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Use Epic to search the following books:

1. The Voice that Won the Vote

2. What's Your Story: Susan B. Anthony

3. Women's Suffrage

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Search Epic to read the following books:

1. The Passing of the Civil Rights Act 1964

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1964: "The Importance of the Civil Rights Act

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1964: "The Importance of the Civil Rights Act

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1964: "The Importance of the Civil Rights Act" | PBS LearningMedia

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Learn about the impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, often considered one of the most influential laws in U.S. history, in this video from American Experience: "1964." It not only ended segregation in public places, it altered the "southern way of life" and created a new America.

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Kids learn about the history of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 including the background and work by leaders such as President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Use Epic! to search for the following books:
1. 12 Incredible Facts about the Montgomery Bus Boycott
2. Rosa Parks Stays Seated
3. A Picture Book of Rosa Parks
4. Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

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The Brown case overturned an earlier decision by the Supreme Court. In 1896 the court had decided that it was legal to make African Americans and whites use separate public facilities. Throughout the South nearly all public places, including parks, restaurants, movie theaters, and drinking fountains, were separate. It was illegal for an African American to use a facility reserved for whites.

For years African Americans and others worked to change the segregation laws. One group that was very active in those efforts was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In the late 1940s the NAACP supported several African American children who had applied to all-white schools. The children were not accepted into the schools. The NAACP then brought lawsuits against the school boards. The law at the time said that schools could be kept separate if they were equal. The court cases argued that the Black schools were not equal to the white schools. Eventually five of the cases were combined and brought before the Supreme Court.

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a court case about segregation in United States public schools. Segregation means keeping Blacks and whites separate. In 1954 the...

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Brown v. Board of Education

Argued December 9-11, 1952
Reargued December 7-9, 1953
Decided May 17, 1954

Full case name
Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al.

Citations

347 U.S. 483 ( more)

Subsequent history

Parties were ordered to return to determine how the ruling should be applied in Brown II, 349 U.S. 294 (1955)

Holding

Separate but equal educational facilities for racial minorities is inherently unequal, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Court membership

Case opinions

Majority

Warren, joined by all other Justices

Laws applied

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) (in part)

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (full name Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) was a Landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1950 in Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grade girl named Linda Brown had to walk more than a mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her segregated school for black children. However, there was an elementary school for white children less than seven blocks away. At that time, many schools in the United States were segregated. Black children and white children were not allowed to go to the same schools.

Her father, Oliver Brown, tried to get Linda into the white school, but the principal of the school refused. The two schools were supposed to be " separate but equal." However, they were not.

In 1951, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped the parents file a class action lawsuit. There were five lawsuits in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware, and the district of Colombia about having black students going to legally segregated schools. In 1896, the Supreme Court had ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation was legal, as long as separate places for blacks and whites were "separate but equal." The NAACP's lawyers argued that the white and black schools in Topeka were not "separate but equal."

Kenneth Clark is a Psychologist that gave young African American children black and white dolls to see how they felt about segregation and integration. The children liked the white dolls. After the doll test Clark also gave the black children drawings of a kid and asked them to color it like themselves, some of those kids colored themselves white or yellow crayon which they also used in the case.

The case eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court. After years of work, in 1954, Thurgood Marshall and a team of other NAACP lawyers won the case. It was named "Brown" because she was alphabetically the first name on the list of plaintiffs. After the lawsuit many of the plaintiffs lost their jobs and respect in society.

The Supreme Court has nine justices. The vote on Brown v. Board of Education was unanimous, meaning that all nine justices voted the same way. One of the judges, Robert Jackson, had recently had a heart attack and was not supposed to come back to court until the next month. However, he came to the court when the judges read their decision, possibly to show that every one of the judges agreed.

The ruling in the case was written by Earl Warren, who was Chief Justice. He said "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This decision made the racial segregation of schools against the law in every US state.

Some states did not obey this court decision at first. The supreme Court ruled the schools had up to 5 years to desegregate. It was not until the early 1970s that all United States public schools were integrated (the opposite of segregated). Integrating America's schools required many state and Supreme Court decisions to force schools to integrate.

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Brown v. Board of Education Facts for Kids

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Brown v. Board of Education Argued December 9-11, 1952 Reargued December 7-9, 1953 Decided May 17, 1954 Full case name Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al. Citations 347 U.S. 483 ( more) Subsequent history Parties were ordered to return to determine how the ruling should be applied in Brown II, 349 U.S.

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Brown vs. Board of Education | A More or Less Perfect Union | Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 Social Studies Teaching and Lesson Resources

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Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools in public schools are unconstitutional.

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The March on Washington was a political demonstration in Washington, D.C. Its full name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march was organized by civil rights leaders who wanted to bring people together to protest racial discrimination and to encourage the passage of civil rights legislation. The leaders included A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, John Lewis, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

On August 28, 1963, some 250,000 people from all over the country gathered in Washington D.C. They marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial to demand equal justice for all citizens under the law. Prominent civil rights leaders made speeches, religious leaders led prayers, and singers gave musical performances. King gave what became known as his "I Have a Dream" speech. The speech called for equality and freedom and became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement. It is one of the most famous speeches in U.S. history.

