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Civil Rights Act (1866)
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 is established to protect the civil rights of African-Americans. The act guaranteed the right to sue, own property, and contract for work. -
14th Amendment Ratified
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified. The amendment grants the privilege of citizenship to African-Americans. It also guarantees that a person cannot be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. It also makes it illegal to deny a person equal protection under the law. -
US Supreme Ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an 8 to 1 vote that the “separate but equal” argument presented in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. The Supreme Court rules that if “separate but equal” facilities were available for both African-American and white travelers there was no violation of the 14th Amendment. -
NAACP Established
The NAACP is established by W.E.B. Du Bois and other civil rights activists. The purpose of the organization is to fight racial injustice through legal means. The organization lobbied to legislative bodies to create anti-lynching laws and eradicate injustice in its first 20 years. However, in the 1930s, the NAACP established a Legal Defense and Education Fund to fight legal battles in court. Headed by Charles Hamilton Houston, the fund created a strategy of dismantling segregation in education. -
Small Scale Start Of Protests
More than 100 African-American military veterans organized by the Southern Negro Youth Congress donned their uniforms and marched in a double file to the Jefferson County Courthouse, demanding to be allowed to register to vote. Most were denied. -
Arthur Shores Case
Arthur Shores filed the first legal challenge to Birmingham's segregated zoning laws on behalf of Samuel Mathews. -
Samuel Matthews Property
Samuel Mathews became the first African American to legally purchase a residence in North Smithfield. His house was bombed on the first night, touching off the "Battle of North Smithfield" and a long string of bombings intended to terrorize African Americans from moving into formerly white-only neighborhoods. -
NAACP Endorses Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall’s strategy of fighting segregation is endorsed by the NAACP Board of Directors. Marshall’s strategy included tackling segregation in education. -
Start Of Larger Scaled Protests
The Birmingham Business League, Birmingham Emancipation Association and the NAACP organized a protest at which approximately 2,000 Black residents protested at Smithfield Court for an end to terrorist activities. The crowd approved resolutions in favor of expanding real estate sales to Black buyers, and expressed support for the work of attorney Arthur Shores. -
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Arthur Shores Wins A Number Of Cases
1950: Arthur Shores won another challenge to Birmingham's still-segregated zoning laws in Clarence Mullins' court on behalf of Mary Means Monk.
1952: Arthur Shores won a federal case that resulted in his appointment to the Jefferson County Executive Democratic Committee.
1952: Arthur Shores and the NAACP filed suit on behalf of Autherine Lucy in an attempt to integrate the University of Alabama. -
Numerous School Segregation Charges
Several school segregation cases, which had been filed in states such as Delaware, Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington DC, are combined under Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. By combining these cases under one umbrella shows the national significance. -
US Supreme Court Ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson. The ruling argued that the racial segregation of public schools is a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. -
Bus Boycotts (Martin Luther-King and Rosa Parks)
The segregation system was disliked by many coloured people so they boycotted until the segregation system in the bus system was changed or improved. -
Emmett Goes To A Grocery Store
Emmett joins a group of teenagers, seven boys and one girl, to go to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market for refreshments to cool off after a long day of picking cotton in the hot sun. Bryant's Grocery, owned by a white couple, Roy and Carolyn Bryant, sells supplies and candy to a primarily black clientele of sharecroppers and their children. Emmett goes into the store to buy bubble gum. Some of the kids outside the store will later say they heard Emmett whistle at Carolyn Bryant. -
Emmett Kidnapped
About 2:30 a.m., Roy Bryant, Carolyn's husband, and his half brother J. W. Milam, kidnap Emmett Till from Moses Wright's home. They will later describe brutally beating him, taking him to the edge of the Tallahatchie River, shooting him in the head, fastening a large metal fan used for ginning cotton to his neck with barbed wire, and pushing the body into the river. -
Milam And Bryant Arrested
J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant are arrested on kidnapping charges in LeFlore County in connection with Till's disappearance. They are jailed in Greenwood, Mississippi and held without bond. -
Body Found
Three days later, Emmett Till's decomposed corpse is pulled from Mississippi's Tallahatchie River. Moses Wright identifies the body from a ring with the initials L.T. -
Milam And Bryant Fully Prosecuted
Mississippi Governor Hugh White orders local officials to "fully prosecute" Milam and Bryant in the Till case. -
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A range of events
Court Case Not Guilty, Funeral and spreading of the news of Emmett's brutal murder. -
Civil Rights Act
In 1957, President Eisenhower sent Congress a proposal for civil rights legislation. The new act established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote. It also established a federal Civil Rights Commission with authority to investigate discriminatory conditions and recommend corrective measures. -
Arkansas Refuses to Desegregate Schools
Arkansas’ governor, as well as lawmakers, refuse to desegregate schools. In the case, Cooper v. Aaron the U.S. Supreme Court remains steadfast by arguing that states must obey its rulings as it is an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. -
James Meredith
James H. Meredith, who in 1962 became the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, is shot by a sniper shortly after beginning a lone civil rights march through the South. Known as the “March Against Fear,” Meredith had been walking from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, in an attempt to encourage voter registration by African Americans in the South. -
March On Washington
The March on Washington was a massive protest march that occurred in August 1963, when some 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Also known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the event aimed to draw attention to continuing challenges and inequalities faced by African Americans a century after emancipation. It was also the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s now-iconic “I Have A Dream” speech. -
Civil Rights Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs. It also strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools. -
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Mississippi Burning, 3 Dead
All three activists were murdered sometime between the 21st and 22nd.