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Thirteenth Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. -
Fourteenth Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. -
Fifteenth Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment (Amendment XV) to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". -
Plessy vs Ferguson
Plessy vs. Ferguson is a landmark United States Supreme Court. It was a decision upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities. -
Integration of the Armed Forces
Also klnown as the Executive Order 9981 is an executive order issued by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished racial discrimination in the armed forces and eventually led to the end of segregation in the services. -
Brown vs Board
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. -
Emmett Till is murdered
Emmett Till was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. -
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. -
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American Civil Rights Movement
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Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) founded
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement. -
Crisis at Central High School and the “ Little Rock Nine”
The Little Rock Nine were a group of African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was one of the organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in April 1960. SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support SNCC's work in the South, allowing full-time SNCC workers to have a $10 per week salary. -
Greensboro Sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in 1960 which led to the Woolworth's department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. -
Freedom Rides
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. -
John F. Kennedy becomes President
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his death in 1963. -
Integration of The University of Mississippi “James Meredith”
James Howard Meredith (born June 25, 1933) is an American civil rights movement figure, a writer, and a political adviser. In 1962, he was the first African-American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the American civil rights movement. -
MLK arrested and jailed in Birmingham
On Good Friday, April 12, King is arrested with Ralph Abernathy by Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor for demonstrating without a permit. During the eleven days he spent in jail, MLK writes his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail -
March on Washington DC “I Have a Dream Speech”
he March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom or "The Great March on Washington", as styled in a sound recording released after the event was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating that racial harmony. -
16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham bombed
The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963 as an act of racially motivated terrorism. The explosion at the African-American church, which killed four girls, marked a turning point in the U.S. 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
John F. Kennedy assassinated - Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President
Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States (1963–1969). He became president as JFK was assassinated. -
Three civil-rights workers murdered in Mississippi
Three American civil rights' workers, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael "Mickey" Schwerner, were shot at close range on the night of June 21–22, 1964 by members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County's Sheriff Office and the Philadelphia Police Department located in Philadelphia, Mississippi. The three had been working on the "Freedom Summer" campaign, attempting to register African Americans to vote. -
Civil Rights Act 1964 passed
he Civil Rights Act of 1964 (enacted July 2, 1964) is a landmark piece of civil rights 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. -
Twenty Fourth Amendment “Poll Tax abolished”
The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote. -
Malcolm X shot to death
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was preparing to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom when someone in the 400-person audience yelled "Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket!" As Malcolm X and his bodyguards attempted to quiet the disturbance, a man seated in the front row rushed forward and shot him once in the chest with a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun. -
Selma to Montgomery March
The Selma to Montgomery marches, also known as Bloody Sunday and the two marches that followed, were marches and protests held in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. All three were attempts to march from Selma to Montgomery where the Alabama capitol is located. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination in voting.Echoing the language of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Act prohibits states and local governments from imposing any "voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color." -
Black Panthers are founded
The Black Panther Party or BPP was a black revolutionary socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s. -
Stokley Carmichael coins the phrase “Black Power”
Stokely Carmichael was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. Growing up in the United States from the age of eleven, he graduated from Howard University and rose to prominence in the civil rights and Black Power movements, first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party. -
MLK assassinated
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader of the African-American civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who became known for his advancement of civil rights by using civil disobedience. He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968 passed
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 (enacted April 11, 1968) is a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin. The Act was signed into law during the King assassination riots by President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had previously signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act into law.
