While the World Watched: A Birmingham Bombing Survivor Comes of Age during the Civil Rights Movement

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case that ruled segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. As a result, public schools across the country were ordered to integrate, inspiring fierce backlash in strictly segregated Southern states like Alabama.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a law signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson that prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. It was considered a major victory for the civil rights movement and one of the most important pieces of legislation passed in American history.

Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation in many states across the South. Implemented after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, Jim Crow laws implied a “separate but equal” society in which Black people and white people had access to the same resources and services. However, in practice, spaces and services for Black people were often significantly worse than those for white people, and the laws led to racial discrimination and oppression.