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President Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

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President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.

From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.

The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.

The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.

The Emancipation Proclamation

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Enlarge The Emancipation Proclamation (page 1) Record Group 11 General Records of the United States View in National Archives Catalog Español President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

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The 14th Amendment, which requires equal protection under the law to all persons is ratified.

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14th Amendment: Simplified Summary, Text & Impact

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The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including former slaves—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.”

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The 15th Amendment, which bans racial discrimination in voting is ratified.

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The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution

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The 15th Amendment guaranteed African-American men the right to vote. Almost immediately after ratification, African Americans began to take part in running for office and voting.

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The time period of the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

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Read 113k reviews from the world's largest community for readers. The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of consci...

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President Truman issues Executive Order 9981 outlawing segregation in the U.S. military.

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When President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948, calling for the desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, he repudiated 170 years of officially sanctioned discrimination. Since the American Revolution, African Americans had served in the military, but almost always separately from white soldiers-and usually in menial roles.

A major achievement of the post-war civil rights movement -and of Truman's presidency-the event marked the first time a U.S. commander in chief had used an executive order to implement a civil rights policy. It became a crucial step toward inspiring other parts of American society to accept desegregation.

Truman's journey to signing 9981 is the story, in part, of heeding pressure from Black civil rights leaders and recognizing, pragmatically, the importance of the Black vote to his political fortunes. But it's also the story of his overcoming his own deeply embedded racial prejudices.

Truman's White Supremacist Roots

In 1911, when Truman was a 27-year-old corporal in the Missouri National Guard, he wrote to his future wife, Bess Wallace: "I think one man is just as good as another so long as he's honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman... I am strongly of the opinion that negros (sic) ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America."

Truman came by these beliefs from his upbringing in Missouri, where his grandparents had owned slaves and where 60 African Americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950, the second-highest number of any state over that period outside the Deep South.

He grew up in a home that openly reviled abolitionism, Reconstruction and Abraham Lincoln. "Truman literally learned at his mother's knee to share the South's view of the War Between the States," wrote William E. Leuchtenburg, a professor emeritus of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in 1991. "He also acquired an abiding belief in white supremacy."

After the Lynchings of Black Veterans, Truman Took Action

Yet when the beatings and murders of recently returned African American World War II veterans in the South captured national attention, Truman, who assumed the presidency after Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, was moved to act.

"My stomach turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of army trucks in Mississippi and beaten," Truman said. "Whatever my inclinations as a native of Missouri might have been, as president I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this."

In response to the lynchings, and under pressure from Black civil rights groups, Truman formed the President's Committee on Civil Rights in late 1946. It produced a report, To Secure These Rights, which condemned all forms of segregation and asked for an immediate end to discrimination and segregation in all branches of the armed services.

In 1947, Truman became the first president to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In his speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Truman said, "It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all of our citizens."

Truman Realized He Needs the Black Vote

Throughout his life, Truman made racist statements to his intimates and in private correspondence and likely never fully abandoned the attitudes of his youth. But he was an astute politician who understood the importance of the Black vote to his political fortunes. In 1940, as a U.S. Senator, he told the National Colored Democratic Association, "The Negroes' flag is our flag, and he stands ready, just as we do, to defend it against all foes from within and without."

Truman's sharpening views on civil rights during his first term as president divided the Democratic Party. Conservative Southern Democrats from South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama protested the party's civil rights plank, walking out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Without the white Southern vote, Truman's chances in the general election against Republican nominee Thomas Dewey dimmed considerably.

Despite the Dixiecrat defections, Truman's aides convinced him that a winning coalition included Black voters, whose leaders saw the integration of the armed forces as a major election issue. Months before the election, 20 African American organizations, including the NAACP and the National Urban League, issued a "Declaration of Negro Voters," which included desegregating the armed forces among its demands.

In the last days of the election, Truman made a campaign appearance in Harlem, marking the first time a U.S. president had visited the symbolic capital of Black America. Truman was lured there by Anna Arnold Hedgeman, an African American political operative who spearheaded his campaign's Black outreach. According to Hedgeman's biographer, Jennifer Scanlon, "Truman won the race, in a narrow margin nationally, thanks in part to the Black electorate and to Hedgeman."

