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In 1954, each state had its own laws governing segregation in public schools. -
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Martin Luther King and others establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King was made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. According to King, it is essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists and hatemongers who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges. -
The "Little Rock Nine" students enter a white public school. 9 black kids enrolled in an all-white school when, later on, the supreme court ordered that segregation was unconstitutional. President Eisenhower sends the National Gaurd to Little Rock's Central High School to protect the nine black students as they desegregate the school. -
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Sit-ins began and started doing an anti-segregation sit-in to raise awareness of the depths of segregation in the nation. -
A group of freedom riders set out to challenge segregation in buses and bus terminals in the South. They wanted to test the Supreme Court decision of Boynton v. Virginia, which found that segregation in public transportation was illegal because it violated the Interstate Commerce Act. -
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy directed the Interstate Commerce Commission to desegregate interstate travel. He issued new rules ending discrimination in interstate travel. -
Riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school. -
When the students in the march were attacked by policemen, fire hoses, and police dogs they remained nonviolent showing their strength this prompted President John F. Kennedy to publicly fully support racial equality and led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
More than 230,000 people including about 75,000 whites converged on the nation's capital. They assembled on the lawn of the Washinton Monument and marched to the Lincoln Memorial. There they listened to speakers demand the immediate passage of the civil rights bill. -
More than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C. on August 28 of 1963 and the rally became known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Civil rights groups rallied to shed light on political and social challenges that African Americans faced in 1963 America. -
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The 24th Amendment prohibited both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections. It gave people the unconditional right to vote regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. -
Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited discrimination because of race, religion, national origin, and gender. It gave all citizens the right to enter libraries, parks, washrooms, restaurants, theaters, and other public accommodations. -
The March from Selma to Montgomery was another example of the violence and prejudice towards African Americans. -
President Lyndon Johnson passed the Voting Rights Act in August of 1965. This act outlawed discriminatory voting practices adopted by many southern states following the Civil War. An example of a practice outlawed are the literacy tests that the southern states required for a person to vote. -
Voter registration disparity in southern states. -
The Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary socialist organization that was created in 1966 and ended in 1982. It achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movements and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Their initial goal set forth a doctrine that called for the protection of black neighborhoods from police brutality. -
Thurgood Marshall was the first African American to serve as a Supreme Court Justice. Marshall was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in October of 1967. He was nominated due to his great success in arguing before the Supreme Court in important cases such as Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, KS. -
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was the arguably most important civil rights activist for the black during the 1950s and 1960s. He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis by James Earl Ray who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in Tennessee state prison.