Final answer:
The civil rights legislation and milestones in the United States include the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court decisions in Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, the ratification of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Step-by-step explanation:
The struggle for civil rights in the United States has been marked by significant legislative and judicial milestones. One such landmark is the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves, and provided all citizens with equal protection under the laws, countering the Dred Scott decision.
The Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the doctrine of "separate but equal." This ruling was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, which declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.
The Twenty-Fourth Amendment, ratified in 1964, eliminated the poll tax in federal elections, which had been used to disenfranchise African American voters. This progression in legislation continued with the landmark passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South.