Civil Rights Timeline

  • Emitt Till's Murder

    Emitt Till's Murder
    14-year-old Emitt Till from Chicago is brutally murdered in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. His murderers are acquitted, and the case bring international attention to the civil rights movement after Jet magazine publishes a photo of Till’s beaten body at his open-casket funeral.
  • Rosa Parks Refuses to Sit in The Back of The Bus

    Rosa Parks Refuses to Sit in The Back of The Bus
    Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. She was arrested and her defiant stance prompts a year-long Montgomery bus boycott.
  • Freedom Riders Start

    Freedom Riders Start
    Throughout 1961, Black and white activists, known as freedom riders, took bus trips through the American South to protest segregated bus terminals and attempted to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters. The Freedom Rides were marked by horrific violence from white protestors, they drew international attention to their cause.
  • The March on Washington

    Approximately 250,000 people take part in The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans.
  • MLK "I Have A Dream" Speech

    "I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.I have a dream today!"
  • Malcom X "The Ballot or The Bullet" Speech

    "It's time for us to submerge our differences and realize that it is best for us to first see that we have the same problem, a common problem — a problem that will make you catch hell whether you're a Baptist, or a Methodist, or a Muslim, or a nationalist. Whether you're educated or illiterate, whether you live on the boulevard or in the alley, you're going to catch hell just like I am."
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, preventing employment discrimination due to race, color, sex, religion or national origin. Title VII of the Act establishes the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to help prevent workplace discrimination.
  • Bloody Sunday

    In the Selma to Montgomery March, around 600 civil rights marchers walk to Selma, Alabama to Montgomery—the state’s capital—in protest of Black voter suppression. Local police block and brutally attack them. After successfully fighting in court for their right to march, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders lead two more marches and finally reach Montgomery on March 25.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated

    Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray is convicted of the murder in 1969.
  • Malcolm X is Assassinated

    Black religious leader Malcolm X is assassinated during a rally by members of the Nation of Islam.
  • Barack Obama

    Barack Obama
    First black president to ever be elected
  • Barack Obama votes

    Barack Obama votes
    The amount of people who voted for Barack Obama in the 2009 election
  • Barack Obama States he won

    Barack Obama States he won
    The amount of states that voted for the first african american president
  • Black Lives Matter

    Black Lives Matter is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people, and promote anti-racism.
  • Asian hate during covid 19

    Asian hate during covid 19
    during the pandemic asians were being targetted becasue they belive the covid 19 virus came from them
  • Ahmaud Arbery

    Ahmaud Arbery
    On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was murdered during a racially motivated hate crime while jogging in Satilla Shores, a neighborhood near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia.
  • Brianna Taylor

    Brianna Taylor
    On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black American woman, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment when at least seven police officers forced entry into the apartment as part of an investigation into drug dealing operations.
  • George Floyd

    George Floyd
    Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, who pressed his knee to Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds while Floyd was handcuffed face down in the street.
  • BLM Riots

    BLM Riots
    The George Floyd protests were a series of police brutality protests that began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020. The civil unrest and protests began as part of international reactions to the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, during an arrest. People broke into stores, stole, burned buikdings to the ground.
  • Jacob Blake

    Jacob Blake
    Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was left partly paralyzed after a white police officer shot him seven times in the back