African American Leaders Dialed Up the Pressure

On March 22, 1948, Truman met with Black leaders to discuss segregation. "I can tell you the mood among Negroes of this country is that they will never bear arms again until all forms of bias and discrimination are abolished," A. Phillip Randolph, the pioneering union organizer and civil rights leader, told the president.

At a hearing nine days later before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Randolph said, "I personally will advise Negroes to refuse to fight as slaves for a democracy they cannot possess and cannot enjoy."

In a celebrated case taken up by the American Civil Liberties Union, Winfrid Lynn, a Black landscape gardener from New York, went to jail after he told his local draft board he would "not be compelled to serve in a unit undemocratically selected as a Negro."

That June, Randolph informed President Truman that if he didn't issue an executive order ending segregation in the armed forces, African Americans would resist the draft.

A month later, with an election looming and under intense pressure from civil rights leaders, Truman signed Executive Order 9981-and created the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Forces, popularly known as the Fahy Committee, to oversee the process.

Gradual Integration-and a Lasting Legacy

To achieve full integration, Truman needed cooperation from the military's four branches. "I want the job done," Truman told the committee in early 1949, "and I want it done in a way so that everyone will be happy to cooperate to get it done."

For its part, the Army balked. "The Army is not an instrument for social evolution," said Kenneth Royall, the Secretary of the Army, who expressed concern about the order's adverse effect on enlistments, reenlistments and soldier morale nationwide-but especially in the South.

Truman, who would settle for nothing less than full desegregation, forced Royall into retirement after he refused to comply with the order.

It took six years to desegregate America's armed forces. In late 1954, the deactivation of the 94 th Engineer Battalion, the Army's last all-Black unit, completed the process. Executive Order 9981 remains one of the crowning achievements of Truman's eight years in office, a bold decision that pitted him against the southern wing of his party on this and other civil rights issues. But as postwar American society evolved, the armed forces became an important model for desegregation and equal opportunities for African Americans.

In 1998, on the 50th anniversary of Executive Order 9981, General Colin Powell, who later became America's first Black secretary of state, spoke about the impact of Truman's decision on his life: "The military was the only institution in all of America-because of Harry Truman-where a young Black kid, now 21 years old, could dream the dream he dared not think about at age 11. It was the one place where the only thing that counted was courage, where the color of your guts and the color of your blood was more important than the color of your skin."

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Why Harry Truman Ended Segregation in the US Military in 1948 | HISTORY

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Executive Order 9981, one of Truman's most important achievements, became a major catalyst for the civil rights movement.

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The Supreme Court declares school segregation unconstitutional in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that "separate-but-equal" education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

Separate But Equal Doctrine

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that racially segregated public facilities were legal, so long as the facilities for Black people and whites were equal.

The ruling constitutionally sanctioned laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites-known as "Jim Crow" laws -and established the "separate but equal" doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

But by the early 1950s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) was working hard to challenge segregation laws in public schools, and had filed lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs in states such as South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware.

In the case that would become most famous, a plaintiff named Oliver Brown filed a class-action suit against the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1951, after his daughter, Linda Brown, was denied entrance to Topeka's all-white elementary schools.

In his lawsuit, Brown claimed that schools for Black children were not equal to the white schools, and that segregation violated the so-called "equal protection clause" of the 14th Amendment, which holds that no state can "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

The case went before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, which agreed that public school segregation had a "detrimental effect upon the colored children" and contributed to "a sense of inferiority," but still upheld the "separate but equal" doctrine.
READ MORE: The Family That Fought School Segregation 8 Years Before Brown v. Board of Ed
Brown v. Board of Education Verdict

When Brown's case and four other cases related to school segregation first came before the Supreme Court in 1952, the Court combined them into a single case under the name Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, served as chief attorney for the plaintiffs. (Thirteen years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson would appoint Marshall as the first Black Supreme Court justice.)

At first, the justices were divided on how to rule on school segregation, with Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson holding the opinion that the Plessy verdict should stand. But in September 1953, before Brown v. Board of Education was to be heard, Vinson died, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower replaced him with Earl Warren, then governor of California.

