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Oliver Brown, the father of Linda Brown, along with an NAACP lawyer, worked together to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson in the Supreme Court.
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Emmett Till, a 14 year old black boy, whistled and complimented a white woman, leading to his kidnapping, beating and brutal murder. Despite the overwhelming evidence and their admissions, his two murders, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milan, were convicted as innocent and let go.
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Rosa Parks, a black woman in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to move seats for a white man, leading to her arrest and the spark that started the bus boycotts.
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The SCLC was a conference founded on Jan. 10, 1957, made up of 60 black ministers, civil rights leaders, and the famous Martin Luther King Jr. They organized activist movements and peaceful protests, and were closely linked to black churches.
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Nine black students were enrolled into an integrated school, causing white protestors and the Arkansas governor to attempt to bar them from school. Eventually, the President called in federal soldiers to escort them into the school and control the mob.
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The Greensboro Sit-Ins were a series of sit-in protests for desegregated facilities. It began at Woolworth's Lunch Counter with four college students, and quickly spread through the city. Black customers could buy items, but they were not given their food. They were threatened, beat and attacked, but they continued for their cause.
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Ruby Bridges, six years old at the time, was one of four black children who passed an extremely difficult test to enter an all-white school. She was escorted by federal marshals, and she was the only student in her class under one teacher.
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436 individuals on 60 different rides, from many different organizations, got together to ride from Southern states all the way to Washington D.C. However, multiple mobs attacked them, and many died in a bus burning.
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On August 28, 1963, 250,000 people marched to Washington D.C. in a peaceful protest for equal jobs and freedoms. On that day, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech as the last speech of the day.
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This act, enacted in 1964, enabled the federal government to prevent discrimination or segregation based on race, color, religion, national origin, and other minorities, in public and private spaces.
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On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcom X was shot dead on stage at the New York City Audubon Ballroom. His assassins, Thomas Hagan, Norman 3X Butler, and Thomas 15X Johnson, were beat for killing him before police came and arrested them.
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A peaceful march was held from Selma to Montgomery to confront the governor of Alabama for the unlawful shooting of a black man by a state trooper. The protestors were tear-gassed and assaulted, and a few lost their lives.
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The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson, banned literacy tests and poll taxes in all states, stating that voting is a federal matter, not a state matter.
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On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead on his balcony at the Loraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, by a man named James Earl Ray.