African Black Civil Rights

By Drachmann
  • Period: to

    African Americans

  • The Niagara Movement

    The movement is formed in part as a protest to Booker T. Washington's policy of accommodation to white society; the Niagara movement embraces a more radical approach, calling for immediate equality in all areas of American life.

  • The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is founded

    For the next half century, it would serve as the country's most influential African-American civil rights organization, dedicated to political equality and social justice In 1910,

  • the Universal Negro Improvement Association

    An influential black nationalist organization "to promote the spirit of race pride" and create a sense of worldwide unity among blacks.

  • 1920's - The Harlem Renaissance

    This literary, artistic, and intellectual movement fosters a new black cultural identity.

  • Nine black youths are indicted in Scottsboro, Ala.

    On charges of having raped two white women. Although the evidence was slim, the southern jury sentenced them to death. The Supreme Court overturns their convictions twice; each time Alabama retries them, finding them guilty. In a third trial, four of the Scottsboro boys are freed; but five are sentenced to long prison terms.

  • Jackie Robinson

    Jackie Robinson breaks Major League Baseball's color barrier when he is signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers by Branch Rickey.

  • African Americans integrating the U.S. armed forces

    Although African Americans had participated in every major U.S. war, it was not until after World War II that President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order integrating the U.S. armed forces.

  • Malcolm X

    Malcolm X becomes a minister of the Nation of Islam. Over the next several years his influence increases until he is one of the two most powerful members of the Black Muslims (the other was its leader, Elijah Muhammad). A black nationalist and separatist movement, the Nation of Islam contends that only blacks can resolve the problems of blacks.

  • Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans.

    Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans. declares that racial segregation in schools is unconstitutional (May 17).

  • Emmett Till & Rosa Parks

    A young black boy, Emmett Till, is brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Two white men charged with the crime are acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder. The public outrage generated by the case helps spur the civil rights movement (Aug.).
    Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger (Dec.1).

  • The Southern Christian Leadership Conference

    The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights group, is established by Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth (Jan.-Feb.)

  • sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter (Feb. 1)

    Four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter (Feb. 1). Six months later the "Greensboro Four" are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South.

  • "Freedom Riders"

    Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.

  • James Meredith

    James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi (Oct. 1). President Kennedy sends 5,000 federal troops after rioting breaks out.

  • Martin Luther King arrested

    Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala. He writes "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which advocated nonviolent civil disobedience.

  • President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act

    President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin (July 2).

  • Malcolm X

    Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is assassinated (Feb. 21).

  • The Black Panthers

    The Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale (Oct.).

  • Stokely Carmichael

    Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coins the phrase "black power" in a speech in Seattle (April 19).

  • Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis

    Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. (April 4).
    President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing (April 11).

  • Tuskegee Syphilis experiment

    The infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiment ends. Begun in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service's 40-year experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis has been described as an experiment that "used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone."

  • Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

    The Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action, but imposed limitations on it to ensure that providing greater opportunities for minorities did not come at the expense of the rights of the majority (June 28).

  • The first race riots

    The first race riots in decades erupt in south-central Los Angeles after a jury acquits four white police officers for the videotaped beating of African-American Rodney King (April 29).

  • Grutter v. Bollinger

    In Grutter v. Bollinger, the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5–4) upholds the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body." (June 23)

  • Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson

    In Parents v. Seattle and Meredith v. Jefferson, affirmative action suffers a setback when a bitterly divided court rules, 5 to 4, that programs in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., which tried to maintain diversity in schools by considering race when assigning students to schools, are unconstitutional.

  • Sen. Barack Obama

    Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat from Chicago, becomes the first African American to be nominated as a major party nominee for president.
    On November 4, Barack Obama, becomes the first African American to be elected president of the United States, defeating Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain.

  • Barack Obame becomes the country's 44th president.

    Barack Obama Democrat from Chicago, becomes the first African-American president and the country's 44th president.
    On February 2, the U.S. Senate confirms, with a vote of 75 to 21, Eric H. Holder, Jr., as Attorney General of the United States. Holder is the first African American to serve as Attorney General.