Civil Rights Timeline

  • Benjamin Mays

    Benjamin Mays
    Benjamin Mays was a distinguished African American minister, educator, scholar, and social activist. He was also a significant mentor to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
    {[(morehouse college)]}
  • Herman Talmadge

    Herman Talmadge
    Herman Talmadge, son of Eugene Talmadge, served as governor of Georgia for a brief time in early 1947 and again from 1948 to 1954. In 1956 Talmadge was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his defeat in 1980. The election of Herman Talmadge everntually led to the three governors controversy.
  • Lester Maddox

    Lester Maddox
    Lester Maddox
    Lester Maddox was a segregationist that ran a successful restaurant but when three blacks wanted to be seated, he sold his restaurant to his employees rather than agreeing to serve black customers. He was also Georgia's 75th governor from 1967 to 1971.
  • Martin Luther King Jr.

    Martin Luther King Jr.
    He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. He helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington. This is where he made is famous "I have a dream" speech.
  • Andrew Young

    Andrew Young
    After Martin Luther King's assassination many of his closest followers struggled to find a voice. Young did not. He won Georgia's Fifth District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972 and became the first African American since Reconstruction to be elected to Congress from Georgia.
  • Maynard Jackson

    Maynard Jackson
    Elected mayor of Atlanta in 1973, Maynard Jackson was the first African American to serve as mayor of a major southern city. Jackson served eight years and then returned for a third term in 1990, following the mayorship of Andrew Young.
  • End of White Primary

    S.S. Allwright, a white county election official in Texas, denies Lonnie Smith, a black man, the right to vote in a Democratic Party primary.
  • Three Governor's Controversy

    Herman Talmadge
    When the General Assembly elected Talmadge's son Herman Talmadge as governor, the newly elected lieutenant governor, Melvin Thompson, claimed the office of governor, and the outgoing governor, Ellis Arnall, refused to leave office.
  • Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education
    Brown v Board
    Agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional, the Plessy vs Ferguson ruling was overruled, saying that segregation of public schools is banned
  • 1956 State Flag

    1956 State Flag
    The flags of Georgia has changed over the many years depending on different beliefs of segregation and racism
  • SNCC

    SNCC
    SNCC played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
  • SIbley Commission

    SIbley Commission
    60 percent of witnesses favored total segregation. Sibley, ignoring the results of the hearings, presented the commission's report to state leaders, in which he recommended accepting Hooper's decision while offering several measures that would allow schools to remain largely segregated.
  • Holmes and Hunter to UGA

    Holmes and Hunter to UGA
    On January 6, 1961, Judge William Bootle issued his ruling, stating that Holmes and Hunter "would have already been admitted had it not been for their race and color." As a result UGA immediately admitted the two, who became the university's first African American students since its founding in 1785.
  • Albany Movement

    Albany Movement
    It was the first mass movement in the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community, and it resulted in the jailing of more than 1,000 African Americans in Albany and surrounding rural counties.
  • March on Washington

    March on Washington
    MLK speech
    On Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism.
  • Civil Rights Act

    Civil Rights Act
    The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools