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Union soldiers arrived in Galveston and declared the end of the Civil War, with General Granger reading aloud a special decree that ordered the freeing of some 200,000 slaves in the state.
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Howard University's law school becomes the country's first black law school. Howard University has been labeled “the capstone of Negro education,” because of its central role in the African American educational experience.
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The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed, guaranteeing the right to vote for all U.S. citizens.
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It was a legal case in which the Supreme Court decided that "separate but equal" facilities satisfied the guarantees of 14th Amendment, giving legal sanction to "Jim Crow" segregation laws.
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The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas ended legal racial segregation in public schools.
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African-American woman Rosa Parks's arrest after her refusal to move to the back of a bus triggers a citywide boycott of the bus system.
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The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia declares that laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage are unconstitutional.