Recent Event Highlights: Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, Freedom Summer, and 23 more...
Created by gibsoaly on Mar 8, 2011
Last updated: 03/09/11 at 05:45 PM
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During the 1968 summer olympics African Americans participated in the games and showed signs of protesting discrimination. Two prominent people were Tommie Smith and John Carlos.
The Fair Housing Act made it illegal for any person to refuse business of selling with any other person due to race, color, religion or national origin.
MArtin Luther King Jr. travelled to Memphis Tennessee assist sanitation workers trying to get better working conditions and wage. When he stood on the balcony of his motel room he was shot by a rifle and later it was determined a white ex-convict was charged with his murder.
Thurgood Marshall was the first African American to serve on the court and did an extremely good job. He was one who argued for the case of Brown v. Board of Education.
The Black Panther party organized armed patrols of urban neighborhoods to protect people from being abused by the police and created antipoverty programs that benefited unfortunate African Americans. The style of the Black Panthers was admired by young African Americans.
The Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests and gave the power to the federal government to oversee the voting reistration and elections in states with minorites who were discriminated against.
This march was organized by Martin Luther and the SCLC to pressure the federal government to enact voting rights legislation. This day became known as "Bloody Sunday" because a series of confrontations occurred on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. State troopers attacked the marchers as they tried to cross the bridge.
Malcolm X became a member of the nation of Islam and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. He became one of the nation's most prominent ministers. When he returned home from Mecca he seemed more willing to consider limited acceptance of whites. He was shot and killed by three members of the nation of Islam.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned segregation in public places and and gave the federal government the ability to compel state and local school boards to desegregate their schools.
Freedom Summer was a major campaign where 1,000 black and white volunteers were to visit Mississippi where they would focus on registering African Americans to vote and they also were to form the MFDP.
On this historical day more than double the amount of expected people crowded around the Lincoln Memorial. Popular celebrities and entertainers showed up and a long list of speakers addressed the crowd. The most important/influential was Martin Luther King Jr., this is where he delivered his "I have a dream" speech.
James Meredith was an Air force veteran who wanted to enroll at the all white University of Mississippi. With the support of the NAACP, Meredith was able to win a federal court case that ordered the university to desegregate. The governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, was determined to keep the integration of the university from happening. A riot broke out and white protestors were intent on scaring Meredith away however he ended up graduating in 1963 with a degree in law.
The Twenty Fourth Amendment banned the poll tax which was used to keep poor African Americans from voting. It also placed a restriction on the practice of drawing election districts to dilute African American vote and established the rule "one man, one vote."
The freedom ride took place in the sout where activists defied segregation codes-African Americans sat in the front and used white restrooms at bus stations. Several people were extremely upset at this and one of the buses was firebombed in Anniston and the other, a white mob crowded it and beat up passengers.
In this case, the supreme court ruled that segregation on buses or in waiting rooms was illegal.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was a new civil rights ogranization established by young activists. It's goal was to create a movement that involved various classes of African Americans to obtain equality. The organization took part in nonviolent protests such as sit-ins, read-ins, and wade-ins where they would attend white facilities and refuse to leave.
The Little Rock school board had a plan to slowly desegregate its' schools. It first started with nine African Americans who volunteered to enroll at a previously all white school. They were faced with threats, angry mobs, and harrassment everyday. Eisenhower sent his best federal troops to protect the nine students everyday at school.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was created by Martin Luther King Jr. and another minister Ralph Abernathy. It fought racial injustices through nonviolent resistance and had many followers. It organized several protests, one of which was the Prayer Pilgrimage in Washington D.C. which helped convince congress to pass civil rights legislation.
Civil rights activists in Montgomery organized a one day bus boycott. The black community refused to be transported by means of bus to show their opposition toward what happened to Rosa Parks.
In august 1955, Emmitt Till made the mistake of whistling at a white woman in a grocery store. This went against the unwritten laws in the Jim Crow south. Two days later two white men dragged him from his bed at night and brutally beat him and shot him in the head. They were charged with his murder but had an all white male jury and got no punishment.
The NAACP challenged the segregation of public schools at all grade levels and this became known as Brown v. Board of Education. In the end, the Supreme Court agreed with the NAACP's statement that the segregation of public schools did in fact violate the constitution.
CORE was founded by James Farmer and several others who were influenced by people such as Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Ghandi. They organized protests against segregation in several northern cities and they used direct nonviolence to gain civil rights.
The Nation of Islam is a sect of religion lead by Elijah Muhammed. They have strict rules such as no drugs, alcohol and they are for racial segregation.
By the end of WWII the NAACP had become one of the largest and most powerful civil rights organization in the nation. It attracted blacks, whites and several lawyers. The NAACP won several important cases such as Sweatt v. Painter and Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1986, the Plessy v. Ferguson case enforced de jure segregration which was the idea of segregation imposed by law. Plessy v. Ferguson made the argument that this was constitutional as long as the facilities for blacks and whites were "separate but equal." However this was rarely the case.
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