Four or the Greensboro Four, went to Woolworth's Store, they were refused service from the segregated lunch counter, at the same store. ollowing store policy, the lunch counter staff refused to serve the African American men at the "whit -
SNCC
It was one of the organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s -
Freedom Rides
Civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. -
James Meredith
James Meredith is a civil-rights icon who hates the term "civil rights."
ames Meredith, right, attends class for the first time in Peabody Hall on The University of Mississippi campus, in Oxford, Miss. Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi after integration, says he doesn't plan to participate in the university's commemoration of his history-making enrollment 50 years ago, which prompted a state-federal standoff, sparked deadly mob violence and ultimately en -
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
n 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and sent to jail because he and others were protesting the treatment of blacks in Birmingham, Alabama. A court had ordered that King could not hold protests in Birmingham. Birmingham in 1963 was a hard place for blacks to live in. Everything was segregated, from businesses to churches to libraries. Blacks faced constant discrimination and the constant threat of violence. -
March on Washington
It was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C..Thousands of Americans headed to Washington on Tuesday August 27, 1963. On Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism. -
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
On Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four girls. This murderous act shocked the nation and galvanized the civil rights movement. -
“Bull” Connor uses fire hoses on black demonstrators
Connor became an international symbol of racism. Connor infamously directed the use of fire hoses and police attack dogs against peaceful demonstrators, including children.His aggressive tactics backfired when the spectacle of the brutality being broadcast on national television served as one of the catalysts for major social and legal change. -
24th Amendment
prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. -
Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner
On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers—a 21-year-old black Mississippian, James Chaney, and two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24—were murdered near Philadelphia, in Nashoba County, Mississippi. They had been working to register black voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer and had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on trumped-up charges, imprisoned for several hours, and then released after dark in -
Civil Rights Act 1964
A landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women. -
Black Power
The emergence of the Black Power movement (1966–1975) began to gradually eclipse the original "integrated power" aims of the movements for civil rights that had been espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Malcolm X assassinated
Malcolm X was preparing to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom when someone in the 400-person audience yelled "Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket!"As Malcolm X and his bodyguards attempted to quiet the disturbance,A man who was seated in the front row rushed forward and shot him once in the chest with a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun. -
Bloody Sunday
On March 7, 1965, state troopers and a sheriff’s posse in Selma, Ala., attacked 525 civil rights demonstrators taking part in a march between Selma and Montgomery, the state capital. The march was organized to promote black voter registration and to protest the killing of a young black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by a state trooper during a Feb. 18 voter registration march in a nearby city. -
Civil Rights Act 1965
A andmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination in voting -
Los Angeles Race Riots 1965
In the predominantly black Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, racial tension reaches a breaking point after two white policemen scuffle with a black motorist suspected of drunken driving. A crowd of spectators gathered near the corner of Avalon Boulevard and 116th Street to watch the arrest and soon grew angry by what they believed to be yet another incident of racially motivated abuse by the police. A riot soon began, spurred on by residents of Watts who were embittered after years of economic -
Black Panthers Founded
In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation a party whose agenda was the revolutionary -
Loving vs. Virginia
It was a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage. -
MLK was Assassinated
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hit by a sniper's bullet. King had been standing on the balcony in front of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when, without warning, he was shot. The .30-caliber rifle bullet entered King's right cheek, traveled through his neck, and finally stopped at his shoulder blade. King was immediately taken to a nearby hospital but was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Civil Rights Act 1968-
a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin and made it a federal crime to “by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin. -
Voting Rights Act 1991
A United States statute that was passed in response to a series of United States Supreme Court decisions which limited the rights of employees who had sued their employers for discrimination. -
Rosa Parks
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.
