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13th Amendment
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. -
14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave equal rights to US citizens. -
15th Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". -
Plessy vs Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal." -
Integration of the Armed Forces
In 1948, President Harry S Truman's Executive Order 9981 ordered the integration of the armed forces shortly after World War II, a major advance in civil rights. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state sponsored segregation. -
Emmett Till is murdered
Emmett Till was an African American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. -
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) founded
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement -
Crisis at Central High School and the "Little Rock Nine"
The Little Rock Nine was a group of African American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African American Civil Rights Movement. -
Greensboro Sit-ins
On February 1, 1960, four students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina sat down at the lunch counter inside the Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina.The men, later known as the Greensboro Four, ordered coffee.Following store policy, the lunch counter staff refused to serve the African American men at the "whites only" counter and the store's manager asked them to leave. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded
he Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 1960. SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support SNCC's work in the South. -
JFK becomes president
John F. Kennedy becomes the youngest man ever to be elected president of the United States, narrowly beating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon. He was also the first Catholic to become president. -
Freedom Rides
13 riders left Washington, DC, on Greyhound and Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending in New Orleans, Louisiana where a civil rights rally was planned. Most of the Riders were from CORE, and two were from SNCC. -
Integration of the University of Mississippi James Meredith
The US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy consulted with Governor Barnett, who agreed to have Meredith enroll in the university. After being barred from entering on September 20, on October 1, 1962, he became the first African-American student at the University of Mississippi.White students and anti-desegregation supporters protested his enrollment by rioting on the Oxford campus. -
MLK arrested and jailed in Birmingham, Alaba "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"
King wrote the letter from the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama, where he was confined after being arrested for his part in the Birmingham campaign, a planned non-violent protest conducted by the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights and King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference against racial segregation by Birmingham's city government and downtown retailers. -
March on Washington DC "I have a dream speech"
Called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. The speech, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters. -
16th Street Baptist Church bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963. The explosion at the African American church, which killed four girls, marked a turning point in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. -
JFK assassinated and Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President
Johnson succeeded to the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, completed the rest of Kennedy's term and was elected President in his own right, winning by a large margin in the 1964 election. -
24th amendment "poll tax abolished"
On January 23, 1964, South Dakota ratified the 24th Amendment, abolishing the use of the poll tax as a requirement to vote in federal elections. -
3 Mississippi civil rights workers murders
The Mississippi civil rights workers murders involved the lynching of three anti-racism and social justice activists near Philadelphia in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 21, 1964, during the American Civil Rights Movement. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed
Outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public. -
Malcolm X shot to death
In February 1965, less than a year after leaving the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three members of the group. -
Selma to Montgomery march
On March 7, 1965, an estimated 525 to 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. -
voting rights act of 1965 passed
The resolution, signed into law on August 6, 1965, empowered the federal government to oversee voter registration and elections in counties that had used tests to determine voter eligibility or where registration or turnout had been less than 50 percent in the 1964 presidential election. It also banned discriminatory literacy tests and expanded voting rights for non English speaking Americans. -
Black Panthers are founded
n African-American revolutionary leftist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s. -
Stokely Carmichael coined the phrase "black power"
Carmichael joined Martin Luther King Jr. in New York on April 15, 1967 to share his views with protesters on race in terms of the war in Vietnam. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
leader of the African-American civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968,was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the Civil Rights Act of 1866 prohibited discrimination in housing, there were no federal enforcement provisions.
