Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877. Such legally enforced segregation in the south lasted into the 1960s.
The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested for her refusal to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when the federal ruling Browder v. Gayle took effect, and led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws that segregated buses were unconstitutional.
Pullman porters were men hired to work for the railroads as porters on sleeping cars. Starting shortly after the American Civil War, George Pullman sought out former slaves to work on his sleeper cars. Their job was to carry passengers’ baggage, shine shoes, set up and maintain the sleeping berths, and serve passengers. Pullman porters served American railroads from the late 1860s until the Pullman Company ceased operations on December 31, 1968, though some sleeping-car porters continued working on cars operated by the railroads themselves and, beginning in 1971, Amtrak. The term "porter" has been superseded in modern American usage by "sleeping car attendant", with the former term being considered "somewhat derogatory".
Edgar Daniel Nixon, known as E. D. Nixon, was an American civil rights leader and union organizer in Alabama who played a crucial role in organizing the landmark Montgomery bus boycott there in 1955. The boycott highlighted the issues of segregation in the South, was upheld for more than a year by black residents, and nearly brought the city-owned bus system to bankruptcy. It ended in December 1956, after the United States Supreme Court ruled in the related case, Browder v. Gayle (1956), that the local and state laws were unconstitutional, and ordered the state to end bus segregation.
Homer Adolph Plessy was an American shoemaker and activist, who was the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. He staged an act of civil disobedience to challenge one of Louisiana's racial segregation laws and bring a test case to force the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of segregation laws. The Court decided against Plessy. The resulting "separate but equal" legal doctrine determined that state-mandated segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as long as the facilities provided for both black and white people were putatively "equal". The legal precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson lasted into the mid-20th century, until a series of landmark Supreme Court decisions concerning segregation, beginning with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
Diane Judith Nash is an American civil rights activist, and a leader and strategist of the student wing of the Civil Rights Movement.
Gloria Richardson Dandridge was an American civil rights activist best known as the leader of the Cambridge movement, a civil rights action in the early 1960s in Cambridge, Maryland, on the Eastern Shore. Recognized as a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, she was one of the signatories to "The Treaty of Cambridge", signed in July 1963 with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and state and local officials. It was an effort at reconciliation and commitment to change after a riot the month before.
Katherine "Kate" Brown (1840–1883) was an employee of the United States Senate and the plaintiff in Railroad Company v. Brown (1873), a case decided by the United States Supreme Court. She was African-American.
Robert Fox (1846-1933) was an African-American activist who sparked a civil rights battle in Louisville, Kentucky in October 1870 by entering a segregated streetcar. He was born in Kentucky to Albert and Margaret Fox and worked as an undertaker and a grocer. He died in 1933.
Elizabeth Jennings Graham was an African-American teacher and civil rights figure.
The Separate Car Act was a law passed by the Louisiana State Legislature in 1890 which required "equal, but separate" train car accommodations for Blacks and Whites. An unsuccessful challenge to this law culminated in the United States Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which upheld the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation.
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, "Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. Such laws remained in force until 1965. Formal and informal segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well, even if several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white "Redeemers"-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-White Movement of Southern Republicans.
The Royal Ice Cream sit-in was a nonviolent protest in Durham, North Carolina, that led to a court case on the legality of segregated facilities. The demonstration took place on June 23, 1957 when a group of African American protesters, led by Reverend Douglas E. Moore, entered the Royal Ice Cream Parlor and sat in the section reserved for white patrons. When asked to move, the protesters refused and were arrested for trespassing. The case was appealed unsuccessfully to the County and State Superior Courts.
Charlotte L. Brown (1839–?) was an American educator and civil rights activist who was one of the first to legally challenge racial segregation in the United States when she filed a successful lawsuit against a streetcar company in San Francisco in the 1860s after she was forcibly removed from a segregated streetcar. Brown's legal action and the precedent it created led to additional challenges to segregation in San Francisco and within 30 years, California enacted legislation to make such segregation on streetcars illegal statewide.
Civil rights in the United States include noted legislation and organized efforts to abolish public and private acts of racial discrimination against Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, Latin Americans, women, the homeless, minority religions, and other groups since the independence of the country.
African American women played a variety of important roles in the civil rights movement. They served as leaders, demonstrators, organizers, fundraisers, theorists, formed abolition and self-help societies. They also created and published newspapers, poems, and stories about how they are treated and it paved the way for the modern civil rights movement. They were judged by the color of their skin, as well as being discriminated against society because they are women. African American women faced two struggles, both sexism and racism. Womanism fully encompasses the intersectionality between these two social barriers, thus encompassing African American female involvement in the civil rights movement. African American women led organizations and struggles for their suffrage, anti-lynching laws, full employment and especially against the Jim Crow Laws. They had to constantly fight for equality and needed to have a voice in what they can do in society. Black women served a special role as "bridge leaders," forming connections between those in formal positions of power and political constituents. They were the middle person going back and forth between the two groups and provided information to them. A major turning point was the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, which followed Rosa Park's bold move of not giving up her bus seat. Several notable African American female activists and organizations emerged from this movement, making essential gains in the civil rights agenda, despite restricted access to power and the Cold War atmosphere pushing for silence within the United States.
The history of slavery in Colorado began centuries before Colorado achieved statehood when Spanish colonists of Santa Fe de Nuevo México (1598–1848) enslaved Native Americans, called Genízaros. Southern Colorado was part of the Spanish territory until 1848. Comanche and Utes raided villages of other indigenous people and enslaved them.
Transport and bus boycotts in the United States were protests against the racial segregation of transport services before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed forms of discrimination.