-
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 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. -
Emmett Till Lynched
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African-American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after a white woman said she was offended by him in her family's grocery store. -
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 -
Little Rock 9
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. -
Ruby Bridges Attends School in New Orleans
is an American civil rights activist. She was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis in 1960. -
Greensboro Sit-In Movement
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, which led to the Woolworth department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. -
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 States6 -
James Meredith Enrolls at University of Mississippi
James Meredith, an African American man, attempted to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi in 1962. Chaos soon broke out on the Ole Miss campus, with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many others arrested, after the Kennedy administration called out some 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce order. -
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
also known as the Letter from Birmingham City Jail and The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. -
University of Alabama Desegregated
President John F. Kennedy federalized National Guard troops and deployed them to the University of Alabama to force its desegregation. The next day, Governor Wallace yielded to the federal pressure, and two African American students–Vivian Malone and James A. Hood–successfully enrolled. -
Medgar Evers Assassinated
Medgar Evers was killed. After a funeral in Jackson, he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. -
March on Washington (MLK)
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd near the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom -
Birmingham Church Bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism which occurred at the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, -
Freedom Summer Project
Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi -
24 Amendment
The Constitution of the United States of America abolished the poll tax for all federal elections. A poll tax was a tax of anywhere from one to a few dollars that had to be paid annually by each voter in order to be able to cast a vote. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. -
Martin Luther King wins Nobel Peace Prize
Oslo, Norway, Oct. 14--The Nobel Peace prize for 1964 was awarded today to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The 35-year-old civil rights leader is the youngest winner of the prize that Dr. Alfred Nobel instituted since the first was awarded in 1901. -
March on Selma
were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery. -
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. -
Watts Riots
he 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 -
Thurgood Marshall Named Supreme Court Justice
American lawyer, serving as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. -
Martin Luther King Assassinated
Martin Luther King Jr., American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. CST.
