Timeline: 1955 - 1975

Dec 4, 1955

Civil Rights Movement

1955 was also a landmark year for the Civil Rights Movement in America. In December of this year, Rosa Parks famously refused to obey a bus drivers’ order to get out of her seat to make room for a white passenger. This sparked several significant protests in her city of Montgomery, Alabama.

Feb 1, 1960

Sit-In at the Lunch Counter

Four black college students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina stage a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth lunch counter, protesting their denial of service. This action caused a national campaign, waged by seventy-thousand students, both white and black, over the next eight months, in sit-ins across the nation for Civil Rights.

Aug 6, 1965

Voting Rights

August 6, 1965 - The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Two significant portions of the act; the outlawing of the requirement of potential voters to take a literacy test in order to qualify and the provision of federal registration of voters in areas with less than 50% of all voters registered.

1966

Bullet Proof Vest Invented

Kevlar is developed by Dupont scientist Stephanie Louise Kwolek. She would patent the compound, used extensively in bullet proof vests, in 1966.

Nov 8, 1966

First Black Senator

November 8, 1966 - The first black United States Senator in eighty-five years, Edward Brooke, is elected to Congress. Brooke was the Republican candidate from Massachusetts and former Attorney General of that state.

Jan 14, 1970