Civil Rights for African Americans
by liz and shauna
1. Civil Rights Act of 1964
1.1. U.S law intended to end all discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.
1.2. Considered the most important U.S law on Civil Rights since Reconstruction in 1865-1867
1.3. Law was proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1963 but then streghtened and passed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
2. Voting Rights of 1965
2.1. Before 1965, blacks were not allowed to vote.
2.2. Lyndon B. Johnson made Civil Rights his top priority while in office.
2.3. On August 5, 1965, it was signed into law that discriminatory literary tests were banned and federal goverment was to oversee voter registration.
2.4. By 1968, almost 60% of eligible blacks were registered to vote in Mississippi.
3. 24th Amendment
3.1. Guarantees no person can be denied the right to vote due to inability to pay a tax prior to voting
3.2. Proposed on: August 27th, 1962
3.3. Ratified: January 23, 1964
4. Thesis Statement: African Americans have fought a long and hard fight to be just as equal as white people. Without the efforts of the men and women of the 1960's, who knows what the Civil Rights of African Americans would be now?
5. Oliver L. Brown (Brown vs. Board of Education) 1954. Topeka, Kansas.
5.1. Before this, black and white children were segregated in schools, primarily in the south.
5.2. Declared previous ruling, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment
5.3. The Supreme Court decided that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This meant that schools could not discriminate students by separation based on race.
6. Montgomery Bus Boycott. December 1, 1955.
6.1. Rosa Parks, a black woman, was asked to give up her seat.
6.2. She was then arrested and taken to jail.
6.3. Blacks protested for 381 days, not taking the buses anywhere.
6.4. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the African Americans to not segregate buses or any form of public transportation.
7. By Liz Pereira and Shauna Oswald Period 4
