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Brown vs. Board of Education
The Supreme Court ruled the case as unconstititional to segregate public school. The ruling paves the way for large-scale desegregation. It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice. -
Death of Emmett Till
While visiting family in Mississippi 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, was brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman. The white woman’s husband and her brother made Emmett carry a cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and told him to take off his clothes then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and threw his body into the river after it was tied to the fan with barbed wire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywc3YFeMiYE -
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man
NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott. -
The boycott was successful!
The buses are desegregated. Newly elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott. -
Little Rock Nine
Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, starting an era of change. -
Sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter
(Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a segregated counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later the original four protesters are served lunch at the same Woolworth's counter. Student sit-ins would be effective throughout the Deep South in integrating parks, theaters, and other public facities. -
Testing the new laws in the South
Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more than 1,000 volunteers, black and white. -
Change in Mississippi
James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F8K6p651v8 -
"Letter from Birmingham Jail"
Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala. He writes his seminal arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws. -
"I Have a Dream"
(Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vDWWy4CMhE -
Birmingham, Alabama
Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black youths. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Presicent Johnson signs the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaRUca7FyAc -
Bloody Sunday
Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3fq79yKGaQ&nohtml5=False -
Voting Rights Act
Congress passes an act to make it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal. August 11-17: Race riots erupt in a black section of Los Angeles. -
Change in Heart
In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their laws. -
MLK's Death
Martin Luther King, at age 39, is shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room. Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray is convicted of the crime. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PalIIpfhw_g
