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Plessy Vs Ferguson
U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". -
Tuskegee Airmen
Because of The Tuskegee Airmen, the U.S. won World War II in August of 1945. In total, The Tuskegee Airmen flew over 15,000 individual missions and shot down 112 enemy airplanes in World War II, according to the National World War II Museum. -
Integration of MLB
The beginning of the end of the Negro Leagues. When Jackie Robinson stepped onto the Ebbets Fields as a Brooklyn Dodger on April 15, 1947 it signaled the end of segregation in Major League Baseball. It also signaled the beginning of the end of Negro League Baseball. -
Armed Forces Integration
On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, creating the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. The order mandated the desegregation of the U.S. military. -
Sweatt V. Painter
In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the Equal Protection Clause required that Sweatt be admitted to the university. The Court found that the "law school for Negroes," which was to have opened in 1947, would have been grossly unequal to the University of Texas Law School. -
Brown V. Board of Education
Marshall argued the case before the Court. Although he raised a variety of legal issues on appeal, the central argument was that separate school systems for Black students and white students were inherently unequal, and a violation of the "Equal Protection Clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Death of Emmitt Till
Donham testified in 1955 that Emmett grabbed her hand and waist and propositioned her, saying he had been with “White women before.” But years later, when professor Timothy Tyson raised that trial testimony in a 2008 interview with Donham, he claimed she told him, “That part's not true.” -
Montgomery bus boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. -
Integration of Little Rock High School
In 1957, nine ordinary teenagers walked out of their homes and stepped up to the front lines in the battle for civil rights for all Americans. The media coined the name “Little Rock Nine" to identify the first African American students to desegregate Little Rock Central High School. -
Civil Rights act of 1957
This legislation established a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate civil rights violations and also established a Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 authorized the prosecution for those who violated the right to vote for United States citizens. -
Greensboro Four Sit-In
On February 1, 1960, four friends sat down at a lunch counter in Greensboro. That may not sound like a legendary moment, but it was. The four people were African American, and they sat where African Americans weren't allowed to sit. They did this to take a stand against segregation. -
Freedom Riders of 1961
Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. -
24th amendment proposed
Amendment Twenty-four to the Constitution was ratified on January 23, 1964. It abolished and forbids the federal and state governments from imposing taxes on voters during federal elections. -
Integration of University of Mississipi
In 1962, a federal appeals court ordered the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, an African-American student. Upon his arrival, a mob of more than 2,000 white people rioted; two people were killed -
Integration of University of Alabama
On a scorching June day in 1963, James Hood and Vivian Malone became the first two black students to enroll successfully at the University of Alabama, defying Gov. George C. Wallace Jr.'s symbolic — and vitriolic — “stand in the schoolhouse door.” -
March on Washington
On 28 August 1963, more than 200,000 demonstrators took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation's capital. The march was successful in pressuring the administration of John F. Kennedy to initiate a strong federal civil rights bill in Congress. MLK also had his "I Have a Dream" speech there. -
Assassination of JFK
On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X was ambushed and fatally shot while delivering a speech. His wife and daughters were in the audience. Three men were convicted of his murder. -
Selma to Montgomery March: "Bloody Sunday"
The Selma Marches were a series of three marches that took place in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. These marches were organized to protest the blocking of Black Americans' right to vote by the systematic racist structure of the Jim Crow South. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
Assassination of MLK Jr.
At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. News of King's assassination prompted major outbreaks of racial violence, resulting in more than 40 deaths nationwide. -
Voting rights act of 1968
Following Bloody Sunday, President Lyndon Johnson sent a voting rights bill to Congress. It provided for direct federal intervention to enable African Americans to register and vote and banned tactics long designed to keep them from the polls(such as literacy tests).