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Brown vs Board of Education
A Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that "separate-but-equal" education and other services were not equal at all. -
Murder of Emmett Till
While visiting family in Money, Mississippi is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. The people who killed him were the white woman's husband and her brother. They nearly beat him to death. After that, they tied him to the cotton-gin and put him into the river to die. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott was 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
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC had a large role in the American civil rights movement. -
Integration of Little Rock High School (Little Rock Nine)
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African-American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School. 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
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was the principle channel of student commitment in the United States to the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s. -
Woolworth's Counter Sit-ins in Greensboro
The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, 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 Rides
Freedom Rides are bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. Freedom Riders were the groups of White and African-American civil rights activists who Participated in Freedom Rides. Those activists did a lot of things where "whites-only" signs were at mostly. -
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letters from a Birmingham Jail"
Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letters from a Birmingham Jail." Was written as a response to local clergy's "call for unity" during the protests of 1963. The letter's defense of nonviolent resistance and its insistence on justice for all have made it a foundational text of both the civil rights movement and history classrooms. -
Assassination of Medgar Evers
In the driveway outside his home on Jackson, Mississippi, African-American civil rights leader Medgar Evers is shot to death by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith. -
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The march was held in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African-Americans. -
Birmingham Church Bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
In New York City, Malcolm X, and 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. -
March on Selma
The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil rights protests that occurred in Alabama, for an effort to register black voters in the South. As the world watched, the protesters finally achieved their goal. They were under the protection of federalized National Guard troops during this. This march raised awareness of the difficulties faced by black voters and the need for a national Voting Rights Act. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King Jr., and American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m.