Displaying considerable political skill and determination, the new chief justice succeeded in engineering a unanimous verdict against school segregation the following year.

In the decision, issued on May 17, 1954, Warren wrote that "in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place," as segregated schools are "inherently unequal." As a result, the Court ruled that the plaintiffs were being "deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment."

Little Rock Nine

In its verdict, the Supreme Court did not specify how exactly schools should be integrated, but asked for further arguments about it.

In May 1955, the Court issued a second opinion in the case (known as Brown v. Board of Education II), which remanded future desegregation cases to lower federal courts and directed district courts and school boards to proceed with desegregation "with all deliberate speed."

Though well intentioned, the Court's actions effectively opened the door to local judicial and political evasion of desegregation. While Kansas and some other states acted in accordance with the verdict, many school and local officials in the South defied it.

In one major example, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called out the state National Guard to prevent Black students from attending high school in Little Rock in 1957. After a tense standoff, President Eisenhower deployed federal troops, and nine students-known as the " Little Rock Nine"- were able to enter Central High School under armed guard.
READ MORE: Why Eisenhower Sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock After Brown v. Board
Impact of Brown v. Board of Education

Though the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board didn't achieve school desegregation on its own, the ruling (and the steadfast resistance to it across the South) fueled the nascent civil rights movement in the United States.

In 1955, a year after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and would lead to other boycotts, sit-ins and demonstrations (many of them led by Martin Luther King Jr.), in a movement that would eventually lead to the toppling of Jim Crow laws across the South.

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, backed by enforcement by the Justice Department, began the process of desegregation in earnest. This landmark piece of civil rights legislation was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

In 1976, the Supreme Court issued another landmark decision in Runyon v. McCrary, ruling that even private, nonsectarian schools that denied admission to students on the basis of race violated federal civil rights laws.

By overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine, the Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education had set the legal precedent that would be used to overturn laws enforcing segregation in other public facilities. But despite its undoubted impact, the historic verdict fell short of achieving its primary mission of integrating the nation's public schools.

Today, more than 60 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the debate continues over how to combat racial inequalities in the nation's school system, largely based on residential patterns and differences in resources between schools in wealthier and economically disadvantaged districts across the country.
READ MORE: How Dolls Helped Win Brown v. Board of Education
Sources

History - Brown v. Board of Education Re-enactment, United States Courts.
Brown v. Board of Education, The Civil Rights Movement: Volume I (Salem Press).
Cass Sunstein, "Did Brown Matter?" The New Yorker, May 3, 2004.
Brown v. Board of Education, PBS.org.
Richard Rothstein, Brown v. Board at 60, Economic Policy Institute, April 17, 2014.

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Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that "separate-but-equal" education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

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Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. Bus boycott begins and lasts for more than a year. Buses desegregated in 1956.

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rosa parks stood up for civil rights by sitting down - cnn

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63 years ago, Rosa Parks stood up for civil rights by sitting down

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It was on this day in 1955 when a simple act of defiance elevated a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, into a pivotal symbol in America's civil rights movement.

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The National Guard is called in to block “The Little Rock Nine” from integrating Little Rock High School. President Eisenhower sends in federal troops to allow the black students to enter the school.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were illegal. The case, Brown v. The Board of Education, has become iconic for Americans because it marked the formal beginning of the end of segregation.

But the gears of change grind slowly. It wasn't until September 1957 when nine teens would become symbols, much like the landmark decision we know as Brown v. The Board of Education, of all that was in store for our nation in the years to come.

The "Little Rock Nine," as the nine teens came to be known, were to be the first African American students to enter Little Rock's Central High School. Three years earlier, following the Supreme Court ruling, the Little Rock school board pledged to voluntarily desegregate its schools. This idea was explosive for the community and, like much of the South, it was fraught with anger and bitterness.

On September 2, 1957 the night prior to what was to be the teens' first day in Central High classrooms, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus ordered the state's National Guard to block their entrance. Faubus said it was for the safety of the nine students.

On September 4, just 24 hours after a federal judge ordered the Little Rock Nine to begin attending Central High immediately, a belligerent mob, along with the National Guard, again prevented the teens from entering the school.

Sixteen days later a federal judge ordered the National Guard removed. Once again on September 23, the Little Rock Nine attempted to enter the school. Though escorted by Little Rock police into a side door, another angry crowd gathered and tried to rush into Central High. Fearing for the lives of the nine students, school officials sent the teens home. They did, however, manage to attend classes for about three hours.

Finally, 52 years ago today, on September 25, 1957, following a plea from Little Rock's mayor, Woodrow Mann, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and sent U.S. Army troops to the scene. Personally guarded by soldiers from the National Guard soldiers and the Army's 101st Airborne, the Little Rock Nine began regular class attendance at Central High.

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In 1954 the United States Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were illegal. The case, Brown v. The Board of Education, has become iconic for Americans because it marked the formal beginning of the end of segregation.

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Four black college students begin sit-ins at the lunch counter of a Greensboro, North Carolina, restaurant where black patrons are not served.

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Photo by News & Record Staff, © News & Record

The Greensboro Sit-Ins were non-violent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, which lasted from February 1, 1960 to July 25, 1960. The protests led to the Woolworth Department Store chain ending its policy of racial segregation in its stores in the southern United States. The Greensboro Sit-Ins were the first prominent sit-ins of the civil rights movement.

The "Greensboro Four," the four young black men who staged the first sit-ins in Greensboro-Ezell Blair Jr. (now known as Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil-were students at North Carolina and Agricultural and Technical College. They were influenced by the non-violent protest teachings and strategies of Mohandas Gandhi, as well as the early freedom rides organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1947.

Blair, Richmond, McCain, and McNeil planned the protest carefully, enlisting the help of a local white businessman, Ralph Johns, to put their plan into action. That plan was simple. They would first stop at Ralph Johns's store so he could contact a news reporter. They would then go to Woolworth's Five and Dime store in downtown Greensboro and sit at the lunch counters where they would ask to be served. When they were denied service, they would refuse to leave. They would repeat the process daily as long as it took to desegregate the lunch counter. They also hoped their protest would attract widespread attention to the issue and pressure Woolworth to desegregate.

On February 1, 1960, the four sat down at the lunch counter inside the Woolworth store. Woolworth's lunch counter policy was to serve whites only and the staff, which included black employees, refused the four men service. The store manager, Clarence Harris, asked them to leave, but the four men stayed until the store closed that night.

The next day, more than twenty black students joined the sit-in including coeds from Bennett College also in Greensboro. White customers harassed the black students and the lunch counter staff continued to refuse them service. News reporters and a TV cameraman covered the protests the second day as the Greensboro community and eventually the nation and the world learned of them. On the third day, more than sixty people came to the Woolworth store. On the fourth day, more the three hundred people took part in the protests which now included the lunch counter at Greensboro's Kress store (now K-Mart).

As the sit-ins occurred in Greensboro, students from other North Carolina sites, including Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte, staged similar protests. The sit-in movement spread to Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta, Georgia; and Richmond, Virginia, by early March.

The Greensboro Woolworth's finally served blacks at its lunch counter on July 25, 1960, when manager Clarence Harris asked four black Woolworth's employees-Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones, and Charles Best-to change out of their uniforms and into street clothes. The employees then ordered a meal at the lunch counter, becoming the first African Americans to be served at Woolworth's. Most lunch counters around Greensboro would be desegregated over the next few weeks.

The Greensboro Sit-Ins were the catalyst for the formation of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which would become one of most important organizations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, has collections related to the Greensboro Sit-Ins.

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The Greensboro Sit-Ins were non-violent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, which lasted from February 1, 1960 to July 25, 1960. The protests led to the Woolworth Department Store chain ending its policy of racial segregation in its stores in the southern United States. The Greensboro ... Read MoreGreensboro Sit-Ins (1960)

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To Kill A Mockingbird is published on July 11th.

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"To Kill a Mockingbird" was Lee's only published book until "Go Set a Watchman," an earlier draft of "Mockingbird," was published on July 14, 2015. Lee continued responding to her work's impact until her death in February 2016.

The book is loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was 10.

