Civil Rights Timeline

  • Brown vs, Board of Education

    Brown vs, Board of Education
    Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality.
  • Emmett Till Murder.

    Emmett Till Murder.
    Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store.
  • Rosa Parks and The Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Rosa Parks and The Montgomery Bus Boycott
    Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat for a white individual, which later influenced the spark for the 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 in the United States.
  • Little Rock Nine

    Little Rock Nine
    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.
  • Greensboro Woolworth's Sit-ins

    Greensboro Woolworth's Sit-ins
    The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store—now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum—in Greensboro, North Carolina, which led to the F. W. Woolworth Company department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation.
  • Freedom Rides

    Freedom Rides
    Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia.
  • March On Washington

    March On Washington
    The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as the March on Washington or The Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans.
  • Birmingham Baptist Church Bombing

    Birmingham Baptist Church Bombing
    The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a white supremacist terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, and resulted in the death of four young girls.
  • Civil Rights Act

    Civil Rights Act
    The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity.
  • "Bloody Sunday"/ Selma to Montgomery March

    "Bloody Sunday"/ Selma to Montgomery March
    600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma.
  • Voting Rights Act

    Voting Rights Act
    The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. ... Other general provisions specifically outlaw literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities.
  • Loving v. Virginia

    Loving v. Virginia
    Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.