{"response":{"docs":[{"event_id":"jfk_assassination","title":"John F. Kennedy's Assassination","years":["1963"],"description":"On November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in a presidential motorcade.  Shortly after the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended and charged with the president's murder.  Kennedy's assassination threatened to slow the growing momentum of the Civil Rights movement.  While the first years of his presidency were largely overshadowed by the Cold War, President Kennedy publicly committed his administration to the cause of racial equality in the summer of 1963 when he proposed a Civil Rights bill to Congress and offered his endorsement to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law on July 2, 1964."},{"event_id":"emmett_till_murder","title":"Emmett Till murder","years":["1955"],"description":"In August of 1955 Mamie Till, a black working-class single mother from Chicago, sent her fourteen year old son, Emmett, to visit relatives in Leflore County, Mississippi.  On August 24 Till, along with several friends, traveled to nearby Money, a small, deeply-segregated town in the heart of the Mississippi Delta where the youth reportedly whistled and made advances toward a white woman when he entered Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market.  Several days following the alleged incident on August 28, Emmett Till was kidnapped from the home of his uncle.  Three days later Till's body was found floating in the Tallahatchie River; the fourteen year old boy had been severely beaten before being fatally wounded by a gunshot to the head.  Photographs of Till's disfigured body appeared in African American newspapers and magazines across the country, galvanizing support for racial reform in the South. On September 23, less than one month after Till's body was recovered, an all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, the husband and half-brother of Till's accuser, for Till's murder, prompting African Americans in northern cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and New York to stage rallies and demonstrations for racial justice."},{"event_id":"mlk_assassination","title":"Dr. King's Assassination","years":["1968"],"description":"On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by a sniper's bullet while standing on the second-floor balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.  As news of King's death spread, violent riots broke out in African American neighborhoods in over one hundred cities across the United States.  King, who was the nation's foremost civil rights leader, had returned to Memphis to lead a nonviolent march in support of the city's striking sanitation workers.  On April 8, King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and the couple's four small children led a crowd estimated at forty thousand in a silent march through the streets of Memphis to honor the fallen leader and support the cause of the city's black sanitation workers.  The next day, funerary rites for King were held in his hometown, Atlanta, Georgia.  Following a nationally televised broadcast of his funeral service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, King's body was led three-and-a-half miles through the city's streets, with more than one hundred thousand mourners in tow, to Morehouse College where a second funeral service was performed.  King's assassin, James Earl Ray, was apprehended by authorities in London, England after a two-month international manhunt.  Upon his extradition to Tennessee, Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. and was given a ninety-nine year jail sentence."},{"event_id":"poor_peoples_campaign","title":"Poor People's Campaign","years":["1968"],"description":"In the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, the fate of his final cause, the Poor People's Campaign, faced an uncertain future.  As chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), King committed the organization's resources to the Poor People's Campaign in 1967, in response to the string of urban riots that had recently occurred in New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Los Angeles.  The goal of the campaign was to emphasize the plight of the poor and to push the country's lawmakers to pass federal legislation to improve the economic and social conditions of the impoverished.  At the time of King's death, members of the SCLC were in the midst of planning a massive demonstration of the nation's poor in Washington, D.C.  Following King's assassination, Ralph Abernathy took over leadership of the SCLC and vowed to continue work on the Poor People's Campaign in memory of his fallen colleague.  In May of 1968, demonstrators descended on the nation's capitol, arriving by foot, car, bus, horse-drawn carriage, and mule train.  While in Washington, the protestors lived in Resurrection City, an encampment set up on the National Mall, which maintained dining and daycare facilities, a dispensary, and its own City Hall.  For the next six weeks, thousands of participants poured into Resurrection City and staged daily demonstrations at the offices of government officials and their agencies.  Despite the efforts of the organizers and participants, the Poor People's Campaign and their march on Washington failed to garner the intended response from the country's legislators.  On June 19, 1968, following a demonstration at Lincoln Memorial, Resurrection City closed and the Poor People's Campaign reached an uneventful end."},{"event_id":"civil_rights_act_1957","title":"Civil Rights Act of 1957","years":["1957"],"description":"On September 9, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957.  Originally proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the Act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights.  Although influential southern congressman whittled down the bill's initial scope, it still included a number of important provisions for the protection of voting rights.  It established the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, and empowered federal officials to prosecute individuals that conspired to deny or abridge another citizen's right to vote.  Moreover, it also created a six-member U.S. Civil Rights Commission charged with investigating allegations of voter infringement.  But, perhaps most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 signaled a growing federal commitment to the cause of civil rights."