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On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The decision effectively overturned the “separate but equal” ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson, which had allowed Jim Crow laws that mandated separate public facilities for whites and African Americans to prevail throughout the South during the first half of the 20th century. -
The boycott was sparked by Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white male passenger. After, many African Americans stopped using public transportation to show that they wanted buses to be desegregated. This movement was effective and eventually the Supreme Court desegregated buses. -
On February 1, 1960, a group of four freshmen from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (now North Carolina A&T State University), a historically black college, began a sit-in movement in downtown Greensboro. After making purchases at the F.W. Woolworth department store, they sat at the “whites only” lunch counter. -
On November 14, 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted to her first day at the previously all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans by four armed federal marshals. They were met with angry mobs shouting their disapproval, and, throughout the day, parents marched in to remove their children from the school as a protest to desegregation. -
The Freedom Rides began on May 4, 1961, with a group of seven African Americans and six whites, who boarded two buses bound for New Orleans. Testing the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case Boynton v. Virginia, which extended an earlier ruling banning segregated interstate bus travel to include bus terminals and restrooms, the so-called Freedom Riders used facilities for the opposite race as their buses made stops along the way. -
This movement protested against segregation policies in Albany, Georgia. Many organizations fighting this issue got involved, even Martin Luther King Jr. He was jailed during this time for offering counsel to these organizations, but was release a few days later. This movement was unsuccessful, and went on for a year without accomplishing its goal. -
This campaign was formed to end discrimination policies in Alabama. African Americans were not able to eat, use the restroom, or drink from the same fountain as white people. African Americans peacefully protested against the issue by forming sit ins and marches. Their goal was to get arrested so jails would become crowded. The protesters were treated poorly by police. This movement was effective because many public places now allowed all races. -
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC launched a campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, with local Pastor Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) to undermine the city’s system of racial segregation. -
This march was a huge event in the US that many people attended in attempts to allow African Americans to get equal job opportunities and freedom.King performed his famous "I have a dream" speech. This march played a factor in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
On July 2, 1964, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act into law, a stronger version of what his predecessor, President Kennedy, had proposed the previous summer before his assassination in November 1963. The act authorized the federal government to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. -
On February 21, 1965, the prominent African American leader Malcolm X was assassinated while lecturing at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York. An eloquent orator, Malcolm X spoke out on the civil rights movement, demanding it move beyond civil rights to human rights and argued that the solution to racial problems was in orthodox Islam. -
This march went down in history as Bloody Sunday for the violent beatings state troopers inflicted on protesters as they attempted to march peacefully from Selma, Ala., to the state capital, Montgomery. The march was aimed at fighting the lack of voting rights for African Americans. -
On March 7, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state’s capital, Montgomery, to call for a federal voting rights law that would provide legal support for disenfranchised African Americans in the South. State troopers, however, sent marchers back with violence and tear gas, and television cameras recorded the incident. -
The Chicago Open Housing Movement, also called the Chicago Freedom Movement, was formed to protest segregated housing, educational deficiencies, and employment and health disparities based on racism. The movement included multiple rallies, marches and boycotts to address the variety of issues facing black Chicago residents -
A series of violent confrontations between the city police and residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighborhoods of Los Angeles began on August 11, 1965, after a white police officer arrested an African American man, Marquette Frye, on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Later accounts indicated that Frye resisted arrest but were unclear whether police had used excessive force. -
In the beginning of the assassination of Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California was founded to protect African American neighborhoods from police brutality. The Black Panthers launched numerous community programs that offered such services as tuberculosis testing, legal aid, transportation assistance, and free shoes to poor people -
A series of violent confrontations between residents of predominantly African American neighborhoods and city police in Detroit began on July 23, 1967, after a raid at an illegal drinking club where police arrested everyone inside, including African Americans. Nearby residents protested, and several began to vandalize property, loot businesses, and start fires for the next five days. -
Many groups and individuals vehemently opposed the Vietnam War in the massive peace movement of the 1960s and '70s. King compared the antiwar movement to the civil rights movement and denounced U.S. involvement in a series of speeches, rallies and demonstrations. -
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed by a sniper while standing on the second-floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He had been staying at the hotel after leading a nonviolent demonstration in support of striking sanitation workers in that city. His murder set off riots in hundreds of cities across the country, and it also pushed Congress to pass the stalled Fair Housing Act. -
The goal of the Poor People’s Campaign was to gain more economic and human rights for poor Americans from all backgrounds. A multicultural movement, the campaign included Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans and whites along with African Americans.