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Plessy v. Ferguson
Supreme Court case which was about the Jim Crow railroad cars in Louisiana. The Court decided by 7-1 that legislation could not overcome racial attitudes and it was constitutional to have "Separate but equal" facilities. -
Formation of NAACP
(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) created by a group of liberals to eradicate racial discrimination. -
Brown v. BOE of Topeka
Topeka Board of Education denied Linda Brown admittance to an all white school close to her house. Thurgood Marshall argued that a separate but equal violated equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
After Rosa Parks was arrested, Martin Luther King rallied the black community to do this. This seriously hurt the bus companies. This lasted more than a year, and ended in 1956 when the SC declared segregated buses unconstitutional. It was a political and social protest campaign against racial segregation. -
Formation of SCLC
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by Martin Luther King, which taught that civil rights could be achieved through nonviolent protests. -
Integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas
A group of African American students who were enrolled in Little Rock High School in 1957. Students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. On their first day of school, troops from the Arkansas National Guard would not let them enter the school and they were followed by mobs and threatened to lynch. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
This was primarily a voting rights bill, was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1957. -
Greensboro Sit-In
Four African American students sat at a lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, and politely asked for service. Their request was refused. Once they were asked to leave, they remained in their seats. -
Formation of SNCC
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, founded by young black adults, seeking immediate change, not gradual. -
Boynton v. Virginia
Held racial discrimination in businesses that serve interstate commerce is unconstitutional. -
First Freedom Ride
Organized mixed-race groups who rode interstate buses deep into the South to draw attention to and protest racial segregation, beginning in 1961. This effort by northern young people to challenge racism proved a political and public relations success for the Civil Rights Movement. -
James Meredith enrolls in Ole Miss
Civil Rights Figure, writer, political adviser and Air Force veteran. He became the first African American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi, after the intervention of the federal government. -
Birmingham Protests
A movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. -
March on Washington
Led by Civil Rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending on Congress. -
24th Amendment Passed
Poll taxes are prohibited. The right to vote cannot be denied based on the paying or non-paying of a poll tax. -
Freedom Summer
A voter registration drive in Mississippi spearheaded by the collaboration of civil rights groups, the campaign drew the activists of thousands of black and white civil rights workers, many of whom were students from the North. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights and United States labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, and or national origin. -
Malcolm X leads the Nation of Islam
A group of Islamic African Americans. The goal was to improve social, economic, mental, and spiritual conditions for African Americans. Members included Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. -
Malcolm X assassinated
Malcolm X the most celebrated of black muslims. He died in 1965 when a black gunmen, presumably under orders from rivals within the Nation of Islam, assassinated him. -
Selma March
Martin Luther King organizes a march in Selma. Tens of thousands of black protesters petition for the right to vote outside of the city hall and are ignored. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
Black Panthers founded
Organization of armed black militants formed in Oakland, California to protect black rights. They represented a growing dissatisfaction with the non-violent wing of the civil rights movement, and signaled a new direction to that movement after the legislative victories. -
MLK Jr. assassinated
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at Memphis Hotel. James Earl Ray, white man who resented the increasing black influence in society. King's murder set off a new round of riots across the country, while both blacks and whites mourned the tragic death of a charismatic leader. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
Defined housing discrimination as "refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person because of his or her race, color, religion, or national origin." -
Robert F. Kennedy assassinated
Robert F. Kennedy, brother of John F. Kennedy and anti-war candidate, is assassinated after he wins the California presidential primary. His assassin was Sirhan, an Arab nationalist. He targeted Kennedy because of his support for Israel.