},{"event_id":"sit_ins_nashville_tn","title":"Sit-ins: Nashville, Tenn.","years":["1960"],"description":"The Nashville sit-in movement is widely regarded as one of the most successful and sustained student-directed sit-in campaigns of the Civil Rights movement.  Contributing to its success was the leadership and organization provided by noted pacifist, James M. Lawson.  During the late winter months of 1959, Lawson and the Nashville Student Movement, an organization comprised of students from the city's four African American colleges, made plans to launch a large-scale sit-in campaign targeting segregated restaurants and department stores in the city's downtown commercial district.  Lawson prepared participants for the campaign by offering workshops where he instructed students on the importance of discipline and self-control through simulated sit-ins. Upon receiving word of the sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Nashville Student Movement launched their planned campaign into action.  Local police officers responded to the staged sit-ins by arresting participating demonstrators.  Despite the arrests, students continued to carry out the sit-ins by deploying multiple waves of demonstrators to occupy the lunch counters.  The sit-in demonstrations continued until April 19 when a bomb exploded in the home of Z. Alexander Looby, a prominent African American attorney who served as one of the primary lawyers for students arrested during the sit-ins. The incident prompted thousands of demonstrators to stage a march on City Hall where Nashville Mayor, Ben West, met the marchers on the building's front steps to address their grievances.  When publicly asked if he supported discrimination based on race, West voiced his opposition to segregation.  Anxious to move the city forward and restore downtown commerce, city officials and local businesses agreed to desegregate Nashville's public facilities on May 10, 1960."},{"event_id":"freedom_rides","title":"Freedom Rides","years":["1961"],"description":"On May 4, 1961, an interracial group of student activists under the auspices of the Congress of Racial Equality departed Washington D.C. by bus to test local compliance throughout the Deep South with two Supreme Court rulings banning segregated accommodations on interstate buses and in bus terminals that served interstate routes.  The \"Freedom Riders\" traveled with limited difficulty through North Carolina, Georgia, and South Carolina, but encountered violent resistance in Alabama.  A mob of angry whites firebombed one of their buses outside the city of Anniston, and riders were severely beaten in Birmingham and Montgomery.  Although injuries prevented many of the original participants from continuing, activists from the Student Nonviolent Committee volunteered to ride in their place, and the reconstituted freedom riders traveled under federal protection to Mississippi where they were arrested and jailed.  At the behest of the Kennedy Administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued an order on November 1, 1961 banning segregation in all facilities under its jurisdiction.  The following December, a group of freedom riders traveled by train from Atlanta to Albany, Georgia to test the ruling.  Their arrest by local authorities helped to invigorate the Albany Movement, which would later be regarded as one of the most significant developments of the civil rights era."},{"event_id":"gatech_integration","title":"Georgia Tech Integration","years":["1961"],"description":"To avoid the civil unrest that attended the University of Georgia's court-ordered desegregation, officials at Georgia Tech began plotting an integration strategy in January 1961.  After months of careful planning, Tech President Edwin Harrison announced the following May that the school would admit three of thirteen black applicants for admission the following fall.  Despite enjoying broad support from Atlanta's business and political communities, tensions remained high as the fall semester approached and school administrators took a number of steps to preclude the possibility for disorder; Members of the press were barred from campus to discourage disruptive behavior and plainclothes police officers were on hand to ensure a peaceful desegregation process.  On September 27, the school's first three black students attended classes without incident, making Georgia Tech the first institution of higher education in the Deep South to integrate peacefully and without a court order."},{"event_id":"march_on_washington","title":"March on Washington","years":["1963"],"description":"On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million Americans from across the United States converged on the nation's capitol in what was to become a defining moment in the Civil Rights movement.  Plans for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom began in 1962 when A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, put forth the idea of a mass gathering on Washington, D.C. to draw attention to the economic plight of the county's African American population.  Randolph called upon the nation's leading civil rights organizations to lend their support to the march and persuaded President John F. Kennedy to endorse the demonstration.  As plans progressed, Randolph charged noted civil rights activist, Bayard Rustin, with the arduous task of coordinating and directing the logistics for the march.  Rustin and his crew of volunteers worked around the clock to make necessary arrangements as word of the upcoming march spread throughout the country, and thousands of anxious supporters prepared to make their descent on the nation's capitol.  On August 28, 1963, a crowd of 250,000 people, including nearly 450 members of Congress, gathered at Lincoln Memorial to listen to the day's scheduled performances and speeches. Randolph along with Roy Wilkins, John Lewis and others delivered riveting speeches before Martin Luther King took his place at the podium and delivered his famous \"I Have a Dream\" speech.  Even though the March on Washington succeeded in both dramatizing and politicizing the need to secure federal legislation banning segregation and racial discrimination, it would be another year before King's dream was realized with the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act."