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'To Kill a Mockingbird,' published 60 years ago, still resonates

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"To Kill a Mockingbird" was Lee's only published book until "Go Set a Watchman," an earlier draft of "Mockingbird," was published on July 14, 2015. Lee continued responding to her work's impact until her death in February 2016.

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CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) and SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) sponsor “Freedom Rides,” which bus student volunteers into Southern states to test new laws prohibiting segregation.

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Courtesy Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

Following the momentum of student-led sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina and Nashville, Tennesssee in early 1960, an interracial group of activists, led by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Executive Director James Farmer, decided to continue to challenge Jim Crow segregation in the South by organizing "freedom rides" through the region. They used as their model CORE's 1946 "Journey of Reconciliation" where an interracial group rode interstate buses to test the enforcement of the Supreme Court's decision in Morgan v. the Commonwealth of Virginia which outlawed segregation in interstate travel. White southern segregationists resisted CORE's efforts. When most of the demonstrators were arrested in North Carolina, the police effectively aborted the Journey of Reconciliation.

Recalling that failed effort 15 years earlier, James Farmer organized a new generation of black and white activists to travel on interstate buses to test the 1960 United States Supreme Court decision in Boynton v. Virginia which reiterated the earlier ruling prohibiting racial segregation in interstate transportation.

This time CORE organized a dozen activists who were paired into two interracial sets of Freedom Riders who would travel on Greyhound and Trailways buses, respectively, from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, Louisiana. The Freedom Riders left Washington on May 4, 1961 and traveled without incident across Virginia and North Carolina. They encountered violence for the first time at the bus terminal in Rock Hill, South Carolina when several young white males beat black riders who attempted to use a "whites only" restroom.

The Freedom Riders continued, however, and crossed Georgia without incident. When the activists reached Alabama on May 14 the attacks intensified. The Greyhound riders were met in Anniston by a mob whose members threw rocks and slashed the bus's tires. The driver managed to drive the bus a few miles out of town. When he stopped to repair the tires, white supremacists firebombed the vehicle. For that group the Freedom Ride had ended.

The riders in the Trailways bus were also assaulted by Anniston whites. They managed to get to Birmingham where they encountered a larger mob who beat them with baseball bats, lead pipes and bicycle chains.

Infuriated by the news of the vicious assaults, Diane Nash, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organized a new contingent of Freedom Riders in Nashville. The second group departed from Nashville on May 14 to reinforce the beleaguered CORE Riders in Alabama.

Upon their arrival in Birmingham on May 17, Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Conner ordered his police officers to place the activists in protective custody. The following morning law officials transported the riders back to the Tennessee state line, leaving them on the side of the highway. Instead of abandoning the campaign, Nash led the resilient activists 100 miles back to Nashville to regroup.

On May 20, the Nashville riders were back in Birmingham where there were no incidents. Then all of the Freedom Riders traveled on to Montgomery where a mob of men, women and children carrying baseball bats, tire irons and bricks met them at the terminal. As the riders departed from the bus, the angry gang swarmed, beating the passengers. They attacked SNCC activists John Lewis and Jim Zwerg, who both sustained severe injuries. When White House observer John Seigenthaler attempted to protect two of the Freedom Riders, Susan Wilbur and Susan Hermann, an attacker knocked him unconscious.

The nationally televised attack strengthened the resolve of the Freedom Riders. James Farmer arrived to personally lead the rest of the group to Jackson, Mississippi. Law enforcement officials protected them as they traveled across the state. Once in the bus terminal in the Mississippi capital, Jackson city police arrested all of the demonstrators for violating a recently passed breach of the peace statute. They were convicted and fined $200 each. When the riders refused to pay, the judge sentenced them to 90 days in jail.

In an effort to intimidate the marchers, Mississippi officials transferred the now nearly one hundred men and women freedom riders to the state penitentiary at Parchman where they were subject to beatings and inedible food and repeatedly strip searched. Prison officials confiscated the blankets and mattresses of all of the activists. When other demonstrators arrived in Jackson they were also arrested and sent to Parchman where they faced similar conditions. By the end of the summer over 300 women and men were incarcerated there.

