Background and Introduction

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves held in the states still fighting in the Civil War. After the War, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1865, abolished slavery everywhere in the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment, adopted in 1868, made the former slaves, and any other person born in the United States or naturalized, a citizen and required that all citizens be granted equal protection of the law. The Fifteenth Amendment, adopted in 1879, made it against the law to deny any citizen the right to vote because of his or her race or color or because he or she was formerly a slave.

Despite the promises of these new laws, the former slaves and their descendants, along with other racial and ethnic minorities, did not receive equal treatment under the law. In fact, in 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that State governments could separate people of different races as long as the separate facilities were equal. This "separate but equal" doctrine lasted until 1954 when the Supreme Court overruled its previous decision in cases involving schools in Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. Also in the 1890s, African-Americans were kept from exercising their right to vote by taxes, called "poll taxes", that had to be paid before a person could cast a vote and by tests given by voting registrars who had the power to pass or fail an applicant based on the color of his or her skin. Poll taxes and voting tests were finally outlawed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man who had boarded the bus after she did. At that time, public buses in the South were segregated, and African-Americans not only had to ride in the back of the bus, but also had to give up their seats to any white person who wanted to sit. Ms. Parks was arrested and taken to jail for refusing to give up her seat. On December 5, 1955, African-Americans in Montgomery began a boycott of the public buses led by a minister who had recently come to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The peaceful boycott continued for 381 days during which time 90% of the African-Americans in Montgomery refused to ride the buses. At the end, the buses in Montgomery were desegregated.

Public Accommodations and Facilities

Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation because of race, color, religion, or national origin. Places of public accommodation are hotels, motels, restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums, and concert halls.

Until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, persons from minority groups were excluded from, or segregated in, restaurants, motels, theaters, and other places of public accommodations. On February 1, 1960, 4 African-American students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College went into the Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, sat down at the lunch counter and ordered cups of coffee. The waitress refused to serve them coffee unless they stood up to drink it because only whites were allowed to sit at the lunch counter. The black students sat at the lunch counter until the store closed, but were never served their coffee. The next day they returned with more students and the peaceful protest called a "sit-in" was begun. Across the South, peaceful sit-ins by students took place in more than 100 cities in 1960. Although the protesters were beaten, and sometimes sent to jail, they continued to peacefully sit-in until they achieved their goals - desegregation of places of public accommodation.

In 1961, a new phase of the movement to desegregate places of public accommodation began - the "Freedom Rides." African-Americans were still sitting in the back of the buses in the South and were not permitted to use "whites only" restroom facilities in the terminals even though the Supreme Court had outlawed segregation on interstate buses (buses that traveled between states) in 1946. In May 1961, the first group of 13 Freedom Riders, white and black ranging in age from college students to a 60-year-old professor and his wife, left Washington, DC, on their way via Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi to New Orleans, Louisiana. They went in 2 buses. Riders in the first bus were attacked in both Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama. The Freedom Riders on this bus were beaten by men with pipes. The second bus was firebombed just outside of Anniston, Alabama.

Title III of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in public facilities because of race, color, religion, or national origin. Public facilities are facilities owned, operated or managed by state or local governments, like courthouses or jails. At the same time as the sit-ins and Freedom Rides, other protesters demonstrated against segregation in public facilities.