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1954:brown vs board of Education
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. -
1955: Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
On December 1, 1955, African American civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger. -
1957: The Little Rock Nine and the Little Rock Central High School Integration
In September 1957 nine African American students attended their first day at Little Rock Central High School, whose entire student population had until that point been white. -
1958: Katz drugstore sit in
In 1957, Luper escorted her Dunjee High School students to New York City, New York to perform a play she had written, Brother President: The Story of Dr. Martin Luther King, for a national freedom rally. -
1960: The Greensboro Four and the Sit-In Movement
On February 1, 1960, a group of four African American students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina, a historically Black college, began a sit-in movement in downtown Greensboro. -
1960: Ruby Bridges and the New Orleans School Integration
On November 14, 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted to her first day at the previously all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans by four armed federal marshals. -
1960: Boynton v. Virginia
1960, Boynton v. Virginia was a decision by the United States Supreme Court. The case overturned a judgment convicting Bruce Boynton, a Black law student, for trespassing by being in a restaurant in a bus terminal that was "whites only." -
1961: Freedom Rides
The Freedom Rides began on May 4, 1961, with a group of seven African Americans and six white people who boarded two buses bound for New Orleans. -
1963: Birmingham Demonstrations
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the SCLC launched a campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, with local Pastor Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) to undermine the city’s system of racial segregation. -
1963: March on Washington
The demonstrations of 1963 culminated with the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28 to protest civil rights abuses and employment discrimination. -
1964: Civil Rights Act
On July 2, 1964, Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Civil Rights Act into law, a stronger version of what his predecessor, President Kennedy, had proposed the previous summer before his assassination in November 1963. -
1965: Assassination of Malcolm X
On February 21, 1965, the prominent Black leader Malcolm X was assassinated while lecturing at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York. An eloquent orator, Malcolm X spoke out on the civil rights movement, demanding it move beyond civil rights to human rights, and argued that the solution to racial problems was in orthodox Islam. -
1965: Selma March
On March 7, 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., organized a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state’s capital, Montgomery, to call for a federal voting rights law that would provide legal support for disenfranchised African Americans in the South. -
1965: Watts Riots
A series of violent confrontations between the city police and residents of Watts and other predominantly African American neighborhoods of Los Angeles began on August 11, 1965, after a white police officer arrested a Black man, Marquette Frye, on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. -
1966: Black Panther Party founded
In the wake of the assassination of Malcolm X and urban uprisings, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, to protect African American neighborhoods from police brutality. -
1967: Loving v. Virginia
On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Virginia statutes prohibiting interracial marriage unconstitutional in the case Loving v. Virginia. -
1967: Detroit Riot
A series of violent confrontations between residents of predominantly Black neighborhoods and city police in Detroit began on July 23, 1967, after a raid at an illegal drinking club where police arrested everyone inside, including 82 African Americans. -
1968: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed by a sniper while standing on the second-floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. -
2020:George Floyd
George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, on May 25, 2020. -
2020:BLM Movement
Black Lives Matter protests peaked on June 6, when half a million people turned out in nearly 550 places across the United States. That was a single day in more than a month of protests that still continue to today.