},{"event_id":"montgomery_bus_boycott","title":"Montgomery Bus Boycott","years":["1956 "," 1955"],"description":"Local authorities in Montgomery, Alabama, arrested Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, when she refused to vacate her seat in the white section of a city bus on December 1, 1955.  To protest Parks' arrest and the continued segregation of Montgomery's bus lines, members of the city's black community formed the Montgomery Improvement Association on December 4, 1955, and launched a community wide boycott to compel the system's integration.  Under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr., black commuters and a small number of white sympathizers suffered official harassment, numerous threats, and personal inconvenience for more than a year while the matter made its way through the federal courts.  On November 13, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision, and ruled the segregated system unconstitutional. To celebrate the boycott's victory, King and three ministerial colleagues boarded a city bus on December 21, 1956 only one day after Montgomery officials received the court order to desegregate the city's buses, and took their seats throughout the vehicle."},{"event_id":"freedom_summer","title":"Freedom Summer","years":["1964"],"description":"During the summer of 1964, hundreds of Northern college students traveled to Mississippi to help register black voters and encourage participation in the Civil Rights movement.  Under the direction of the Council of Federated Organizations, the predominantly white students organized health clinics, established \"freedom schools\" to educate black school children, and sponsored voter registration drives throughout the state.  Perhaps most importantly, student volunteers helped to establish the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which attempted to unseat the state's all-white regular delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.  Although the Democratic Party ultimately seated Mississippi's regular delegation, the MFDP's bid for recognition raised awareness of voter discrimination in the Deep South and helped secure passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965."},{"event_id":"loving-v-virginia","title":"Loving v. Virginia","years":["1967"],"description":"\"In Loving v. Virginia, decided on June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down Virginia’s law prohibiting interracial marriages as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.\"--Encyclopedia of Virginia"},{"event_id":"ny_race_riots","title":"New York Race Riots","years":["1964"],"description":"The New York Race Riots of 1964 were the first in a series of devastating race-related riots that ripped through American cities between 1964 and 1965.  The riots began in Harlem, New York following the shooting of fifteen-year-old James Powell by a white off-duty police officer on July 18, 1964.  Charging that the incident was an act of police brutality, an estimated eight thousand Harlem residents took to streets and launched a large-scale riot, breaking widows, setting fires and looting local businesses.  The eruption of violence soon spread to the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant and continued for six days, resulting in the death of one resident, over one hundred injuries, and more than 450 arrests.  As the civil unrest in New York City began to cool, another riot broke out upstate, in Rochester, New York.  Like the Harlem Riot, the Rochester Riot stemmed from an alleged act of police brutality.  For three days, violent protestors overturned automobiles, burned buildings, and looted stores causing over one million dollars' worth of damages.  Following Governor Nelson Rockefeller's mobilization of the state's National Guard, public order was restored to Rochester on July 26.  The New York Race Riots of 1964 highlighted the racial injustice and growing civil unrest existing in northern cities and served as a powerful indicator of the urgent need for social and economic reforms for African American communities outside of the South."},{"event_id":"little_rock_integration","title":"Little Rock Central High School Integration","years":["1957"],"description":"The desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, gained national attention on September 3, 1957, 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."},{"event_id":"albany_movement","title":"Albany Movement","years":["1961 "," 1962"],"description":"In November 1961, residents of Albany, Georgia, launched an ambitious campaign to eliminate segregation in all facets of local life.  The movement captured national attention one month later when local leaders invited Martin Luther King, Jr. to join the protest.  Despite King's involvement, the movement failed to secure concessions from local officials and was consequently deemed unsuccessful by many observers.  Subsequent appraisals, however, have identified the movement as a formative learning experience for King and other civil rights organizers, and credited it with hastening the ultimate desegregation of Albany's facilities, which occurred only one year following the movement's conclusion in August 1962."},{"event_id":"watts_riots","title":"Watts Riots","years":["1965"],"description":"The Watts Riot, which raged for six days and resulted in more than forty million dollars worth of property damage, was both the largest and costliest urban rebellion of the Civil Rights era.  The riot spurred from an incident on August 11, 1965 when Marquette Frye, a young African American motorist, was pulled over and arrested by Lee W. Minikus, a white California Highway Patrolman, for suspicion of driving while intoxicated.  As a crowd on onlookers gathered at the scene of Frye's arrest, strained tensions between police officers and the crowd erupted in a violent exchange.  The outbreak of violence that followed Frye's arrest immediately touched off a large-scale riot centered in the commercial section of Watts, a deeply impoverished African American neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles.  For several days, rioters overturned and burned automobiles and looted and damaged grocery stores, liquor stores, department stores, and pawnshops.  Over the course of the six-day riot, over 14,000 California National Guard troops were mobilized in South Los Angeles and a curfew zone encompassing over forty-five miles was established in an attempt to restore public order.  