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Brown v Board of Education I
The Supreme Court’s decision that overturned the Plessy vs. Ferguson decided in 1896 and the Court ruled that "separate but equal" schools for African Americans were inherently unequal so it would be considered unconstitutional. -
White Citizens Council
An association, primarily in the south, dedicated to maintaining segregation and ruling white supremacy. -
Brown v Board of Education II
The Court ordered them to unite their schools "with all deliberate speed." Many schools still didn’t want to integrate and let African American children join. -
Lynching of Emmett Till
A 14 year old African American who was lynched in Mississippi after being accused of “offending” a white woman in a grocery store while he was saying goodbye. -
Rosa Parks Arrested
An African American was arrested for defying a law in Alabama requiring African American passengers to give up their seats to white passengers when the bus was full. With that being said, African Americans were required to sit at the back of the bus. -
Martin Luther King House Bombing
An angry black community showed up at his house after it had been bombed and when King arrived home he was shocked his family wasn’t hurt and by silently putting his hand up he had made peace with the crowd. He told them to go home and that God would take care of “us”. -
Montgomery bus boycott Dec 5, 1955 – Dec 20, 1956
A Boycott to protest during the civil rights movement which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. -
Bombing of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
Ku Klux Klan members in Alabama bombed Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth’s home. He was home at the time of the bombing with his family and two members of Bethel Baptist Church, where he served as a pastor. The blast of dynamite destroyed the home and caused damage to Shuttlesworth’s church next door but no one inside the home suffered serious injury. -
SCLC Founded
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)- 60 African American ministers and civil rights leaders met in Atlanta with the intentions of replicating the successful strategy of the Montgomery bus boycott. -
Eisenhower sends in Federal Troops
Eisenhower sent troops to maintain peace while the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, AR. They made plans to desegregate this state. -
Freedom Summer June – August 1959
Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States that was launched in June of 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi. -
SNCC Formed
David Forbes was there when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee staged its first conference at Shaw University in April 1960, and two months after a peaceful protest on February 1st in Greensboro, North Carolina started a national sit-in movement. -
Greensboro sit ins February 1 – July 25, 1960
These were non-violent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina. -
Freedom Rides May 4, 1961 – Dec 10, 1961
A decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation of interstate transportation facilities, including bus terminals. This was considered unconstitutional. -
White mob attacks federal marshals in Montgomery
A white mob attacked a busload of Freedom Riders in Montgomery getting the federal government ready to send in U.S. marshals to restore order. -
Albany Georgia “failure”
It had an unsuccessful attempt at desegregating public spaces in Southwest Georgia. There were many beneficial lessons, strategies and tactics for the leaders of the civil right movement and a key components to the movement's future successes in desegregation and policy changes in other areas of the Deep South. -
Bailey v Patterson
African Americans in Mississippi wanted to have their constitutional right to nonsegregated transportation enforced. They claimed that this right was denied to them. Nevertheless, the court decided that no state could require segregation in transportation facilities. -
MLK goes to a Birmingham jail
This is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. -
Equal Pay Act
A US labor law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender paygap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program. -
Kennedy sends in Federal Troops
In 1963 President JFK federalized National Guard troops and sent them to the University of Alabama to force its desegregation. -
Assassination of Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers was killed and after a funeral in Jackson, he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. President JFK publicly announced the killing. -
March on Washington “I have a Dream”
This is a public speech that was delivered by an American civil rights activist named Martin Luther King Jr. Many people were inspired by him.During the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
Bombing of a church in Birmingham
A bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. This church consisted of predominantly African American people, this church also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. -
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
Crowds of excited people flooded the streets and lined up to see the Kennedy’s enter. Their car turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza and around 12:30 p.m. as it was passing the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire suddenly reverberated in the plaza. Bullets were shot in the president's neck and head and he slumped over toward Mrs. Kennedy. The governor was shot in his back. -
XXIV (24th) Amendment
The United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials. -
Killing of Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner
In 1964 the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, also known as the Freedom Summer murders or the Mississippi civil rights workers'. These three activists were abducted and murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi in June of 1964 during the Civil Rights Movement. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act was put into place by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964. It prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and laslty it had made employment discrimination illegal. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
He’s is assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of African American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. -
Selma to Montgomery March Mar 7, 1965 – Mar 21, 1965
Selma-to-Montgomery marchers fought for the right to carry out their protest, while President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for federal voting rights legislation to protect African Americans from barriers that prevented them from voting. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits racial discrimination in voting -
Black Panthers Formed
The Black Panther Party's core practice was its open carry armed citizens' patrols ("cop watching") to monitor the behavior of officers of the Oakland Police Department and challenge police brutality in the city. -
Loving v Virginia
A decision of the US. Supreme Court that struck down laws banning interracial marriage as violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Minneapolis Riots
Racial tension rose in North Minneapolis along Plymouth Avenue in a series of acts of arson, assaults, and vandalism. The violence lasted about three nights, is often linked with other race-related demonstrations in cities across the nation during 1967’s “long hot summer.” -
Detroit Riots Jul 23, 1967 – Jul 28, 1967
The bloodiest incident in the summer of 1967. Composed mainly of confrontations between black residents and the Detroit Police Department, it began in the morning of Sunday July 23, 1967, in Detroit, Michigan. -
Assassination of MLK
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated. Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside. -
Assassination of Robert “Bobby” Kennedy
Bobby Kennedy was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961- September 1964, and as a U.S. Senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968.
