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March on Washington, in full March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1963 by civil rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress.

On August 28, 1963, an interracial assembly of more than 200,000 people gathered peaceably in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. The crowd was uplifted by the emotional strength and prophetic quality of the address given by Martin Luther King, Jr., that came to be known as the " I Have a Dream" speech, in which he emphasized his faith that all men, someday, would be brothers and his hope that one day his children would live in a nation where they would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." The rising tide of civil rights agitation greatly influenced national opinion and resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, guaranteeing equal voting rights, outlawing discrimination in restaurants, theatres, and other public accommodations involved in interstate commerce, and encouraging school desegregation.

American civil rights movement Events

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Jeff Wallenfeldt.

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March on Washington | Date, Summary, Significance, & Facts

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March on Washington, in full March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1963 by civil rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress.

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Diana: I like this source of information because it has interviews with people that have good points of view of this protest. It helps you understand better what were the sit-ins.

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Learn more about our Civil Rights Heroes with Studies Weekly! StudiesWeekly.com

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Chicago Freedom Movement (1965-1967) Priscilla

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Chicago Freedom Movement (1965-1967) Priscilla

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I really like this article because it’s short and to the point.

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https://www.history.com/.amp/this-day-in-history/medgar-evers-assassinated

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David: I also decided to add this video because it gives you another point of view.

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Medgar Evers - Assassination | American Freedom Stories | Biography

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David: I decided to add this source of information because it gives a very detailed information.

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Medgar Evers - Civil Rights Activist | Mini Bio | BIO

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Table of Contents

1. Birmingham in the 1960s

2. Letter from a Birmingham Jail

3. th Street Baptist Church

4. Aftermath of the Birmingham Church Bombing

5. Lasting Impact of the Birmingham Church Bombing

The Birmingham church bombing occurred on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama-a church with a predominantly Black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured. Outrage over the incident and the violent clash between protesters and police that followed helped draw national attention to the hard-fought, often-dangerous struggle for civil rights for African Americans.

Birmingham in the 1960s

The city of Birmingham, Alabama, was founded in 1871 and rapidly became the state's most important industrial and commercial center. As late as the 1960s, however, it was also one of America's most racially discriminatory and segregated cities.

Alabama Governor George Wallace was a leading foe of desegregation, and Birmingham had one of the strongest and most violent chapters of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The city's police commissioner, Eugene "Bull" Connor, was notorious for his willingness to use brutality in combating radical demonstrators, union members and any Black citizens.

Did you know? By 1963, homemade bombs set off in Birmingham's Black homes and churches were such common occurrences that the city had earned the nickname "Bombingham."

Precisely because of its reputation as a stronghold for white supremacy, civil rights activists made Birmingham a major focus of their efforts to desegregate the Deep South.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested there while leading supporters of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in a nonviolent campaign of demonstrations against segregation. While in jail, King wrote a letter to local white ministers justifying his decision not to call off the demonstrations in the face of continued bloodshed at the hands of local law enforcement officials.

His famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" was published in the national press, along with shocking images of police brutality against protesters in Birmingham that helped build widespread support for the civil rights cause.

16th Street Baptist Church

Many of the civil rights protest marches that took place in Birmingham during the 1960s began at the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had long been a significant religious center for the city's Black population and a routine meeting place for civil rights organizers like King.

KKK members had routinely called in bomb threats intended to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the church.

At 10:22 a.m. on the morning of September 15, 1963, some 200 church members were in the building-many attending Sunday school classes before the start of the 11 am service-when the bomb detonated on the church's east side, spraying mortar and bricks from the front of the church and caving in its interior walls.

Most parishioners were able to evacuate the building as it filled with smoke, but the bodies of four young girls (14-year-old Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Denise McNair) were found beneath the rubble in a basement restroom.

Ten-year-old Sarah Collins, who was also in the restroom at the time of the explosion, lost her right eye, and more than 20 other people were injured in the blast.

The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15 was the third bombing in 11 days, after a federal court order had come down mandating the integration of Alabama's school system.

Aftermath of the Birmingham Church Bombing

In the aftermath of the bombing, thousands of angry Black protesters gathered at the scene of the bombing. When Governor Wallace sent police and state troopers to break the protests up, violence broke out across the city; a number of protesters were arrested, and two young African American men were killed (one by police) before the National Guard was called in to restore order.

King later spoke before 8,000 people at the funeral for three of the girls (the family of the fourth girl held a smaller private service), fueling the public outrage now mounting across the country.

Though Birmingham's white supremacists (and even certain individuals) were immediately suspected in the bombing, repeated calls for the perpetrators to be brought to justice went unanswered for more than a decade. It was later revealed that the FBI had information concerning the identity of the bombers by 1965 and did nothing. ( J. Edgar Hoover, then-head of the FBI, disapproved of the civil rights movement; he died in 1972.)

In 1977, Alabama Attorney General Bob Baxley reopened the investigation and Klan leader Robert E. Chambliss was brought to trial for the bombings and convicted of murder. Continuing to maintain his innocence, Chambliss died in prison in 1985.

The case was again reopened in 1980, 1988 and 1997, when two other former Klan members, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry, were finally brought to trial; Blanton was convicted in 2001 and Cherry in 2002. A fourth suspect, Herman Frank Cash, died in 1994 before he could be brought to trial.

Lasting Impact of the Birmingham Church Bombing

Even though the legal system was slow to provide justice, the effect of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church was immediate and significant.

Outrage over the death of the four young girls helped build increased support behind the continuing struggle to end segregation-support that would help lead to the passage of both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In that important sense, the bombing's impact was exactly the opposite of what its perpetrators had intended.

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The Birmingham church bombing occurred on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama-a church with a predominantly Black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured.

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16th street baptist church bombing (article) Luis Angel

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16th street baptist church bombing (article) Luis Angel

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Brown vs. Board Of Education Gustavo Infographic

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Brown vs. Board Of Education Gustavo Infographic

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Gustavo: I think this infografics explian very good the case of segregation in public spaces. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX9Dmo24_cc.

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Brown v. Board of Education | BRI's Homework Help Series

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This article talks about how children marched for desegregation, and how they didn’t go to school because of that.

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By the end of April 1963, the Birmingham Campaign, led by Martin Luther King Jr. of the SCLC and Fred L. Shuttlesworth of the ACMHR, was faltering. After weeks of boycotts, picket lines, sit-ins, and arrests, the campaign had not achieved the goals of desegregating public areas in the highly segregated city as set forth in the ACMHR's Birmingham Manifesto. It explained that African Americans had been economically exploited and endured political domination, despite seeking relief by petitioning the city and working through the legal system. Along with desegregating public places, the ACMHR also called upon the city to institute merit hiring policies for city jobs.

