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The 14th Amendment granted due process and equal protection under the law to African Americans.
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The 15th Amendment granted blacks the right to vote, including former slaves.
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Congress passed a third Civil Rights Act in response to many white business owners and merchants who refused to make their facilities and establishments equally available to black people. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited such cases of racial discrimination and guaranteed equal access to public accommodations regardless of race or color. White supremacist groups, however, embarked upon a campaign against blacks and their white supporters.
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The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating racially segregated but equal railroad cars. The ruling stated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution dealt with political and not social equality. Plessy v. Ferguson gave a broad interpretation of "equal but separate" accommodations with reference to "white and colored people" legitimizing "Jim Crow" practices throughout the South.
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The U.S. Supreme Court unanimous decision that overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine in public schools.
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded by a multi-racial group of activists in New York, N.Y. Initially, the group called themselves the National Negro Committee. Founders Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard and William English Walling led the call to renew the struggle for civil and political liberty.
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President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services.
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The U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the racist policy of segregation by legalizing “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites.
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Emmett Till was murdered in Money, Mississippi.
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Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery City Bus and was arrested.
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins.
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Sixty black pastors and civil rights leaders from several southern states—including Martin Luther King, Jr.—meet in Atlanta, Georgia to coordinate nonviolent protests against racial discrimination and segregation.
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The Little Rock 9 enter Central High School as federal troops oversee the situation sent by President Eisenhower.
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4 black college students sat at an all-white lunch counter and started a sit-in protest at a Woolworth’s store.
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Freedom riders begin a bus ride through the South to protest segregation.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Birmingham protesting in the “most segregated city in America.”
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"I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.
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Approximately 250,000 people take part in The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
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A bomb at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama kills four young girls and injures several other people prior to Sunday services. The bombing fuels angry protests.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law outlawing literacy tests.
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Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a popular figure during the civil rights movement.
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A march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for voting rights begins.
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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.
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Huey Newton & Bobby Seale founded the “Black Power” political group known as the Black Panthers.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis.
