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Formation of the NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was established in 1909. It is the oldest and largest civil rights organization. During the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s, the group won many legal victories and now the NAACP has more than 2,200 branches. -
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
The Congress of Racial Equality was founded in 1942 and became one of the leading activist organizations in the early years of the American civil rights movement. In the 1960s, CORE was working with other civil rights groups and launched a series of initiatives like the Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer. -
Desegregation of the Military
In 1940, President Roosevelt upheld the segregation of white and black soldiers into different regiments. He thought integration would threaten military efficiency and increase racial tension. Throughout the war, blacks pushed the government to end the segregation. President Truman eventually organized a committee on civil rights that declared "The injustice of calling men to fight for freedom while subjecting them to humiliating discrimination within the fighting forces is at once apparent" -
Brown vs Board of Education
This was a very big landmark in the Supreme Court. At first, the justices were split on how to rule on school segregation. In September 1953, Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson died and he was replaced with Earl Warren, the governor of California. The decision was made on May 17, 1954. Warren said that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Segregated schools are inherently unequal. -
Plessy vs. Ferguson
Plessy vs. Ferguson was an 1896 US Supreme Court decision that held up the constitutionality of racial segregation. The case grew from an 1892 incident when a black train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for blacks only. The Jim Crow legislation based on race were encouraged after the Plessy decision was not overturned until the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a protest against segregated seating on public buses in Montgomery Alabama. The boycott happened from December 5, 1955 to December 20, 1956. Rosa Parks, a black woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to give her seat to a white man. The Supreme Court ordered Montgomery to integrate their bus system. As a result, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a leader in the civil rights movement. -
Murder of Emmett Till
Emmett Till was visiting his family in Money, Mississippi when he was brutally killed for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. The murderers were the white woman's husband and her brother. They made Emmett carry a 75 pound cotton gin to the bank and ordered him to take his clothes off. The two men then proceeded to beat him nearly to death, gouged his eye out, and then shot him in the head and then threw his body into the river with the cotton gin tied to him. -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine black students who attended a white Central High School in Arkansas.On the first day of school, Governor Orval Faubus called the Arkansas National Guard to block the black students' entry into the High School. Later that month, President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to Little Rock Nine into school. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The SCLC main objective was to advance the cause of civil rights in America, but not in a violent manner. They wanted to bring peace and change at the same time. The SCLC was formed in 1957 right after the Montgomery Bus Boycott had ended. -
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
The SNCC was a civil rights group formed to give young black people more of a voice in the civil rights movement. It soon became one of the more radical branches. Ella Baker was the leader of the SNCC and she was concerned that MLK was out of touch with the young black people who wanted the movement to make faster progress. -
The Strategy of Sit-Ins
On February 1, 1960, a new strategy was added to the peaceful activists' tactics. Four black college students walked up to a white only lunch counter in Greensboro, NC and asked for coffee. When they were refused service, they sat patiently and waited. This birthed the civil rights sit-ins. Many African Americans began to participate in sit-ins and it worked. They would go to white only counters and ask for food and when refused service, they would sit there and wait until they were served. -
Freedom Riders
The Freedom Riders were groups of white and black civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides. These were bus trips through the South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Freedom Riders tried to use white-only bathrooms and lunch counters at bus station in Alabama. The groups were confronted by arresting police officers and horrific violence from white protesters. -
MLK's I Have a Dream Speech
Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream speech in front of a crowd of 250,000 people in Washington. He spoke about the Founding Fathers and the Bible. He talked about the themes to depict the struggle of African American, before closing with a inspirational talk on his dreams of equality. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination based on color, race, religion, sex, or national origin. This was first proposed by JFK, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress. In future years, Congress expanded the act and passed additional civil rights legislation like the Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was also known as the Mississippi Summer Project. It was a voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations including CORE. This was aimed at increasing black voter registration in Mississippi. The Mississippi project was run by the local Council of Federated Organizations. -
Malcolm X begins Leading Nation of Islam
Malcolm X was a very influential person in the Civil Rights Movement. Malcolm X was sentenced to 6 years in prison when he was guilty of burglary. In prison, he found the teaching of Elijah Muhammad, the leader of Lost-Found Nation of Islam. After he was released from prison, he became the minister of Temple number 7 in Harlem. -
Race Riots in Watts
The race riots in Watts was a large series of riots that broke out on August 11, 1965. These riots broke out in a majority black neighborhood of Watts in Los Angeles. The Watts Riots lasted six days and resulted in 34 deaths, 1,032 injuries and 4,000 arrests. It involved 34,000 people and ended in the destruction of 1,000 buildings. Total damages costed 40 million dollars. -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed by President Johnson. It overcame legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented blacks from exercising their right to vote. The Voting Rights Act is one of the most far-reaching things of civil rights legislation in history. -
MLK's Assassination
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. MLK led the civil rights movement since the 1950s. He performed many speeches and nonviolent protests to fight the segregation. He achieved many civil-rights advances for African Americans. When he got assassinated, the black Americans were very angry. His assassination helped speed up the equal housing bill that would be the last achievement of the civil rights era. -
Boston Busing
In Boston Massachusetts, court-ordered school busing turns violent on the first day of class. School buses carrying African American kids were hit with eggs, bricks, and bottles while police fought white protesters. US District Judge Arthur Garrity ordered the busing of black students to white schools and white students to black schools in an effort to integrate Boston's geographically segregated public schools. -
Rodney King Trial
In Los Angeles, a jury acquits four police officers who had been charged with expressing excessive force in arresting black motorist Rodney King a year earlier. After the verdict was announced, protesters immediately took the streets, engaging in random acts of violence and destruction. Reginald Denny, a white truck driver was one of the victims of the violence. He was pulled from his truck and beaten severely. The police officers were convicted of violating Rodney's civil rights.
