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13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Formally abolishing slavery in the United States and eliminating to make blacks and whites equal but segregation then stood against that. -
14th Amendment
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.It is basicly saying everyone is equal and gets equal treatment and protection by the law no matter the specifications. -
15th Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" such as slavory. Every man has that right no matter who or what they are. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy bought a first class ticket at the Press Street Depot and boarded a "whites only" car of the East Louisiana Railroad in New Orleans. "Separate but equal" remained standard doctrine in U.S. law until its repudiation in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. -
19th Amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex.The amendment was put into action because of the women's suffrage movement, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. -
Smith v. Allwright
Texas claimed that the Democratic Party was a private organization that could set its own rules of membership. Smith argued that the law in question essentially disfranchised him by denying him the ability to vote in what was the only meaningful election in his jurisdiction. The Court agreed that the restricted primary denied Smith his protection under the law and found in his favor. -
Executive Order 9981
U.S. President Harry S. Truman abolished racial segregation in the armed forces. It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin. This policy shall be put into effect as rapidly as possible, having due regard to the time required to effectuate any necessary changes without impairing efficiency or morale. -
Brown v. Board of Education
In Topeka, Kansas Thirteen parents took their children to schools in their neighborhoods and tried to enroll them for the upcoming school year but all were turned away and thus forced to attend other "black" schools which were much farther away.These parents sued the Topeka Board of Education as a result. The Parents won the case and it was made illegal to segregate because it was not "seperate but equal" though that didnt change much because other things were impemented to avoid the new law. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. The boycott caused crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's black population who were the principal boycotters were also the bulk of the system's paying customers. Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses were unconstitutional. -
Voting Rights Act 1965
Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." Congress intended the Act to outlaw the practice of requiring otherwise qualified voters to pass literacy tests in order to register to vote, a principal means by which Southern states had prevented Blacks to do so. -
Civil Rights Act 1957
The integration of public schools, Southern whites in Virginia began a "Massive Resistance". Violence against blacks rose then like in Little Rock where the President ordered in federal troops to protect nine children integrating a public school, the first time the federal government had sent troops to the South. The continued physical assaults against activists and bombings of schools and churches in the South. The administration of Eisenhower proposed legislation to protect African americans. -
Greensboro and Nashville Sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests which led to the Woolworth's department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. While not the first sit-ins of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were an instrumental action, leading to increased national sentiment at a crucial period in US history. -
Freedom Rides
CORE undertook a new tactic aimed at desegregating public transportation throughout the south. The riders continued to Mississippi, where they endured further brutality and jail terms but generated more publicity and inspired dozens more Freedom Rides. By the end of the summer, the protests had spread to train stations and airports across the South, and in November, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued rules prohibiting segregated transportation facilities. -
Emancipation Proclamation
United States President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states then in rebellion, thus applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at that time. The Proclamation immediately freed 50,000 slaves, with nearly all the rest were freed as Union armies advanced. -
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
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. The march was organized by a group of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, under the theme "jobs, and freedom." -
"Sunday School Boming"
The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963 as an act of racially motivated terrorism. The explosion at the African-American church, which killed four girls, marked a turning point in the U.S. 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
24th Amendment
The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) 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.Poll taxes appeared in southern states after Reconstruction as a measure to prevent African Americans from voting, and had been held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in the 1937 decision Breedlove v. Suttles. -
Civil Rights Act 1964
It outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
It was meant to be a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin -
Emmett Till Murder
An African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Problems identifying Till affected the trial, partially leading to Bryant's and Milam's acquittals
