National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Forms, 1909

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'News Editorials from Across the United States'

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The day after the Supreme Court decided the unconstitutionality of school segregation in Brown v Board of Education, newspaper across the United States and around the world reported their variable reactions to the prospect of desegregation.

Claudette Colvin Arrested for Refusing to Give Up her Seat, Montgomery AL, March 2, 1955

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From Wikipedia: Claudette Colvin (born Claudette Austin; September 5, 1939)[1][2] is an American pioneer of the 1950s civil rights movement and retired nurse aide. On March 2, 1955, she was arrested at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a crowded, segregated bus. It occurred nine months before the similar, more widely known incident in which Rosa Parks, secretary of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), helped spark the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.

'Zora Neale Hurston, “Court Order Can't Make Races Mix,” Sentinel (Orlando), August 11, 1955'

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Responding to the proposed desegregation of American schools, Black writer and cultural critic Zora Neale Hurston offered a defense of Black schools and railed against the prospect of Black children being forced to learn within racist institutions.

JET Magazine Publishes Photographs of Emmett Till's Open Casket Funeral

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Mamie Till-Mobley asked that her son, Emmett Till, be given an open casket funeral on September 6, 1955, so the world could see what his murderers had done. 

On September 15, 1955, JET magazine featured an image of Emmett Till's open casket on its cover. The image drew revulsion towards the lynching from around the world.

Rosa Parks Arrested for Refusing to Give Up Her Bus Seat

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On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks rejected bus driver James F. Blake's order to vacate a row of four seats in the "colored" section in favor of a white passenger, once the "white" section was filled. A police officer arrested her.

Parks later said about being asked to move to the rear of the bus, "I thought of Emmett Till—a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store, whose killers were tried and acquitted—and I just couldn't go back."

Martin Luther King, Jr. Addresses Montgomery Bus Boycotters, Holt Street Baptist Church

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At Holt Street Baptist Church, Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr addresses a crowd of people following the first day of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

'Interview with Store Maid, by Willie M. Lee'

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Journalist Willie M. Lee interviewed a number of the bus boycotters in Montgomery. In this piece, someone identified only as a "store maid" expressed their adoration of Martin Luther King, Jr. and their willingness to defend themselves, violently, against racist abuse.

Ghana Declares Independence From Britain

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Ghana's independence had a powerful resonance across the Black Atlantic and especially in the United States. Many African American leaders traveled to Accra for the occasion, including Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Robert F. Williams Drives the KKK out of Monroe, NC

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Founding Statement, 15-17 April 1960

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The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced /snɪk/ SNIK) was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s.

Ella Baker, “Bigger than a Hamburger,” June 1960

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Diane Nash Recalls the Nashville Students’ Involvement in the Freedom Rides in 1961

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Freedom Rides, May-December 1961

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From Wikipedia: Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.[3] The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961,[4] and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17.[5]

The Freedom Riders challenged this status quo by riding interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating. The Freedom Rides, and the violent reactions they provoked, bolstered the credibility of the American Civil Rights Movement. They called national attention to the disregard for the federal law and the local violence used to enforce segregation in the southern United States. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, and other alleged offenses, but often they first let white mobs attack them without intervention.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sponsored most of the subsequent Freedom Rides, but some were also organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The Freedom Rides, beginning in 1961, followed dramatic sit-ins against segregated lunch counters conducted by students and youth throughout the South, and boycotts of retail establishments that maintained segregated facilities.

The Supreme Court's decision in Boynton supported the right of interstate travelers to disregard local segregation ordinances. Southern local and state police considered the actions of the Freedom Riders to be criminal and arrested them in some locations. In some localities, such as Birmingham, Alabama, the police cooperated with Ku Klux Klan chapters and other white people opposing the actions, and allowed mobs to attack the riders.

Possible Role Playing Situations, Mississippi Freedom Summer Preparation, 1964

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Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964

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From Wikipedia: 

Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. Blacks had been restricted from voting since the turn of the century due to barriers to voter registration and other laws. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers such as libraries, in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local Black population.

The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of the Mississippi branches of the four major civil rights organizations (SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and SCLC). Most of the impetus, leadership, and financing for the Summer Project came from SNCC. Bob Moses, SNCC field secretary and co-director of COFO, directed the summer project

The Civil Rights Act 1964

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Spearheaded by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the aftermath of his predecessor's assassination, the Civil Rights Act came into effect on July 2nd, 1964.

Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner

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From Wikipedia: It took authorities weeks to fully investigate the disappearance of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. On August 4th, 1964 - some 6 weeks after their disappearance - their bodies were recovered from an earthen damn in Meridian, Mississippi, after a tip off from an informant. 

Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City

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The 1964 Democratic National Convention coronated President Lyndon Johnson as the party's candidate for the forthcoming presidential election, but was notorious for shunning the request of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party for redress of grievances. Framed by Fannie Lou Hamer's searing testimony of the racism she had experienced at the hands of the Mississippi Democratic Party.

Horace Doyle Barnette's Confession to the FBI, 20 November 1964

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Under police questioning, participant in the Mississippi Burning murders Horace Dayle Barnette confessed his role, revealing the deliberate planning and brutal execution of three civil rights workers.

President Johnson Throws Support Behind Voting Rights Act

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"...and we shall overcome."

Watts Rebellion

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Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) Calls for Black Power

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Black Panther Party founded in Oakland

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