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July 26, 1948
Truman signs Excutive order9981, which it says, " It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national orgin." -
May 17, 1954
Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brow v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans. Agreeing that segregation in public scholls is unconstitutional. -
Aug.
14 year old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped beaten shot and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. -
1955
Rosa Parks, refuses to give up her seat on the bus, at the front of the colored section. -
GreensBoro, N.C.
Four African American students at North Carolina Agricultural and technical college, start a sit-in at a segrefated WoolWorth's lunch counter. -
April
In Raleigh, N.C. the student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is founded at Shaw University, providing young black people with a place in the civil rights movement. -
Oct 1
James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Riots started happening so to prevent this, President Kennedy sent 5,000 federal troops. -
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King is arreted and put in jail during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham. -
Aug. 28
About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. -
Sept. 15
Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes. -
Jan. 23
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. -
July 2
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
August 4
(Neshoba Country, Miss.) The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in an earthen dam -
Feb. 21
(Harlem, N.Y.) Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. -
Nov. 22
fater two years of debates vetoes and threatened vetoes President Bush reverses himself and signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991. -
April 29
beating of African American Rodney King. By Police -
October 24
Rosa Park dies at age 92. -
January 30
Coretta Scott King dies at age 78. of a stroke. -
February
Emmett Till's 1955 murder case, reopened by the Department of Justice in 2004, is officially closed. -
May 10
James Bonard Fowler, a former state trooper, is indicted for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson 40 years after Jackson's death
