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Brown v Board of Education of Topeka
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), 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
Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 when the fourteen-year-old was accused of whistling at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman who was a cashier at a grocery store. Four days later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnapped Till, beat him and shot him in the head. -
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. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
Ruby Bridges Attends School in New Orleans
Ruby Nell Bridges Hall (born September 8, 1954) 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
These groups became the grassroots organizers of future sit-ins at lunch counters, wade-ins at segregated swimming pools, and pray-ins at white-only churches. By sitting in protest at an all-white lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, four college students sparked national interest in the push for civil rights. -
Freedom Riders
a person who challenged racial laws in the American South in the 1960s, originally by refusing to abide by the laws designating that seating in buses be segregated by race. -
James Meredith Enrolls at University of Mississippi
The Ole Miss riot of 1962, or Battle of Oxford, was fought between Southern segregationist civilians and federal and state forces beginning the night of September 30, 1962; segregationists were protesting the enrollment of James Meredith, a black US military veteran, at the University of Mississippi -
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
A letter that Martin Luther King, Jr., addressed to his fellow clergymen while he was in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, after a nonviolent protest against racial segregation (see also sit-ins). -
University of Alabama Desegregated
On June 10, 1963, 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
was an American civil rights activist in Mississippi and the state's field secretary of the NAACP. ... Evers was murdered in 1963 by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council. -
March on Washington
The March on Washington was an interracial march by 250,000 blacks and whites on August 28, 1963 in Washington D.C., protesting segregation and job discrimination against blacks in the nation. Also called March for Freedom and Jobs. -
Birmingham Church Bombing
September 15, 2013 marked the 50th anniversary of the bombing. September 15, 1963 - A bomb blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, kills four African-American girls during church services. ... Three former Ku Klux Klan members are eventually convicted of murder for the bombing -
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. -
24th Amendment
The 24th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America abolished the poll tax for all federal elections. -
24th Amendment
The 24th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America abolished the poll tax for all federal elections. -
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. -
Martin Luther King wins Nobel Peace Prize
African American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in America. At 35 years of age, the Georgia-born minister was the youngest person ever to receive the award. -
March on Selma
On 25 March 1965, Martin Luther King led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, after a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, where local African Americans, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
A law passed at the time of the civil rights movement. It eliminated various devices, such as literacy tests, that had traditionally been used to restrict voting by black people. -
Watts Riots
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. -
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. -
Thurgood Marshall Named Supreme Court Justice
Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer, serving as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from October 1967 until October 1991. ... In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
