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Emmett Till
Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement. -
Rosa Parks
The modern civil rights movement began in the 1950s. It sparked a movement in 1955 when a black woman from Alabama named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. -
Rosa Parks Arrest
Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat and the blacks refused to continue to sit at the back of the bus. -
Bus Boycott
The boycott is also believed to have not started specifically with Rosa Parks, but had been in the works. A council of 25 associations had informed the mayor that in 1955 a boycott would take place due to the segregation laws. What the council needed was a respected member of the community to be arrested on no other charges but the color of their skin. -
Bus Boycott 381 Days
Black people were furious after many failed attempts fighting for their civil rights that they decided to boycott the bus system. Being that the blacks made up 75% of the bus population, without their economic input via fares bus companies were sure to bankrupt. -
Black Sit-in
(Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from NCA & T College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Student sit-ins would be effective throughout the Deep South in integrating parks, theaters, libraries, & other public facilities. -
Robert F. Williams, Armed Resistance to Racial Oppression
NAACP Branch President Robert F. Williams successfully led an armed self-defense of the home of the branch vice president and Monroe, N.C.'s black community from an armed attack by a Ku Klux Klan motorcade. At a time of high racial tension, massive Klan presence and official rampant abuses of the black citizenry, Williams was recognized as a dynamic leader and key figure in the American South where he promoted a combination of nonviolence with armed self-defense. -
James Meredith, 1st Black Student at University of Mississippi
James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops. -
MLK Jr. Arrested
Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws. -
Medgar Evers, Murdered
Jackson, Mississippi's NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in hung juries. -
I Have a Dream (The Defining Moment)
I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters -
Ku Klux Klan
The KKK name was used by numerous independent local groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor's offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama. Several members of KKK groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 and children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. -
Malcolm X
Expressing many regrets about his time with them, which he had come to regard as largely wasted, he embraced Sunni Islam. After a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, which included completing the Hajj, he repudiated the Nation of Islam, disavowed racism and founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He continued to emphasize Pan-Africanism, black self-determination, and black self-defense. -
Selma to Montgomery Marches (Freedom Day)
The Selma to Montgomery marches, which included Bloody Sunday, were actually three marches that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. -
Malcolm X, Murdered
(Harlem, N.Y.) Malcolm X, black nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. It is believed the assailants are members of the Black Muslim faith, which Malcolm had recently abandoned in favor of orthodox Islam. -
The Watts Riot
Riots raged for six days and resulted in more than $40 Million in property damage, the largest and costliest urban rebellion of the Civil Rights era. The riot started when Marquette Frye, a young African American motorist, was pulled over and arrested by a white California Highway Patrolman, for suspicion of driving while intoxicated. As a crowd on onlookers gathered at the scene of Frye's arrest, strained tensions between police officers and the crowd erupted in a violent exchange. -
Project Alabama Political Freedom Movement
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. presents the SCLC plan, the "Project for an Alabama Political Freedom Movement," a plan conceived by James Bevel that calls for mass action and voter registration attempts in Selma and Dallas County. -
Black Panther Party of Self Defense
(Oakland, Calif.) The militant Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. -
Martin Luther King Jr. Murdered
Memphis, Tenn. Martin Luther King, at age 39, is shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room. Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray is convicted of the crime. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. -
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education,
The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upholds busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools. Although largely unwelcome (and sometimes violently opposed) in local school districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities such as Charlotte, Boston, and Denver continue until the late 1990s. -
Trayvon Martin, Murdered
George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Florida, calls 911 to report "a suspicious person" in the neighborhood. He is instructed not to get out of his SUV or approach the person. Zimmerman disregards the instructions. Moments later, neighbors report hearing gunfire. Zimmerman acknowledges that he shot Martin, claiming it was in self-defense. In a police report, Officer Timothy Smith writes that Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose and back of the head. -
Black Lives Matter (The Next era in the Civil Rights Movement)
A call to action for Black people after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed. It was a response to the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, our movements. Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.