"Bull" Connor in 1963

Like King's Albany Campaign in Georgia, the movement's lack of media attention jeopardized the campaign's effectiveness and dampened enthusiasm among volunteers. Hoping to avoid the failures of the Albany Campaign, King proposed altering the groups' plans to gain more media attention. On April 29, 1963, King convened an emergency meeting of the ACMHR-SCLC Central Committee to discuss the campaign's impending collapse if they did not change their tactics and attract more volunteers. During this meeting, leaders James Bevel and Ike Reynolds mentioned the 150 or so adolescent volunteers who had participated in the campaign and who were eager to contribute toward its success. Previously, King and other civil rights leaders had refused to allow school-aged children to participate in their efforts. Many found the suggestion of exposing children to the violence of Commissioner of Public Safety T. Eugene "Bull" Connor's police force morally reprehensible. During the meeting, King wavered on the issue of child demonstrators as the Central Committee argued against Bevel and Reynolds' proposal. Nevertheless, Bevel and Reynolds convinced King to allow them to host a rally on May 2 in which adolescents would skip school and join together at several local churches.

Children's Crusade Participants

Bevel immediately began to advertise the event, which he billed as a youth "summit meeting," rather than a "rally" or "march," to avoid any controversy surrounding the participation of school-aged marchers. In particular, Bevel recruited popular African American students, such as athletes and prom queens, reasoning that these individuals could most effectively motivate and unify Birmingham's adolescent population around the school boycott so as to make it more effective. Responding to concerns in the days preceding the youth rally that young people would not be enthusiastic or turn out in great numbers, Bevel argued that child marchers could be more effective than adult demonstrators because children would be influenced by peer pressure to join their friends. Bevel also added that the adolescents' lack of financial obligations would make them more eager than adults to serve jail time because they would not be jeopardizing their jobs. Many parents and school administrators disagreed with the school boycott and spoke out against the effort, the ACMHR and SCLC, and King and Shuttlesworth. Such dissension prompted King to doubt his decision to allow Bevel to organize the youth rally.

On the morning of May 2, the Central Committee advised King to call off the march. King neither called off the meeting nor appeared at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Around noon that day, Bevel began directing children (who were generally between seven and 18 years of age) with picket signs to leave the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Leaving in groups of between 10 and 50, the children headed toward city hall or the downtown shopping district. As they walked, the children peacefully surrendered to the Birmingham police, who were waiting for them to emerge. With a continuous stream of children marching from Sixteenth Baptist Church, AME Zion Church, and the Apostolic Overcoming Holiness Church of God, the city's jail was soon filled to maximum capacity. Throughout the Children's Crusade, the jails would remain full as more than 2,000 protestors would occupy the jails at any one time. Witnessing police restraint, which had been absent in the campaign's earlier phase, King embraced the demonstration. During a mass meeting at Sixth Avenue Baptist Church, he praised the children's bravery and recommitted himself to the Birmingham Campaign and its goals.

Violent Crowd Control

The peacefulness of the Children's Crusade did not last long, however. When the ACMHR-SCLC once again sent out child demonstrators on May 3, Connor ordered law enforcement to deter the demonstrators with high-pressure water cannons and attack dogs. After arresting 70 youths, the police and the fire department again employed these violent tactics to stop the rest of the children from exiting the church or from escaping into nearby Kelly Ingram Park. Despite the Crusade's nonviolent mandate, bystanders began to throw bricks and bottles at the police to stop them from continuing to hurt the children, prompting law enforcement to turn hoses and dogs on those bystanders. For the next few days, the pattern continued as children attempted to march and the police attempted to stop them. The police brutality leveled against the young demonstrators as well as the plight of the students who remained imprisoned unified Birmingham's African American community and increased support for the ACMHR-SCLC's campaign. Many individuals who had initially opposed the campaign's involvement of child demonstrators rallied behind the imprisoned youths.

The events in Birmingham brought national attention as the news media sent journalists and photographers to document them. Among the photographers present, Charles Moore of Life magazine and Bill Hudson of The New York Times famously photographed the events of May 3 and 4 and published the photos in their respective publications. These images of young black people brutalized by white police caused international embarrassment for the United States and its government. In the midst of the Cold War, the federal government wanted to be seen as promoting freedom and not sanctioning racial oppression.

Kelly Ingram Park Sculpture

The negative media attention prompted Pres. Kennedy to take action. On May 3, 1963, he sent Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall to negotiate with the ACMHR-SCLC to end the demonstrations. Over the next few days, Marshall convinced King and Ralph Abernathy to compromise with Birmingham city leaders and businessmen over the alacrity with which city accommodations and businesses would be forced to desegregate. Although the Birmingham Manifesto had called for the immediate desegregation of public spaces and private businesses, King and Abernathy agreed to allow Birmingham a short time delay to fulfill their demands. Shuttlesworth, who had been injured during the Crusade, was unable to attend the negotiation and give his input. King and Abernathy's compromise would cause a rift between King and Shuttlesworth, who believed that King had used his "local" civil rights effort to gain national recognition.

The Children's Crusade stands as one of the civil rights movement's more brutal events. The violence, however, achieved the goal of raising national attention and pushing the Kennedy Administration to minimize its international embarrassment by sending agents to work towards desegregating Birmingham. On June 11, 1963, Pres. Kennedy called for a civil rights bill to prohibit racial discrimination and eliminate segregation in schools, employment, and public areas. This call would eventually culminate in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed by Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2 that year.
Additional Resources
Eskew, Glenn. But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Right Struggle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Manis, Andrew. A Fire You Can't Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham's Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999.

McWhorter, Diane. Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.

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Mattie Howard ArrestThe Children's Crusade was a controversial episode of the modern civil rights movement and the 1963 Birmingham Campaign in which African American school children marched for desegregation. Organized by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Birmingham, Jefferson County, it was intended to force integration of public spaces and local businesses in the famously segregated city.

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Maria V: This article explains the importance of the Bloody Sunday during this time and it explains the detailed story behind it. Also, it relies on other important elements of the Civil Rights Movement so it is more understandable

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Nearly a century after the Confederacy's guns fell silent, the racial legacies of slavery and Reconstruction continued to reverberate loudly throughout Alabama in 1965. On March 7, 1965, when then-25-year-old activist John Lewis led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama and faced brutal attacks by oncoming state troopers, footage of the violence collectively shocked the nation and galvanized the fight against racial injustice.

The passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 months earlier had done little in some parts of the state to ensure African Americans of the basic right to vote. Perhaps no place was Jim Crow's grip tighter than in Dallas County, Alabama, where African Americans made up more than half of the population, yet accounted for just 2 percent of registered voters.
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For months, the efforts of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register Black voters in the county seat of Selma had been thwarted. In January 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., came to the city and gave the backing of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) to the cause. Peaceful demonstrations in Selma and surrounding communities resulted in the arrests of thousands, including King, who wrote to the New York Times, "This is Selma, Alabama. There are more negroes in jail with me than there are on the voting rolls."
READ MORE: Civil Rights Movement Timeline
The rising racial tensions finally bubbled over into bloodshed in the nearby town of Marion on February 18, 1965, when state troopers clubbed protestors and fatally shot 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, an African American demonstrator trying to protect his mother, who was being struck by police.

In response, civil rights leaders planned to take their cause directly to Alabama Governor George Wallace on a 54-mile march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. Although Wallace ordered state troopers "to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march," approximately 600 voting rights advocates set out from the Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday, March 7.

King, who had met with President Lyndon Johnson two days earlier to discuss voting rights legislation, remained back in Atlanta with his own congregation and planned to join the marchers en route the following day. By a coin flip, it was determined that Hosea Williams would represent the SCLC at the head of the march along with Lewis, an SNCC chairman and future U.S. congressman from Georgia.

The demonstrators marched undisturbed through downtown Selma, where the ghosts of the past constantly permeated the present. As they began to cross the steel-arched bridge spanning the Alabama River, the marchers who gazed up could see the name of a Confederate general and reputed grand dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, Edmund Pettus, staring right back at them in big block letters emblazoned across the bridge's crossbeam.

Once Lewis and Williams reached the crest of the bridge, they saw trouble on the other side. A wall of state troopers, wearing white helmets and slapping billy clubs in their hands, stretched across Route 80 at the base of the span. Behind them were deputies of county sheriff Jim Clark, some on horseback, and dozens of white spectators waving Confederate flags and giddily anticipating a showdown. Knowing a confrontation awaited, the marchers pressed on in a thin column down the bridge's sidewalk until they stopped about 50 feet away from the authorities.

"It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march," Major John Cloud called out from his bullhorn. "This is an unlawful assembly. You have to disperse, you are ordered to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continue."

"Mr. Major," replied Williams, "I would like to have a word, can we have a word?"

"I've got nothing further to say to you," Cloud answered.

Williams and Lewis stood their ground at the front of the line. After a few moments, the troopers, with gas masks affixed to their faces and clubs at the ready, advanced. They pushed back Lewis and Williams. Then the troopers' pace quickened. They knocked the marchers to the ground. They struck them with sticks. Clouds of tear gas mixed with the screams of terrified marchers and the cheers of reveling bystanders. Deputies on horseback charged ahead and chased the gasping men, women and children back over the bridge as they swung clubs, whips and rubber tubing wrapped in barbed wire. Although forced back, the protestors did not fight back.

Lewis later testified in court that he was knocked to the ground and a state trooper then hit him in the head with a nightstick. When Lewis shielded his head with a hand, the trooper hit Lewis again as he tried to get up.

Weeks earlier, King had scolded Life magazine photographer Flip Schulke for trying to assist protestors knocked to the ground by authorities instead of snapping away. "The world doesn't know this happened because you didn't photograph it," King told Schulke, according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Race Beat.

This time, however, television cameras captured the entire assault and transformed the local protest into a national civil rights event. It took hours for the film to be flown from Alabama to the television network headquarters in New York, but when it aired that night, Americans were appalled at the sights and sounds of " Bloody Sunday."
READ MORE: When Did African Americans Get the Right to Vote?
Around 9:30 p.m., ABC newscaster Frank Reynolds interrupted the network's broadcast of "Judgment at Nuremberg"-the star-studded movie that explored Nazi bigotry, war crimes and the moral culpability of those who followed orders and didn't speak out against the Holocaust-to air the disturbing, newly arrived footage from Selma. Nearly 50 million Americans who had tuned into the film's long-awaited television premiere couldn't escape the historical echoes of Nazi storm troopers in the scenes of the rampaging state troopers. "The juxtaposition struck like psychological lightning in American homes," wrote Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff in The Race Beat.

The connection wasn't lost in Selma, either. When his store was finally empty of customers, one local shopkeeper confided to Washington Star reporter Haynes Johnson about the city's institutional racism, "Everybody knows it's going on, but they try to pretend they don't see it. I saw 'Judgment at Nuremberg' on the Late Show the other night and I thought it fits right in; it's just like Selma."

Outrage at "Bloody Sunday" swept the country. Sympathizers staged sit-ins, traffic blockades and demonstrations in solidarity with the voting rights marchers. Some even traveled to Selma where two days later King attempted another march but, to the dismay of some demonstrators, turned back when troopers again blocked the highway at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Finally, after a federal court order permitted the protest, the voting rights marchers left Selma on March 21 under the protection of federalized National Guard troops. Four days later, they reached Montgomery with the crowd growing to 25,000 by the time they reached the capitol steps.

The events in Selma galvanized public opinion and mobilized Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act, which President Johnson signed into law on August 6, 1965. Today, the bridge that served as the backdrop to "Bloody Sunday" still bears the name of a white supremacist, but now it is a symbolic civil rights landmark.
READ MORE: The MLK Graphic Novel That Inspired John Lewis and Generations of Civil Rights Activists

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How Selma's 'Bloody Sunday' Became a Turning Point in the Civil Rights Movement | HISTORY

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The assault on civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama helped lead to the Voting Rights Act.

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Fred Blackwell / Jackson Daily News, via AP

On a frigid day in February, four black students entered a department store in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat down at a lunch counter and expected to go hungry.

A hostile reception in 1960 was not a surprise, either, after they asked to be served at a segregated F.W. Woolworth's dining counter. "We don't serve Negroes here," the waitress told Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, David Richmond and Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan).

The students offered receipts showing school supplies bought at the five-and-dime for classes at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, and asked why their money was green in one area of the store and black in another.

Back in 1960, the Greensboro Four did not leave. They opened their textbooks and began to study.

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A failure to receive their order was part of a demonstration plan created by the students to protest segregated public spaces. Brown v. Board of Education struck down the practice in schools four years before, but places like pools and lunch counters prohibited blacks in many places.

And the four needed their story to be documented to fight a common claim dogging the civil rights movement: that abuse and threats from whites were exaggerated, and if they did exist, police crackdowns and civilian violence against them were appropriate because demonstrators were provocative.

"Pictures of their open schoolbooks highlighted the absurdity of the students being treated as second-class citizens," he said. Those images, like fire hoses blasting nonviolent protesters and dogs tearing into activists, were among potent symbols used to draw sympathy and support of civil rights for African Americans, he said.

Thursday's incident in Philadelphia was evocative of those crucial moments in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Two unidentified black men waiting for a business associate were asked to leave after they requested bathroom access. The manager called 911 when the men refused.

Footage of police cuffing and removing the two men barreled across social media, prompting Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson to publicly apologize and vow to meet with the men involved. The incident has provoked outcries of racial discrimination. Johnson has called for unconscious bias training for what he called a "reprehensible" incident.

"People don't believe black people when they say this stuff happens. It does. They want to know the extenuating circumstances. There are none," Melissa DePino, the woman who shared the viral video of the arrest in Starbucks, told Philadelphia Magazine.

But like Black Lives Matter and the Colin Kaepernick protests, whites have often taken issue with the way blacks have chosen to protest. In the spring of 1960, as the lunch-counter protests continued to surge, former president Harry S. Truman said he would have kicked out people performing a sit-in, had he a business.

Truman's words "serves to aid and abet the violent forces in the South," Martin Luther King Jr. said on "Meet the Press" in April 1960.

King understood the power of images then, as his message of nonviolent resistance beamed into homes across the nation.

Nonviolent protest, shown through photos and footage, served to help the country "reevaluate the stereotypes that they have developed concerning Negroes. . . . In the long run, it will transform the whole of American society," he said. Within a week, those images showed hundreds of nonviolent protesters at Woolworth's store.

Conceivably, Chafe said, videos of the incident that Starbucks CEO Johnson called hard to watch "can have the same powerful impact in terms of starting a much larger kind of protest." Those are already underway in Philadelphia, with one leading to a store shutdown.

In October 1960, dozens of black demonstrators led by King were arrested at a lunch-counter protest in Atlanta, with 14 sent to jail after refusing to post bond.

The charge? Refusing to leave private property when requested, the New York Times reported then, similar to the 2018 incident in Philadelphia.

Counter sit-ins represented a sea change in demonstrations, Chafe said. The civil rights movement was in decline after the Montgomery bus boycotts ended in 1956. Those efforts were more passive; the refusal to use something was a difficult symbol to rally behind.

But the sit-ins were active and visceral and challenged segregation, or as King put it on "Meet the Press," "the basic problem of human relations." In one of the most prominent photos of the movement, white protesters douse black demonstrators and their white supporters with food in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963, leading to more support for their cause.

McCain told The Post years later that he had never expected to be served at the Greensboro store. "What we wanted to do was serve notice, more than anything else, that we were going to be about trying to achieve some of the rights and privileges we were due as citizens of this country," he said.

A section of the counter was cut out and preserved in the Smithsonian. "The best feeling of my life," McCain told the Associated Press, was "sitting on that dumb stool." He died in 2014. Richmond died in 1990, and McNeil and Khazan are still alive.

In one photo of the second day of protest, the four men sit at the counter. The only thing visible on the counter is a book peeking through the gap next to McCain. The men are young and uncertain about what would happen. A weary-looking black cook stands behind the counter, allowed to work the counter but unable to eat at it.

By July 1960, Woolworth's desegregated its dining areas. The Greensboro Four could now eat there while they studied. And the cook could, for the first time, take off his apron and sit on the stool to enjoy a meal.

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Before video of a Starbucks arrest, images of lunch counter sit-ins helped launch a movement

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On a frigid day in February, four black students entered a department store in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat down at a lunch counter and expected to go hungry. A hostile reception in 1960 was not a surprise, either, after they asked to be served at a segregated F.W. Woolworth's dining counter.

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Jimena: Here I leave a video and an article that explains a lot the Bloody Sunday, and it shows not only one perspective but I shows more details. For example with this video I learned that white man also marched in this protests.

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DocsTeach is a product of the National Archives education division. Our mission is to engage, educate, and inspire all learners to discover and explore the records of the American people preserved by the National Archives. The National Archives and Records Administration is the nation's record keeper.

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Wilmar: This video helps a lot with the research especially if you want to go in more deep with the topic because it shows the children perspective of the situation but already grown-ups.

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Children's Crusade of 1963 | American Freedom Stories | Biography

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Download this template
Image-Heavy Infographic

This design caters to content creators who are trying to reveal trends and information from shapes, designs, or photography - rather than just numbers and figures.
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Pro tip: Choose a template that offers a range of layout options for different types of information. A template with diverse layouts can help you create more visually engaging and informative infographics.

2. Decide on a goal for your infographic.

Once you have the template you want to use, it's time to get into the details. Without a clear goal, your infographic may include too much information or fail to convey your message.

Your goal should include the purpose of your infographic. Do you want to educate, persuade, inform, or inspire your audience?

An infographic can help you:

Quickly summarize complex topics

Simplify complicated processes

Highlight research or survey results

Condense long-form content, like blog posts or case studies

Analyze and compare different products or concepts

Boost awareness about a topic

And an infographic is for more than just presenting information. So, your goal should also include a desired action or response you want to elicit from your audience. Do you want them to sign up for a newsletter, visit a website, or take another desired action?

Critically thinking about goals for your infographic helps you align each infographic with larger marketing targets.

3. Identify the audience for your infographic.

Infographics don't sell themselves on design alone. They're ultimately about communication. You need to deliver "info" that's just as compelling as the "graphic," and to do that, you need to know the audience your infographic intends to reach.

According to Harvard Business Review, five possible audiences can change how you choose and visualize your data: novice, generalist, managerial, expert, and executive. Start by comparing your infographic's ideal reader with one of these five audiences - which one applies to your reader?

When thinking about the data you want to visualize, let the five audiences above dictate how advanced your data will be. For example:

A novice audience might need data whose meaning is more obvious at first blush.

A generalist may want to better understand the big picture of a concept.

A managerial audience might need to see how different groups or actions affect one another.

An expert might be more interested in getting into the weeds of your numbers and posing theories around them.

An executive has more in common with a novice audience in that they only have time for the simplest or most critical information and the impact it'll have on the business.

Once you've identified who your infographic is for, dig deeper into that persona. You should understand what interests that audience, what motivates them, and what specific information they need.

Then, think about how and where they'll see your infographic. Will it be on a website, shared on social media, or presented at a conference? Can you repurpose sections of your infographic for different channels?

The platform and situation should influence the design and format of your infographic. Keeping these details in mind will make your infographic stand out and make an impact.

Pro tip: Take audience awareness a step further by conducting research or gathering feedback from your target audience. These details make it easier to tailor your infographic to their specific needs.

4. Collect your content and relevant data.

Using the audience you've chosen above, your next step is to organize all the content and data you'll use in the infographic. You can either collect third-party data or use your own original data.

Choose your data.

Compelling data needs to be comprehensive enough to give your readers proper context around the data you're presenting.

When collecting your data, make sure you know what story you want to tell through this information. Data for the sake of data won't add value to your infographic at all.

Choose data that's interesting and gives a good understanding of the topic. You can compare numbers or look at trends over time to tell a story with your data.

For example, a spike in website traffic from one month to the next doesn't mean much - until, say, you reveal that traffic was on a steady decline over the previous three months. Suddenly you have a story of how you were able to reverse a downward trend.

Organize your data.

Make sure to organize the data in a way that makes sense and tells the story you want to share. Think about what data points are most important and create a structure that emphasizes that data.

For example, you may want to write a quick outline of your data story. Then, match your data points with each relevant section of your outline.

Cite your sources.

If you use third-party data, be sure you properly cite your sources - just like in any other good piece of content.

And, try to keep your infographic uncluttered by a ton of different source URLs. A great way to cite your sources is to include a simple URL at the bottom of your infographic that links to a page on your site.

You can also list the individual stats used in your infographic and their sources on a landing page. Try linking this page to an offer that includes your free infographic.

With these tips, your infographic will look clean and professional and people will be able to access the sources no matter where the infographic gets shared or embedded. It may even drive visitors back to your site.

Pro tip: Think about different types of charts and graphs to present your data. Look for chances to turn complex statistics or concepts into easy-to-understand visualizations.