All told, the rioting claimed the lives of thirty-four people, resulted in more than one thousand reported injuries, and almost four thousand arrests before order was restored on August 17.  Throughout the crisis, public officials advanced the argument that the riot was the work outside agitators; however, an official investigation, prompted by Governor Pat Brown, found that the riot was a result of the Watts community's longstanding grievances and growing discontentment with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools.  Despite the reported findings of the gubernatorial commission, following the riot, city leaders and state officials failed to implement measures to improve the social and economic conditions of African Americans living in the Watts neighborhood."},{"event_id":"ny_school_boycott","title":"New York School Boycott","years":["1964"],"description":"In one of the largest demonstrations of the Civil Rights movement, hundreds of thousands of parents, students and civil rights advocates took part in a citywide boycott of the New York City public school system to demonstrate their support for the full integration of the city's public schools and an end to de facto segregation.  The idea for a boycott began in the early 1960s, when Milton Galamison, a Presbyterian minister and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) Brooklyn branch, brought parents, teachers, and local civil rights activists together in a coalition called the Parents' Workshop for Equality in New York City Schools.  The organization's sole objective was to render the racial imbalance of African American and Puerto Rican schools by persuading the New York City Board of Education to implement integration timetables.  After years of unsuccessful lobbying, the Parents' Workshop for Equality decided to take direct action against the school board and called upon Bayard Rustin to organize a one-day protest and boycott of the city's public school system.  With the boycott set for February 3, 1964, Rustin worked with local Civil Rights organizations to plan the boycott, as well as local ministers who established freedom schools for participating students to attend.  Response from the African American and Puerto Rican communities was overwhelming as more than 450,000 students refused to attend their respective schools on the day of the boycott.  In addition, thousands of demonstrators staged peaceful rallies at the Board of Education, City Hall and the Manhattan office of Governor Nelson Rockefeller.  Despite enjoying broad support, the boycott failed to force the city's school board to undertake immediate reform."},{"event_id":"highlander_25th","title":"Highlander Folk School 25th Anniversary","years":["1957"],"description":"Between 1932 and 1962, the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, provided a valuable training ground for two generations of southern labor organizers and Civil Rights activists.  During the 1930s and 1940s, the school was instrumental in unionizing textile, timber, and mine workers throughout the region, often working in concert with national organizations such as the Congress of Industrial Organizations.  In the 1950s, Highlander became a seedbed of Civil Rights activism, holding regular educational workshops to promote nonviolent protest and encourage black voter registration.  To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the school hosted a Labor Day weekend retreat in 1962 that was attended by Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and Pete Seeger among others.  The event was filmed by Ed Friend, an agent of the Georgia Commission on Education, which later used the footage to discredit the organization as a \"communist training school.\"  Although faculty members defended Highlander's mission, the charges gained traction, and the state of Tennessee revoked the school's charter in 1962."},{"event_id":"naacp_convention_atlanta","title":"NAACP convention in Atlanta","years":["1962"],"description":"In July 1962, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held its annual convention in Atlanta.  Although \"the city too busy to hate\" had recently integrated its lunch counters, the majority of public accommodations throughout Atlanta remained segregated and delegates were turned away from several downtown hotels.  Despite the presence of robed clansmen picketing outside the convention hall, the organization's meeting proceeded without incident.  Delegates called for an increased federal commitment to Civil Rights reform, and approved plans to intensify civil rights campaigns in large cities outside the South."},{"event_id":"selma_montgomery_march","title":"Selma-Montgomery March","years":["1965"],"description":"To protest local resistance to black voter registration in Dallas County, Alabama, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized a mass march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965.  Under the leadership of John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the SCLC's Hosea Williams, a column of five hundred to six hundred demonstrators marched without incident through the streets of Selma until reaching the Edmund Pettus Bridge where they were brutally attacked by state troopers and mounted patrolmen.  Television cameramen captured the incident on film, and \"Bloody Sunday,\" as it came to be known, helped marshal nationwide support for the passage of voting rights legislation. Undeterred by the threat of violence, Martin Luther King Jr. led more than three thousand marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge only two weeks later.  From there, King's column made the 54-mile trek to the state capital under the watchful protection of the recently federalized Alabama National Guard, arriving in Montgomery four days later."},{"event_id":"sit_ins_atlanta_ga","title":"Sit-ins: Atlanta, Ga.","years":["1960"],"description":"In March 1960, students representing Atlanta's six historically black colleges organized a series of sit-ins at area lunch counters to protest the city's legally sanctioned segregation.  Local retailers subsequently agreed to negotiate with representatives from the recently formed student group Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), but neither side evinced a willingness to compromise.  Protests expanded when negotiations stalled, and student leaders persuaded Martin Luther King, Jr. to participate in a bid for greater publicity.  