-
1865 - 13th Amendment
Passed by Congress on January 31st, 1865, and ratified on December 6th, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States.
It declares that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been dully convicted, shall exist withing the United States,or any place subject to their jurisdiction." -
1868 - 14th Amendment
On July 28th, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. The amendment grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the civil war. -
1870 - 15th Amendment
Passed by Congress February 26th, 1869, and ratified February 3rd, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote.
It declared that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." -
1896 - Plessey v. Ferguson
Plessey v. Ferguson was a landmark decision of the U.S. supreme court issued in 1896. It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality - a doctrine that came to be known as "seperate but equal. -
1948 - Truman desegregates the military
Executive Order 9981 was an executive order issued on July 26th, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished racial discrimination in the United States Armed Forces and eventually led to the end of segregation in the services. -
1954 - Brown v Board of Ed.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. -
1955 - Rosa Parks / Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political protest campaign against the policy or racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement. -
1958 - Little Rock Crisis
Because of Brown v. Board of Education and racial segregation in public schools, nine African American students called the Little Rock Nine enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. -
1960 - Sit-In Movement
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1960, which was one of the sit-ins that later led to the Woolworth department chain removing its policy of racial segregation. It was mostly students that did the sit-in and it was caused by "Gray's Only" lunch counters. -
1961 - Freedom Riders
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 which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. -
1962 - James Meredith and Ole Miss
The Ole Miss riot of 1962,or Battle of Oxford, was fought between Southern segregationists and federal and state forces beginning the night of September 30, 1962; segregationists were protesting the enrollment of James Meredith, a black US military veteran, at the University of Mississippi. -
1963 - Letter From a Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail, also known as the Letter from Birmingham City Jail and The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. -
1963 - "I Have a Dream Speech"
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement. -
1964 - Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi -
1964 - Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. -
1965 - Selma March
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery. -
1965 - Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