5. Download your template to PowerPoint.

For the sake of time (remember, our mission is to create an infographic in under an hour), I'm going to create an infographic with PowerPoint.

This is the easiest tool to use because it's widely accessible software that's already on most computers, so you can work on your infographic even without an internet connection. The user interface is also familiar and user-friendly, making it easy for beginners.

This example is based on steps and best practices from our guide, How to Create Effective Inbound Marketing Campaigns.

I've picked the "World's Greatest Timeline" infographic template from our collection of infographic templates. This template is best suited for my data set since it will allow me to outline each step of the campaign creation process in chronological order.

If you're ready to get started, just open the infographic template in PowerPoint. This will create a new presentation based on the selected template. Then you can start customizing.

6. Customize your infographic.

This is the most time-consuming part - plugging in the content you already have. With the right template, this step will go fast. All you need to do is replace the placeholder text and graphics with your own information.

Come up with a catchy title, plug in your data/content, and adjust your font sizes and formatting. Feel free to switch up the graphics and colors, too, so they're relevant to your brand and the data you're providing. To customize the look of the infographic even more, you might add or change the colors or font styles to your liking.

In this example, you'll notice that I've inputted my text and changed the font colors to HubSpot's signature colors:

You're not limited by what the template includes, either. You can use the tools in PowerPoint software to create bar graphs, pie charts, and other visuals to support your data. (Note: Download our free infographic templates for a cheat sheet for using PowerPoint's various features and tools.)

As you customize, focus on visual hierarchy and readability. Remember, any visuals should support and enhance your data.

Pro tip: Use consistent visual cues such as icons, color schemes, or illustrations. This creates a consistent visual language for your infographic and reinforces your brand. If your business plans to use infographics consistently, think about creating an infographic-specific style guide.

7. Include a footer with your sources and logo.

Finally, include a link to your source (mine is here) and the company logo. This way, people will recognize your content if it gets shared on social media or embedded on other websites.

After all, one of the main benefits of creating infographics is their shareability. These details will also make your infographic feel more credible and authentic.

Pro tip: Contributor details or acknowledgments can also boost the trustworthiness of your infographic.

8. Promote and publish your infographic.

The only thing left to do is to publish and promote your awesome new infographic. A few recommendations for promotion:

Publish your infographic on your blog.

Publishing an infographic on a blog improves the visual appeal of your content. It also makes it easier for your audience to understand complex or new concepts, boosts SEO, and drives user engagement. Don't forget to include your list of sources.

Add a Pinterest button.

This will help visitors easily "pin" your infographic on Pinterest for quick sharing and added exposure. Think about adding a brief description or caption for Pinterest sharing. This increases your chances of engagement and can generate more interest from potential viewers.

Create and add an embed code.

This makes it easy for visitors to share your infographic on their websites, social media platforms, and blogs, as we did below.

Share This Image On Your Site

With the infographic complete and published, that's a wrap. It won't take you long to create some impressive infographics of your own once you get started - but before you begin, we've got some tools to make the creative process even smoother.

How to Make an Infographic for Free

Now that we've reviewed the many variations of infographic formats and when to use them, you may be wondering how much it's going to cost. The good news is you can make engaging and effective infographics for free with many tools on the market. Here are some of our favorites:

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Canva is a design platform than can help you create a variety of media like presentations, blog graphics, and posters in addition to infographics. It's easy to get started using one of their templates.

The tool works by simply dragging and dropping the elements that you'd like to use into place. Once you're satisfied with your graphic, you can easily download it in a variety of formats of formats to share with your team.

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As we showcased earlier, HubSpot's free, customizable infographic templates make it easy to quickly create new visuals for your project. Simply download the template and open in PowerPoint.

From there you can replace text by typing into the template and change the colors to suit your brand's palette. Our offer comes with step-by-step directions to make ensure a hiccup-free experience.

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Piktochart is a free online tool to help you create infographics with zero design experience required. Where Piktochart shines is its many offerings to help visualize data. The free version gives you access to pie charts, maps, bar charts, and pictographs to display data in a variety of formats.

Users have the option to upload a CSV, Google Sheet or Excel file into the graph maker or opt to copy/paste into the template. The brand stands by their user-friendliness, aiming to help novices create infographics in 30 minutes or less.

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Snappa's infographic maker pushes the limits of creating media on the fly - claiming users can make infographics in just five minutes. Snappa offers a variety of readymade templates and an easy drag-and-drop builder to help users quickly create the content they need.

Users have to option to add and take away graphics, text, and stock images to customize their creations. Once completed, the finished product can be easily downloaded for use. Snappa also makes it easy to repurpose the infographics you've made by offering several formats for social sharing.

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Similar to others on this list, Venngage uses a drag and drop editor to help users create infographics without any design experience. Start with a template, and customize colors, text, and shapes as you see fit.

Venngage also has a robust stock photo library, with an impressive 40,000 icons and images available for use, plus another 3 million from Pixabay. The only drawback is that the collaboration features and brand kit are only available with paid tiers.

Visme helps users make graphics in three easy steps: choose a template, upload or input your data, and customize. If you prefer to start a graphic from scratch, there is also an option to swap specific portions of your infographic using blocs instead of using a full template.
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Once finished, users can opt to share their project with a link or download in a variety of formats. While the basic version of Visme is free, you'll need to opt for a paid tier for access to the brand kit feature.

Ready to get started? Here are some guidelines you should keep in mind.

Tips for Creating a Great Infographic

1. The information you communicate matters more than its design.

You can make the most visually appealing infographic of the year, but if it doesn't clearly communicate a purpose or message, then what's the point?

Not to say that the infographic's design is unimportant, but the information available on it should always be the priority. A good infographic tells the audience what they need to know, and is given adds more depth or dimension when coupled with a good design.

2. Know who you're making the infographic for.

Speaking of the audience, you have to know the type of reader that's looking for the information you have to offer. We already discussed the different types of audiences you write for, but we just wanted to reiterate it once more.

3. Avoid adding clutter to your infographic.

It's easy to get carried away with icons, graphics, and word art, but if it's becoming distracting to the reader, then it's defeating the purpose of the infographic in the first place.

Keep your infographic looking clear and skimmable, the reader shouldn't have to navigate it like a puzzle to find the information they need.

4. Ensure the visuals add value to your data.

Echoing our last point, the visuals that do make it to your infographic should be there to add value to the data beside it - this is the concept behind information design.

Whether it's graphs, diagrams, icons, or real-life imagery, it should take the numerical value of information shared and contextualize it. This way there's an emotional element behind the messaging than just bolding percentages.

5. Test for readability and user experience.

Before you share your infographic, make sure it's legible and accessible to a wide range of users. Test the font size, color contrast, and readability on different screens and devices. Think about usability factors like navigation and CTAs.

Share Your Professional Infographic Today

This whole thing took me under an hour to put together - much less time (not to mention more professional looking) than it would've taken if I'd started from scratch. Plus, it's less expensive than hiring a designer and using the resources you might want to save for larger campaigns.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure to learn more about how we use AI.

