Rosa Parks
• December 1, 1955
• Refused to stand so
a white man didn‟t
have to sit near
„negroes‟.
• Her arrest inspired
the Montgomery
Bus Boycott.
• „I didn‟t feel I was
being treated like a
human being‟.
Emmett Till
• 14-year-old Chicago
boy
• Accused of
„whistling‟ at a white
woman in a store
• Dragged from his
bed, beaten, shot
and thrown in a river
– body found days
later
Before - and open casket viewing • Attackers found not
guilty, afterwards
admitted to crime.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Led the
Montgomery Bus
Boycott
• Spoke, wrote and
marched for civil
rights
• Promoted non-
violent protest
• Shot before a
rally in Memphis,
Tennesse, 1968
Thurgood Marshall
• Lawyer who
argued the Brown
v. Board of
Education case in
1954
• First African
American justice
on the Supreme
Court
Brown v. Board of Education - 1954
• “...the doctrine of
„separate but equal‟
has no place.
Separate
educational facilities
are inherently
unequal.”
• Many states resist
integration practices
into the 1970‟s
• Overturned Plessy
v. Ferguson
Little Rock Nine
•Nine high school
students enrolled in
1957.
•Governor first
refused to protect
them
•Then closed all high
schools for a year
•Schools re-opened in
1959, but students
needed escorts from
the US Army to enter
the building
Montgomery Bus Boycott
• Began with Rosa
Parks’ arrest
• 381 days – blacks
walked, car-pooled,
biked
• Bus segregation
declared
unconstitutional in
1957
Freedom Riders – blacks & • “... a Klansman shoved
him sideways against a
whites (try to) ride concrete wall. Others came
on buses together up behind him. “Hit him,”
someone shouted, and a
Klansman obliged with a
fist to Person‟s face.
Person rose with a
bloodied mouth... This time
he fell back into the arms
of a Klansman, who held
him to receive a third
blow... Peck moved to help
him up and was flattened
by a rain of five or six
punches. Then about a
dozen Klansmen
surrounded the two men
and pummeled them with
kicks, pipes, and object
that looked like heavy key
rings.”
Jim Crow
• Insulting name
for a black
person
• The traditions
and laws that
discriminate
against blacks,
especially in the
South