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Imagine being unable to eat or sleep in most restaurants or motels and hotels; being unable to sit where you wanted in a movie theatre; having to sit in the rear when you boarded a bus, even an empty one; being forced to attend an inferior school; and even being forbidden to drink from certain water fountains.

These were the facts of everyday life for all Black people in the Southern part of the United States as recently as 1960. They were citizens of a country founded on the principle that all men are created equal. Yet, they were treated unequally and declared unequal - by law.

In the middle 1950's, a movement of ordinary women and men arose to challenge this way of life. Using boycotts, marches, and other forms of protest, they ultimately forced the South to end its peculiar system of legalized segregation. They succeeded because, in a democracy, when the people speak, the government must listen.

The events which shaped the modern civil rights movement began on May 15, 1954, when the United States Supreme Court