Racial segregation was a very real and scary thing back in the '60's. African Americans were forced to take different routes, drink from different water fountains, attend different schools and eat different restaurants than the ever so special, whites.
The Civil Rights Movement begins. 

In the court case of Plessy v Ferguson, Homer Plessy (who was seven-eighths Caucasian) refused to give up his seat on an all white train. He was arrested and tried in court for his actions, to have the ruling go in his favor.   
The court ruled that jailing Plessy for his choice of seat based on his color was a violation of his fourteenth amendment rights.
The case banned segregation on trains and rail cars. 

            Plessy v Ferguson made a dent in the pile of Civil Rights, but there were things out there like the Jim Crow Laws, laws that prohibited blacks and whites from doing things together, like eating, or drinking Coca-Cola. 
             These laws were ridiculous and unnecessary and mandated de jure segregation with the laws the procured. 

           In the case Brown v Board of Education, a law was made to efface segregation in the public school system. 
           A young black girl was forced to walk over one mile and through a railroad switch station to catch the bus that took her school every day, when an all white school was only a few blocks from her house, and within safe walking distance. 
            The case declared segregation in schools unconstitutional and a violation of the thirteenth amendment. 
            Thurgood Marshall was one of the first African Americans to serve on the Supreme Court. He served on this case.

          Places all over towns everywhere were segregated and held signs just like this one that dictated where a person should go, which water fountain they should drink from, based on de jure and de facto segregation.

          In Little Rock, Arkansas, just after the ruling of Brown v Board of Education, nine African American students were enrolled to attend school in Little Rock Central High School. 
          They were viciously attacked, and were forced to be home schooled for a period of time, until the President stepped in and distributed guards to the nine students, simply to ensure safety as they attended classes. 
            They became known as the Little Rock Nine for enduring such struggles in Little Rock Central High School. 

            Bus segregation was another thing plagued the African American people during the '60's. They were forced to ride completely separate buses, and then to sit only in the back of the previously dubbed "white bus". 

           Rosa Parks was an African American that after working one day, got on a white bus, sat in the front, and when asked to move, she refused. 
           This started the Montgomery Bus Boycott where Martin Luther King Jr. became a prominent figure nationwide.

             She was arrested later that day for not cooperating and violating the Montgomery City Code, which entailed forcing her to sit in the back of a bus. 
             Many people, black and white, rode across the nation in what was termed the "Freedom Rides" to protest racial inequality and segregation on national buses. 

The Birmingham Campaign was a campaign in 1963 organized by the SCLC to bring attention to the unequal treatment of different races. 
            It all started in the worst city for racial inequality, Birmingham, as a protest to allow business owners to provide employment for any person that applied for the job. 
            The campaign brought attention to the media and most of the violent outbreaks were recorded on live national television. 

             The Freedom Summer was also called the Mississippi Summer Project. It was a demonstration to prove, yet again, racial equality. 
            African Americans signed up to vote anywhere they could so they could turn the tables of the voting laws.
            Later, the 15th amendment was passed stating that there was to be no discrimination in the voting booths strictly because of color, or race.

           The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed any practices or procedures that were discriminatory or racist during the voting procedure to keep blacks from voting.

March on Washington

 

The Greensboro Sit-Ins...

Civil Rights Act 1968