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Jackie Robinson
Jackie breaks the wall between the blacks and whites. He is the first African american to play MLB baseball. He played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. -
Desegregation of the Military
President Truman issued executive order requiring integrated units in the armed forces. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Supreme Court reverses the Plessy decision by stating that separate schools are by nature unequal. All schools are ordered to desegregate in a timely fashion. -
Emmett Till
This 14 year old Chicagoan was visiting his family Mississippi but he was kidnapped. He was brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River by his two captors, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant. He was killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The two men were cleared by an all white jury. They later boated about the murder in a Look magazine interview. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks started up a 381 day bus boycott starting in 1955. It was organized by Martin Luther King Jr. It was so that the bus businesses would lose money and desegregate the buses. Rosa Parks took the first seat in the colored section in the back of the bus. She was asked to move because the bus was getting full and they wanted to give more seats to the whites. She refused and was arrested and fined $10. -
Little Rock Central High School is desegregated
The National Guard troops prevent black children from attending the school after the Little Rock school board voted to integrate schools. About 1000 federal paratroopers were used to escort black students and tried to preserve the peace. The Arkansas Governor, Faubus, closed schools for 1958-59 school year in response to the Little Rock outbreak. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell. The Act marked the first occasion in a while that the government took action to protect civil rights. Some people took away things from the bill, but it still provided things for voting rights. It established the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department. The most important thing this act did was to help the civil rights movement in the future. -
Temple Bombing
A group of racists placed a bomb made of dynamite at the front entrance of a synagogue in Atlanta. The bomb went of and cost thousands of dollars in damage, however no one was hurt. This event got people and leaders to rally for civil rights. A famous photo of the mayor and the Rabbi of the synagogue was taken in front of the demolished building. -
Lunch Sit-in Protest
In Greensboro, NC, 4 black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College started a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. They were refused food, but remained sitting there. It started nonviolent protests throughout the southern states. Student sit-ins were effective in all public places -
Freedom Riders opposed segregation
Blacks and whites took buses to the South to protest bus station segregation. Many were greeted with riots and beatings. -
James Meredith
James Meredith enrolled at the University of Mississippi-
Pres. Kennedy had to send 5000 federal troops to allow Meredith to register for his classes. This event caused riots that killed two and injured hundreds. -
Civil Rights Protests
In Birmingham Alabama, there was a civil rights protest. Commissioner of Public Safety used fire hose and police dogs on black demonstrators. Images of this event were shown and published widely. They were helpful with gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world. -
The March On Washington
On August 28, 1963, more than a total of 200,000 blacks and whites gathered at the Lincoln memorial. They listened to speeches like Martin Luther King Jr. ¨I Have a Dream¨ speech. They also protested racial injustice. -
JFK Assasination
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas by Lee Harvey Oswald. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, uses the country’s anger to pass civil rights legislation. He agree with the changes by using the legacy of Kennedy's memory. -
SNCC
In Raleigh North Carolina, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded at Shaw University. It provided young blacks with a place in the civil rights movement. Later the SNCC grows into a more radical organization. The leader of the organization is Stokely Carmichael.