The Freedom Riders failed to reach New Orleans, Louisiana. However the international attention their efforts received forced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to petition the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to outlaw segregation in interstate travel. Unlike the earlier Supreme Court rulings which segregationists largely ignored, the ICC immediately imposed sanctions and penalties for the violation of its order. On November 1, 1961, the new order went into effect across the nation.

The Freedom Rides illuminated the courage of black and white youth and highlighted the leadership of Diane Nash. The Freedom Rides also inspired rural southern blacks to embrace civil disobedience as a strategy for regaining their civil rights. That inspiration would be seen in subsequent campaigns such as Mississippi's Freedom Summer in 1964 and the Selma Movement in 1965 as well as in dozens of much less heralded efforts to register to vote or to integrate the region's public schools.

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Following the momentum of student-led sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina and Nashville, Tennesssee in early 1960, an interracial group of activists, led by Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Executive Director James Farmer, decided to continue to challenge Jim Crow segregation in the South by organizing ... Read MoreFreedom Rides (1961)

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To Kill a Mockingbird wins the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

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The 1961 Fiction winner was selected by the public from a diverse group of 100 finalists on PBS's 'The Great American Read.'

Following eight episodes, the vote is in - and "To Kill a Mockingbird" reigns supreme.

The Southern Gothic novel by Harper Lee received 242,275 votes from a total of nearly 4.3 million cast in a poll accompanying PBS's "The Great American Read."

"I'm not surprised at all that Americans chose 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as their best-loved novel," host Meredith Vieira said. "Harper Lee's iconic work of literature is cherished for its resonance, its life lessons and its impact on one's own moral compass."

As part of the series, the network invited the public to select their favorite novel from 100 finalists chosen through a demographically diverse national survey of 7,200 respondents.

The group ran the gamut from canonical works of English literature ("Pride and Prejudice" [#4]) to world classics ("One Hundred Years of Solitude" [#54]) and contemporary bestsellers, including George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" quintet (#48). Individual books in finalist series were not ranked in favor of the complete work.

Other Pulitzer-winning novels that made the cut include "Gone With the Wind" (#6), "The Grapes of Wrath" (#12), "Lonesome Dove" (#22), "The Color Purple" (#27), "A Confederacy of Dunces" (#58), "Beloved" (#60), "Gilead" (#84) and "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" (#93).

1953 Fiction winner Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" (#65) was also selected, while Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" (#72) was shortlisted for the 1953 Fiction Prize.

Read the full list here.

Related

Read the jury report on "To Kill a Mockingbird" here.

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'To Kill a Mockingbird' Voted America's Favorite Novel

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The 1961 Fiction winner was selected by the public from a diverse group of 100 finalists on PBS's 'The Great American Read.' Following eight episodes, the vote is in - and "To Kill a Mockingbird" reigns supreme.

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James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. The Supreme Court rules that segregation is unconstitutional in all transportation facilities.

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James Howard Meredith was born on June 25, 1933, in Kosciusko, Miss., and raised on his family's 84-acre farm in Attala County. After graduation from Gibbs High in St. Petersburg, Fla., in June 1951, he served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1960, including a three-year tour of duty at Tachikawa Air Base in Japan.

He returned to his home state determined to become the first African-American to attend the University of Mississippi. He attended Jackson State College from 1960 to 1961, and applied for admission to the University of Mississippi in January 1961.

The state took several measures to prevent his admission. In February, the university sent Meredith a telegram denying his admission. When Meredith's responses to this telegram went unanswered, he filed suit with the assistance of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund. After a protracted court battle, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Sept. 10, 1962, that Meredith was to be admitted to the university. Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett tried to prevent Meredith's enrollment by assuming the position of registrar and blocking his admission.

On Sept. 30, 1962, when a deal was reached between Barnett and U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy to allow Meredith to enroll, a riot broke out on campus. A mob of angry whites confronted U.S. marshals stationed on campus to protect Meredith. The crowd assaulted the marshals with bricks and bullets outside the Lyceum, the university's administration building, until the arrival of federal troops quelled the violence in the early morning hours. Two bystanders died in the confrontation, 206 marshals and soldiers were wounded, and 200 individuals were arrested. Meredith was finally allowed to register for courses on Oct. 1, 1962.

