Civil Rights Timeline

  • Benjamin Mays

    Benjamin Mays
    Perhaps best known as the longtime president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Benjamin Mays was a distinguished African American minister, educator, scholar, and social activist. He was also a significant mentor to civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and was among the most articulate and outspoken critics of segregation before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the United States.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rRqg17WWCI
  • Herman Talmadge

    Herman Talmadge
    1956 Talmadge was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he served until his defeat in 1980. Talmadge, a Democrat, was governor at a time of political transition in the state, and he served in the Senate during a time of great political change in the nation as well. As a member of the southern bloc of the Senate, Talmadge was a staunch opponent of civil rights legislation, but he began to reach out to black voters in the 1970s. I
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zgc_7QypH0
  • Lester Maddox

    Lester Maddox
    The tumultuous political and social change in Georgia during the 1960s yielded perhaps the state's most unlikely governor, Lester Maddox. Brought to office in 1966 by widespread dissatisfaction with desegregation, Maddox surprised many by serving as an able and unquestionably colorful chief executive.
  • Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Martin Luther King, Jr.
    King, both a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist, had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among many efforts, King headed the SCLC. Through his activism, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the South and other areas of the nation, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmEZGbUvW2M
  • Maynard Jackson as Mayor of Atlanta

    Maynard Jackson as Mayor of Atlanta
    lected mayor of Atlanta in 1973, Maynard Jackson was the first African American to serve as mayor of a major southern city. Jackson served eight years and then returned for a third term
    Elected mayor of Atlanta in 1973, Maynard Jackson was the first African American to serve as mayor of a major southern city. Jackson served eight years and then returned for a third term in 1990. During his tenure, Jackson increased the amount of city business
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajkv5AWMltY
  • Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education
    On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Court’s unanimous decision overturned provisions of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which had allowed for “separate but equal” public facilities, including public schools in the United States. Declaring that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” the Brown v. Board decision helped break the back of state-sponsored segregation,
  • 1956 State Flag

    1956 State Flag
    Om May 8, 2003, Governor Sonny Perdue signed legislation creating a new state flag for Georgia. The new banner became effective immediately, giving Georgia its third state flag in only twenty-seven months—a national record. Georgia also leads the nation in the number and variety of different state flags.
  • SNCC

    SNCC
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    The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), formed to give younger blacks more of a voice in the civil rights movement, became one of the movement’s more radical branches. In the wake of the early sit-ins at lunch counters closed to blacks, which started in February 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Ella Baker, then director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), helped set up the first meeting of what became SNCC. She was concerned that SCLC, led by the
  • March on Washington

    March on Washington
    On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington, D.C., for a political rally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Organized by a number of civil rights and religious groups, the event was designed to shed light on the political and social challenges African Americans continued to face across the country. I have a dream speech was delivered here.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wDU-oYQN04
  • Civil Rights Act

    Civil Rights Act
    The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and also pas