Page 40 - Year 9

History: From Civil War to Civil Rights: 3 of 3

Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s

Brown vs On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that
Board of "separate but equal" public schoolsfor different races
Education were unconstitutional, following a legal challenge by the
1954 National Associationfor the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP).

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in
Money, Mississippi, on August 24, 1955, when he
The murder of reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store.
Emmett Till 1955 Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s
Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him
and shot him in the head. The men were tried for Began at a lunch counter in Woolworth’sin Greensboro when
murder, but an all-white, male jury ac- quitted them. Sit-Ins 1960 four studentsrefused to move from whites-only seats. The
The nation was shocked by these events. movement rapidly spread and led to the formationof SNCC.
Much desegregationfollowed.
On December 1, 1955, four days before the boycott
began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman,
The refused to give up her seat to a white man on a
Montgomery Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. The Members of CORE rode the Greyhound bus route through the
Bus Boycott boycottof public buses by African- Americans in Freedom Rides south to see if previously agreed desegregationwas being
1955 1961 followed.The bus was firebombed at Freedom Riders were
Montgomery began on the day of Parks' court hearing viciously attacked at Birmingham.
and lasted 381 days. Montgomery’sbuses were then
officially desegregated.
King and SCLC led a series of events in this highly- segregatedcity.
Nine black students enrolled at formerly all -white Teenagers were used in some marches and were attackedby
Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in Birmingham, police using dogs and high-pressure fire hoses. King was arrested
September 1957, testing Brown vs Board of Education. Alabama 1963 and locked up in prison. Contributed to passage of 1964 Civil
On September 4, 1957, the first day of classes at Central
Little Rock, High, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called in the Rights Act
Arkansas 1957 state National Guard to bar the black students’ entry
into the school. Later in the month, President Dwight D. 250,000 people, about one-fifth of them white, came to listen to
Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the March on speakers, including King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream speech. Parts
“Little Rock Nine” into the school, and they started their Washington 1963 of the event were filmed live on TV.
first
full day of classes on September 25.