Martin Luther King Jr.
We honor Martin Luther King Jr.
because he was the person who gave
the African Americans a right to vote.
So now the white and black have
rights to vote.
Rosa Parks
On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks,
age 42, refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order
that she give up her seat to make room for a white
passenger. Her action was not the first of its kind: Irene
Morgan, in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys, in 1955, had
won rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court and the
Interstate Commerce Commission respectively in the
area of interstate bus travel. Nine months before Parks
refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette
Colvin refused to move from her seat on the same bus
system. But unlike these previous individual actions of
civil disobedience, Parks' action sparked the
Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Emmett Till
• Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28,
1955) was an African American boy from Chicago,
Illinois, who was murdered[1] at the age of 14 in
Money, Mississippi, a small town in the state's Delta
region, after reportedly whistling at a white woman.
The murder of Emmett Till was noted as one of the
leading events that motivated the American Civil
Rights Movement.[1] The main suspects were
acquitted, but later admitted to the murder.
Andrew Goodman
• In 1964, Goodman volunteered along with fellow
activist Mickey Schwerner to work on the "Freedom
Summer" project of the Congress of Racial Equality
(CORE) to register blacks to vote in Mississippi. Having
protested U.S. President Lyndon Johnson's presence at
the opening of that year's World's Fair, Goodman left
New York to train and develop civil rights strategies at
Western College for Women (now part of Miami
University) in Oxford, Ohio. In mid-June, Goodman
joined Schwerner in Meridian, Mississippi, where the
latter was designated head of the field office. They
worked on registering blacks in rural areas to vote.
Bobby Seale
• In 1962, at the age of 25, Seale began attending
Oakland City College, located on Grove Street,
near the Berkeley city limits, where he would join
the Afro-American Association (AAA) and as a
result meet Huey Newton, later his co-founder of
the Black Panther Party. Seale and co-member
Newton became increasingly skeptical about the
direction of the AAA, and in particular, the AAA's
tendency to analyze rather than act on the
problems facing black Americans.
Malcolm X
• While in prison, Malcolm X became a member of the
Nation of Islam. After his parole in 1952, he became one of
the Nation's leaders and chief spokesmen. For nearly a
dozen years, he was the public face of the Nation of Islam.
Tension between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, head
of the Nation of Islam, led to Malcolm X's departure from
the organization in March 1964.
• After leaving the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X became a
Sunni Muslim and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, after which
he disavowed racism. He traveled extensively throughout
Africa and the Middle East. He founded Muslim Mosque,
Inc., a religious organization, and the secular, black
nationalist Organization of Afro-American Unity. Less than a
year after he left the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X was