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McDonalds
In 1955, Ray Kroc, a businessman, joined the company as a franchise agent and proceeded to purchase the chain from the McDonald brothers. -
Period: to
America 1955 - 1975
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Brown II
In Brown II, the Court ordered them to integrate their schools "with all deliberate speed." In Brown II, the Supreme Court also set out rules about what schools needed to do to de-segregate. Finally, it explained how the United States government would make sure the schools did de-segregate. -
OU admits Blacks
He applied and was accepted into the University of Oklahoma in 1948, as a result of the United States Supreme Court decision in McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, concerning his application, which enabled African Americans to be admitted to graduate education at the University of Oklahoma on a segregated basis. -
The Murder of Emmett Louis Till
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement. -
Busses Desegregated
On May 29, 1961, Attorney General Robert Kennedy petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to issue regulations banning segregation, and the ICC subsequently decreed that by November 1, 1961, bus carriers and terminals serving interstate travel had to be integrated. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. The United States Congress has called her "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". -
The Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. -
Dr. T. R. M. Howard
January 16 – FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover writes a rare open letter of complaint directed to civil rights leader Dr. T. R. M. Howard after Howard charged in a speech that the "FBI can pick up pieces of a fallen airplane on the slopes of a Colorado mountain and find the man who caused the crash, but they can't find a white man when he kills a Negro in the South. -
Autherine Juanita Lucy
Autherine Juanita Lucy is an American activist who was the first African-American student to attend the University of Alabama, in 1956. Her expulsion from the institution later that year led to the university's President Oliver Carmichael's resignation. Years later, the University admitted her as a master's student and in 2010 a clock tower was erected in her honor. -
Little Rock Central High School
September 24 – President Dwight Eisenhower federalizes the National Guard and also orders US Army troops to ensure Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas is integrated. Federal and National Guard troops escort the Little Rock Nine. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 9, 1957. -
Bethel Baptist Church Bombing
The 1958 Bethel Baptist Church bombing was a racially motivated terrorist attack against Civil Rights Movement leader Fred Shuttlesworth's Bethel Baptist Church in Collegeville on June 29, 1958. The bombing was the second in a string of three bomb attacks targeting the church. -
Greensboro sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests from February to July 1960, primarily in the Woolworth store—now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum—in Greensboro, North Carolina, -
The Civil Rights Act of 1960
The Civil Rights Act of 1960 is a United States federal law that established federal inspection of local voter registration polls and introduced penalties for anyone who obstructed someone's attempt to register to vote. -
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his work as president concerning relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to becoming president. -
George Corley Wallace
George Corley Wallace Jr. opposed desegregation and supported the policies of "Jim Crow" during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 inaugural address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever". -
Phillip Henry Davis Rucker
On this date, Phillip Henry Davis Rucker was born in Brooklyn New York at Jewish Hospital -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964is a landmark civil rights and labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. -
Nobel Peace Prize
In 1964 Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his dynamic leadership of the Civil Rights movement and steadfast commitment to achieving racial justice through nonviolent action. -
Malcolm X
On February 19, 1965, Malcolm X told interviewer Gordon Parks that the Nation of Islam was actively trying to kill him. On February 21, 1965, he was preparing to address the OAAU in Manhattan's Audubon Ballroom when someone in the 400-person audience yelled, "Nigger! Get your hand outta my pocket!"[189][190][191] As Malcolm X and his bodyguards tried to quell the disturbance,[N] a man rushed forward and shot him once in the chest with a sawed-off shotgun. -
Bloody Sunday
The first march took place on March 7, 1965, organized locally by Bevel, Amelia Boynton, and others. State troopers and county postmen attacked the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas after they passed over the county line, and the event became known as Bloody Sunday. -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. -
The Watts riots
The Watts riots sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion or Watts Uprising,[1] took place in the Watts neighborhood and its surrounding areas of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. -
United States Department of Housing and Urban Development
The department was established on September 9, 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Department of Housing and Urban Development Act. -
The National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization founded in 1966. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman, and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m. He was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience. -
Fair Housing Act
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Pub.L. 90–284, 82 Stat. 73, enacted April 11, 1968) is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots. Titles VIII through IX is commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, which was meant as a follow‑up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
On June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mortally wounded shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Earlier that evening, the 42-year-old junior senator from New York was declared the winner in the South Dakota and California 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries during the 1968 United States presidential election. He was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. PDT on June 6, about 26 hours after he had been shot. -
Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Twenty-sixth Amendment (Amendment XXVI) to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. It was proposed by Congress on March 23, 1971, and three-fourths of the states ratified it by July 1, 1971. -
Gold Standard Ends
The government held the $35 per ounce price until August 15, 1971, when President Richard Nixon announced that the United States would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value, thus completely abandoning the gold standard. -
Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses supports, and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. It is considered one of the Big Five companies in the U.S. information technology industry. -
Watergate
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal in the United States involving the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon from 1971 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. -
The Vietnam War Ends
The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; South Vietnam was supported by the United States, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Thailand, and other anti-communist allies.