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The 14th Amendment is passed
The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. -
Plessy v Ferguson decision
The Plessy decision set the precedent that "seperate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal." -
NAACP founded
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded by a multi-racial group of activists in New York, N.Y. Initially, the group called themselves the National Negro Committee. Founders Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard and William English Walling led the call to renew the struggle for civil and political liberty. -
The Chicago Race Riot of 1919
A shortage of jobs for returning veterans only worsened the conflicts between labor and management. Workers believed that they had made sacrifices for the war effort and now, in the face of inflation, deserved higher wages and the recognition of their unions by both government and business. Failing to achieve these goals, over 4 million workers engaged in 3600 strikes in 1919. Chicago in July, over 250,000 workers were involved. -
President Truman signs Executive Order 9981.
President Truman had been examining the issue of segregation in the armed forces since at least 1947, when he appointed the President's Committee on Civil Rights. By January 1948, the President was determined to end military segregation by executive order. However, it was not until the delegates at the 1948 Democratic National Convention called for a liberal civil rights plank that included desegregation of the armed forces that Truman felt comfortable enough to issue Executive Order No. 9981. -
Brown v. Board of Education Topeka case
Brown v. Board of Education Topeka case where the Supreme Court bans segregation in all public schools in the United States. -
Emmett Till murdered
While visiting family in Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till was 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, were arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. The case became a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest, the Montgomery black community launched a bus boycott that lasted over a year until the buses desegregated on Dec. 21, 1956. -
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference established
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was established by Martin Luther King, Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Charles K. Steele. -
Black students are refused service
Four black students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in North Carolina stage a sit-in at a lunch counter where they are refused service. -
Freedom Riders
Student volunteers called “freedom riders” begin testing state laws prohibiting segregation on buses and railways stations. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion or national origin and transform American society. The law allowed the federal government to enforce desegregation and prohibits discrimination in public facilities, in government and in employment. -
“Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Martin Luther King, Jr., composed a letter from his prison cell in Birmingham in response to local religious leaders’ criticisms of the campaign: “Never before have I written so long a letter. I’m afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk... think long thoughts and pray long prayers?” -
“I Have a Dream"
More than 250,000 people join in the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listened as Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. -
Birmingham Church Bombed
Even as the inspiring words of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech rang out from the Lincoln Memorial during the historic March on Washington in August of 1963, racial relations in the segregated South were marked by continued violence and inequality. On September 15, a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
