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13th Amendment
The thirteenth amendment is the amendment that abolished slavery. This ended slavery after the American Civil War. -
14th Amendment
The fourteenth amendment provides equal protection under the laws. This amendment also grants citizenship to all people who are born/naturalized in the United States. -
15th Amendment
The fifteenth amendment prohibits the federal government and states from denying a citizen the right to vote. People of different race and color were being denied the right to vote, this amendment got rid of that. -
Plessy V. Ferguson
Homer Plessy (a man who was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black, had the apperance of a white man) had rode in a "White only" car. He was arrested and was put in prison. He was convicted on violating the law. The case was took to the supreme court and was argued that the segregation law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court had ruled in favor of Ferguson. -
Formation of the NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored people was a civil rights organization which was founded in 1909. The goal was to eliminate race prejudice. The NAACP was a particularly in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education which prohibited segregation in public schools. -
Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka
This court case helped rule that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. African American children in five different states were denied admission to public schools because of their race. -
Emmett Till's Murder
Emmett Till was a 14 year old African American boy who visited family in Mississippi. Emmett and his cousins visited a store and Emmett was accused of offending a white woman. The woman's husband and friend had kidnapped Emmett and brutally murdered Emmett. Emmett's family demanded that they have a open casket funeral so everyone could see what they did to their son. This helped galvanize the Civil Rights movement. -
Rosa Parks arrested/Montgomery bus boycott
In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. She was ordered by the bus driver to give up her seat but Rosa Parks responded by saying "no." Since she was refusing to give up her seat on the bus, she was arrested. After Rosa Parks was arrested it sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott which was a movement in the Civil Rights Movement in which African Americans in Montgomery refused to ride segregated city buses for a total of 381 days. -
Little Rock Nine
Little Rock Nine were nine African American students who were integrated into Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Governor Orval Faubus used the Arkansas National Guard to block these nine students from entering the school. Because of this President Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and he sent U.S. Army toops to enforce the school to let the nine students enter the building. -
Greensboro Sit-in
Students in Greensboro, North Carolina peacefully protested against racial segregation. The students sat by a segregated lunch counter at a department store and they all refused to leave when they were denied service. -
Freedom Rides
In 1961 civil rights activists organized a series of bus rides to challenge segregation in interstate bus travel in the south. The riders faced violence in the south which included them being beated, arrested and one of the buses was burned. -
March on Washington for Jobs/MLK's "I have a dream" speech
The March on Washington for Jobs was a massive demonstration which supported civil and economic rights for African Americans. This was one of the largest civil rights rallies in US history. MLK delievered his famous "I have a dream" speech during this rally. In the dream he gives everyone a vision of the future where racial equality is achieved and people are judged by their character not the color of their skin. -
March from Selma to Montgomery
The March from Selma to Montgomery was a series of protest that were focused on getting voting rights from African Americans in the south. They walked a 54- mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. The protest were lead by Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. A guy named James Earl Ray was an American fugitive who was convicted of the murder of MLK. After the assassination he fled to London and was captured there. -
Swann vs. Charlottee- Mecklenburg Schools
This was a court case that addressed the issue of school desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina. This was following the Brown vs. Board of Education court case.