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Plessy v. Ferguson
1. made white and black only train cars
2. was a new segregation law
3. they sat in "whites only" cars
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537

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Birmingham campaign
1. Attacked Birmingham merchants
2. they wanted to ruin Birmingham's segregation system
3. they boycotted merchants
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/birmingham-campaign

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Truman Desegregated the military
1. He signed a law for equal opportunities for the military
2. He put in the policy in effect as fast as possible
3. People did not like the policy
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/executive-order-9981.htm#:~:text=On%20July%2026%2C%201948%2C%20President,desegregation%20of%20the%20U.S.%20military.

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Executive Order 9981, Desegregating the Military (U.S. National Park Service)

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Brown v. Board of Education
1. Stated that segregating schools isn't constitutional
2. Played a major part in Civil Rights
3. Supreme Court saw it in 1952
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483

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Montgomery Bus Boycott
1. first big protest against segregation
2. It began with Rosa Parks
3. Supreme Court ruled to integrate buses
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-boycott

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Rosa Parks' Bus

In 1955, African Americans were still required by a Montgomery, Alabama, city ordinance to sit in the back half of city buses and to yield their seats to white riders if the front half of the bus, reserved for whites, was full.

But on December 1, 1955, African American seamstress Rosa Parks was commuting home on Montgomery's Cleveland Avenue bus from her job at a local department store. She was seated in the front row of the "colored section." When the white seats filled, the driver, J. Fred Blake, asked Parks and three others to vacate their seats. The other Black riders complied, but Parks refused.

She was arrested and fined $10, plus $4 in court fees. This was not Parks' first encounter with Blake. In 1943, she had paid her fare at the front of a bus he was driving, then exited so she could re-enter through the back door, as required. Blake pulled away before she could re-board the bus.

Did you know? Nine months before Rosa Parks' arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin was arrested in Montgomery for the same act. The city's Black leaders prepared to protest, until it was discovered Colvin was pregnant and deemed an inappropriate symbol for their cause.

Although Parks has sometimes been depicted as a woman with no history of civil rights activism at the time of her arrest, she and her husband Raymond were, in fact, active in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), and Parks served as its secretary.

Upon her arrest, Parks called E.D. Nixon, a prominent Black leader, who bailed her out of jail and determined she would be an upstanding and sympathetic plaintiff in a legal challenge of the segregation ordinance. African American leaders decided to attack the ordinance using other tactics as well.

The Women's Political Council (WPC), a group of Black women working for civil rights, began circulating flyers calling for a boycott of the bus system on December 5, the day Parks would be tried in municipal court. The boycott was organized by WPC President Jo Ann Robinson.

Montgomery's African Americans Mobilize

As news of the boycott spread, African American leaders across Montgomery (Alabama's capital city) began lending their support. Black ministers announced the boycott in church on Sunday, December 4, and the Montgomery Advertiser, a general-interest newspaper, published a front-page article on the planned action.

Approximately 40,000 Black bus riders-the majority of the city's bus riders-boycotted the system the next day, December 5. That afternoon, Black leaders met to form the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The group elected Martin Luther King Jr., the 26-year-old-pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its president, and decided to continue the boycott until the city met its demands.

Initially, the demands did not include changing the segregation laws; rather, the group demanded courtesy, the hiring of Black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy, with whites entering and filling seats from the front and African Americans from the rear.

Ultimately, however, a group of five Montgomery women, represented by attorney Fred D. Gray and the NAACP, sued the city in U.S. District Court, seeking to have the busing segregation laws totally invalidated.

Although African Americans represented at least 75 percent of Montgomery's bus ridership, the city resisted complying with the protester's demands. To ensure the boycott could be sustained, Black leaders organized carpools, and the city's African American taxi drivers charged only 10 cents-the same price as bus fare-for African American riders.

Many Black residents chose simply to walk to work or other destinations. Black leaders organized regular mass meetings to keep African American residents mobilized around the boycott.

Integration at Last

On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment, adopted in 1868 following the U.S. Civil War, guarantees all citizens-regardless of race-equal rights and equal protection under state and federal laws.

The city appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court's decision on December 20, 1956. Montgomery's buses were integrated on December 21, 1956, and the boycott ended. It had lasted 381 days.

Bus Boycott Meets With Violence

Integration, however, met with significant resistance and even violence. While the buses themselves were integrated, Montgomery maintained segregated bus stops. Snipers began firing into buses, and one shooter shattered both legs of a pregnant African American passenger.

In January 1957, four Black churches and the homes of prominent Black leaders were bombed; a bomb at King's house was defused. On January 30, 1957, the Montgomery police arrested seven bombers; all were members of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group. The arrests largely brought an end to the busing-related violence.

Boycott Puts Martin Luther King Jr. in Spotlight

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was significant on several fronts. First, it is widely regarded as the earliest mass protest on behalf of civil rights in the United States, setting the stage for additional large-scale actions outside the court system to bring about fair treatment for African Americans.

Second, in his leadership of the MIA, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a prominent national leader of the civil rights movement while also solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance. King's approach remained a hallmark of the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s.

Shortly after the boycott's end, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a highly influential civil rights organization that worked to end segregation throughout the South. The SCLC was instrumental in the civil rights campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, and the March on Washington in August of that same year, during which King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

The boycott also brought national and international attention to the civil rights struggles occurring in the United States, as more than 100 reporters visited Montgomery during the boycott to profile the effort and its leaders.

Rosa Parks, while shying from the spotlight throughout her life, remained an esteemed figure in the history of American civil rights activism. In 1999, the U.S. Congress awarded her its highest honor, the Congressional Gold Medal.

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Montgomery Bus Boycott - Facts, Significance & Rosa Parks | HISTORY

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For 382 days, almost the entire African American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses. The protests marked a turning point in the American civil rights movement.

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The murder of Emmett Till
1. murdered for flirting with a white woman
2. He was beaten to death by the son brother and husband of the woman
3. The murder was racially motivated.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till

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Emmett Till is murdered | August 28, 1955 | HISTORY

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Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.

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Little Rock Nine
1. First African Americans in Little Rock Central high school.
2. Federal laws were furious about them attending the school.
3. Federal judge ordered them not to go and blocked them.
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/little-rock-nine

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How the Little Rock 9 Impacted the Civil Rights Movement | The American Presidency w/ Bill Clinton

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Loving v. Virginia
1. It was a mixed-race marriage
2. They were accused of violating the law in Virginia
3. They filled a court case for it
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395

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How Loving v. Virginia Led to Legalized Interracial Marriage | History

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Black Power Movement
1. Empathised racial pride
2. Malcolm X was assassinated
3. They stomped through the streets for equality

https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power#:~:text=Black%20Power%20began%20as%20revolutionary,of%20political%20and%20cultural%20institutions.

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Black Power began as revolutionary movement in the 1960s and 1970s. It emphasized racial pride, economic empowerment, and the creation of political and cultural institutions. During this era, there was a rise in the demand for Black history courses, a greater embrace of African culture, and a spread of raw artistic expression displaying the realities of African Americans.

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Greensboro sit-in
1. sat in segregated lunch places as a protest
2. They got arrested for it
3. It made a impact that lasted because of it

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/the-greensboro-sit-in

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Freedom Riders
1. it was a group ran by C.O.R.E
2. it was made to tease the supreme court
3. people traveled to the jim crow south to use whites only stuff.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-rides

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Civil Rights Activists Test Supreme Court Decision

The 1961 Freedom Rides, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), were modeled after the organization's 1947 Journey of Reconciliation. During the 1947 action, African American and white bus riders tested the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Morgan v. Virginia that found segregated bus seating was unconstitutional.

The 1961 Freedom Rides sought to test a 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals, was unconstitutional as well. A big difference between the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation and the 1961 Freedom Rides was the inclusion of women in the later initiative.

In both actions, Black riders traveled to the Jim Crow South-where segregation continued to occur-and attempted to use whites-only restrooms, lunch counters and waiting rooms.