After more than a year of demonstrations and failed negotiations, members of the city's black political establishment met privately with white business leaders, and negotiated a settlement wherein area lunch counters would be desegregated after the court-ordered integration of city schools the following fall.  Although they protested the decision on campus, student leaders ultimately submitted to the settlement, and Atlanta's lunch counters were desegregated in September 1961."},{"event_id":"brown_vs_boe","title":"Brown versus Board of Education","years":["1954"],"description":"The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was a watershed event in the history of the United States.  The landmark ruling had it roots in Topeka, Kansas, in 1951 when, Oliver Brown, an African American minister and welder, called upon the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for legal assistance after the city's school board refused to enroll his daughter in an all-white school.  The class action lawsuit, filed by Brown and nearly twenty others, ended in the U.S. District Court's ruling in favor of the Board of Education.  Undaunted, Thurgood Marshall, chief council for the NAACP, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Brown v. Board of Education, as well as four similar cases challenging the segregation of public schools in Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware and Washington, D.C.  Proceedings for the cases began on December 9, 1952.  After several delays and a rehearing in December of 1953, the Supreme Court finally reached a unanimous decision on May 17, 1954, when it ruled that the segregation of public school systems was unconstitutional.  The decision, however, failed to address any means for enforcement or provide timetables for states to integrate their schools.  In 1955, the Supreme Court issued an additional edict, which instructed states to begin the process of desegregation \"with all deliberate speed.\""},{"event_id":"clemson_integration","title":"Integration of Clemson University","years":["1963"],"description":"In January 1963 after a legal battle, Harvey Gantt became the first African American student to be accepted at Clemson University. In September of that same year, Lucinda Brawley was admitted as Clemson's first African American woman student."},{"event_id":"housing-act-of-1961","title":"Housing Act of 1961","years":["1961"],"description":"On June 30, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed the Housing Act of 1961 : Public law 87-70, 75 Stat. 149, 87th Congress, (S. 1922) into effect, which allocated federal aid and played a key role in shaping housing policies and programs of that era by emphasizing affordability and open space land acquisition for communities in urban development projects. Passed during the 87th Congressional session, the 1961 Act built upon decades of previous legislation and ongoing negotiation meant to uphold liberal reform goals while also moving forward with conservative private industry programs."},{"event_id":"temple_bombing_atlanta","title":"Temple Bombing (Atlanta, Ga.)","years":["1958"],"description":"In the early hours of October 12, 1958, fifty sticks of dynamite exploded in a recessed entranceway at the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, Atlanta's oldest and most prominent synagogue, more commonly known as \"the Temple.\"  The incident was but the most recent in a string of bombings throughout the nation affecting churches and synagogues associated with the Civil Rights movement.  For Atlanta's Jewish community, the event evoked memories of the notorious lynching of Leo Frank half a century earlier, arousing fears of anti-Semitism that had waned, but never disappeared.  Rather than react with indifference, or worse, however, Atlanta's business, media, and political elites denounced the bombing in no uncertain terms and launched an ambitious campaign to raise funds for the synagogue's repair.  Although the suspects were later acquitted, the outpouring of local support helped to dispel fears of anti-Semitic violence, and the moderate consensus that emerged in the bombing's wake helped to distinguish Atlanta as \"the city too busy to hate.\""},{"event_id":"scope_project","title":"SCOPE project","years":["1965"],"description":"On June 14, 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched an innovative grassroots organizing campaign, the Summer Community Organization and Political Education (SCOPE) project. Under the direction of WW II veteran Hosea Williams, SCOPE sought to build upon the momentum of the Medgar Evers led NAACP in Mississippi, 1964 Freedom Summer, as well as the voting rights stuggle that culminated in the Selma-Montgomery March. The project placed nearly five hundred predominantly white college students in nearly one hundred predominantly black rural and urban areas in Southern states, including: Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina to help lead voter registration drives. SCOPE successfully encouraged political activism,  reported violations of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act; along with developing political education programs for some of the counties that the campaign served. Its voter registration drives also flourished: SCOPE volunteers, working with local activists and leaders, and SCLC field staff, registered more than 49,000 new African American voters by the project's official end date on August 28, 1965, with about thirty-five SCOPE volutneers taking positions on the SCLC staff with additional activities continuing in 1966."},{"event_id":"prayer_pilgrimage","title":"Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, Washington, D.C.","years":["1957"],"description":"The Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington for Freedom took place on May 17, 1957, when a crowd of over thirty thousand nonviolent demonstrators, from more than thirty states, gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the third anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling.  In addition to celebrating the three-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision to end segregation in public education, the Prayer Pilgrimage also dramatized and politicized the failure of most southern states to work toward or implement the court-ordered desegregation of their schools.  