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The 14th Amendment was passed.
Constitutional amendment forbids any state from depriving citizens of their rights and privileges and defines citizenship. So basically it granted slaves freed. -
Plessy v. Ferguson decision
Supreme Court rules that separate but equal facilities for different races is legal. Gives legal approval to Jim Crow laws. -
Jackie Robinson joins Brooklyn Dodgers
Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey announced he had purchased the contract of Jackie Robinson, setting the stage for Robinson to break Major League Baseball’s color barrier. -
Montgomery bus boycott
Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. The boycott of public buses by blacks in Montgomery began on the day of Parks' court hearing and lasted 381 days. -
Little Rock Central High School desegregated
1957 crisis over the desegregation of this school is a significant event in the civil-rights moment. -
Lunch counter protests
10 men sat at a "whites only" counter in Rock Hill, South Carolina in a protest against segregation. They were arrested and nine ("The Friendship Nine") were sentenced to 30 days labor on a chain gang. -
Freedom Riders oppose segregation
The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South. Boynton vs. Virginia (1960), which declared segregation in interstate bus and rail stations unconstitutional. -
"Letter from Birmingham jail"
In response to white ministers who urge him to stop causing disturbances, King issues articulate statement of nonviolent resistance to wrongs of American society. -
Malcolm X assassinated
Rejecting integration and nonviolence, Malcolm splits off from Elijah Muhammad's Black Muslims and is killed by black opponents. -
Selma to Montgomery march
On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma
