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Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case that ruled racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine. -
Rosa Parks: Biography, Civil Rights Activist, Bus BoycottRosa Parks' refusal to give up her bus seat in segregated Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a 381-day mass protest led by Martin Luther King Jr. that crippled the bus system and led to a Supreme Court ruling desegregating public buses, making it a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement. -
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American boy brutally kidnapped, beaten, and lynched in Mississippi in August 1955 after a white woman falsely accused him of offending her at her family's store, a moment that exposed the raw racism of the Jim Crow South and became a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. -
The Little Rock Nine were nine Black students who bravely integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957, following the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, facing mob hostility and National Guard obstruction ordered by Governor Orval Faubus, prompting President Eisenhower to send federal troops to escort them, marking a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement and federal enforcement of school desegregation. -
The Greensboro Sit-ins began Feb. 1, 1960, when four Black AT University students sat at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter, demanding service, sparking a nationwide student-led nonviolent protest movement against segregation, leading to the desegregation of Woolworth's and other counters, and birthing the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). -
The Freedom Rides were a series of civil rights protests in 1961 where interracial activists rode buses into the segregated American South to challenge the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions that ruled segregation in interstate bus travel unconstitutional. -
King defends nonviolent direct action against segregation, responding to white clergy who called protests "unwise and untimely". He argues for the moral imperative to break unjust laws, explains why he is in Birmingham as an "outsider" (injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere), outlines the four steps of nonviolent campaigns (facts, negotiation, self-purification, direct action), and criticizes the "white moderate" for prioritizing order over justice, -
The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963, was a racist terrorist attack by Ku Klux Klan members that killed four young African-American girls (Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair) and injured many others attending Sunday school, becoming a pivotal, tragic event symbolizing the brutality of segregation and galvanizing the Civil Rights Movement. -
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a peaceful 1963 protest where an estimated 250,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. to advocate for civil and economic rights for African Americans. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark U.S. law signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, ending segregation in public places, ensuring equal employment opportunities, and integrating schools and public facilities, making it a monumental step in the American Civil Rights Movement. -
The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from requiring the payment of a poll tax or any other tax to vote in federal elections. -
Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, was a brutal attack on peaceful civil rights marchers, led by figures like John Lewis, who were attempting to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge to demand voting rights for Black Americans; the televised violence, featuring tear gas and billy clubs, shocked the nation, galvanized support for the movement, and directly led to President Lyndon B. Johnson pushing for and signing the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 was landmark U.S. legislation banning discriminatory voting practices, like literacy tests and poll taxes, that historically disenfranchised Black Americans, especially in the South, ensuring voting rights under the 15th Amendment by federal oversight, especially through "preclearance" for covered jurisdictions, although key parts were weakened by the Supreme Court's Shelby County decision in 2013, which struck down its coverage formula. -
Loving v. Virginia (1967) was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case where the Court unanimously ruled that state laws banning interracial marriage (anti-miscegenation laws) violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, striking down all such laws and establishing marriage as a fundamental right