-
NAACP was founded
Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth. On February 12, 1909, the nation's largest and most widely recognized civil rights organization was born. -
Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson stepped onto Ebbets Field for his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was the beginning of an unparalleled career in baseball. At the end of his explosive nine years as a Dodger, his record included a . 311 batting average, 137 home runs, 734 runs batted in, and 197 stolen bases. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. -
Desegregation of Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas
The desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, gained national attention on September 3, 1957, when Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating the high school. -
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957
On September 9, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Originally proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the Act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights. -
Sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter
In 1960 four freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro walked into the F. W. Woolworth store and quietly sat down at the lunch counter. They were refused service, but they stayed until closing time. -
CORE “freedom ride”
Freedom Rides, in U.S. history, a series of political protests against segregation by Blacks and whites who rode buses together through the American South in 1961. In 1946 the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in interstate bus travel. -
March on Washington
It was the largest gathering for civil rights of its time. An estimated 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, arriving in Washington, D.C. by planes, trains, cars, and buses from all over the country. -
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
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. -
“Bloody Sunday”
A march held in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 for the 600 people attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was there that law enforcement officers beat unarmed marchers with billy clubs and sprayed them with tear gas. -
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act was enacted on August 6, 1965, and it prohibited states from imposing qualifications or practices to deny the right to vote on account of race; permitted direct federal intervention in the electoral process in certain places, based on a “coverage formula” -
Dr. King was thrown into Birmingham Jail
On October 30, 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy were arrested and forced to begin serving sentences in Birmingham jail because they led peaceful protests against unconstitutional bans on "race mixing" in Birmingham in 1963. -
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights movement leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. -
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her courageous act of protest was considered the spark that ignited the Civil Rights movement. For decades, Martin Luther King Jr.'s fame overshadowed hers.