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Civil Rights Timeline

  • University of California vs. Bakke

    University of California vs. Bakke
    Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that involved a dispute over whether preferential treatment for minorities could reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16-100 seats set aside for minority students.
  • Emmitt Tills Murder

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

    Montgomery Bus Boycott
    The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation.
  • Little Rock Nine Cross

    Little Rock Nine Cross
    The Little Rock Nine were 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.
  • Civil rights act of 1957

    Civil rights act of 1957
    This legislation established a Commission on Civil Rights to investigate civil rights violations and also established a Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 authorized the prosecution for those who violated the right to vote for United States citizens.
  • Greensboro Sit-In

    Greensboro Sit-In
    On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats.
  • Freedom Rides

    Freedom Rides
    On 4 May 1961, the freedom riders left Washington, D.C., in two buses and headed to New Orleans. Although they faced resistance and arrests in Virginia, it was not until the riders arrived in Rock Hill, South Carolina, that they encountered violence.
  • March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

    March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
    The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as simply the March on Washington or the Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. At the march, final speaker Dr. 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 and racial segregation.
  • Civil Rights act of 1964

    Civil Rights act of 1964
    The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing.
  • March from Selma to Montgomery

    March from Selma to Montgomery
    Fifty years ago, on March 7, 1965, hundreds of people gathered in Selma, Alabama to march to the capital city of Montgomery. They marched to ensure that African Americans could exercise their constitutional right to vote — even in the face of a segregationist system that wanted to make it impossible.
  • Assassination Of Martin Luther Jr.

    Assassination Of Martin Luther Jr.
    On the afternoon of April 1968, posing as John Willard, Ray rented a room at a Memphis roominghouse near the Lorraine Motel. That day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated as he stood on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
  • Swann vs. Charlotte - Mecklenburg Schools

    Swann vs. Charlotte - Mecklenburg Schools
    Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, case in which, on April 20, 1971, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously upheld busing programs that aimed to speed up the racial integration of public schools in the United States. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v.
  • Hank Aarons Home Run record

    Hank Aarons Home Run record
    Two numbers will be tied to Hank Aaron forever. There was 715, the number of career home runs he reached to dethrone Babe Ruth as the all-time big fly king in 1974, in one of the most iconic moments in sports history. And then there was 755, Aaron's ultimate total, and a record that stood for another 31 years.
  • Barba Jordans Address at the democratic national Convention

    Barba Jordans Address at the democratic national Convention
    On July 12, 1976, Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. As Americans sensed a fracturing of American life in the 1970s, Jordan called for Americans to commit themselves to a “national community” and the “common good.” Jordan began by noting she was the first black woman to ever deliver a keynote address at a major party convention and that such a thing would have been almost impossible even a decade earlier.