EQ: What were the major events of the Civil Rights movement?

 Plessy v. Ferguson  Separate but Equal  Jim Crow Laws  Laws designed to enforce segregation

 Linda Brown  Forced to go to a separate school far away from her home  Across railroad tracks

 Supreme Court  Linda Brown’s lawyer Thurgood Marshall  Argued segregation psychologically damaged African-American students  Supreme Court agreed  Brown v. Board cancels out Plessy v. Ferguson

 Brown v. Board of Education ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional  But most of the south desegregated very slowly  1954 – The Little Rock school board was the first to comply with Brown v. Board

 Governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, blocked the school with the National Guard  When he was ordered by law to remove the National Guard, the students were met by a riot

 1000 Federal troops arrived and escorted the students to the high school

Eisenhower uses the military - Eisenhower sent in the U.S. military to ensure the students be allowed in. - Desegregation was going to happen

 Eisenhower passes the Civil Rights Act of 1957  Federal crime to prevent a person from voting  Created Civil Rights Commission  The Little Rock incident showed that the South was unwilling to desegregate without a fight

 NAACP  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People  Created for social reform  Worked to end racial discrimination

 NAACP worked to end segregation in southern transportation system  Rosa Parks  Seamstress  Dignified and respectable  REFUSED to give up her seat to a white man

Results of her refusal… - She was arrested and charged with violation of the city’s segregation law

 50,000 African Americans boycotted the Montgomery Bus system  The Montgomery Improvement Association lead the way  MIA chose Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as spokesperson

 1956 – Supreme Court ruled the segregation laws unconstitutional  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. became the new leader of the Civil Rights movement

 Testing the Supreme Court decision banning segregation on buses.  Civil Rights activists’ ride south  Met by mobs everywhere

 The Kennedy Administration acted  U.S. Marshall’s were sent  Interstate Commerce Commission banned all segregation in interstate travel

 March on Washington D.C.  250,000 people marched on D.C.  Demanding passage of the Civil Rights Bill

 One of the most famous speeches in 20 th Century.  Link to text version, and/or audio visual 

 Project to register African Americans as voters  Again met with violence  3 Civil Rights workers went missing  Racial beatings and murders continued

 Malcolm X

 Urban Racial Violence  New York riots in Harlem  Watts Riot – Worst race riot in nations history  African American rage

 Shot by James Earl Ray  Robert Kennedy urged non-violence  But the rage led to worst urban rioting in U.S. history  Kennedy was assassinated later that year

 Kerner Commission  Study the causes of urban violence  Civil Rights Acts of 1964 & 1968  Support declined into the 1970’s because of the militant movement  Affirmative Action  Controversy still