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Brown v. Board of Education
1) Plessy v. Ferguson
2) A colored student enrolled in a public school in Topeka Kansas
and they would not allow her to attend there.
3) They ruled that the laws of separate but equal facilities was unconstitutional. -
Emmett Louis Till
1) Emmett Louis Till
2) Money, Mississippi
3) Emmett Till, a 14 year old boy from Chicago was visiting family in Money, Mississippi. He was murdered for flirting with a white women by her husband and brother. They made Emmett carry a 75 lb cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River. They beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. Emmett was identified by the ring on his hand. -
Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat
1) Rosa Parks sat in the first row of the colored section after a long day of work, after the bus began to fill the bus driver asked Rosa Parks and other African Americans to stand up. Rosa did not move.
2) This resulted in Rosa Parks being arrested and fined $10 -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
1) President Eisenhower
2) It established the Civil Rights section of the Justice Department and it empowered federal prosecuters to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote. -
Events at Little Rock, Arkansas
1) At Little Rock, 9 African Americans were enrolled in a public school. On the first day they were surrounded by mobs of white people who were throwing things at them and yelling racial threats. The governor of Little Rock ordered the Coast Guard to prevent the African American students from entering and only allowing the white students to go inside.
2) The congress ordered the governor to remove the troops, he complied and removed them. Police would escort the students inside the school. -
Attack of the Freedom Riders
1) Freedom Riders traveled by bus through Alabama and Mississippi to challenge segregation at southern bus terminals. They faced a lot of violence from white southerners.
2) Organizations that helped organize the Freedom Riders were CORE and SNCC.
3) Whites also joined in with the Freedom Riders. -
James Meredith enrolls at Ole Miss
1) When James Meredith an African American student tried to enroll at Ole Miss chaos broke out on the campus. Riots ended with 2 dead, hundreds wounded, and many arrested.
2) The government got involved when Kennedy's administration called 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce order on the campus. -
Children Attacked with Dogs and Fire Hoses
1) Birmingham police attack marching children with dogs and fire hoses
2) Birmingham, Alabama
3) Thousands of children were trained in the tactics of non-violence. The children were going through the city protesting segregation peacefully, they wanted to talk to the mayor. Hundreds of children were arrested and police were ordered to spray the children with powerful water hoses, hit them with batons, and threaten them with police dogs. Despite this, children continued to protest. -
Medgar Evers Assassinated
1) Medgar Evers was an African American civil rights activist from Mississippi. He worked to desegregate the University of Mississippi and to gain social justice along with voting rights.
2) Evers was a volunteer in the U.S. Army, he also participated in the Normandy invasion. He joined the NAACP as a field worker and traveled through his state recruiting African Americans to join the civil rights movement. He was shot in the driveway outside his home by Byron De La Beckwith, on June 12, 1963. -
The March on Washington
1) The purpose of the March on Washington was to open jobs and create freedom in the nations capital.
2) The famous speech at this event was the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. -
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing
1) Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing
2) Birmingham, Alabama
3) On September 15th, a bomb went off before Sunday services at the 16th Street Baptist Church. This church was mostly black and served as a meeting spot for civil rights leaders. Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley were killed, along with many others injured. This event helped draw attention to the hard-fought and dangerous struggle for civil rights for African Americans. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
1) President Lyndon Johnson
2) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. -
The March to Selma
1) The March to Selma was organized because even 100 years after the Civil War, African Americans were still facing troubles when trying to register to vote.
2) The marchers were met with violent resistance from the state and local authorities. White mobs would attack and beat protesters to death. The local officials were trying to stop the protesters.
3) This march resulted in congress passing the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote and banned literacy tests. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
1) Voting Rights Act of 1965
2) This act was passed by congress in Washington, D.C.
3) The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by congress on July 9th and singed in to law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6th. It aimed to overcome legal barriers at state and local levels that stopped African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment. This act widened the franchise and is considered as the most far reaching piece of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. -
Thurgood Marshall first black Supreme Court Justice
1) Before becoming a Justice, Marshall studied law at Howard University. He was a counsel to the NAACP, and won the Brown v. Board of Education case, which led to the Supreme Court ending racial segregation in public schools.
2) I think that this was a monumental event because it was the first major step to desegregation in the government. I think that this event showed that African Americans could work at the same level as whites and showed that there is no educational barrier between them. -
Highway Patrolmen Fire on Protesters
1) "Orangeburg Massacre"
2) Orangeburg, South Carolina
3) On the 6th, a group of Black students from South Carolina State and Claflin Colleges came to the All Star bowling alley and refused to leave. On the 7th 15 of them were arrested. On the 8th students started a bonfire on the college's campus, authorities came to try to put in out and one officer was injured by a piece of railing thrown at him. The officers starting shooting, 3 students were killed, 2 in college and 1 in high school. -
The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King
1) Just after 6 p.m. Martin Luther King was standing out on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel. This is when a snipers bullet hit him in the neck. He was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead around an hour later. He was only 39 years old.
2) The assassination had such a huge impact on both because it seemed to widen the rift between them. Blacks saw this as a rejection of their pursuit for equality. His murder fueled the growth of Black Power and the Black Panther Party.
