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Voting Rights Act
In August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act outlawed literacy tests and other tactics used to deny African Americans the right to vote. The act also called for the federal government to supervise voter registration in areas where less than half of voting-age citizens were registered to vote. Federal intervention would ensure that eligible voters were not turned away. -
Founding of CORE
CORE was created Chicago -
Integration of Military
On July 26, 1948, Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which stated, “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 origin.” With this order, desegregation became official policy in the armed forces. -
Brown v Board Decision
The Brown case stayed in the Supreme Court for a year and a half. During this time, a new chief justice, Earl Warren, was appointed to the Court. Warren was a firm opponent of segregation. Believing that a unanimous decision in the Brown case would carry more weight than a divided one, he worked hard to convince all the judges to rule in favor of the plaintiffs. Finally, in May 1954, he succeeded. On May 17, he announced the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education: -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks, a 43-year-old African American woman, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Parks, a seamstress, had been active in the Alabama chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Years later, Parks described her motives for remaining in her seat: “This is what I wanted to know: when and how would we ever determine our rights as human beings?” -
Little Rock
The Supreme Court decision in the Brown v Board of Education anger many white citizens in the town of Little Rock and leads to the assault of many colored students. -
Sit-Ins
Four African American students from North Carolina's Agricultural and Technical College sat down at a lunch counter in the Woolworth's drugstore in Greensboro. They ordered food, but the waitress refused to serve them, saying that only white customers could eat at Woolworth's. -
James Meredith
African American veteran of the Korean War, applied for admission as a transfer student to the University of Mississippi, commonly known as Ole Miss. The university had traditionally been all white, and Meredith knew he would be taking a stand to integrate it. -
Freedom Rides
One direct action targeted the interstate bus system in the South. In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in interstate transport was illegal. In the spring of 1961, the civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized Freedom Rides to test whether southern states were complying with the ruling. -
Birmingham
In the early 1960s, Birmingham, Alabama, was a steel-mill town with a long history of bigotry. Martin Luther King Jr. called it the most segregated city in the country. As a result, the SCLC decided to focus its attention there in 1963.
Black residents of Birmingham experienced segregation in nearly every aspect of public life. Virtually no public facility in Birmingham allowed blacks and whites to mix. -
March on Washington
Following the spring protests in Birmingham, civil rights activists took their concerns to Washington, D.C. There they demonstrated for “jobs and freedom” and urged the passage of civil rights legislation. -
Freedom Summer- Three worker disappearance
Three student activists disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi, after visiting the site of a burned black church. One of the activists, James Chaney, was black. The other two, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were white. Six weeks later, the FBI discovered their bodies. They had been murdered. -
Civil Rights Act
banned discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin—the most important civil rights law passed since Reconstruction. -
Selma March
In Dallas County, where Selma is located, only 320 of more than 15,000 eligible black voters were registered to vote at the time. For weeks, civil rights protesters held daily marches at the Dallas County Courthouse. By February, more than 3,000 had been arrested, charged with crimes such as “unlawful assembly.” At that point, the SCLC called for a march from Selma to the state capital at Montgomery. The marchers planned to present the governor with a list of grievances. -
King Assassination
