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Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation of schools was unconstitutional, and that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court's decision was unanimous.This overruled that of Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896 that ruled schools could be separate but equal. The Brown v. Education case started in Topeka Kansas, but was similar to other cases challenging the segregation of public schools in Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, D.C. -
Emmett Till Murder
Emmett was fourteen years old when he went to visit family members in Money, Mississippi. While at a store with his cousins, Emmett allegedly whistled at the cashier, who was a white woman named Carolyn Bryant. She told her husband Roy, and he and brother-in-law, J.W. Milam went to where Emmett was staying and kidnapped him. Emmett was beaten so badly his corpse was only able to be identified by a ring. An all white jury declared Bryant and Milam not guilty, fueling rage in the country. -
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
In Montgomery, Alabama, a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat up to a white man. Her refusal brought attention to the inequality of black and white riders on public buses. She was arrested, and found guilty of breaking segregation laws. In the Montgomery Bus Boycott, black people faced official harassment, numerous threats, and personal inconvenience for 381 days while the matter made its way through the federal courts. The boycott ended with the desegregation of buses. -
Little Rock Nine
Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called upon the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating into a white high school. On September 5, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took action against the defiant governor by removing the Guard from Faubus' control. Additionally, he ordered 1,000 troops from the United States Army 101st Airborne Division to oversee the integration. -
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Sit-Ins: Greensboro, North Carolina
Four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College students staged a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter. They sat at the "whites-only" counter, but were denied service and asked to leave. The next day, 30 students, came to the counter to participate in another sit-in. By February 5, the number of active participants in the Greensboro sit-in movement was more than 300. By the end of February, over 30 cities and towns in 7 states were successfully engaged in the sit-in campaigns. -
Birmingham Bombing
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church served as a central meeting place for Civil Rights activities before it was bombed by Robert Chambliss, an active member of the Ku Klux Klan. Four girls were killed, and dozens of others were injured. In the aftermath of the bombing, violent demonstrations broke out throughout Birmingham, Alabama resulting in the death of two young African American boys. The bombing was one of the deadliest acts of violence to take place during the Civil Rights movement. -
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Freedom Summer
Hundreds of Northern college students traveled to Mississippi to help register black voters. The predominantly white students organized health clinics, established "freedom schools" to educate black school children, and sponsored voter registration drives throughout the state. The volunteers helped to create the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which attempted to unseat the state's all-white regular delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex. This included segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment, and public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools. or national origin. It did not end discrimination, but it did open the door to further progress. -
Selma-Montgomery March
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized a march from Selma to Montgomery to protest local resistance to black voter registration. 500-600 demonstrators marched without incident through the streets of Selma until reaching the Edmund Pettus Bridge where they were brutally attacked by state troopers and patrolmen. Television cameramen captured the incident on film, and the event became known as "Bloody Sunday." -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by a sniper's bullet while standing on the second-floor balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. As news of King's death spread, violent riots broke out in African American neighborhoods across the United States. On April 8, King's widow and the couple's 4 small children led a crowd estimated at 40,000 in a silent march through Memphis to honor the leader and support the cause of the city's black sanitation workers.
