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Brown vs Board of Education
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. -
Murder of Emmitt Till
Money, Mississippi, in 1955 when the fourteen-year-old was accused of whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who was a cashier at a grocery store. Milam kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in the head. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the civil rights movement. -
Formation of the SCLC
American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., had a large role in the American civil rights movement. -
March on Selma
Southern state legislatures had passed and maintained a series of discriminatory requirements and practices that had disenfranchised most of the millions of African Americans across the South throughout the 20th century. -
Integration of Little Rock High School (Little Rock Nine)
a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
Founding of SNCC
A United States political organization formed by Black college students dedicated to overturning segregation in the South and giving young Blacks a stronger voice in the civil rights movement in America. SNCC, as an organization, advanced the "sit-in" movement, protest technique. -
Woolworth's counter sit-ins in Greensboro,
when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. -
Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. -
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letters from a Birmingham Jail”
The Letter from Birmingham Jail or Letter from Birmingham City Jail, also known as The Negro Is Your Brother. MLK wrote the letter from the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was confined after being arrested for his part in the Birmingham campaign. -
Assassination of Medgar Evers
As a field worker for the NAACP, Evers traveled through his home state encouraging poor African Americans to register to vote and recruiting them into the civil rights movement. He was instrumental in getting witnesses and evidence for the Emmett Till murder case, which brought national attention to the plight of African Americans in the South. -
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. It was one of the largest civil rights rallies in US history, and one of the most famous examples of non-violent mass direct action. -
Birmingham Church bombing
a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church as church members prepared for Sunday services. The racially motivated attack killed four young girls and shocked the nation. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
In New York City, Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