The pilgrimage was organized by A. Philip Randolph, a noted leader of the Civil Rights movement who gained recognition in 1941 when his plan for a mass gathering in Washington to draw attention to discrimination in the war defense industry, prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to desegregate the nation's munitions factories and establish the Fair Employment Practices Commission.  The demonstration's three-hour program featured addresses, prayers, songs and scripture recitations led Mahalia Jackson, Roy Wilkins and Mordecai Johnson, as well as, Martin Luther King Jr.'s first address before a national audience.  While organizers of the Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington for Freedom voiced disappointment that the crowd failed to reach its anticipated attendance of fifty thousand people, at the time it occurred, the march earned the distinction of being the largest organized demonstration for Civil Rights, and was instrumental in laying the groundwork for future marches on the nation's capitol."},{"event_id":"birmingham_demonstrations","title":"Birmingham Demonstrations","years":["1963"],"description":"Despite energetic organization on the local level, Birmingham, Alabama remained a largely segregated city in the spring of 1963 when Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleagues at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) launched Project C (for confrontation), an ambitious program that wedded economic pressure and large scale direct action protest to undermine the city's rigid system of segregation.  After conducting sit-ins, hosting mass meetings, and waging an economic boycott, the campaign received national media attention on April 7th when Public Safety Commissioner T. Eugene \"Bull\" Connor loosed police attack dogs on marchers undertaking nonviolent protest. King's decision to disregard a federal court injunction barring further demonstrations resulted in his arrest, along with local leader Fred L. Shuttlesworth, and many others on April 12th.  While imprisoned, King penned \"A Letter from Birmingham Jail,\" his eloquent response to critics of direct action protest.  On May 3rd, Birmingham police used high pressure fire hoses to disrupt a peaceful demonstration composed largely of students, thereby provoking national outrage and prompting federal intervention.  Officials from the Kennedy administration helped negotiate a settlement on May 10th, but rioting ensued the very next day in response to the bombing by Klansmen of the A.G. Gaston Motel and the home of the Reverend A.D. King.  Despite the high cost, events in Birmingham helped galvanize national support for civil rights reform and contributed to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."},{"event_id":"ole_miss_integration","title":"Ole Miss Integration","years":["1962"],"description":"On September 30, 1962, riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school.  Despite the presence of more than 120 federal marshals who were on hand to protect Meredith from harm, the crowd turned violent after nightfall, and authorities struggled to maintain order.  When the smoke cleared the following morning, two civilians were dead and scores more were reported injured.  For Meredith, the riot was perhaps a fitting coda to a process that began almost two years earlier when he brought suit against the school, alleging that he was denied admission on the basis of race. Although a lower court sided with the university, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued a decision in June 1962 ordering the school to admit Meredith the following fall, thereby ensuring a showdown between the federal government and Mississippi's segregationist state government.  After spending the night of September 30 under federal protection, Meredith was allowed to register for classes the following morning, and became the first black graduate from the university in August 1963."},{"event_id":"civil_rights_act_1964","title":"Civil Rights Act of 1964","years":["1964"],"description":"The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson just a few hours after House approval on July 2, 1964.  The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools."},{"event_id":"ua_integration","title":"University of Alabama Integration","years":["1963"],"description":"On May 16, 1963, a federal district court in Alabama ordered the University of Alabama to admit African American students Vivien Malone and James Hood during its summer session.  The court's decision virtually ensured a showdown between federal authorities and Alabama Governor George Wallace who had made a campaign promise a year earlier to prevent the school's integration even if it required that he stand in the schoolhouse door.  Despite receiving a federal court injunction barring such a move, Wallace fulfilled his campaign pledge on June 11, when he temporarily blocked the students' entrance by positioning himself before the doorway of Foster Auditorium.  Although he ultimately yielded when President Kennedy federalized Alabama's National Guard, the incident earned Wallace a nationwide reputation for white resistance."},{"event_id":"augusta_movement","title":"Augusta Movement","years":["1962"],"description":"In March 1960, students from Augusta's historically black Paine College initiated the direct action phase of the city's Civil Rights movement when they organized sit-ins at area department stores.  Biracial negotiations ensued, but the white negotiating committee ultimately reneged on their commitment to desegregate the city's lunch counters.  White intransigence continued to foil the city's student-led reform movement until April 1962 when local businessmen reopened negotiations with student leaders to forestall negative publicity in advance of the U.S. Masters Golf Tournament.  Although a small number of stores desegregated before negotiations concluded, Augusta experienced little integration prior to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  Racial tensions continued to simmer after the passage of federal legislation, however, and ultimately reached a boiling point in May 1970 when race riots erupted throughout the city."},{"event_id":"heart_atl_pickrick_trial","title":"Heart of Atlanta/Pickrick trial","years":["1964"],"description":"In 1964, two Atlanta business owners captured national attention when they refused to comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  Moreton Rolleston and Lester Maddox, owners of the Heart of Atlanta Motel and the Pickrick Restaurant respectively, sued to challenge the constitutionality of Section II of the Civil Rights Act, which barred segregation in all public accommodations on the basis that the practice inhibited the interstate movements of people and products.  