John Lewis

The original group of 13 Freedom Riders-seven African Americans and six whites-left Washington, D.C., on a Greyhound bus on May 4, 1961. Their plan was to reach New Orleans, Louisiana, on May 17 to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled that segregation of the nation's public schools was unconstitutional.

The group traveled through Virginia and North Carolina, drawing little public notice. The first violent incident occurred on May 12 in Rock Hill, South Carolina. John Lewis, an African American seminary student and member of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), white Freedom Rider and World War II veteran Albert Bigelow and another Black rider were viciously attacked as they attempted to enter a whites-only waiting area.

The next day, the group reached Atlanta, Georgia, where some of the riders split off onto a Trailways bus.

Did you know? John Lewis, one of the original group of 13 Freedom Riders, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in November 1986. Lewis, a Democrat, continued to represent Georgia's 5th Congressional District, which includes Atlanta, until his death in 2020.

Freedom Riders Face Bloodshed in Alabama

On May 14, 1961, the Greyhound bus was the first to arrive in Anniston, Alabama. There, an angry mob of about 200 white people surrounded the bus, causing the driver to continue past the bus station.

The mob followed the bus in automobiles, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. The Freedom Riders escaped the bus as it burst into flames, only to be brutally beaten by members of the surrounding mob.

The second bus, a Trailways vehicle, traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, and those riders were also beaten by an angry white mob, many of whom brandished metal pipes. Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor stated that, although he knew the Freedom Riders were arriving and violence awaited them, he posted no police protection at the station because it was Mother's Day.

Photographs of the burning Greyhound bus and the bloodied riders appeared on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country and around the world the next day, drawing international attention to the Freedom Riders' cause and the state of race relations in the United States.

Following the widespread violence, CORE officials could not find a bus driver who would agree to transport the integrated group, and they decided to abandon the Freedom Rides. However, Diane Nash, an activist from the SNCC, organized a group of 10 students from Nashville, Tennessee, to continue the rides.

U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, brother of President John F. Kennedy, began negotiating with Governor John Patterson of Alabama and the bus companies to secure a driver and state protection for the new group of Freedom Riders. The rides finally resumed, on a Greyhound bus departing Birmingham under police escort, on May 20.

Federal Marshals Called In

The violence toward the Freedom Riders was not quelled-rather, the police abandoned the Greyhound bus just before it arrived at the Montgomery, Alabama, terminal, where a white mob attacked the riders with baseball bats and clubs as they disembarked. Attorney General Kennedy sent 600 federal marshals to the city to stop the violence.

The following night, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. led a service at the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, which was attended by more than one thousand supporters of the Freedom Riders. A riot ensued outside the church, and King called Robert Kennedy to ask for protection.

Kennedy summoned the federal marshals, who used tear gas to disperse the white mob. Patterson declared martial law in the city and dispatched the National Guard to restore order.

Kennedy Urges 'Cooling Off' Period

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders departed Montgomery for Jackson, Mississippi. There, several hundred supporters greeted the riders. However, those who attempted to use the whites-only facilities were arrested for trespassing and taken to the maximum-security penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi.

That same day, U.S. Attorney General Kennedy issued a statement urging a "cooling off" period in the face of the growing violence:

"A very difficult condition exists now in the states of Mississippi and Alabama. Besides the groups of 'Freedom Riders' traveling through these states, there are curiosity seekers, publicity seekers and others who are seeking to serve their own causes, as well as many persons who are traveling because they must use the interstate carriers to reach their destination.

In this confused situation, there is increasingly possibility that innocent persons may be injured. A mob asks no questions.

A cooling off period is needed. It would be wise for those traveling through these two Sites to delay their trips until the present state of confusion and danger has passed and an atmosphere of reason and normalcy has been restored."

During the Mississippi hearings, the judge turned and looked at the wall rather than listen to the Freedom Riders' defense-as had been the case when sit-in participants were arrested for protesting segregated lunch counters in Tennessee. He sentenced the riders to 30 days in jail.

Attorneys from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP), a civil rights organization, appealed the convictions all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed them.