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How to Create an Infographic in Under an Hour [+ Free Templates]

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See how quick and easy it is to create a professional-looking infographic with 15 free infographic templates in PowerPoint.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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On May 2, 1963, more than one thousand students skipped classes and gathered at Sixth Street Baptist Church to march to downtown Birmingham, Alabama. As they approached police lines, hundreds were arrested and carried off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses. When hundreds more young people gathered the following day for another march, white commissioner, Bull Connor, directed the local police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstration. Images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, being clubbed by police officers, and being attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, and triggered outrage throughout the world.

Despite the violence, children continued to march and protest in an organizing action now known as the Children's Crusade.

The crusade ended after intervention from the U.S. Department of Justice. The event moved President John F. Kennedy's to express support for federal civil rights legislation and the eventual passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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On May 2, 1963, more than one thousand students skipped classes and gathered at Sixth Street Baptist Church to march to downtown Birmingham, Alabama. As they approached police lines, hundreds were arrested and carried off to jail in paddy wagons and school buses.

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16th Street Baptist Church bombing | terrorist attack, Birmingham, Alabama, United States [1963]

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16th Street Baptist Church bombing: 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, terrorist attack in Birmingham, Ala., on Sept. 15, 1963, on the predominantly African American 16th Street Baptist Church by local members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

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March On Washington

By the 1960's, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States had reached a peak. The movement was to try to make changes in jobs and freedom for Black Americans. It was organized by many of the nation's religious and civil leaders and was based on the concept of peaceful demonstration.

On August 26, 1963, over 200,000 people showed up in Washington, D.C. to let the people and government know that the nation needed changes to get rid of discrimination against Black Americans. The government thought that there might be unrest and had set up trained guards, just in case, but there services were never needed.

The peaceful march included members of both black and white people from all areas of life. While the Civil Rights Act had been passed, the people that showed up in Washington, D.C. that day were there to prove that not enough was being done to get rid of the oppression that was being faced by Black Americans. They arrived, holding each other's arms and singing the song "We shall overcome".

The original name of the march was the March for Jobs and Freedom, but eventually just became known as the "March on Washington". The organizers of the event were overwhelmed with people that wanted to be present. Musicians such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performed and singers included Mahalia Jackson and Josephine Baker.

The NAACP had put the idea of the march together and had originally thought that about 100,000 people would show up. They were pleased when over 200,000 people marched in peace and harmony to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Reporters and journalists from all over America were present to witness the day.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been asked to speak but had not really planned on it until they didn't have anyone to give the last presentation. No one wanted to be last because they thought everyone would be heading home. King had only planned on four minutes and, of course, everyone stayed to hear the well-loved representative of the Civil Rights Movement talk. Dr. King stated a few words and then Mahalia Jackson yelled out from the background for him to "tell them about the dream". She was talking about his idea that he had shared in a previous discussion.

It was at that moment that Dr. King gave his now famous "I have a dream" speech, that captivated the audience, brought tears to people's eyes and gave hope to many that attended.
Just a part of the speech included:

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By the 1960's, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States had reached a peak. The movement was to try to make changes in jobs and freedom for Black Americans. It was organized by many of the nation's religious and civil leaders and was based on the concept of peaceful demonstration.

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civl rights justice south emmit till medgar evers civil rights workers birmingham

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The Murder of Medgar Evers - Civil Rights Cases

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Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers in 1994, 30 years after the fact by Borgna Brunner Related Links Black History MonthEncyclopedia: Civil Rights For Kids: Civil Rights Heroes Martin Luther King Conspiracy TheoriesBlack History TimelineCivil Rights TimelineOn June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers, 37, civil rights activist and field secretary for the NAACP in Mississippi, was shot in the back while walking up to his house.

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Little Rock 9 / Brown Vs. Board of Education

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Little Rock 9 / Brown Vs. Board of Education

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Little Rock Nine, group of African American high-school students who challenged racial segregation in the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas. The group-consisting of Melba Pattillo, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Minnijean Brown, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, and Thelma Mothershed-became the centre of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, especially in the South. The events that followed their enrollment in Little Rock Central High School provoked intense national debate about racial segregation and civil rights.

During the summer of 1957, the Little Rock Nine enrolled at Little Rock Central High School, which until then had been all white. The students' effort to enroll was supported by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which had declared segregated schooling to be unconstitutional.

Warned by the Little Rock board of education not to attend the first day of school, the nine African American students arrived on the second day accompanied by a small interracial group of ministers. They encountered a large white mob in front of the school, who began shouting, throwing stones, and threatening to kill the students. In addition, about 270 soldiers of the Arkansas National Guard, sent by Arkansas Gov. Orval Eugene Faubus, blocked the school's entrance. Faubus had declared his opposition to integration and his intention to defy a federal court order requiring desegregation.

The confrontation in Little Rock drew international attention to racism and civil rights in the United States as well as to the battle between federal and state power. Television and newspaper reporters devoted substantial coverage to the "Little Rock Nine," as the African American students were called.

Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Governor Faubus, and Little Rock's mayor, Woodrow Mann, discussed the situation over the course of 18 days, during which time the nine students stayed home. The students returned to the high school on September 23, entering through a side door to avoid the protesters' attention and wrath.

They were eventually discovered, however, and white protesters became violent, attacking African American bystanders as well as reporters for northern newspapers. The students were sent home, but they returned on September 25, protected by U.S. soldiers. Despite Eisenhower's publicly stated reluctance to use federal troops to enforce desegregation, he recognized the potential for violence and state insubordination. He thus sent the elite 101st Airborne Division, called the "Screaming Eagles," to Little Rock and placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal command.

The Little Rock Nine continued to face physical and verbal attacks from white students throughout their studies at Central High. One of the students, Minnijean Brown, fought back and was expelled. The remaining eight students, however, attended the school for the rest of the academic year. At the end of the year, in 1958, senior Ernest Green became the first African American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School.

Governor Faubus was reelected in 1958, and, rather than permit desegregation, he closed all of Little Rock's schools. Many school districts in the South followed Little Rock's example, closing schools or implementing "school-choice" programs that subsidized white students' attendance at private segregated academies, which were not covered by the Supreme Court's decision. Little Rock Central High School did not reopen with a desegregated student body until 1960, and efforts to integrate schools and other public areas throughout the country continued through the 1960s.

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Little Rock Nine | Names, Significance, Facts, & Segregation

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Little Rock Nine, group of African American high-school students who challenged racial segregation in the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas. The group became the center of the struggle to desegregate public schools in the United States, and their actions provoked intense national debate about civil rights.

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Racial segregation was still legal in the United States on February 1, 1960, when four African American college students sat down at this Woolworth counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Politely asking for service at this "whites only" counter, their request was refused. When asked to leave, they remained in their seats.

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Emmett Till (born July 25, 1941, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.-died August 28, 1955, Money, Mississippi) African American teenager whose murder catalyzed the emerging civil rights movement.

