Significant Events
Selma to Montgomery March:
- SCLC concentrated their members at Selma, Alabama
- Focus on improving the situation for Afro-Americans to vote
- Previous trials to take on a march alike were brutally beaten down by local officals
- Success: March 21st, 1965
- Approximately 6000 participants (protected by national Army troops) walked to Montgomery, where 50,000 supporters joined them
- Martin Luther King gave speech: (quote) „No tide of racism can stop us!“
- Lyndon B. Johnson supported the march and ordered the security
- Accomplished the legalisation of the Voting Rights Act
- Showed how hard it was for Southern Black population to actually vote and enforce equality
BROWN v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA:
- 1954: church minister O. Brown went to court to fight segregation in schools by which his daugther was affected
- he was represented by Thurgood Marshall, with support by NAAPC
- won with argument that segregation was against the 14th amendment and psychologically harmful to the students
- resulted in a great success for NAAPC
- but not completely accepted, de facto segregation (segregation in people's minds rather than the law) not changed
Little Rock Nine: