History of Civil Rights

  • Women tried to push for right to vote at a convention

  • SC ruled that equal protection clause doesn't apply to women

  • Women gained suffrage

  • Barrage of law school cases came to SC on case by case basis

    Small vicroties were won
  • SC ruled that the "equal" law school built for AA in TX was not equal enough

  • Brown v. Board of Education

    postponed from 1952, extended the 14th's reach and applied it to ALL NOT on a case by case basis. Was not readily enforced until Brown II.
  • Rosa Parks refused to give up seat

    Civil rights leaders used this as a spark and boycotted bus company for more than a year
  • Sit in at Greensboro Restaurant

  • Court upheld FL ruling that women are exempted from jury duty

    Woman was convicted of beating her husband to death because he cheated on her, said that her rights were violated because she was convicted by all male jury.
  • Other sit ins- over 70,000 participants and 3,000 arrests

  • Freedom riders began. Beaten up, firebombed, everything TVed

  • Letter from Birmingham Jail

  • Kennedy's speech on Civil Rights coercing Congress to action

  • "I have a dream"

  • SC shifted focus from de jure segregation to de facto

    de jure: inside the law
    de facto: outside the law, such as housing patterns
  • Places with large black popuations had to vote with defective machines

  • FL voting mess up

    Many people were not allowed to vote because their names were "accidently" placed on a felony ist. Took a whjile to clear names, most names were of minorities or AA. Vote in FL was decided by a few hundred votes
  • SC invalidated volutary desegregation plan in an attempt to become color blind