The march greatly influenced public opinion. It resulted in President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law banned discrimination in restaurants, movie theaters, and other public places. One year later Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act as well.

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The March on Washington was a political demonstration in Washington, D.C. Its full name was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march was organized by civil rights leaders who wanted to bring people together to protest racial discrimination and to encourage the passage of civil rights legislation.

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Article modified from BrainPop

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On August 28, 2020, Martin Luther King III stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., as part of a demonstration to fight for changes in the ways that police interact with citizens, especially Black people.

Exactly 57 years ago, his father, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stood in the same spot and gave his famous "I Have A Dream" speech during one of the most important civil rights demonstrations in U.S. history: the 1963 March on Washington. That day, over 250,000 people gathered on the National Mall to demand that people be treated equally, no matter their race.

A FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

The March on Washington took place during a nationwide civil rights movement in which Black Americans were fighting to receive the same treatment as white Americans.

Although slavery was made illegal in the United States in 1863 by the Emancipation Proclamation, Black people continued to be treated unfairly. For example, beginning in the 1890s, southern states passed what were called "Jim Crow" laws that discriminated against Black people and segregated (or separated) them from white people. The laws varied by state, but they often forced Black people to use different bathrooms from white people, ride in different train cars, or attend different schools. These "separate" facilities were often in poor condition. Many southern states also created tests to prevent Black people from voting.

Black people were also not being hired for jobs they were qualified for-especially government jobs or defense jobs like building warplanes-just because of their race. In 1941, civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph organized a march to protest that. But six days before the event, President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed an executive order that banned discrimination in the defense industry and created a group to enforce the order. Randolph called off the march, but five years later, Congress stopped funding the enforcement group, and many companies went back to discriminating against Black people.

By the 1960s, many Black people were still unemployed or had low-paying jobs, and much of the country was still segregated by race. Civil rights leaders, including King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, joined with Randolph to organize another change-making demonstration: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the official name of the march.

The goal of the march was to urge President John F. Kennedy to pass a civil rights bill that would end segregation in public places like schools, ensure easier access to voting, train and place unemployed workers, and end the practice of not hiring people because of their race. The March on Washington was scheduled on the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

"I HAVE A DREAM"

The day of the march was sunny and hot. Marchers arrived at the National Mall on buses and greeted each other with handshakes and hugs. Then they began their peaceful one-mile walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. The organizers estimated that perhaps 100,000 people would attend, but that day about 190,000 Black people and 60,000 white people came to the demonstration. Not a patch of grass could be seen as the marchers squeezed together to hear the speeches in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

For three hours, they heard inspiring messages from the civil rights leaders about keeping up hope in the fight for equality and a better life. John Lewis, who would go on to serve 33 years in Congress, said, "Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village and hamlet of this nation until true freedom comes, until the revolution of 1776 is complete."

King spoke last. One hundred years after emancipation, Black Americans, he said, were still not free. He said the marchers were there to fulfill the promise of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, which guarantees all citizens the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. He said that Black people wouldn't be free until they have the freedom to visit all public spaces, freedom to enter businesses, freedom to vote, and freedom from police brutality.

Just when it seemed King was ending his speech, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, "Tell them about the dream!" That's when he gave the most remembered line of the day: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

ACHIEVEMENTS

From the Lincoln Memorial, the leaders walked to the White House, where they met with Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to demand support for a national civil rights bill. A year later, their demand was granted. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlaws discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or national origin. It also ended segregation in all public places and made voter registration easier for everyone.

Then the next year, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It allowed the federal government to overturn state laws that had made it harder for Black people to vote.

THE FIGHT ISN'T OVER

Although the 1963 March on Washington brought important changes to the United States, the fight for equality between Black and white people isn't over. A 2013 Supreme Court decision struck down a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required some states (especially those with a history of making it hard for Black people to vote) to get permission from the federal government to change their voting laws. Since the decision, those states have created new voting rules, such as ones that decrease the amount of time for early voting and throw out ballots cast at the wrong polling station. Some say this is making voting more difficult.

Other issues also demonstrate inequality between races. For instance, according to a Harvard University study, Black Americans are over three times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans. After George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a police officer on May 25, 2020, about 15 million people across the country have protested in support of Black lives.

As A. Philip Randolph said at the 1963 March on Washington, "The March on Washington is not a climax of our struggle, but a new beginning, not only for the negro but for all Americans who thirst for freedom and a better life."

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A historic demonstration gained freedoms for Black Americans

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Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott | Civil Rights Movement | Grades 3-5, 6-8, 9-12 Social Studies Teaching and Lesson Resources

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Discover how Rosa Parks played a pivotal role igniting the modern civil rights movement. In December 1955, Parks, a Black seamstress and civil rights activist, refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white patron. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery Bus Movement, a yearlong protest that ultimately bankrupted the Montgomery bus company and led to the Supreme Court ruling that public transportation and accommodations could not be racially segregated.