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The Sit-in Movement
In the fall of 1959, four young African Americans—Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, and Franklin McCain—enrolled at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, an African American college in Greensboro. The four freshmen often talked about the civil rights movement. In January 1960, McNeil suggested a sit-in. “All of us were afraid,” Richmond later recalled. “But we went and did it.” -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Urged on by former NAACP official and SCLC executive director Ella Baker, students established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. African American college students from all across the South made up the majority of SNCC’s members. Many whites also joined. SNCC became an important civil rights group.Volunteer Robert Moses urged the SNCC to start helping rural Southern African Americans, who often faced violence if they tried to register to vote. -
The Freedom Riders
In early May 1961, teams of African American and white volunteers who became known as Freedom Riders boarded several southbound interstate buses. Buses were met by angry white mobs in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama. The mobs slit bus tires and threw rocks at the windows. In Anniston, someone threw a firebomb into one bus. Fortunately, no one was killed. In Birmingham, riders emerged from a bus to face a gang of young men armed with baseball bats, chains, and lead pipes. -
The March on Washington
Civil rights leaders kept the pressure on legislators and the president by planning a large-scale march on Washington. On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 demonstrators, African American and white, gathered near the Lincoln Memorial. They heard speeches and sang songs. Dr. King then delivered a powerful speech calling for freedom and equality for all Americans. -
The Bill Becomes Law
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most comprehensive civil rights law Congress had ever enacted. The law made segregation illegal in most places of public accommodation, and it gave citizens of all races and nationalities equal access to public facilities. The law gave the U.S. attorney general more power to bring lawsuits to force school desegregation and required private employers to end discrimination in the workplace. It also established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) -
The Selma March
In January 1965, the SCLC and Dr. King selected Selma, Alabama, as the focal point for their campaign for voting rights. Although African Americans made up a majority of Selma’s population, they made up only 3 percent of registered voters.Sheriff Jim Clark had deputized and armed dozens of white citizens. His posse terrorized African Americans. On one occasion, they even used clubs and cattle prods on them. King’s demonstrations in Selma led to the arrest of more than 3,000 African Americans
