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1865 - 13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment was added to the United States Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. -
1868 - 14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. -
1870 - 15th Amendment
Passed by Congress February 26, 1869, and ratified February 3, 1870, the 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote. -
1896 - Plessey v. Ferguson
In May 18, 1896, Plessey v. Ferguson was a case where it was about the controversy about "seperate but equal." Plessy v. Ferguson was the first major inquiry into the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s (1868) equal-protection clause, which prohibits the states from denying “equal protection of the laws” to any person within their jurisdictions. -
1948 - Truman desegregated the military
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, committing the government to integrating the segregated military. -
1954 - Brown v. Board of Ed.
During 1954, the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. -
1955 - Rosa Parks / Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955 from this boycott. -
1957 - Little Rock Crisis
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. The nine students were escorted by federal troops to be escorted into the school. -
1960 - Sit-in Movement
The sit-in movement was a wave of sit-ins that followed the Greensboro sit-ins on February 1, 1960 in North Carolina. The sit-in movement employed the tactic of nonviolent direct action and was a pivotal event during the Civil Rights Movement. -
1961 - Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961. The Freedom Riders challenged the Jim Crow laws. Police arrested riders for trespassing, unlawful assembly, violating state and local Jim Crow laws, and other alleged offenses, but often they first let white mobs attack them without intervention. -
1962 - James Meredith and Ole Miss
James Meredith, an African American man, attempted to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi in 1962. Chaos soon broke out on the Ole Miss campus, with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many others arrested, after the Kennedy administration called out some 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce order. -
1963 - Letter From a Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail, also known as the Letter from Birmingham City Jail is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. -
1963 - March on Washington / ¨I Have a Dream¨ Speech
The March on Washington was a massive protest march that occurred in August 1963, when some 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Also known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was also the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s now-iconic “I Have A Dream” speech. -
1964 - Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive. Aimed at increasing black voter registration in Mississippi, the Freedom Summer workers included black Mississippians and more than 1,000 out-of-state, predominately white volunteers. -
1964 - Civil Rights Act of 1964
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. -
1965 - Selma March
The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil-rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama, a Southern state with deeply entrenched racist policies. In March of that year, in an effort to register black voters in the South, protesters marching the 54-mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were confronted with deadly violence from local authorities and white vigilante groups. -
1965 - Voting Rights Act
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.