The cases were paired and tried before a three-judge circuit court in Atlanta, which upheld the law and ordered both men to admit black patrons within twenty days.  Maddox's decision to close the Pickrick rather than submit to integration earned him the admiration many white Georgians, and paved his way to victory in the state's 1966 gubernatorial contest.  Rolleston meanwhile appealed his decision to the Supreme Court (Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States), which unanimously upheld the lower court's decision."},{"event_id":"mlk_nobel_prize","title":"Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Nobel Prize","years":["1964"],"description":"In 1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his dynamic leadership of the Civil Rights movement and steadfast commitment to achieving racial justice through nonviolent action.  King accepted the award on December 10, 1964 in Oslo, Norway on behalf of the Civil Rights movement and pledged the prize money to the movement's continued development.  At the age of thirty-five, King became the the youngest man, and only the second African American, to receive the prestigious award."},{"event_id":"baton_rouge_bus_boycott","title":"Baton Rouge Bus Boycott","years":["1953"],"description":"In 1953, Baton Rouge, Louisiana became the site of the first large-scale bus boycott to protest a city's segregated bus system. The eight-day boycott  became a blueprint for the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott."},{"event_id":"memphis_sanitation_strike","title":"Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike","years":["1968"],"description":"Longstanding tensions between disgruntled African American sanitation workers and Memphis city officials erupted on February 12, 1968 when nearly one thousand workers refused to report to work demanding higher wages, safer working conditions, and recognition of their union, local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.  Despite organizing city-wide boycotts, sit-ins, and daily marches, the city's sanitation workers were initially unable to secure concessions from municipal officials.  At the urging of Reverend James T. Lawson, Martin Luther King, Jr. agreed to come to Memphis and lead a nonviolent demonstration in support of the sanitation workers.  On March 29 over five thousand demonstrators, carrying signs which read \"I Am A Man,\" participated in King's march.  However, the peaceful demonstration took a turn for the worse when an estimated two hundred participants began breaking storefront windows and looting.  The ensuing violence resulted in the death of Larry Payne, a sixteen year old African American who was killed by Memphis police officers, the imposition of a city-wide curfew, and the mobilization of nearly four thousand National Guard troops.  Deeply troubled by the violent outbreak, King vowed to return to Memphis to lead a peaceful demonstration.  On April 3, 1968, nearly two months after the initial start of the strike, King returned to Memphis and delivered what would be his last public speech.  The following evening King was assassinated on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel.  In the wake of King's death, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent James Reynolds, undersecretary of labor, to Memphis to help resolve the strike.  Nearly two weeks later on April 16, the Memphis sanitation workers' strike ended when the city agreed to issue raises to African American employees and recognize the workers' union."},{"event_id":"new_orleans_integration","title":"New Orleans school integration","years":["1960"],"description":"Two years following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Federal District Court Judge, J. Skelly Wright, ordered the Orleans Parish School Board to design an effective plan for the desegregation of New Orleans' public schools.  The ruling aroused significant local opposition, however, and parents, school board members, city leaders, and elected officials moved to secure state legislation to overturn Wright's decision.  After four years of circumventing the court-ordered desegregation, the school board finally put in place a plan to integrate the city's public schools in 1960.  The plan called for the integration of two New Orleans schools, both located in the impoverished Ninth Ward, on a one-grade-per-year basis, beginning with the first grade.  On November 14, 1960, four girls, shielded and protected by armed United States marshals, integrated the two schools; Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, Gaile Etienne entering McDonogh 19 and Ruby Bridges entering William Frantz.  In the days following the integration, riots led by staunch segregationists erupted throughout the city and student enrollments at the two desegregated schools dwindled, as parents chose to enroll their children in the city's private schools.  The integration of New Orleans' public schools drew national criticism from those who condemned segregationists for their hostile reactions and prompted acclaimed American painter, Norman Rockwell, to paint \"The Problem We All Live With,\" which depicted four federal marshals escorting six-year-old Ruby Bridges to school on her first day at William Frantz."},{"event_id":"sedition_trial_americus","title":"Sedition Trial, Americus, Ga.","years":["1963"],"description":"After relocating to Sumter County in February 1963, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee fieldworkers Ralph Allen, Don Harris, and John Perdew launched voter registration and community organizing drives under the aegis of the Southwest Georgia Project.  Members of Sumter's black community welcomed their arrival, and by July the three activists enjoyed sufficient support to lead large-scale direct action protests in the county seat of Americus.  To suppress demands for reform, local authorities arrested the three fieldworkers along with Congress of Racial Equality agricultural worker Zev Aeloney one week later on charges of insurrection, which carried the death penalty under Georgia's 1871 Anti-Treason Act.  