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Integration of the Military
President Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
The Supreme Court rules unanimously that segregation in public schools was "inherently unequal" and thus unconstitutional. As a result, the ruling overturned the Court's earlier declaration of 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" facilities were allowable under the Constitution. It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice. -
The Murder of Emmett Till
Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement. -
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest, the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated on December 21, 1956. As newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is Founded
Martin Luther King, Jr., formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). It aimed to mobilize the vast power of the black churches on behalf of black rights. This was an exceptionally shrewd strategy, because the churches were the largest and best-organized black institutions that had been allowed to flourish in a segregated society. "We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline," King urges. -
Crisis at Central High School and the "Little Rock Nine"
Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, mobilized the National Guard to prevent nine black students from enrolling in Little Rock's Central High School. Confronted with a direct challenge to federal authority, President Eisenhower sent troops to escort the children to their classes. This was the most prominent national example of the implementation of the May 17, 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. -
Greensboro, North Carolina "Sit-ins"
Without a detailed plan or institutional support, four black college freshman in Greensboro, North Carolina demanded service at a whites-only Woolworth's lunch counter. Observing that "fellows like you make our race look bad," the black waitress refused to serve them. But they kept their seats and returned the next day with nineteen classmates. The following day, eighty-five students joined in; by the end of the week, a thousand. -
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is Founded
The sit in movement rolled swiftly across the South, swelling into a wave of wade-ins, lie-ins, and pray-ins to compel equal treatment in restaurants, transportation, employment, housing, and voter registration. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded to give more focus and force to these efforts. -
Attack on Freedon Riders
After the wave of sit-ins that surged across the South in 1960, groups of Freedom Riders fanned out to end segregation in facilities serving interstate bus passengers. A white mob torched a Freedom Ride bus near Anniston, Alabama, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy's personal representative was beaten unconscious in another anti-Freedom Ride riot in Montegomery. When southern officials proved unwilling or unable to stem the violence, Washington sent federal marshals to protect Freedom Riders. -
"Ole Miss" Desegregates
A twenty-nine-year-old air force veteran, James Meredith, encountered violent opposition when he attempted to register at the University of Mississippi ("Ole Miss"). In the end, President Kennedy was forced to send in four hundred federal marshals and three thousand troops to enroll Meredith in his first class. Meredith became the first black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi. -
Martin Luther King, Jr., Arrested in Birmingham, Alabama
After launching a campaign against discrimination in Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated big city in America, Martin Luther King, Jr., is arrested and jailed. While in jail, Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws. He stated in his letter, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -
President Kennedy's Speech
After seeing peaceful civil rights marchers repeatedly repelled by police with attack dogs and high-pressure water hoses, President Kennedy delivered a memorable speech to the nation. He called the situation a "moral issue" and committed his personal and presidential prestige to finding a solution. Kennedy declared the principle at stake "is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution." He called for new civil rights legislation to protect black citizens. -
March on Washington
Martin Luther King, Jr., led more than 200,000 black and white demonstrators on a peaceful March on Washington in support of President Kennedy's propsed legislation. In an electrifying speech from the Lincoln Memorial, King declared, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a natioin where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." -
The 24th Amendment and Freedom Summer
The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote. Blacks joined hands with white civil right workers in a massive voter-registration drive in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Singing "We Shall Overcome," they zealously set out to soothe generations of white anxieties and black fears. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
After a lengthy filibuster, Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act banned racial discrimination in most private facilities open to the public, including theaters, hospitals, and restaurants. It strengthened the federal government's power to end segregation in schools and other public places. Title VII of the act barred employers from discriminating based on race or national orgin in hiring and empowered the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce the law, -
March on Selma
Martin Luther King, Jr., resumed the voter-registration in Selma, Alabama, where blacks made up 50 percent of the population but only 1 percent of the voters. State troopers with tear gas and whips assaulted King's demonstrators as they marched peacefully to the state capital at Montegomery. A Boston Unitarian minister was killed, and a few days later a white Detroit woman was shotgunned to death by Klansmen on the highway near Selma. -
President Johnson's Speech
As the nation recoiled in horror before the violent scenes on the March on Selma, President Johnson delivered a compelling address on televsion. What happened in Selma, he insisted, concerned all Americans, "who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice." Then, in a stirring adaptation of the anthem of the civil rights movement, the president concluded, "And we shall overcome." -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Following words with deeds, Johnson speedily shepherded through Congress the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law on August 6. It outlawed literacy tests and sent federal voter registrars into several southern states. As a result, the act marked the end of an era in the history of the civil rights movement - the era of nonviolent demonstrations, focused on the South, led by peaceful moderates like Martin Luther King, Jr., and aimed at integrating blacks into American society. -
The Watts Riot
As if to symbolize the turn of events, just five days after President Johnson signed the landmark voting law, a bloody riot erupted in Watts, a black ghetto in Los Angeles. Blacks enraged by police brutality burned and looted their own neighborhoods for nearly a week. -
The Effects of the Watts Riot
Thirty-one blacks and three whites lay dead, more than a thousand people had been injured, and hundreds of buildings stood charred and gutted. The Watts explosion heralded a new phase of the black struggle - increasingly marked by militant confrontation, focusing on nothern and western cities, led by radical and sometimes violent spokespersons, and often aiming not at interracial cooperation but at black separatism. -
Executive Order 11246
Asserting that civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination, President Johnson issues Executive Order 11246, which enforces affirmative action for the first time. It requires government contractors to "take affirmative action" toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment. -
The Black Panther Party
The militant Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California. It was an organization of armed black militants with a growing dissatisfaction with the non-violent wing of the civil rights movement. The Black Panther party brandished weapons in the streets of Oakland, California, even while it was establishing children's breakfast programs. -
Black Power
Stokely Carmichael, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), began to preach the doctrine of Black Power, which, he said, "will smash everything Western civilization has created." Some advocates of Black Power insisted that they simply intended the slogan to describe a broad-front effort to exercise the political and economic rights gained by the civil rights movement and to speed the integration of American society; others emphasized black separatism. -
Loving v. Virginia
In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their laws. -
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Assassination
Despair deepened when the magnetic and moderate voice of Martin Luther King, Jr., was forever silenced by a sniper's bullet in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. A martyr for justice, he had bled and died against the peculiarly American thorn of race. The killing of King cruelly robbed the American people of one of the most inspirational leaders in their history - at a time when they could least afford to lose him. This outrage triggered a nationwide orgy of ghetto-gutting and violence. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. -
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
The Supreme Court upholds busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools. Although largely unwelcome (and sometimes violently opposed) in local school districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities such as Charlotte, Boston, and Denver continue until the late 1990s.
