Amy Hu

The purpose of the law was to prevent black and white people as equal and establishing white people as above black people. The laws also required the separation of white people and people of color on all forms of public transportation and in schools

Ending racial segregation in public schools decided by Supreme Court. However many schools still remained segregated.

Sixty black pastors and civil rights leaders gathered together to coordinate the protest against radical discrimination.

On the first day of classes at Central High, Governor Orval Faubus called in the guard to block the black students’ entry into the high school. The group of 9 black student attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

On August 28, Martin Luther King speaks about 250,000 people attending on the March Washington for jobs and freedom. He used the “I have a dream” theme before, in a handful of stump speeches which makes many to see for the first time the importance and urgency of racial equality. He ended his stirring, 16-minute speech with his vision of the fruit of racial harmony:

President Lyndon B. Johson signed the civil rights act into law preventing employment discrimination

Around 600 civil rights, marchers walk to Selma, Alabama to Montgomery in protest of black voter suppression. After successfully fighting in court for their right to march, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders lead two more marches and finally reach Montgomery on March 25.

Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old.

President Johson signed the civil rights acts of 1968, providing equal housing opportunities regardless of race, religion or national origin.