Messages of support for Meredith arrived from all over the world, including from Rosa Parks, Josephine Baker and Langston Hughes. However, Meredith was ostracized by most of his fellow students at the university and needed 24-hour protection from marshals. As a result, he described himself as "the most segregated Negro in America." The broadside "Rebel Resistance" was created by students, in collaboration with the Citizens' Council, to urge students to avoid any association with Meredith. Federal troops remained on campus for more than a year to ensure his safety. In spite of these challenges, Meredith graduated with a bachelor's degree in August 1963. He went on to earn his LL.B. in 1968 from Columbia Law School.

A civil rights activist, businessman, politician and author, Meredith has dedicated his life to supporting individual rights. Aside from being the first African-American to attend the University of Mississippi, Meredith is noted for leading the 1966 "March Against Fear" from Memphis to Jackson in protest of the physical violence that African-Americans faced while exercising their right to vote. When Meredith was shot on the second day of the march, civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., stepped in to complete the march.

Meredith campaigned on behalf of a number of black politicians in several states, and in 1972 ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat. In 1989, he joined the staff of North Carolina's arch-conservative Sen. Jesse Helms. In 1996, he led the "Black Man's March to the Library." He is the author of numerous publications, including Three Years in Mississippi, which describes his experience integrating the University of Mississippi, and A Mission from God: A Memoir and Challenge for America.

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James Howard Meredith was born on June 25, 1933, in Kosciusko, Miss., and raised on his family's 84-acre farm in Attala County. After graduation from Gibbs High in St. Petersburg, Fla., in June 1951, he served in the U.S. Air Force from 1951 to 1960, including a three-year tour of duty at Tachikawa Air Base in Japan.

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Gregory Peck wins an Academy Award for best actor in the film To Kill a Mockingbird.

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Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

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With a career beginning in 1944, actor Gregory Peck has appeared in indelible dramatic roles for many major Hollywood directors and also become a role model for his lifelong humanitarian efforts. A crusader for social issues and an outspoken opponent of the blacklist, he won an Academy Award for his performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) after four previous nominations and received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1968. He also served as the Academy President from 1967 to 1970 and received such honors as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and the AFI Life Achievement Award. With other major roles including Spellbound (1945), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), Twelve O'Clock High (1949), Roman Holiday (1953), The Big Country (1958), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Cape Fear (1962), and The Omen (1978), he retains a place in history as an all-American role model.

Featuring highlights from the Margaret Herrick Library and the Gregory Peck Collection at the Academy Film Archive.

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With a career beginning in 1944, actor Gregory Peck has appeared in indelible dramatic roles for many major Hollywood directors and also become a role model for his lifelong humanitarian efforts.

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Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, declaring discrimination based on race illegal.

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Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Definition, Summary & Significance | HISTORY

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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, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement.

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A march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, leads to the signing of a new Voting Rights Act.

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1965 Selma to Montgomery March Fast Facts | CNN

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Read CNN’s Fast Facts on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march in Alabama, a pivotal event in the civil rights movement

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Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court justice. In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional.

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Thurgood Marshall stands behind President Lyndon B. Johnson at the White House on June 13, 1967, as LBJ announces he is nominating Marshall to serve on the Supreme Court. | AP Photo

On this day in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom Clark. In announcing his choice, Johnson said it was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place."

On Aug. 30, the Senate, after a heated debate, confirmed Marshall by a vote of 69-11. Two days later, after being sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Marshall became the first African-American to sit on the nation's highest court.

As the NAACP's chief counsel from 1938 to 1961, Marshall, the great-grandson of slaves, argued 32 cases before the high tribunal, repeatedly challenging racial segregation, most notably in public education. He won 29 of those cases, including a historic victory in 1954's Brown v. Board of Education decision, when the court, reversing itself, unanimously found that segregated schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy had nominated Marshall for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. A group of Southern senators, led by James Eastland (D-Miss.), the Judiciary Committee chairman, held up his confirmation, requiring him to serve for the first several months under a recess appointment.

Four years later, he left that bench to become solicitor general in LBJ's Justice Department. As solicitor general, he won 14 of the 19 cases he argued for the federal government.

