civil right movement

(NAACP)-The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. After a race riot in Springfield, Illinois in 1908, "The Call" went out to Northerners to find a way to create social equality. In 1909, a group of multi-racial activists held a conference in New York City in response to "The Call" and decided to form the NAACP (originally called the National Negro Committee). Among the founders were W.E.B. DuBois, Ida Wells-Barnett, Henry Moscowitz, Oswald Garrison Villiard, Mary White Ovington, and William English Walling.

In the case of Guinn v. United States (1915), the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the convictions. Justice Edward White went on to strike down the grandfather clause. He saw the Oklahoma law for what it was--a bald attempt to disfranchise blacks. Justice White wrote that the act "inherently brings" discrimination based on race "into existence since it is based purely on a period of time before the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment and makes that period the controlling and dominant test of the right of suffrage.

Thurgood Marshall rose in front of the United States Supreme Court to argue that Texas’s Democratic primary system allowed whites to structurally dominate the politics of the one-party South. Specifically, the case presented the question of whether the Texas Democratic Party’s policy of prohibiting Blacks from voting in primary elections violated the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

It states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin."

the supreme court unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races, ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.

a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a full Montgomery bus. Bus company policy dictated that black passengers fill seats from the back and white passengers fill seats from the front. Where the sections met, blacks were expected to yield to whites. The racist atmosphere on buses was strengthened by the attitude of the all-white driving staff, which was known to harass black passengers verbally, and sometimes physically.

when Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating the high school. After several failed attempts to negotiate with Faubus, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took action against the defiant governor by simultaneously federalizing the Arkansas National Guard, removing the Guard from Faubus' control, and ordering one thousand troops from the United States Army 101st Airborne Division in Ft. Campbell, Kentucky to oversee the integration. On September 25, 1957 the students, now known as the Little Rock Nine, entered Central High School, an academically renowned school with an enrollment of approximately two thousand white students. Despite suffering constant torment and discrimination from their classmates, eight of the nine students completed the school year at Central High School.

About 200,000 people join the March on Washington DC. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.

Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.