-
Student Strike at Moton High School
An all-black school posed a strike against segration with the hope of bettering the instittuion, and eventually, the desegregation of the school, which eventually led to the case of Davis v. The County School Board of Prince Edward County. The students lost in a federal distsrict court. -
Brown v. Board of Education
This case made segregation in schools unconstitutional and desrcribed it as "unequal". -
Emmet Till Murder
Till was murdered by a group of white men after reportedly flirting with and making suggestive remarks to a white woman. -
Montogmery Bus Boycotts
Began after the arrest of Rosa Parks, and continued until buses were desegregated by the supreme court case Browder v. Gayle. -
Massive Resistance Declared
Declared by US Senator Harry Byrd, it was a policy to unite white politicians to prevent public school desegregation. -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine were the nine African-American students involved in the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School. Their entrance into the school in 1957 sparked a nationwide crisis when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, in defiance of a federal court order, called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the Nine from entering. -
Greensboro Sit-Ins
On February 1, 1960, four African-American students of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University sat at a white-only lunch counter inside a Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth’s store. While sit-ins had been held elsewhere in the United States, the Greensboro sit-in catalyzed a wave of nonviolent protest against private-sector segregation in the United States. -
Freedom Riders
A group of civil rights activists began riding interstate buses into the southern United States. -
Integration of Ole Miss
In late September 1962, after a legal battle, an African-American man named James Meredith attempted to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Chaos briefly broke out on the Ole Miss campus, with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many others arrested, after the Kennedy administration called out some 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce order. -
March on Birmingham
On May 2nd more than 1,000 African American students attempted to march into downtown Birmingham, and hundreds were arrested. When hundreds more gathered the following day, Commissioner Connor directed local police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstrations. During the next few days images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, triggering international outrage. -
March on Washington
The 1963 March on Washington attracted an estimated 250,000 people for a peaceful demonstration to promote Civil Rights and economic equality for African Americans. Participants walked down Constitution and Independence avenues and gathered before the Lincoln Monument for speeches, songs, and prayer. Televised live to an audience of millions, the march provided dramatic moments, most memorably the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream". -
24th Amendment Passes
One measure used by Jim Crow-era southern states to deny the right to vote to blacks was a poll tax, a special fee charged for the right to vote. The Twenty-fourth Amendment, passed at the height of the civil rights movement, banned all such poll taxes. -
Civil Rights act of 1964
A landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities and women. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. -
Malcom X Assassinated
The former Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He was 39. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
A landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. -
Black Power Movement Begins
The movement emphasized racial pride and the creation of Black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote Black collective interests, advance Black values, and secure Black autonomy. -
Loving v. Virginia
A landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional, thereby overturning Pace v. Alabama and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States. -
Martin Luther King Assassination
Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was hit by a sniper's bullet. King had been standing on the balcony in front of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, when, without warning, he was shot. In outrage of the murder, many blacks took to the streets across the United States in a massive wave of riots.
