Civil Rights Movement - Basic Information

American civil rights movement - Background material, super interesting!0Advanced issue found▲1Advanced issue found▲10Advanced issue found▲Martin Luther King, Jr. (centre), with other civil rights supporters at the March on Washington, D.C., in August 1963. The mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s. This movement had its roots in the centuries-long efforts of African slaves and their descendants to resist racial oppression and abolish the institution of slavery. Although American slaves were emancipated as a result of the Civil War and were then granted basic civil rights through the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution, struggles to secure federal protection of these rights continued during the next century. Through nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s broke the pattern of public facilities’ being segregated by “race” in the South and achieved the most important breakthrough in equal-rights legislation for African Americans since the Reconstruction period (1865–77). Although the passage in 1964 and 1965 of major civil rights legislation was victorious for the movement, by then militant black activists had begun to see their struggle as a freedom or liberation movement not just seeking civil rights reforms but instead confronting the enduring economic, political, and cultural consequences of past racial oppression. Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement Match the year to the event. 1954: Brown v. Board of Education On May 17, ???? the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. While the Brown ruling applied only to schools, it implied that segregation in other public facilities was unconstitutional as well. 1955: Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott On December 1, ????, African American civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. Her subsequent arrest initiated a sustained bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. The protest began on December 5, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., then a young local pastor, and was so successful that it was extended indefinitely. Finally, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that segregated seating was unconstitutional, and the federal decision went into effect on December 20, 1956. 1957: The Little Rock Nine and the Little Rock Central High School Integration In September ???? nine African American students attended their first day at Little Rock Central High School, whose entire student population had until that point been white. The Little Rock Nine, as they came to be called, encountered a large white mob and soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard, sent by Arkansas Gov. Orval Eugene Faubus, blocking the entrance of the school. The students were sent home and returned on September 25, protected by U.S. soldiers. Although the students were continually harassed, eight of the nine completed the academic year. 1960: The Greensboro Four and the Sit-In Movement On February 1, ????, a group of four freshmen from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina began a sit-in movement in downtown Greensboro. After making purchases at the F.W. Woolworth department store, they sat at the “whites only” lunch counter. They were refused service and eventually asked to leave. The Greensboro Four, as they came to be called, however, remained seated until closing and returned the next day with about 20 other African American students. The sit-in grew in the following weeks with protestors taking every seat in the establishment and spilling out of the store. As protestors were arrested, others would take their places so that the establishment was unceasingly occupied. The protest spread to other cities, including Atlanta and Nashville. After months of protests, facilities began to desegregate throughout the country, and the Greensboro Woolworth’s started to serve African American patrons in July. 1960: Ruby Bridges and the New Orleans School Integration On November 14, ????, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted to her first day at the previously all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans by four armed federal marshals. They were met with angry mobs shouting their disapproval, and, throughout the day, parents marched in to remove their children from the school as a protest to desegregation. Every subsequent day of that academic year Bridges was escorted to school, enduring insults and threats on her way, and then learning her lessons from her young teacher, Barbara Henry, in an otherwise empty classroom. 1963: March on Washington . In March, ????, a crowd of about 250,000 individuals gathered peacefully on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to listen to speeches by civil rights leaders, notably Martin Luther King, Jr. He addressed the crowd with an eloquent and uplifting message that famously became known as the “I Have a Dream” speech. 1964: Civil Rights Act On July 2, ????, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act into law. The act authorized the federal government to prevent racial discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities. A picture is worth a thousand words Place the titles of the timeline on their respective pictures 1955: Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott 1964: Civil Rights Act 1954: Brown v. Board of Education 1960: The Greensboro Four and the Sit-In Movement 1963: March on Washington 1960: Ruby Bridges and the New Orleans School Integration 1957: The Little Rock Nine and the Little Rock Central High School Integration Enter game PIN here!