At the culmination of a legal strategy pursued by African Americans, in 1954 the Supreme Court struck down many of the laws that had allowed racial segregation and discrimination to be legal in the United States as unconstitutional.[3][4][5][6] The Warren Court made a series of landmark rulings against racist discrimination, including the separate but equal doctrine, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), and Loving v. Virginia (1967) which banned segregation in public schools and public accommodations, and struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage.[7][8][9] The rulings played a crucial role in bringing an end to the segregationistJim Crow laws prevalent in the Southern states.[10] In the 1960s, moderates in the movement worked with the United States Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that authorized oversight and enforcement of civil rights laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964[11] explicitly banned all discrimination based on race, including racial segregation in schools, businesses, and in public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minority voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.
The mob-style lynching of Will James, Cairo, Illinois, 1909
Lynching victim Will Brown, who was mutilated and burned during the Omaha, Nebraska race riot of 1919. Postcards and photographs of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the U.S.[25]
KKK night rally near Chicago, in the 1920s
Colored Sailors room in World War I
A white gang looking for blacks during the Chicago race riot of 1919
White tenants seeking to prevent blacks from moving into the housing project erected this sign, Detroit, 1942.
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.
School integration, Barnard School, Washington, D.C., 1955
Emmett Till’s mother Mamie (middle) at her son's funeral in 1955. He was killed by white men after a white woman accused him of offending her in her family's grocery store.
Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after being arrested for not giving up her seat on a bus to a white person
White parents rally against integrating Little Rock's schools in August 1959.
Student sit-in at Woolworth in Durham, North Carolina on February 10, 1960
A mob beats Freedom Riders in Birmingham. This picture was reclaimed by the FBI from a local journalist who also was beaten and whose camera was smashed.
James Meredith walking to class accompanied by a U.S. Marshal and a Justice Department official
U.S. Army trucks loaded with Federal law enforcement personnel on the University of Mississippi campus 1962
Recreation of Martin Luther King Jr.'s cell in Birmingham Jail at the National Civil Rights Museum
Wreckage at the Gaston Motel following the bomb explosion on May 11, 1963
Congress of Racial Equality march in Washington D.C. on September 22, 1963, in memory of the children killed in the Birmingham bombings
Alabama governor George Wallace tried to block desegregation at the University of Alabama and is confronted by U.S. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach in 1963.
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the National Mall
Leaders of the March on Washington posing before the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963
Bayard Rustin (left) and Cleveland Robinson (right), organizers of the March, on August 7, 1963
Martin Luther King Jr. at a civil rights march on Washington, D.C.
Malcolm X meets with Martin Luther King Jr., March 26, 1964
"We Cater to White Trade Only" sign on a restaurant window in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1938. In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and spent a night in jail for attempting to eat at a white-only restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida.
White segregationists (foreground) trying to prevent black people from swimming at a "White only" beach in St. Augustine during the 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protests
Missing persons poster created by the FBI in 1964 shows the photographs of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner
Lyndon B. Johnson signs the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson (center) meets with civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young, and James Farmer, January 1964
President Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr. at the signing of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965
Police attack non-violent marchers on "Bloody Sunday", the first day of the Selma to Montgomery marches.
Police arrest a man during the Watts riots in Los Angeles, August 1965
Film on the riots created by the White House Naval Photographic Unit
A 3,000-person shantytown called Resurrection City was established in 1968 on the National Mall as part of the Poor People's Campaign.
Mississippi State Penitentiary
Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (and other Mississippi-based organizations) is an example of local grassroots leadership in the movement.
Armed Lumbee Indians aggressively confronting Klansmen in the Battle of Hayes Pond
Jewish civil rights activist Joseph L. Rauh Jr. marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963
Gold medalist Tommie Smith (center) and bronze medalist John Carlos (right) showing the raised fist on the podium after the 200 m race at the 1968 Summer Olympics; both wear Olympic Project for Human Rights badges. Peter Norman (silver medalist, left) from Australia also wears an OPHR badge in solidarity with Smith and Carlos.
Mural of Malcolm X in Belfast
Ku Klux Klan demonstration in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964
Attorney General Robert Kennedy speaking before a hostile Civil Rights crowd protesting low minority hiring in his Justice Department June 14, 1963[288]