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The Scottsboro Boys were nine Black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama in 1931. Despite evidence of innocence, they were swiftly convicted by all-white juries and sentenced to death. The case became a landmark for civil rights, leading to Supreme Court rulings against jury discrimination and for the right to counsel. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, even if the segregated facilities are equal in quality. -
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was brutally lynched in Money, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955, after allegedly flirting with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Kidnapped by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, Till was tortured, shot, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River, with his mother holding an open-casket funeral to expose the brutality. An all-white jury acquitted the killers, sparking nationwide outrage and fueling the Civil Rights Movement. -
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. -
The Little Rock Nine were nine African American students who, in September 1957, became the first to integrate Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, testing the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that desegregated schools. Despite violent opposition, including state-level interference, they entered the school under federal troop protection, marking a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement.
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On November 14, 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first African American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. Escorted by federal marshals amid violent protests, she braved daily threats, with only one teacher, Barbara Henry, agreeing to teach her in an otherwise empty classroom. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, following a 75-day filibuster in the Senate. It is a landmark, far-reaching law that prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The act ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination. -
Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, by members of the Nation of Islam (NOI), primarily motivated by his public, acrimonious split from the organization and its leader, Elijah Muhammad. While Thomas Hagan (Mujahid Abdul Halim) confessed, two other men convicted were exonerated in 2021, leaving the full extent of the conspiracy involving other NOI members, FBI, or NYPD involvement debated. -
On April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST, Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil rights activist, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. at age 39. The alleged assassin, James Earl Ray, an escaped convict from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested on June 8, 1968, at London's Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States and charged with the crime.
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