Lesson 3.3: Challenging Segregation and New Civil Rights Issues

  • The Sit-In Movement

    The sit-in movement brought large numbers of idealistic and energized college students into the civil rights struggle. Many were discouraged by the slow pace of segregation. Sit-ins offered them a way to dictate the pace of change.
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    Freedom Riders

    teams of African American and white volunteers who became known as Freedom Riders boarded several southbound interstate buses. Buses were met by angry white mobs in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama. The mobs slit bus tires and threw rocks at the windows. In Anniston, someone threw a firebomb into one bus. Fortunately, no one was killed.
  • Children's March

    heroic young people marched in groups from churches to downtown businesses. Many were attacked by police, and many were arrested.
  • March on Washington

    more than 250,000 demonstrators, African American and white, gathered near the Lincoln Memorial.
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1963

    the most comprehensive civil rights law Congress had ever enacted.
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    The Selma March

    Dr. King joined with SNCC activists and organized a “march for freedom” from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, a distance of about 50 miles (80 km). On Sunday, March 7, 1965, the march began. The SCLC’s Hosea Williams and SNCC’s John Lewis led some 600 protesters toward Montgomery.