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Montgomery Bus Boycott
A yearlong boycott beginning in 1955 in which Black residents avoided city transportation in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Martin Luther King Jr. became a national figure when he took charge of the boycott and protest. The Supreme Court ended the boycott the following year, forcing the city of Montgomery to desegregate public transportation.
Little Rock Crisis
A standoff that occurred in 1957 when the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, defied a federal court order to integrate public high schools in the state and federal troops were sent in to enforce the law. In the hopes of winning votes from his white constituents, Faubus flouted the law and ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine Black students from entering Central High School in the state’s capital, Little Rock. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, though not a supporter of the civil rights movement, placed the National Guard under federal authority and sent 1,000 army troops to escort the students to class and uphold U.S. law.
Greensboro Sit-In
A 1960 protest in which four Black college students sat at an all-white lunch counter in a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and demanded service. When the clerks refused, the students continued to sit quietly at the counter and refused to leave. The students returned each subsequent day with additional supporters until hundreds of people had joined them. City officials eventually agreed to desegregate Woolworth’s and other local stores, but only after the Black community had waged a long and costly boycott. The Greensboro sit-in encouraged other student leaders to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and inaugurated the Sit-In Movement that spread across the country.
Freedom Rides
A series of protests aimed at the desegregation of buses in the South. Beginning in 1961, CORE and the SNCC organized several interracial Freedom Rides to win sympathy from whites in the North. Freedom Riders met violent mobs throughout Alabama who burned buses and nearly beat several of the riders to death. Southern police also arrested riders for inciting violence and disturbing the peace.
Birmingham Campaign
A peaceful protest organized by Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. Birmingham city commissioner “Bull” Connor ordered police to use force to end the protest, and northern whites watched the violence unfold on national television. While serving a short jail sentence in Birmingham, King wrote his famous “Letter From the Birmingham Jail,” in which he explained the civil rights movement to his critics. The Birmingham campaign also convinced President John F. Kennedy to endorse the movement fully and pressure Congress to pass more civil rights legislation.
March on Washington
Occurring on August 28, 1963, one of the largest political rallies in American history, during which more than 200,000 Black and white demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., on to show their support for more civil rights legislation from Congress. Empowered by their success in Birmingham, SCLC leaders joined forces with the SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP in organizing the march. Martin Luther King Jr. ended the rally with his famous “I Have A Dream” Speech.
Freedom Summer
An SNCC-sponsored event in 1964 that sent nearly 1,000 people—mostly young, white student volunteers from the North—to Mississippi in support of Black civil rights. Volunteers helped register tens of thousands of Black voters, formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and taught civic classes to Black Mississippians. The volunteers paid a heavy price: hundreds were arrested, scores were stabbed and shot, and several died in their efforts to empower Black Mississippians. The Freedom Summer campaign helped convince the U.S. Congress to ratify the Twenty-Fourth Amendment and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
