Civil Rights Timeline

  • Brown v Board of Education

    a decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case declared the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional. The landmark Brown v. Board decision gave LDF its most celebrated victory in a long, storied history of fighting for civil rights and marked a defining moment in US history.
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    May 17 1954

  • The Montgomery Bus Boycott in Alabama begins

    the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. It is one of the most powerful stories of organizing and social change in U.S. history.
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    December 12 1955

  • Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas

    Nine Black students who'd been forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of unruly white crowds were escorted to class by members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division.
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    September 25 1957

  • Greensboro sit in in North Carolina

    Greensboro sit-in, act of nonviolent protest against a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, that began on February 1, 1960. Its success led to a wider sit-in movement, organized primarily by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
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    February 1, 1960

  • The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

    more than 250,000 people gathered in the nation's capital for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march was the brainchild of longtime civil rights activist and labor leader A. Philip Randolph.
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    August 28, 1963

  • Civil Rights Bill

    President Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights bill into law in a White House ceremony.
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    July 2, 1964

  • Voting Rights March

    At the height of the modern civil rights movement, activists organized a march for voting rights, from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, the state capital. On March 7, some 600 people assembled at a downtown church, knelt briefly in prayer, and began walking silently, two-by-two through the city streets.
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    March 7, 1965

  • The signing or Voting Rights Act of 1965

    President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law
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    August 6, 1965

  • The slaying of MLK jr

    On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., 39, was shot and killed while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee; his slaying was followed by a wave of rioting
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    April 4, 1968

  • President LBJ signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968

    On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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    April 11 1968