50 Fun Facts About Civil Rights Movement

The 1896 Supreme Court case that established the "separate but equal" doctrine was Plessy v. what?

Homer Plessy, one-eighth Black, had deliberately boarded a whites-only Louisiana rail car; only Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented.

Which justice cast the lone dissent in Plessy, writing "Our Constitution is color-blind"?

His grandson and namesake sat on the Warren Court that heard Brown v. Board six decades later.

In what year did Brown v. Board of Education rule segregated public schools unconstitutional?

The decision under Chief Justice Earl Warren was unanimous; a follow-up ordered desegregation "with all deliberate speed".

Which president desegregated the US armed forces by executive order in 1948?

Executive Order 9981 came a year after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's colour line.

How old was Emmett Till when he was murdered in Mississippi in August 1955?

His mother's decision to hold an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and Jet magazine's photographs, galvanised a generation of activists.

After their acquittal, Emmett Till's killers confessed to which magazine for $4,000?

Protected by double jeopardy, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam told journalist William Bradford Huie exactly what they had done.

Nine months before Rosa Parks, which 15-year-old was arrested for refusing to give up her Montgomery bus seat?

She was one of the plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, the case that actually ended bus segregation.

How long did the Montgomery bus boycott last?

About 90 percent of Montgomery's Black residents took part, and Jo Ann Robinson mimeographed 52,500 leaflets to launch it.

Which Supreme Court case desegregated the buses and ended the Montgomery boycott?

The November 1956 ruling made the young Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, a national figure.

Rosa Parks was secretary of the local chapter of which organisation when she was arrested?

She had just returned from nonviolence training at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.

Which president sent the 101st Airborne to escort the Little Rock Nine into Central High School in 1957?

Governor Orval Faubus had used the Arkansas National Guard to keep the students out; the next year he closed every high school in the city.

Which of the Little Rock Nine became the first Black graduate of Central High School in 1958?

The nine received the Congressional Gold Medal from President Clinton in 1999.

The Greensboro sit-in of February 1, 1960 began at the lunch counter of which chain store?

The four freshmen from North Carolina A&T kept their receipts from other counters and asked why their money was good everywhere but there.

SNCC was founded in April 1960 at a conference called by which veteran organiser?

The gathering was at Shaw University in Raleigh; SNCC went on to organise the Freedom Rides.

The 1961 Freedom Rides were organised by which group to test a Supreme Court ruling on interstate travel?

The first ride left Washington on May 4, 1961; about 436 riders took part in at least 60 rides that year.

In which Alabama town was a Freedom Riders bus firebombed on Mother's Day 1961?

In Birmingham, Bull Connor gave the Klan fifteen minutes with the riders before police arrived.

Arrested Freedom Riders in Mississippi were sent to which notorious prison?

Under a "jail, no bail" policy they served 39 days each, the maximum without losing the right to appeal.

Who became the first Black student admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962?

Two people died and 28 federal agents were shot; in 1966 he was himself shot on the second day of his March Against Fear.

What was the Birmingham commissioner who turned dogs and fire hoses on child marchers in 1963 known as?

Eugene Connor had lost the mayoral election but refused to leave office; the television pictures forced the Kennedy administration to act.

On what did Martin Luther King Jr. write his "Letter from Birmingham Jail"?

He had been refused writing paper in solitary confinement after his arrest on April 12, 1963.

The Birmingham march by more than a thousand schoolchildren in May 1963 became known as what?

James Bevel of the SCLC proposed it when the campaign ran short of adults willing to be arrested.

Which NAACP field secretary was shot dead in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12, 1963?

Byron De La Beckwith walked free from two hung juries in 1964 and was finally convicted in 1994.

Roughly how many people attended the March on Washington on August 28, 1963?

The Kennedy administration had opposed the march at first, then worked to make sure it succeeded.

Who was the chief organiser of the March on Washington, working alongside A. Philip Randolph?

