African American Equality

By pinkfloyd2013

  • Jackie Robinson joins MLB

    Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play professional sports in the major leagues.

  • Military is Desegregated

    President Truman issues an executive order that desegregates the military.

  • Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas. The Supreme Court rules unanimously against school segregation.

  • Rosa Parks

    Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white person, triggering a successful, year-long African American boycott of the bus system.

  • Congress of Racial Equality

    The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) begins to organize Freedom Rides throughout the South to try to de-segregate interstate public bus travel.

  • Malcom X

    African American radical Malcolm X becomes national minister of the Nation of Islam. He rejects the nonviolent civil-rights movement and integration, and becomes a champion of African American separatism and black pride. At one point he states that equal rights should be secured "by any means necessary."

  • MLK "I Have a Dream."

    More than 200,000 people march on Washington, D.C., in the largest civil rights demonstration ever; Martin Luther King, Jr., gives his "I Have a Dream" speech.

  • Nobel Peace Prize MLK

    Martin Luther King, Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

  • MLK Assasinated

    Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. His murder sparks a week of rioting across the country.

  • Equal Employment Opportunity Act Passed

    The Equal Employment Opportunity Act is passed, prohibiting job discrimination on the basis of, among other things, race, and laying the groundwork for affirmative action.

  • Phili Police Bomb MOVE

    The Philadelphia State Police bomb a house in Philadelphia occupied by an African American activist organization, MOVE. The bombing kills 11 occupants of the house and triggers a fire that destroys a neighborhood and leaves over 300 people homeless.

  • Civil Rights Act Passed

    The Civil Rights Act of 1991 makes it easier for employees to sue their employers for job discrimination.

  • African American Churches Burned

    Amid growing racial tension in the South, nearly 40 primarily African American churches are burned there.

  • Coca-Cola racial discrimination Suit-$192 mill

    In the largest settlement ever in a U.S. racial discrimination suit, the Coca-Cola Company agrees to pay out $192.5 million to roughly 2,000 African American employees.

  • Obama becomes Presedent

    Barrack Obama, An African American becomes the first black U.S. presedent.