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Jackie Robinson joins the Dodgers
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson Broke the Black and white barrier, by being the first Black man to play Major League Baseball. Robinson had a rough start, he started out playing for the Royals, which later took him to the Dodgers. he suffered racial abuse, but that did not stop him. Robinson, kept playing, even after everything. Robinson helped the Dodgers win the National League Pennant, he became a baseball hero who opened doors for future African-amaerican Players, such as Satchel Paige. -
James Meredith at the iniversity of Mississippi
That changed when Meredith set his sights on becoming the first black person to attend Ole Miss. According to one biographer, Meredith was dissatisfied with race relations in the South, and in a calculated move he applied for admission.
However, the university, citing administrative technicalities, refused his application numerous times over the course of the next several months. This prompted the would-be student to write a letter to Thurgood Marshall, the head of the National Association Fund -
March on Washington
Over 200,000 people gathered in Washington D.C for a politicall rally which is known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was designed to show the political and social challenges that African Americans still faced across America. the march became a key moment in the growing sruggle for civil rights, it culminated in Martin Luther King Jr's " I have a dream speech" -
16th street bombing
The September 15, 1963 racially motivated bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, which resulted in the death of four innocent black girls, was the nadir of the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham and perhaps one of the darkest days in Birmingham's history. City authorities, never sympathetic to blacks, did very little to bring the bombers to justice. Not until 1977 was one of the bombers convicted. Locally, the bombing brought the Civil Rights leaders
together. -
23rd Amendment Passes
The 24th amendment was important to the Civil Rights Movement as it ended mandatory poll taxes that prevented many African Americans. Poll taxes, combined with grandfather clauses and intimidation, effectively prevented African Americans from having any sort of political power, especially in the South. When the 24th amendment passed, five southern states, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi still had poll taxes. -
Civil Rights act
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. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. -
Murder in Mississippi
On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers were murdered near Philadelphia, in Nashoba County, Mississippi. They had been working to register black voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer and had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on trumped-up charges, imprisoned for several hours, and then released after dark intothe hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who beat and murdered them. -
selma march
In early 1965, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference made Selma, Alabama, the focus of its efforts to register black voters in the South. That March, protesters attempting to march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were met with violent resistance by state and local authorities. As the world watched, the protesters finally achieved their goal, walking around the clock for three days to reach Montgomery, they were under the protection of the National Guard -
Voting rights act
President Lyndon Johnson signed into Law the Voting Rights act, which aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African- Americans to vote under the 15th Amendment.The act significantly widened the franchise and is considered among the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history. -
MLK Assassinated
Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. News of King’s assassination prompted major outbreaks of racial violence, resulting in more than 40 deaths nationwide and extensive property damage in over 100 American cities. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.
