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January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) His assassination led to an outpouring of anger among Black Americans, as well as a period of national mourning that helped speed the way for an equal housing bill that would be the last significant legislative achievement of the civil rights era. -
In 1948 executive order stated that “there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed forces without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." It established the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity. -
Martin Luther King, Jr., is a civil rights legend. In the mid-1950s, Dr. King led the movement to end segregation and counter prejudice in the United States through the means of peaceful protest. His speeches—some of the most iconic of the 20th century—had a profound effect on the national consciousness. -
In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The 1954 decision declared that separate educational facilities for white and African American students were inherently unequal. -
Called "the mother of the civil rights movement," Rosa Parks invigorated the struggle for racial equality when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955, launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott by 17,000 black citizens. -
Ruby Nell Bridges Hall is an American Hero. She was the first African American child to desegregate William Frantz Elementary School. At six years old, Ruby's bravery helped pave the way for Civil Rights action in the American South. -
During the spring of 1961, student activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) \
launched the Freedom Rides to challenge segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals. -
The Birmingham church bombing occurred on September 15, 1963, when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama—a church with a predominantly Black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. -
March on Washington, in full March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, political demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1963 by civil rights leaders to protest racial discrimination and to show support for major civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress. -
He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966. Lewis was one of the "Big Six" leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington. He fulfilled many key roles in the civil rights movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States. -
In 1964 many people joined together to help colored people have the choice to vote. Voter registration also tried to help increase the number of colored people who could vote in the Mississippi area. -
In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. -
This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
The first march took place on March 7, 1965, organized locally by Bevel, Amelia Boynton, and others. State troopers and county posse men 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. -
Poor People's Campaign, also called Poor People's March, political campaign that culminated in a demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1968, in which participants demanded that the government formulate a plan to help redress the employment and housing problems of the poor throughout the United States.