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Plessy v Ferguson
Plessy v Ferguson was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal". African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana law. -
Formation of the NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as a bi-racial organization to advance justice for African Americans by W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington and Moorfield Storey. Its mission in the 21st century is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination." -
The Congress of Racial Equality is formed
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background." CORE's national chairman was Roy Innis. -
Desegregation of the military
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, committing the government to integrating the segregated military. -
Brown v Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." -
The murder of Emmitt Till
While visiting family 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman 4 days earlier. His assailants, the white woman’s husband, and her brother, made him carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. Then, the men beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil-rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, was arrested and fined for refusing to yield her bus seat to a white man. -
Malcolm X begins leading the Nation of Islam
After his release from prison Malcolm helped to lead the Nation of Islam during the period of its greatest growth and influence. An articulate public speaker, a charismatic personality, and an indefatigable organizer, Malcolm X expressed the pent-up anger, frustration, and bitterness of African Americans during the major phase of the civil rights movement from 1955 to 1965. -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference is formed
On January 10, 1957 Martin Luther King Jr. invited about 60 black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer Church in Atlanta. Out of these two meetings came a new organization with King as its president. Initially called the "Negro Leaders Conference on Nonviolent Integration," then "Southern Negro Leaders Conference," the group eventually chose "Southern Christian Leadership Conference" (SCLC) as its name, and expanded its focus beyond buses to ending all forms of segregation. -
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is formed
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the most important organizations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in April 1960. SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support SNCC's work in the South, allowing full-time SNCC workers to have a $10 per week salary. Many unpaid volunteers also worked with SNCC on projects. -
The Strategy of Sit-Ins
On February 1, 1960, a new tactic was added to the peaceful activists' strategy. Four African American college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the local Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for coffee. When service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be served. No one participated in a sit-in of this sort without the seriousness of purpose. -
The Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States, in 1961 and subsequent years, in order to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17. -
Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement. -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, also known as the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations including the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Aimed at increasing black voter registration in Mississippi, the Freedom Summer workers included black Mississippians and more than 1,000 out-of-state, predominately white volunteers. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which 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. Its duty to guarantee all citizens equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment and its duty to protect voting rights under the Fifteenth Amendment. The Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B Johnson at the White House -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Voting Rights Act is considered one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. -
Race Riots in Watts and other cities
The Watts riots sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion, took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. On August 11, 1965, an African-American motorist was pulled over on suspicion of reckless driving. A minor roadside argument broke out and then escalated into a fight between family members and police. The community reacted with outrage to allegations of police brutality that soon spread, and six days of looting and arson followed. -
Martin Luther King's assassination
Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. King was standing on the second-floor balcony, where he and his associates were staying when a sniper’s bullet struck him in the neck. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Boston Busing
The desegregation of Boston public schools (1974–1988) was a period in which the Boston Public Schools were under court control to desegregate through a system of busing students. W. Arthur Garrity Jr. of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts laid out a plan for compulsory busing of students between predominantly white and black areas of the city -
Rodney King Trial
Rodney Glen King was an African-American taxi driver who became known internationally as the victim of Los Angeles Police Department brutality, after a videotape was released of several police officers beating him during his arrest on March 3, 1991. George Holliday, a witness, filmed the incident from his nearby balcony and sent the footage to local news station KTLA. The footage clearly showed King being beaten repeatedly, and the incident was covered by news media around the world.