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a young African American girl named Linda Brown, was denied admission to her neighborhood school in Topeka, Kansas, because of her race. She was told to attend an all-black school across town. With the help of the NAACP, her parents then sued the Topeka school board. On May 17, 1954, they took it to the Supreme Court
The supreme court ruled that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and violated the
equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
https://youtu.be/TTGHLdr-iak -
MLK was elected to lead the boycott, The act of one tired woman on a bus and the subsequent bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, brought civil rights out of the legal arena and turned it into a struggle in which ordinary Americans realized that they could make a difference. Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat on the bus to a white man showed that even small acts of
defiance could empower people to create change.
The Montgomery bus boycott, became a huge success.
https://youtu.be/FE6Yvy--5aw -
In September 1957, the school board in Little Rock, Arkansas, won a court order requiring that nine African American students be admitted to Central High, a school with 2,000 white students.
[Little Rock Nine] https://youtu.be/oodolEmUg2g -
Starting with just four students, a new mass movement for civil
rights had begun. Within two months, sit-ins had spread to 54 cities in nine states. They were staged at segregated stores, restaurants, hotels, and movie theaters. By 1961, sit-ins had been held in more
than 100 cities. -
In 1961 CORE leader James Farmer asked teams of African
American and white volunteers, many of whom were college students, to travel into the South to draw attention to its refusal to integrate bus terminals. The teams became known as the Freedom Riders. In early May 1961, the first Freedom Riders boarded several southbound interstate buses. When the buses arrived in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama, angry white mobs attacked them. -
an African American air force veteran that applied for a Transfer to the University of Mississippi, that was struggling to gain admission into the school for racial reasons President Kennedy dispatched 500 federal marshals to escort Meredith to the campus. Shortly after Meredith and the marshals arrived, an angry white mob attacked the campus, and a full-scale riot erupted.
https://npg.si.edu/blog/september-30-1962-james-meredith-university-mississippi -
On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 demonstrators of all races flocked to the nation’s capital. The audience heard speeches and sang hymns and songs as they gathered peacefully near the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. King then delivered a powerful speech outlining his dream of freedom and equality for all Americans.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/march-on-washington -
Malcom X felt that had lost patience with the slow progress of civil rights and felt that African Americans needed to act more militantly and demand equality, not wait for it to be given. After Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam, he continued to criticize the organization. Because of this, organization members shot and killed him in February 1965. -
On August 3, 1965, the House of Representatives passed the voting rights bill by a wide margin. The following day, the Senate also passed the bill. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized the U.S. attorney general to send federal examiners to register qualified voters, bypassing local officials who often refused to register African Americans. The law also suspended discriminatory devices, such as literacy tests, in counties where less than half of all adults had been registered to vote. -
In 1966 in Oakland, California, Huey Newton, Bobby
Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver organized the
Black Panthers. The Black Panthers believed that a revolution was necessary in the United States, and they urged African Americans to arm themselves and prepare to force whites to grant them equal rights. Black Panther leaders called for an end to racial oppression and control of major institutions in the African American community, such as schools, law enforcement, housing, and hospitals.
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