Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Us History: 1945 1980: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
Learn about the Supreme Court ruling that outlawed school segregation in the United States.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Us History: 1865 1898: Jim Crow
After Reconstruction, states in the South passed laws that barred African Americans from voting and segregated schools, restaurants, and public accommodations.
Digital History
Digital History: Race
Read about the racial unrest in the turbulent times right after World War I when African Americans were moving north and black veterans were demanding their civil rights. Find out about the violent race riot in Tulsa in 1921, and the...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Making of African American Identity: Segregation: Antilynching Dramas
Brief plays by Georgia Douglas Johnson that protest lynching are examined within this resource. Links to each play are provided in addition to a series of questions for discussion.
Yale University
Yale New Haven Teachers Institute: Race and the Community
Discusses the issues of cultural and racial differences and how these should be addressed in schools. Includes objectives and lesson activities.
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Gilder Lehrman Institute: The Civil Rights Movement: Major Events and Legacies
[Free Registration/Login Required] An essay that speaks of the major events and legacies of the Civil Rights Movement.
Digital History
Digital History: Simple Justice
Follow the civil rights quest for integrated schools from the beginning in 1849 through the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education and the struggle that ensued for decades following in the most reluctant...
Library of Congress
Loc: Photographs of Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination
Photographs taken in the 1940s of various public places that had posted signs for "White" and "Colored."
PBS
Enlightenment: Brown v. Board of Education
Site offers background, further study links, the issue before the court, the ruling and results, and discussion ideas for the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Thomson Reuters
Find Law: u.s. Supreme Court: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1955)
Transcript of the Supreme Court's opinion in the 1955 Brown II case decision, which placed increased emphasis on implementing the 1954 Brown decision to desegregate public schools, thus overturning the 1896 decision in Plessy vs....
Thomson Reuters
Find Law: u.s. Supreme Court: Plessy vs. Ferguson
Transcript of the infamous Supreme Court decision that established the constitutionality of the principle of "Separate but equal," public facilities for members of different races. This was eventually overturned by the 1954 and 1955...
Black Past
Black Past: Meredith, James
A brief encyclopedia entry about James Meredith, the first black to integrate the University of Mississippi. A link will take you to a website so you can see the papers he donated to Old Miss.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of African Art: Contemporary African Art
An exhibition of contemporary African art that pulls together the work of 28 artists from 15 different countries. Read artist biographies, view representative works, and think about two prominent themes that emerge from the collection:...
Siteseen
Siteseen: American Historama: Little Rock Nine
Learn detailed facts about the Little Rock Nine crisis, the refusal to admit 9 African American students to the racially segregated Little Rock Central High in Arkansas in 1957.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History: Separate Is Not Equal: White Only
This section from the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History's exhibition Separate Is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education gives the history of Jim Crow laws and how they affected not only the voting rights of...
Other
Civil Rights Greensboro: Greensboro Sit Ins at Woolworth's
A very detailed description of the sit-ins at the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth's store and other businesses in that city during the first part of 1960. These sit-ins were to call attention to the segregation of public businesses...
USA Today
Minorities Make a Choice to Live With Their Own
Intriguing article explaining the trend illustrated through the 2000 Census information that minorities have broken segregation ties but still choose to live in areas with other members of their racial background.
PBS
Pbs: L. Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun: Jim Crow, Home Ownership, American Dream
Learn how Jim Crow laws impacted home ownership and the pursuit of the American Dream in this series of videos from the American Masters film, Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart. Lorraine Hansberry's family was at the...
Other
Encyclopedia Virginia: Civil Rights Act of 1964
A detailed look at the Civil Rights Act of 1964, paying particular attention to how Virginia Representative Howard W. Smith added an amendment intended to kill the act by making it cover gender discrimination as well as racial. Read...
Siteseen
Siteseen: American Historama: Freedom Riders
Article provides numerous detailed facts and a summary of the Freedom Riders who boarded their buses in May 1961 to test segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals in the South.
The History Cat
The History Cat: The Jim Crow Era: The Life and Death of Jim Crow
Looks at how Southerners continued to discriminate against blacks after the Civil War through Black Codes, or Jim Crow laws, which permitted practices such as segregation in public places and requiring literacy tests in order to vote.
PBS
Pbs: American Experience: Eugene "Bull" Connor
Brief biographical details on Eugene "Bull" Connor, Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, AL in 1961. He was an ultra-segregationist with close ties to the KKK known for enforcing racial segregation and denying civil rights to...
Siteseen
Siteseen: American Historama: Jim Crow Laws
Learn about the Jim Crow Laws, Southern laws that legalized segregation.