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7. Turbulence and Change: The '50s and '60s
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court made its historic decision in Brown vs. Board of Education to end segregation in public schools. One of the lawsuits that made up this decision involved the DC schools, and the following September, Washington opened its schools to all. The rocky process of adjusting to desegregation continued over the next years, and in many ways continues today. Civil rights struggles continued in the 1960s, just as the nation was sending its young men to fight in Vietnam. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968 provoked devastating riots along 14th Street in Columbia Heights and to a lesser extent along Mount Pleasant Street. |