Till was born to working-class parents on the South Side of Chicago. When he was barely 14 years old, Till took a trip to rural Mississippi to spend the summer with relatives. His mother, Mamie Till, knew Emmett to be a jokester accustomed to being the centre of attention, and she warned him that whites in the South could react violently to behaviour that was tolerated in the North. This animosity was exacerbated by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that had allowed racial segregation in public facilities.

Till arrived in Money, Mississippi, on August 21, 1955. He stayed with his great-uncle, Moses Wright, who was a sharecropper, and he spent his days helping with the cotton harvest. On August 24, Till and a group of other teens went to a local grocery store after a day of working in the fields. Accounts of what transpired thereafter vary. Some witnesses stated that one of the other boys dared Till to talk to the store's cashier, Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. It was reported that Till then whistled at, touched the hand or waist of, or flirted with the woman as he was leaving the store. Whatever the truth, Till did not mention the incident to his great-uncle. In the early morning hours of August 28, Roy Bryant, the cashier's husband, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half brother, forced their way into Wright's home and abducted Till at gunpoint. Bryant and Milam severely beat the boy, gouging out one of his eyes. They then took him to the banks of the Tallahatchie River, where they killed him with a single gunshot to the head. The two men tied the teen's body to a large metal fan with a length of barbed wire before dumping the corpse into the river.

Wright reported the kidnapping to the police, and Bryant and Milam were arrested the following day. On August 31, 1955, Till's corpse was discovered in the river. His face was unrecognizable as a result of the assault, and positive identification was possible only because Till was wearing a monogrammed ring that had belonged to his father. On September 2, less than two weeks after Till had embarked on his journey south, the train bearing his remains arrived in Chicago. Mamie Till kept her son's casket open, choosing to reveal to the tens of thousands who attended the funeral the brutality that had been visited on her son. The appalling images of Till's body in the casket appeared in the pages of Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender, and his murder became a rallying point for the civil rights movement.

The trial of Till's killers began on September 19, 1955, and from the witness stand Wright identified the men who had kidnapped Till. After four days of testimony and a little more than an hour of deliberation, an all-white, all-male jury (at the time, Blacks and women were not allowed to serve as jurors in Mississippi) acquitted Bryant and Milam of all charges. Protected from further prosecution by double jeopardy statutes, the pair was paid for the story and interviewed by their lawyer and a journalist in a 1956 article for Look magazine in which they related the circumstances of Till's kidnapping and murder. Mamie Till (Mamie Till-Mobley after she remarried in 1957) would dedicate the rest of her life to promoting civil rights and trying to achieve some measure of justice for her son.

In 2004 the Federal Bureau of Investigation reopened the case. Although Bryant and Milam were long dead, agents sought to obtain a conclusive account of Till's final hours. The three-year investigation, during which Till's body was exhumed for a complete autopsy, did not lead to the filing of criminal charges, but it did uncover a deathbed confession by Milam's brother Leslie, who admitted his own involvement in the kidnapping and murder. After the exhumation, Till's body was reburied in a new casket, and the original one was placed in storage at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, pending the creation of a planned memorial on the site. In 2009 a scandal involving the reselling of grave plots led police to investigate the cemetery, and they discovered Till's original casket rusting and abandoned in a work shed on the outskirts of the property. Later that year the casket was donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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Emmett Till | Death, Mother, Grave, & Facts

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Emmett Till, African American teenager whose murder catalyzed the emerging civil rights movement.

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African Americans admitted in the army

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Executive Order 9981, executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman that abolished racial segregation in the U.S. military.

Beginning with the initial skirmishes of the American Revolution, African Americans had played an important role in the armed forces of the United States. A slave identified as Prince Easterbrooks was one of the first casualties at the Battle of Concord, and thousands of African Americans, both free and enslaved, fought with distinction alongside their white counterparts throughout that war. The level of integration in the Continental Army, however, would not be duplicated in the U.S. military until the 1950s.

The path to official integration began with the signing of Executive Order 8802 by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt in June 1941. It signaled the end of racial discrimination in the U.S. defense industry, but the armed forces generally hewed to a policy of segregation throughout the duration of World War II. The efforts of the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph spurred President Truman to extend the protections afforded to African Americans in the civilian Department of Defense to the uniformed military. In April 1946 a review board chaired by Gen. Alvan Gillem, Jr., advised that the U.S. Army's policy should be to "eliminate, at the earliest practicable moment, any special consideration based on race." While the Gillem Board did not specifically endorse integration, it did note that the army had already desegregated its hospitals because of the unnecessary cost and inefficiency created by the maintenance of separate facilities for white and black patients.

Later in 1946 Truman convened the President's Committee on Civil Rights. That group's landmark report, To Secure These Rights, was published in October 1947. It proposed "to end immediately all discrimination and segregation based on race, color, creed, or national origin, in the organization and activities of all branches of the Armed Services." Facing resistance from Southern senators, Truman circumvented a threatened Senate filibuster by issuing Executive Order 9981 in July 1948, integrating the armed forces and establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, an advisory body tasked with determining the best possible way to implement the new policy.

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The initial response to the order was mixed. The U.S. Navy, which had maintained some degree of integration throughout its history, was the most accommodating branch of service-although African Americans remained primarily concentrated in the separate Steward's Branch in the short term. The Marine Corps (the smallest of the armed services) and the Air Force (the youngest) responded to integration as a matter of efficiency. The U.S. Army flatly opposed the change, with Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall going so far as to state in 1949 that the army "was not an instrument for social evolution." Nevertheless, the President's Committee pressed the army to accept integration. Ultimately, losses in the Korean War rendered the discussion moot, as under-strength white units were forced to accept black recruits to maintain combat effectiveness. In October 1953 the army announced that it had integrated more than 90 percent of black troops in its ranks.

Michael Ray

Learn More in these related Britannica articles:

Truman's Executive Order 9981, which abolished racial segregation in the U.S. military; and Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower's Executive Order 10730, which dispatched federal troops to protect the civil rights of the Little Rock Nine during the integration of Little Rock's Central High School....

Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States (1945-53), who led his country through the final stages of World War II and through the early years of the Cold War, vigorously opposing Soviet expansionism in Europe...

Racial segregation, the practice of restricting people to certain circumscribed areas of residence or to separate institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and facilities (parks, playgrounds, restaurants, restrooms) on the basis of race or alleged race. Racial segregation provides a means of maintaining the economic advantages and superior social status of the...

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Executive Order 9981 | United States history

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Executive Order 9981, executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman that abolished racial segregation in the U.S. military. Beginning with the initial skirmishes of the American Revolution, African Americans had played an important role in the armed forces of the United

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Freedom Rides, in U.S. history, a series of political protests against segregation by Blacks and whites who rode buses together through the American South in 1961.

In 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in interstate bus travel. A year later the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation tested the ruling by staging the Journey of Reconciliation, on which an interracial group of activists rode together on a bus through the upper South, though fearful of journeying to the Deep South. Following this example and responding to the Supreme Court's Boynton v. Virginia decision of 1960, which extended the earlier ruling to include bus terminals, restrooms, and other facilities associated with interstate travel, a group of seven African Americans and six whites left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, on a Freedom Ride in two buses bound for New Orleans. Convinced that segregationists in the South would violently protest this exercise of their constitutional right, the Freedom Riders hoped to provoke the federal government into enforcing the Boynton decision. When they stopped along the way, white riders used facilities designated for Blacks and vice versa.

The Freedom Riders encountered violence in South Carolina, but in Alabama the reaction was much more severe. On May 14, upon stopping outside Anniston to change a slashed tire, one bus was firebombed and the Freedom Riders were beaten. Arriving in Birmingham, the second bus was similarly attacked and the passengers beaten. In both cases law enforcement was suspiciously late in responding, and there were suspicions of collusion in that late response. Although the original Riders were unable to find a bus line to carry them farther, a second group of 10, originating in Nashville and partly organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), renewed the effort. Undeterred by being arrested in Birmingham and transported back to Tennessee, the new Freedom Riders returned to Birmingham and, at the behest of U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, secured a bus and protection from the State Highway Patrol as they traveled to Montgomery, where, when local police failed to protect them, they were again beaten.

Thereafter National Guard support was provided when 27 Freedom Riders continued on to Jackson, Mississippi, only to be arrested and jailed. On May 29 Kennedy ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce even stricter guidelines banning segregation in interstate travel. Still, Freedom Riders continued to travel by public transportation in the South until that dictate took effect in September.

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Freedom Rides | History, Definition, Map, Facts, & Significance

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Freedom Rides, political protests against segregation by Blacks and whites who rode buses together through the U.S. South in 1961. Convinced that segregationists would violently protest this action, the Freedom Riders hoped to provoke the federal enforcement of the Supreme Court's Boynton v. Virginia decision.

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Montgomery bus boycott, mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery's segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional. The 381-day bus boycott also brought the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., into the spotlight as one of the most important leaders of the American civil rights movement.

The event that triggered the boycott took place in Montgomery on December 1, 1955, after seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a city bus. Local laws dictated that African American passengers sat at the back of the bus while whites sat in front. If the white section became full, African Americans had to give up their seats in the back. When Parks refused to move to give her seat to a white rider, she was taken to jail; she was later bailed out by a local civil rights leader.

Many of Montgomery's African American residents were politically organized long before Parks was arrested. For example, the Women's Political Council (WPC) was founded in 1946, and it had been lobbying the city for improved conditions on the buses for a decade before the bus boycott began. In addition, Montgomery had an active branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where Parks also worked as a secretary.

Although Parks was not the first resident of Montgomery to refuse to give up her seat to a white passenger, local civil rights leaders decided to capitalize on her arrest as a chance to challenge local segregation laws. Shortly after Parks's arrest, Jo Ann Robinson, a leader of the WPC, and E.D. Nixon, president of the local NAACP, printed and distributed leaflets describing Parks's arrest and called for a one-day boycott of the city buses on December 5. They believed that the boycott could be effective because the Montgomery bus system was heavily dependent on African American riders, who made up about 75 percent of the ridership. Some 90 percent of the African American residents stayed off the buses that day.

The boycott was so successful that local civil rights leaders decided to extend it indefinitely. A group of local ministers formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to support and sustain the boycott and the legal challenge to the segregation laws. Martin Luther King, the charismatic young pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was elected president of the MIA. A powerful orator, he was new to the area and had few enemies, and, thus, local leaders believed he could rally the various factions of the African American community to the cause.

The MIA initially asked for first-come, first-served seating, with African Americans starting in the rear and white passengers beginning in the front of the bus. They also asked that African American bus drivers be hired for routes primarily made up of African American riders. The bus companies and Montgomery officials refused to meet those demands. Many white citizens retaliated against the African American community: King's home was bombed, and many boycotters were threatened or fired from their jobs. Several times the police arrested protesters and took them to jail, once charging 80 leaders of the boycott with violating a 1921 law that barred conspiracies to interfere with lawful business without just cause.

Despite such intimidation, the boycott continued for more than a year. The MIA filed a federal suit against bus segregation, and on June 5, 1956, a federal district court declared segregated seating on buses to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in mid-November. The federal decision went into effect on December 20, 1956.

The boycott garnered a great deal of publicity in the national press, and King became well known throughout the country. The success in Montgomery inspired other African American communities in the South to protest racial discrimination and galvanized the direct nonviolent resistance phase of the civil rights movement.

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Montgomery bus boycott | Summary & Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Montgomery bus boycott, mass protest against the bus system of Montgomery, Alabama, by civil rights activists and their supporters that led to a 1956 U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that Montgomery's segregation laws on buses were unconstitutional. The boycott was led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

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"Image Ownership: Public Domain"

Between 1961 and 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led a voting registration campaign in Selma, the seat of Dallas County, Alabama, a small town with a record of consistent resistance to black voting. When SNCC's efforts were frustrated by stiff resistance from the county law enforcement officials, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were persuaded by local activists to make Selma's intransigence to black voting a national concern. SCLC also hoped to use the momentum of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to win federal protection for a voting rights statute.

During January and February, 1965, King and SCLC led a series of demonstrations to the Dallas County Courthouse. On February 17, protester Jimmy Lee Jackson was fatally shot by an Alabama state trooper. In response, a protest march from Selma to Montgomery was scheduled for March 7.

Six hundred marchers assembled in Selma on Sunday, March 7, and, led by John Lewis and other SNCC and SCLC activists, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route to Montgomery. Just short of the bridge, they found their way blocked by Alabama State troopers and local police who ordered them to turn around. When the protesters refused, the officers shot tear gas and waded into the crowd, beating the nonviolent protesters with billy clubs and ultimately hospitalizing over fifty people.

"Bloody Sunday" was televised around the world. Martin Luther King called for civil rights supporters to come to Selma for a second march. When members of Congress pressured him to restrain the march until a court could rule on whether the protesters deserved federal protection, King found himself torn between their requests for patience and demands of the movement activists pouring into Selma. King, still conflicted, led the second protest on March 9 but turned it around at the same bridge. King's actions exacerbated the tension between SCLC and the more militant SNCC, who were pushing for more radical tactics that would move from nonviolent protest to win reforms to active opposition to racist institutions.

On March 21, the final successful march began with federal protection, and on August 6, 1965, the federal Voting Rights Act was passed, completing the process that King had hoped for. Yet Bloody Sunday was about more than winning a federal act; it highlighted the political pressures King was negotiating at the time, between movement radicalism and federal calls for restraint, as well as the tensions between SCLC and SNCC.

Sources:
Clayborne Carson, et al, eds., Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle (New York: Penguin, 1991)
Contributor:
University of Washington, Seattle

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Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965) | The Black Past: Remembered and Reclaimed

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"Image Ownership: Public Domain" Between 1961 and 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led a voting registration campaign in Selma, the seat of Dallas County, Alabama, a small town with a record of consistent resistance to black voting. When SNCC's efforts were frustrated by stiff resistance from the county law enforcement officials, Martin Luther King, Jr.