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Civil Rights Movement
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Brown vs. Board of Education Topeka
The fight for one man to gain the right for his daughter to go to a white school. Lead to the legal ending of segregation in public schools. -
Emmett Till
An African American school boy who was murdered in 1955 for reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till's murder brought considerations about segregation, law enforcement, relations between the North and South, the social status quo in Mississippi, the NAACP, White Citizens' Councils, and the Cold War. -
Rosa Parks and the Bus Boycotts
When asked to give up her seat on the bus for a white man Rosa refused. She was then arrested but appealed her conviction which challenged the legality of segregation. At the same time an activist group lead by Martin Luther King Jr. lead to the integration of buses. -
The Formation of the SCLC
An African American civil rights organization. It fought to end all forms of segregation. It was responsible for many boycotts and marches. -
Little Rock, Arkansas - Central High School Integration
A group of nine African American students enrolled at the High School, who initially were banned from entering due to racial segregation. This was the South's challenge to see if the ruling made during the Brown vs. Board of Education would hold up. -
Greensboro, North Carolina Woolsworth's Sit-In
A series of nonviolent protests which fought Woolworth's department store chain policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. It lead to increased national sentiment, and helped desegregation in public accommodations. -
Freedom Riders
A dedicated group of men and women, black and white, across the country boarded buses, trains and planes bound for the deep South to challenge the region‘s outdated Jim Crow laws and the non-compliance with a US Supreme Court decision already three years old that prohibited segregation in all interstate public transportation facilities. -
James Meredith, University of Mississippi
Was the first African American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi. This put pressure on the Kennedy administration to civil rights for African Americans. -
Birmingham Alabama Protests
An organized movement by the SCLC to show the mistreatment of African Americans in Birmingham Alabama. This campaign of nonviolent direct actions culminated in widely publicized confrontations between black youth and white civic authorities, and eventually led the municipal government to change the city's discrimination laws. -
Martin Luther King Arrested
Martin Luther King Jr. Is arrested for demonstrating without a permit. Which leads to the writing of the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Which caused support for the civil rights movement to swell. -
March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating racial harmony during the march.The march is widely credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965) -
24th Amendment to the Constitution
The Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. It took care of most of the loopholes made to keep African Americans from voting. -
Civil Rights Act
Outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. -
Malcom X Shot
Assasinated while addressing the Organization of Afro-American. It bonded the African American people and rallied them for the cause. -
Voting Rights March - Bloody Sunday
Some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. It helped speed up the passing of the civil rights act and rallied people. -
Voting Rights Act
Outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. -
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Watts Riots
The six-day riot resulted in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries, 3,438 arrests, and over $40 million in property damage. It happened due to racial tension. It began the first of many of the violent protests that would soon ensue. -
Formation of the Black Panthers
The organization initially set forth a doctrine calling primarily for the protection of African-American neighborhoods from police brutality.The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. -
Stokely Carmichael - "Black Power" - Seattle
Stokely Carmichael* spoke to an enthusiastic crowd at Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington. A leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later the Black Panthers, Carmichael coined the phrase "Black Power" and in this speech discussed the relationships between language, identity, and power. -
Martin Luther King Assassination
He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39.For some, King's assassination meant the end of a strategy of non-violence.[19] Others simply reaffirmed the need to carry on his work. Leaders within the SCLC confirmed that they would carry on this Poor People's Campaign in his absence. Some black leaders argued the need to continue King's tradition of nonviolence. -
Civil Rights Act 1968
Was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin. The Act was signed into law during the King assassination riots by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had previously signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law.
