Existing comment:
1954 Brown v Board of Education:
Eight-year-old Linda Brown, barred from attending a white school near her home in Topeka, Kansas, attends a black school several miles away. Her father, along with the NAACP and plaintiffs in similar cases nationwide, files suit in an effort to test segregation laws. The case reaches the US Supreme Court, which rules unanimously that school segregation violates the Eighteenth Amendment's equal protection clause and should be ended "with all deliberate speed." This overturns the "separate but equal" Plessy v Ferguson decision that has stood since 1896.
1955 Montgomery bus boycott:
Rosa Parks is arrested after violating a Montgomery, Alabama, segregation ordinance by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Black leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., organize a boycott of the bus company. The boycott ends almost a year later when the US Supreme Court upholds a lower court's decision declaring Montgomery's segregated bus seating unconstitutional.
1964 Civil Rights Act:
President Lyndon B Johnson signs this sweeping law, which prohibits racial discrimination in public facilities (including hotels, restaurants, and theaters), schools and employment.
1965 Immigration Act:
This act eliminates quotas established by previous laws that restricted the immigration of various groups, especially Asians. Immigrants are now to be admitted according to their skills, rather than their nationality.
2006 Voting Rights Act renewed:
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was designed to address discriminated based on race at the polls. Renewing the act kept legislation in place that prevents communities from adopting changes in electoral practices that might weaken the voting strength of minority voters. |