Desegregating Travel

The violence and arrests continued to garner national and international attention, and drew hundreds of new Freedom Riders to the cause.

The rides continued over the next several months, and in the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals.

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Freedom Riders - Facts, Timeline & Significance | HISTORY

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Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals.

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March on washington
1. was a massive protest to washington
2. MLK gave a speech called "I have a dream"
3. they wanted civil rights
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/march-on-washington

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March on Washington - Date, Facts & Significance | HISTORY

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The March on Washington was a massive protest march that occurred in August 1963, when some 250,000 people gathered i…

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Freedom Summer
1. people volunteered to protest peacefully
2.  3 volunteers disappeared
3. their bodies were found after 2 years beaten by a K.K.K member.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-summer

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Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive aimed at increasing the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. Over 700 mostly white volunteers joined African Americans in Mississippi to fight against voter intimidation and discrimination at the polls.

The movement was organized by civil rights organizations like the Congress on Racial Equality ( CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC) and run by the local Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). Freedom Summer volunteers were met with violent resistance from the Ku Klux Klan and members of state and local law enforcement. News coverage of beatings, false arrests and even murder drew international attention to the civil rights movement. The increased awareness it brought to voter discrimination helped lead to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

What Was The Cause of the Freedom Summer?

By 1964, the civil rights movement was in full swing. The Freedom Riders had spent 1961 riding buses throughout the segregated South, fighting Jim Crow laws that dictated where Black riders could sit, eat, and drink. Martin Luther King, Jr. had given his famous " I Have a Dream" speech at the August 1963 March on Washington as 250,000 people gathered before him at the Lincoln Memorial.

Despite all of this progress, the South remained segregated, especially when it came to the polls, where African Americans faced violence and intimidation when they attempted to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Poll taxes and literacy tests designed to silence Black voters were common. Without access to the polls, political change in favor of civil rights was slow-to-non-existent. Mississippi was chosen as the site of the Freedom Summer project due to its historically low levels of African American voter registration; in 1962 less than 7 percent of the state's eligible Black voters were registered to vote.

Freedom Summer Begins

On June 15, 1964, the first three hundred volunteers arrived in Mississippi. Mississippi Project Director Robert "Bob" Moses had pledged his staff and volunteers to "nonviolence in all situations." Few could have foreseen how dire the situation would become.

Volunteers and staff had been warned about the high probability of being arrested and the need to have enough money for bail. They had also been encouraged to mentally prepare themselves for the experience by reading books like Dr. King's memoir, Stride Toward Freedom, and Lillian Smith's novel Killers of the Dream. No books could have prepared them for what happened next.

Among the first wave of volunteers to arrive on June 15 were two white students from New York, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney, a local Black man. The three disappeared after visiting Philadelphia, Mississippi, where they were investigating the burning of a church. Their names became nationally-known as the hunt for their killers began. Spooked but still determined, the staff and volunteers of the Mississippi Project continued on with their mission to register voters and foster a grassroots freedom movement that would continue after their departure.

Six weeks later, the beaten bodies of the missing volunteers were recovered, killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob that had the protection and help of a local policeman. Public outcry over the killings mounted: Where was Federal protection? Why had the investigations been so slow? Distrust grew between white and Black volunteers and staff.

Was The Freedom Summer A Success?

Voter registration in Mississippi was not greatly impacted by the Freedom Summer. While 17,000 Black Mississippians attempted to register to vote that summer, only 1,200 were successful.

The Mississippi Project did establish more than 40 Freedom Schools serving a combined 3,000 students. The Freedom Summer also raised awareness for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, about which Dr. King said: "If you value your party, if you value your nation, if you value democratic government you have no alternative but to recognize, with full voice and vote, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party."

But at the August 1964 Democratic National Convention held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, MFDP delegates were refused seats, dealing another blow to organizers who had risked their lives to make a change.

Impact of The Freedom Summer

Some believe the national attention the Freedom Summer garnered for the civil rights movement helped convince President Lyndon B. Johnson and Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

After the violence of the Freedom Summer, divisions within the civil rights movement grew between those who continued to believe in non-violence and those who had begun to doubt whether equality could be reached through peaceful means. After 1964, more militant factions would rise as the struggle for equality continued.

Sources

Freedom Summer. King Institute of Stanford.
The 1964 Miss. Freedom Summer Protests Won Progress At a Bloody Price. The Daily Beast.
The Tragic Success of Freedom Summer. Politico.
Freedom Summer of 1964 was a mission in hostile territory. USA Today.

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Freedom Summer - Definition, Murders & Results

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Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations. The Ku Klux Klan, police and state and local authorities carried out a series of violent attacks against the activists, including arson, beatings, false arrest and the murders of at least three people.

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Voting rights act
1. outlawed discrimination
2. Made you have to get a literacy test to vote
3. made colored people able to vote
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act#:~:text=This%20act%20was%20signed%20into,as%20a%20prerequisite%20to%20voting.

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Sound Smart: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 | History

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Poor People's Campaign
1. MLK announced the project
2. poor people marched to washington to demand jobs
3. they wanted an education
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/poor-peoples-campaign

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The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute

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Bob Fitch photography archive, © Stanford University Libraries

Martin Luther King announced the Poor People's Campaign at a staff retreat for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in November 1967. Seeking a "middle ground between riots on the one hand and timid supplications for justice on the other," King planned for an initial group of 2,000 poor people to descend on Washington, D.C., southern states and northern cities to meet with government officials to demand jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage, and education for poor adults and children designed to improve their self-image and self-esteem (King, 29 November 1967).

Suggested to King by Marion Wright, director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People' s Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Jackson, Mississippi, the Poor People's Campaign was seen by King as the next chapter in the struggle for genuine equality. Desegregation and the right to vote were essential, but King believed that African Americans and other minorities would never enter full citizenship until they had economic security. Through nonviolent direct action, King and SCLC hoped to focus the nation's attention on economic inequality and poverty. "This is a highly significant event," King told delegates at an early planning meeting, describing the campaign as "the beginning of a new co-operation, understanding, and a determination by poor people of all colors and backgrounds to assert and win their right to a decent life and respect for their culture and dignity" (SCLC, 15 March 1968). Many leaders of American Indian, Puerto Rican, Mexican American, and poor white communities pledged themselves to the Poor People's Campaign.

Some in SCLC thought King's campaign too ambitious, and the demands too amorphous. Although King praised the simplicity of the campaign's goals, saying, "it's as pure as a man needing an income to support his family," he knew that the campaign was inherently different from others SCLC had attempted (King, 29 November 1967). "We have an ultimate goal of freedom, independence, self-determination, whatever we want to call it, but we aren't going to get all of that now, and we aren't going to get all of that next year," he commented at a staff meeting on 17 January 1968. "Let's find something that is so possible, so achievable, so pure, so simple that even the backlash can't do much to deny it. And yet something so non-token and so basic to life that even the black nationalists can't disagree with it that much" (King, 17 January 1968).

After King's assassination in April 1968, SCLC decided to go on with the campaign under the leadership of Ralph Abernathy, SCLC's new president. On Mother's Day, 12 May 1968, thousands of women, led by Coretta Scott King, formed the first wave of demonstrators. The following day, Resurrection City, a temporary settlement of tents and shacks, was built on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Braving rain, mud, and summer heat, protesters stayed for over a month. Demonstrators made daily pilgrimages to various federal agencies to protest and demand economic justice. Midway through the campaign, Robert Kennedy, whose wife had attended the Mother's Day opening of Resurrection City, was assassinated. Out of respect for the campaign, his funeral procession passed through Resurrection City. The Department of the Interior forced Resurrection City to close on 24 June 1968, after the permit to use park land expired.

Although the campaign succeeded in small ways, such as qualifying 200 counties for free surplus food distribution and securing promises from several federal agencies to hire poor people to help run programs for the poor, Abernathy felt these concessions were insufficient.

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Martin Luther King announced the Poor People's Campaign at a staff retreat for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in November 1967.