Recent Event Highlights: VOTING RIGHTS ACT, CIVIL RIGHTS ACT, FREEDOM SUMMER, and 22 more...
Created by lloydjes000 on Mar 8, 2011
Last updated: 03/08/11 at 03:01 PM
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The 1968 Summer Olympics were an international multi-sport event held in Mexico City. The games were the first Olympic Games hosted by a developing country, and the first Games hosted by a Spanish-speaking country. It is the only Games ever held in Latin America.
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, now lay sprawled on the balcony's floor. A gaping wound covered a large portion of his jaw and neck. A great man who had spent thirteen years of his life dedicating himself to nonviolent protest had been felled by a sniper's bullet.
The primary purpose of the Fair Housing Law of 1968 is to protect the buyer/renter of a dwelling from seller/landlord discrimination. Its primary prohibition makes it unlawful to refuse to sell, rent to, or negotiate with any person because of that person's inclusion in a protected class.
Thurgood Marshall was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education.
The Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary leftist organization. The group's "provocative rhetoric, militant posture, and cultural and political flourishes permanently altered the contours of American Identity."
The Voting Rights Act is a landmark piece of national legislation in the U.S. that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. Echoing the language of the 15th Amendment, the Act prohibits states from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League.
Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist. Less than a year after he left the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X was assassinated by three members of the group while giving a speech in New York.
The Civil Rights Act was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against blacks and women. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and by facilities that served the general public.
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi, which up to that time had almost totally excluded black voters. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools and Freedom Houses in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population.
The Twenty fourth Amendment prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964.
The March on Washington was a large political rally in support of civil and economic rights for African Americans. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating racial harmony at the Lincoln Memorial during the march.
James H. Meredith is an American civil rights movement figure. He was the first African American student at the University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the American civil rights movement. Motivated by the broadcast of President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, Meredith decided to apply his democratic rights and then made the ultimate decision to apply to the University of Mississippi.
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists that rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.
Boynton v. Virginia was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that overturned a judgment convicting an African American law student for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal which was "whites only." It held that racial segregation in public transportation was illegal because such segregation violated the Interstate Commerce Act, which broadly forbade discrimination in interstate passenger transportation.
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Little Rock Nine were a group of African American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. On their first day, troops from the Arkansas National Guard would not let them enter the school and they were followed by mobs making threats to lynch.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many historically significant figures of the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott, including Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy. The struggle lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956 when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses to be unconstitutional.
Emmett Till was an African American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the cashier of a small grocery store. Several nights later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother arrived at Till's great-uncle's house where they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River.
Brown v. Board of Education was a major decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation.
The Congress of Racial Equality, or CORE, is a U.S. civil rights organization that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Membership in CORE is stated to be open to "anyone who believes that 'all people are created equal' and is willing to work towards the ultimate goal of true equality throughout the world."
The Nation of Islam is an African-American religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan, by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad. He set out to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of the Black men and women of America. From 1934-1975, the NOI was led by Elijah Muhammad, who established businesses, large real estate holdings, armed forces and schools.
The NAACP was formed in New York City by a group of black and white citizens committed to helping to right social injustices. On February 12, over the signatures of 60 people, the call was issued for a meeting on the concept of creating an organization that would be an aggressive watchdog of Negro liberties.
The United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses, under the doctrine of separate but equal. The decision was handed down by a vote of 7 to 1 with the majority opinion written by Justice Henry Billings Brown and the dissent written by Justice John Marshall Harlan.
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