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Brown vs. Board of Education
Oliver Brown and his wife sued the Board of Education because he and his wife wanted to have their daughter attend an all white school in their neighborhood instead of being bused to a black school. The sueing happened in Topeka, Kansas and the case went all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Brown family won the case and made it illegal to have a segregated public school. -
The death of Emmett Till
Emmett Till, a fourteen year old boy, was visting his uncle in Mississippi and said, "Bye, baby" to the white woman in the convenience store. When the convience store owner heard that Emmett talked to his wife he and his brother-in-law went to Emmett's uncle's house and kidnapped him. At the funeral his mother kept the cassket open so the world could see what had happened. At the trial it was an all white jury and the assailants won the case. -
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks, being a black woman, sat in the front row of the black section and was asked to give up her seat to a white person because the white section was full. She refused and was arrested. For over a year the blacks walked to wherever they needed to go and eventually the city buses couldn't stay in business. -
Sit-Ins
In Greensboro, North Carolina, four students sat down at a "whites only" lunch counter at Woolworths and asked to be served. The four students saved their reciepts from other purchases made at the store and asked why they couldn't be served at the lunch counter of the same store. This was a non-violent protest so they were asked to dress professionally, sit quietely, and sit at every other stool so white sympathizers could join in. -
"Rising tide of discontent" and Kennedy's Response
Governor Geroge Wallace of Alabama tried to interfere with the integration of the University of Alabama. When President Kennedy found out about this he sent troops in to make the Governor step aside so that Vivian Jones and James Hood could enroll. Later that evening President Kennedy addressed the nation with his historic Civil Rights speech, referring to a rise of discontent. He also asked Congress to pass new Civil Rights legislation. -
March on Washington
200,000 - 300,000 demonstrators marched to the Lincoln Memorial in support of: meaningful civil rights laws, a massive federal works program, full and fair employment, decent housing, the right to vote, adequate integrated education. This is also where Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous "I Have A Dream" speech. -
Bombing of Birmingham Church
A predominately black church, The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed by four members of the Ku Klux Klan Sunday morning, before church service, in response to the integration of the University of Alabama. Four young girls were killed and many others were injured. -
Selma to Montgomery March
James Bevel, the director of the Selma movement, Hosea Williams, and John Lewis planned a march of 600 people 54 miles from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Six blocks into the march, at the Edmund Pettus bridge, police officers attacked the non-violent demonstrators with tear gas, billy clubs, bull whips and moved them back into Selma. Two-weeks later the marchers got a court order allowing them to make the march without any issues. -
Voting Rights Act Approved
President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote. The bill made it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections that were designed to deny the vote to blacks. -
Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated
Rev. James Lawson invited Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis, TN to support a sanitation workers' strike. James Earl Ray murdered MLKJ the day after giving a speech in support of garbage collectors.