An openly gay Quaker who had taught King Gandhian nonviolence, he was kept in the background and honoured with a posthumous Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Who was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington?

The 23-year-old SNCC chairman used his speech to criticise the Kennedy administration for not protecting activists in the Deep South.

How many girls died in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church?

The last of the Klansmen responsible was not convicted until 2002.

What date did Lyndon Johnson sign the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public accommodations?

It followed a 54-day Senate filibuster and banned discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin.

The civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in June 1964 were James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and whom?

The killers included members of the Neshoba County sheriff's department; the case inspired the film Mississippi Burning.

Which sharecropper-turned-activist asked 'Is this America?' at the 1964 Democratic convention?

She had been beaten in a Winona jail in 1963 and said she was "sick and tired of being sick and tired".

What "compromise" did President Johnson offer the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in Atlantic City?

The MFDP angrily refused; its members later borrowed passes and sat in the seats the official delegation had abandoned.

How old was Martin Luther King Jr. when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964?

He was the youngest laureate at the time, and Time had named him Person of the Year in 1963.

Martin Luther King Jr. was born with what first name?

His father renamed them both after a 1934 trip to Germany and the story of the Reformation.

Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965 at which New York venue?

Two of the three men convicted were exonerated in 2021 after evidence of FBI and police misconduct emerged.

What did Malcolm X say the "X" in his name replaced?

He was born Malcolm Little in Omaha; after his 1964 pilgrimage to Mecca he took the name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz.

The Selma marchers attacked by state troopers on March 7, 1965 were crossing what?

About 600 marchers were beaten and tear-gassed on "Bloody Sunday"; John Lewis's skull was fractured.

How far is the march route from Selma to Montgomery?

The successful third march took four days and ended with about 25,000 people at the state capitol on March 25, 1965.

Whose death after being shot by a state trooper in Marion, Alabama, sparked the Selma marches?

James Reeb, a white minister from Boston, was murdered after the second march, and Viola Liuzzo after the third.

On what date did President Johnson sign the Voting Rights Act?

During Freedom Summer the year before, only 1,600 of 17,000 Black Mississippians who tried to register had succeeded.

Which constitutional amendment, ratified in 1964, abolished the poll tax in federal elections?

The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments of the Reconstruction era had been hollowed out by Jim Crow laws for decades.

The Lovings, whose 1967 case ended interracial marriage bans, were from which state?

Sixteen states still had such laws; June 12 has been celebrated as Loving Day since 2004.

Who became the first African American justice of the Supreme Court in 1967?

As NAACP counsel he had won 29 of 32 cases before the court, including Brown v. Board.

The Black Panther Party was founded in October 1966 in which city?

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale began with armed patrols monitoring police, then built free breakfast programmes and clinics.

Which FBI director called the Black Panthers "the greatest threat to the internal security" of the US?

His COINTELPRO programme infiltrated and sabotaged the party, which dissolved in 1982.

Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis when he was killed on April 4, 1968. Whom had he come to support?

The night before, he had given the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at Mason Temple.

Where in Memphis was Martin Luther King Jr. standing when he was shot?

James Earl Ray pleaded guilty and got 99 years; riots broke out in more than 100 cities.

The Fair Housing Act was signed one week after King's assassination. It is Title VIII of which law?

It banned discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion and national origin; sex was added in 1974.

Six-year-old Ruby Bridges integrated William Frantz Elementary in which city in November 1960?

Norman Rockwell's painting The Problem We All Live With shows her walking in with US marshals; only one teacher agreed to teach her.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in which year, with King as its president?

It grew directly out of the Montgomery boycott and went on to run the Birmingham and Selma campaigns.

What was the 1964 project that brought nearly 1,000 volunteers to Mississippi to register voters called?

At least 30 Freedom Schools taught 3,500 students, and more than 80,000 people joined the MFDP.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first observed as a federal holiday in which year?

President Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983; it falls on the third Monday in January.