Marshall's most frequent ally on the high court was William Brennan, who had been named to the court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Marshall-Brennan pair consistently supported abortion rights and opposed imposition of the death penalty.

Marshall's conservative critics noted that he once described his legal philosophy as "you do what you think is right and let the law catch up." It was a sign, they said, of Marshall's embrace of judicial activism.

In a 1987 address marking the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution, Marshall said: "The government [the Framers] devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights [that] we hold as fundamental today."

In conclusion, Marshall said: "Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights."

After 24 years on the court, Marshall retired in 1991. He died of heart failure in January 1993 at age 84. In 2005, a major airport that serves the region was renamed the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

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LBJ nominates Thurgood Marshall to Supreme Court, June 13, 1967

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On this day in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom Clark. In announcing his choice, Johnson said it was "the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place."

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President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

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50th Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act Opening Ceremony.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968, more commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, was the third major civil rights law passed in the 1960s. It followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination and Jim Crow segregation in employment, schools and public places, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed racial discrimination in voting. The Fair Housing Act, passed a week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has a complicated history.

The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. The act has two main purposes-prevent discrimination and reverse housing segregation. The part of the law that calls for the reversal of segregation is necessary because decades of unjust government practices have led to the presence of housing segregation today. Research shows that people of color are most likely to live in neighborhoods with limited access to good jobs, healthy food, adequate schools, and other resources needed for success. Jurisdictions enforcing desegregation is one way to work towards a more integrated society where everyone has equal access to opportunity.

Since the passage of the Fair Housing Act, people have brought many cases of housing discrimination to court and have won those legal battles. There has also been an increase in accessible housing available to individuals with disabilities. And recently under the Obama administration, the definition of fair housing enforcement expanded.

Though we have made some progress, many challenges to fair housing remain. There are still extreme racial disparities in homeownership and wealth. In 1968, 65.9% of white families owned their homes, a rate that was 25% higher than the 41.1% of black families that owned their homes. Today, the black homeownership rate has not changed, while the rate of white homeownership has increased five percentage points to 71.1%. These homeownership disparities contribute to the shocking racial wealth gap in America. In 2017, the typical white family held ten times the amount of wealth as the typical black family ($171,000 for whites to $17,409 for blacks, on average). These numbers have worsened since 1968 and point to the fact that housing discrimination continues to determine life outcomes.

In 2017 more than 28,000 complaints of housing discrimination were filed across the country. Some of these complaints resulted in lawsuits against cities, banks, and landlords for discrimination in housing and lending. While some cases were reported and sanctioned, others went unreported.

The changing political landscape is also a major challenge. Protecting fair housing was once a bipartisan effort, but political support for this goal has decreased in recent decades. Under the Trump administration and the direction of Secretary Ben Carson, HUD has ignored its responsibility to enforce antidiscrimination policies and actively work towards integration.

There are actions we can take as housing advocates to create a society that is less discriminatory and more integrated:

We must hold HUD accountable for enforcing fair housing policies by providing public comment on changes to their policies and bringing them to court if warranted.

We must improve access to credit and fight for stronger consumer protections, especially for people of color and low income individuals. It is unacceptable that in 2018 individuals still face discrimination when they try to get loans from banks or apply for housing.

We must update the Fair Housing Act to provide legal protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, source of income, veteran status, domestic violence survivor status, or criminal record.

We must continue to collect data and establish clear goals to determine if we are making progress in ending housing discrimination and segregation.

As activists who fought for the civil rights protections of the 1960s said, the road to justice is long and freedom is a constant struggle. It has been 50 years since the passage of the Fair Housing Act and while we have made progress that is worth celebrating, we have more work to do. We must work to end discrimination in housing because everyone deserves equal access to a safe, decent, and affordable home. We must work towards integration and creating a society in which where one lives does not determine one's outcomes.

Together, we continue the fight.
If you or someone you know is a victim of housing discrimination, you can call this number to report it: (800) 669- 9777. This piece was created with research from the National Fair Housing Alliance's "2018 Fair Housing Trends Report."

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Fair Housing Act Overview and Challenges

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50th Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act Opening Ceremony. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, more commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, was the third major civil rights law passed in the 1960s.