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Plessy v Ferguson
African American train passenger Homer Plessy sat in the white section of the train and refused to sit in a Jim Crow car for blacks, breaking a Louisiana law. He was brought before Judge John H. Ferguson of the Criminal Court for New Orleans. The law was challenged in the Supreme Court on grounds that it conflicted with the 13th and 14th Amendments.(http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/plessy-v-ferguson) (https://www.britannica.com/event/Plessy-v-Ferguson) -
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality was founded on the University of Chicago campus in 1942 as an outgrowth of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. Founded in 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality became one of the leading activist organizations in the early years of the American Civil Rights Movement. . CORE initially embraced a pacifist, non-violent approach to fighting racial segregation. (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/congress-of-racial-equality) -
Jackie Robinson
Jackie broke the color barrier for baseball playing of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Robinson won the National League Rookie of the Year award his first season. In 1949 Robinson won the league MVP award, and he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. 9 days before he died he stated "Id like to live to see a black manager. He not only changed African American athletes lives, he also changed employment opportunities as well (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/jackie-robinson) -
Sweatt v Painter
Heman Sweatt sought admission to the University of Texas Law School in 1946, but his application was rejected solely because of his race. When he took the case to the court they did not give him the relief he had hoped for. Instead they created a separate law school for African Americans. (http://lawhigheredu.com/123-sweatt-v-painter.html) -
Brown v Board of Education
The Brown v. Board decision helped break the back of state-sponsored segregation, and provided a spark to the American civil rights movement. The unanimous decision handed down by the Supreme Court on May 17, 1954, ended federal tolerance of racial segregation. The courts decision declared that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/brown-v-board-of-education-of-topeka) -
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Montgomery bus boycott
African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White man. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system. The demands did not just include changing the segregation laws; rather, the group demanded courtesy, the hiring of black drivers, and a first-come, first-seated policy. (http://bit.ly/1ymBgQq) -
"The Southern Manifesto"
19 Senators and 77 members of the House of Representatives signed the "Southern Manifesto," a resolution condemning the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The Manifesto attacked Brown as an abuse of judicial power that trespassed upon states’ rights. It urged southerners to exhaust all “lawful means” to resist the “chaos and confusion” that would result from school desegregation. (http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1951-2000/The-Southern-Manifesto-of-1956/) -
Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
A civil rights organization founded in 1957, as an offshoot of the Montgomery Improvement Association which successfully staged a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery Alabama's segregated bus system. The SCLC was founded in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and advocated confrontation of segregation through civil dissent. The organization quickly moved to the forefront of the civil rights movement. (https://www.nps.gov/subjects/civilrights/sclc.htm) -
Little Rock - Central High School
After the Supreme Court ruling, that declared segregation unconstitutional, 9 African Americans enrolled in the public school. Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called in the state National Guard to bar the black students’ entry into the school. Later in the month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the “Little Rock Nine” into the school, and they started their first full day of classes on September 25. (http://bit.ly/2ngf3WC) -
Greensboro sit-in
Four black college students, Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David Richmond and Ezell Blair, sat down at a “whites-only” lunch counter at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, N.C., and refused to leave after being denied service. Reactions to the sit-in protesters varied by restaurant. In many places, groups of white men gathered around the protesters to heckle them and there was occasional violence. (http://nyti.ms/2odCC6j) -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
Formed to give younger blacks more of a voice in the civil rights movement. This was made to support the Greensboro sit-in.Ella Baker, executive secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and they established SNCC. SNCC sought to coordinate youth-led nonviolent, direct-action campaigns against segregation and other forms of racism. (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/student-nonviolent-coordinating-committee-sncc) -
Freedom Rides
A group of 13 African-American and white civil rights activists launched the Freedom Rides, a series of bus trips through the American South to protest segregation in interstate bus terminals. They departed from Washington, D.C., and attempted to integrate facilities at bus terminals along the way into the Deep South. African-American Freedom Riders tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters, and vice versa. (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-rides) -
James Meredith
Was the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi. He started a civil rights movement through the south but was shot by a sniper one day into it and sent to the hospital in critical condition. Meredith was a former service man of the US Air Force. His admission into University of Mississippi was revoked when the registrar learned of this race. (http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/james-meredith-shot) -
Letter from Birmingham jail
Shortly after King’s arrest, a friend smuggled in a copy of an April 12 Birmingham newspaper which included an open letter, written by eight local Christian and Jewish religious leaders. Without notes or research materials, King drafted an impassioned defense of his use of nonviolent, but direct, actions.Over the course of the letter’s 7,000 words, he turned the criticism back upon both the nation’s religious leaders and more moderate-minded white Americans (http://bit.ly/1YSpCQ8) -
Medger Evers
African American civil rights activist whose murder drew national attention. Born in Mississippi, he served in World War II before going to work for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He was shot to death in June 1963. He enlisted in the United States Army in 1943. He fought in both France and Germany during World War II before receiving an honorable discharge in 1946. http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/medgar-evers) -
March on Washington
More then 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington DC for a political rally for jobs and freedom.The march was an unprecedented success. It was led by a celebrated array of clergymen, civil rights leaders, politicians, and entertainers. On this day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/march-on-washington) -
Bombing of Birmingham Church
A bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church. It was a predominately black congregation. The church served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured. KKK members had routinely called in bomb threats intended to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the church. (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/birmingham-church-bombing) -
Twenty- Fourth Amendment
The 15th Amendment granted men the right to vote, prohibiting the Government from using "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". The 24th Amendment specifically deals with the poll tax. It prohibits Congress and the states from implementing a poll tax or any other kind of tax. The 24th Amendment states, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President..." (http://bit.ly/2oZkSZM) -
Mississippi Freedom Summer
Civil rights organizations organized voter registration drive, known as the Mississippi summer project.The Freedom Summer, comprised of black Mississippians and more than 1,000 out-of-state, predominately white volunteers, faced constant abuse and harassment from Mississippi’s white population. There was a series of false arrest and violent murders including 3 civil rights activists.(http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-summer) -
Civil Rights Act Passed
The civil rights act ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and also passed additional legislation aimed at bringing equality to African Americans, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/civil-rights-act) -
Malcolm X assassinated
African American nationalist and religious leaders. He was assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. One week after his home was firebombed he was shot to death. At the age of 21, Malcolm was sent to prison on a burglary conviction. It was there he encountered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, after a while he had believed Malcolm became too powerful which led to his death. -
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Selma to Montgomery march
3,200 civil rights demonstrators, led by Martin Luther King Jr., begin a historic march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol at Montgomery. In 1965, King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) decided to make the small town of Selma the focus of their drive to win voting rights for African Americans in the South. On March 21, U.S. Army troops and federalized Alabama National Guardsmen escorted the marchers across Edmund Pettus Bridge. (http://bit.ly/1xdQhVk) -
Voting rights act approved
During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, voting rights activists in the South were subjected to various forms of mistreatment and violence.The voting rights bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a 77-19 vote.The act banned the use of literacy tests, provided for federal oversight of voter registration in areas where less than 50 percent of the nonwhite population had not registered to vote. (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/voting-rights-act) -
Black Panthers
African American revolutionary party. It was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The party’s original purpose was to patrol African American neighbourhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality. At its peak in the late 1960s, Panther membership exceeded 2,000, and the organization operated chapters in several major American cities. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party) -
King Assassinated
King had led the civil rights movement since the mid-1950s, using a combination of powerful words and non-violent tactics such as sit-ins, boycotts and protest marches to fight segregation and achieve significant civil and voting rights advances for African Americans.His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning. (http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr-assassination)
