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Civil Rights Timeline

  • Executive Order 9981

    The Executive Order was sighed by President Truman (33rd). This Order stopped segregation in the military.
  • Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Ruling

    Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Ruling
    On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th amendment and was therefore unconstitutional.
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    Montgomery Bus Boycott

    The boycott was caused because black people had to give up their seats for white people and they had to sit all the way in the back of the bus. This boycott lead all the black people to stop riding the bus and since the majority of people that road the bus was black it hurt the buses financially.
  • Emmett Till was murdered

    Emmett Till was murdered
    Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy. He was murder while visiting family in Mississippi. He was allegedly murdered for flirting with a white woman four days before the murder.
  • Little Rock Nine Intervention

    Little Rock Nine Intervention
    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.
  • Greensboro Sit-In Protest

    Greensboro Sit-In Protest
    The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South.
  • Integration of Ole Miss Riots

    Integration of Ole Miss Riots
    On September 30, 1962, riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school.
  • The Birmingham Children’s March

    The Birmingham Children’s March
    In Birmingham, Alabama a group of black children came together to walk to the mayor and ask for civil rights. Police awaited for the kids to start their protest so they can arrest them.
  • March on Washington

    March on Washington
    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 Wednesday, August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans.
  • 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

    16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
    The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a white supremacist terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963.
  • George Wallace’s “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”

    George Wallace’s “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”
    The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door took place at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, in a symbolic attempt to keep his inaugural promise of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" and stop the desegregation of schools, stood at the door of the auditorium as if to block the entry of two African American students: Vivian Malone and James Hood.
  • Freedom Summer

    Freedom Summer
    Freedom Summer was a time when a group of organized voters came together to get more blacks to vote. This was to help fight against intimidation and discrimination at the polls.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed

    Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed
    In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). 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.
  • The Selma Marches

    The Selma Marches
    Blacks marched 54 miles from Selma to the capitol. This was to help make more blacks register to vote.
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed

    Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed
    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.