Civil Rights Timeline

By embeans

  • Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

    This is the court case that helped declare that state laws for the segregation of black and white schools was unconstitutional. In 1954 the Supreme Court declared the school segregation was illegal. There was also reluctance to give definite guidelines for ending segregation. 80% of Southern whites opposed the Brown decision and some states in the South created plans to oppose these decisions.

  • Little Rock Nine

    After the Brown decision, black people began trying to attend an formerly all-white school. Nine black students had attempted to attend Little Rock's Central High School but were blocked off by angry white students, angry white parents, and the governor of Arkansas sent armed soldiers to make sure the black students stayed out.

  • Sit-Ins

    African American had been refused service at the F.W. Woolsworth's lunch counter but remained able to stay seated at the counter. Due to this event, students from N.C. A&T University began a sit-in at F.W. Woolsworth's lunch counter. This also triggered similar nonviolent protests throughout the South.

  • March on Washington

    The march for freedom and jobs that 200,000 to 300,000 people participated in this march. When the people arrived at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the famous "I Have A Dream" speech which inspired thousands and brought issues more into the light. This march was successful in pressuring the John F. Kennedy administration to initiate a strong federal civil rights bill in Congress.

  • Birmingham Demonstrations

    This was a movement organized in 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in order to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. In this, four young girls were attending Sunday School had been killed when a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. This was a popular site for Civil Right meetings. Birmingham Demonstrations were a series of sit-ins, marches on city hall, and boycotts on downtown merchants to protest segregation.