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Brown vs. Board
In Topeka Kansas Linda Brown was refused access to Sumner elementary school. The case was taken to the Supreme Court. The courts ruled segregation illegal in twenty states in the South.This case provided the legal foundation for the civil rights movement -
Claudette Colvin
Montgomery-On March 2, 1955 she was on the public Capital Heights bus coming home from school and was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman nine months before Rosa Parks was arrested. Browder vs. Gayle supreme court hearing -
Little Rock Nine
Nine African American teens were integrated at Central High in Little Rock Arkansas. Central was the first high school in a major southern city set to be desegregated since Brown vs. Board. A mob of whites and guardsmen refused to allow the students into the school so President Eisenhower had to send one thousand federal marshals to escort the students in. -
The Greensboro Sit-Ins
In Greensboro, North Carolina, four college freshmen staged the first sit-in at a white lunch counter.The students went to a Woolsworth store and made purchases. They sat at the white people only lunch counter and were refused service. They remained seated until closing. News spread quick and other schools heard about the sit-in. Students began sitting at lunch counters in stores all over the south. Protestors boycotted stores in Northern cities. -
Nashville Sit-Ins
One of the most successful sits-in that occurred in Nashville Tennessee from February 13, to May 10, 1960. They were organized by college students from the north. -
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was created on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh two months after the Greensboro sit-ins. Their job was to coordinate sit-ins, support leaders, and publicize their activities -
Ruby Bridges
Six year old Ruby Bridges is integrated at William Frantz Public School in New Orleans. Bridges was driven to school by four federal marshals. When she walked into the school there were people yelled taunts and threw things at her. Bridges spent most of the school year alone. -
Birmingham Children's Crusade
May 2-May 4 Martin Luther King led the Children’s Crusade to protest the Jim Crow Laws and integrate public stores in Birmingham Alabama. Young people filled the streets of Birmingham.The police arrested more than 600 young people on the first day alone. Photographerss snapped pictures of young marchers being bitten by police dogs, beaten by officers, and blasted by fire hoses. The news outraged millions and white leaders in Birmingham were pressured to end segregation in stores. -
Bloody Sunday/March on Selma
MLK’s march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama in response to the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson and voter rights became the most bloody civil rights event. The police forced the marches to turn back by releasing dogs, spraying the crowd with hoses, and beating them. Eight year old Sheyann Webb and nine year old Rachel West were two of those marchers. This event led to President Johnson passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