Their arrest captured national headlines, in part because the activists hailed from reputable Northern universities, and the \"Americus Four\" became a cause celebre for Civil Rights advocates. Although the charges were ultimately dropped when they were released from prison the following November, their detention significantly retarded Civil Rights protest in Americus where large-scale demonstrations did not resume until summer 1965."},{"event_id":"americus_movement","title":"Americus Movement","years":["1963 "," 1964 "," 1965"],"description":"Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) fieldworkers began organizing with black community leaders in Americus soon after their arrival in Sumter County in February 1963.  The movement encountered stiff opposition from local officials, however, and all but collapsed the following July when four Civil Rights activists were arrested and charged with sedition in the wake of large scale direct action protests. Although voter registration drives and citizenship campaigns continued over the course of the next two years, demonstrations were suspended until summer 1965, when Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) activists arrived in Americus and protest resumed with renewed vigor.  However, the murder of a white, twenty-one year old marine recruit in July 1965 provoked a backlash of white violence, dashing hopes for a biracial settlement.  Because the 1965 protests received significant media attention throughout the nation, SCLC workers later concluded that the struggle in Americus helped secure passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965."},{"event_id":"birmingham_bombing","title":"Birmingham Bombing (Sixteenth Street Baptist Church)","years":["1963"],"description":"The bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, was one of the deadliest acts of violence to take place during the Civil Rights movement and evoked criticism and outrage from around the world.  On the morning of September 15, 1963, as the congregation's children prepared for annual Youth Day celebrations, a bomb exploded in the stairwell of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church killing four girls and injuring dozens of others in the assembly.  In the aftermath of the bombing, riots and violent demonstrations broke out throughout Birmingham, resulting in the death of two young African American boys.  Following a tainted investigation by the FBI, Robert Chambliss, an active member of the Ku Klux Klan, was arrested and charged with murder and the possession of dynamite without a permit.  Chambliss was acquitted of murder charges until 1977 when the reopening of the case resulted in his conviction, fourteen years after the bombing.  In recent years, two additional conspirators, Thomas Blanton and Robert Cherry, have been tried and convicted for their roles in the church bombing.  The bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which previously served as a central meeting place and staging ground for Civil Rights activities, was intended to stall the progression of the Civil Rights movement; however, the tragedy had the opposite effect, galvanizing support and propelling the movement forward."},{"event_id":"sit_ins_greensboro_nc","title":"Sit-ins: Greensboro, N.C.","years":["1960"],"description":"On February 1, 1960 four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College students entered the F. W. Woolworth Co. department store in Greensboro, North Carolina and staged a sit-in at the store's segregated lunch counter.  Upon taking their seats at the \"whites-only\" lunch counter, Ezell A. Blair, Jr., Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond attempted to order coffee, but were denied service and asked to leave by the store's manager.  The four men politely refused the manager's request and remained seated at the counter until it closed.  The following day nearly thirty students, both male and female, joined the effort and returned to the Woolworth's lunch counter to participate in another sit-in.  By February 5, the number of active participants in the Greensboro sit-in movement swelled to more than three hundred.  Although Blair, McCain, McNeil, and Richmond were not the first organized group to employ the tactic of a sit-in, their efforts proved to be a watershed event in the Civil Rights movement.  Inspired and motivated by the success of the Greensboro sit-ins, students and activists across the country began organizing efforts to launch sit-ins in their communities.  The collective result of their actions was profound; by the end of February, over thirty cities and towns in seven states were successfully engaged in the sit-in campaigns."},{"event_id":"uga_integration","title":"University of Georgia Integration","years":["1961"],"description":"On January 6, 1961, federal district court Judge W. A. Bootle ordered the immediate admission of Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter to the University of Georgia, ending 160 years of segregation at the school.  Bootle's decision precipitated a constitutional crisis for state legislators, who passed legislation several years earlier mandating an immediate cut-off of state funds to any white institution that admitted a black student.  As rumors circulated Athens and Atlanta regarding the possibility of the university's closing, college administrators urged students to remain calm and observe their usual routines.  Order did prevail on campus until January 11, when an angry mob gathered outside Hunter's dormitory, causing significant property damage and garnering negative publicity for the university and the state.  In the wake of the disturbance, state officials condemned the rioters and ultimately repealed the laws barring state support of integrated schools."},{"event_id":"orangeburg_massacre","title":"Orangeburg Massacre","years":["1968"],"description":"\"On February 8, 1968, South Carolina Highway Patrolmen opened fire on African American college students protesting against ongoing segregation in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Three students were killed and twenty-eight wounded. This shooting was one of the most violent events in South Carolina's twentieth century civil rights history.\"--Low Country Digital History Intitiative, https://ldhi.library.cofc.edu/exhibits/show/orangeburg-massacre."}],"facets":[],"pages":{"current_page":1,"next_page":null,"prev_page":null,"total_pages":1,"limit_value":1000,"offset_value":0,"total_count":43,"first_page?":true,"last_page?":true}}}