Civil Rights

  • Executive Order 9981

    Executive Order 9981
    An executive order issued by President Harry S. Truman to abolish racial discrimination in the United States Armed Forces and it eventually led to the end of segregation in the services
  • Brown vs. Board of Education

    Brown vs. Board of Education
    Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional.
  • Emmett Till

    Emmett Till
    An African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman.
  • Rosa Parks

    Rosa Parks
    Rosa Parks was an African-American civil rights activist who refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled.
  • SCLC

    SCLC
    An African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement
  • Little Rock Nine

    Little Rock Nine
    a group of African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957 which was previously an all white school.
  • Woolworth sit-ins

    Woolworth sit-ins
    For students from all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime. The four men stayed at the lunch counter until closing. The next day they came back with 15 other students. By the third day 300 joined in. The sit-ins spread to lunch counters around the country.
  • SNCC

    SNCC
    about forty college students staged a sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter with the intention of integrating eating establishments in Nashville, Tennessee. Their numbers increased daily and although hundreds were arrested, by May, lunch counters in Nashville began to integrate. This non-violent strategy was adopted by black students all over the Deep South. Within six months these sit-ins had ended restaurant and lunch-counter segregation in twenty-six southern cities.
  • Freedom Rides

    Freedom Rides
    were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional.
  • James Meredith

    James Meredith
    is an American civil rights movement figure, a writer, and a political adviser. In 1962, he was the first African-American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi, an event that was a flashpoint in the American civil rights movement.
  • "Bull” Connor uses fire hoses on black demonstrators

    "Bull” Connor uses fire hoses on black demonstrators
    "Bull" Connor believed that white people and african americans should segregate, he believed the civil rights movement was a communist plot. Because of how he felt about the civil rights movement he lashed out on the peaceful demonstration by ordering officers to spray african americans with hoses and to unleash the dogs.
  • Letter from a Birmingham Jail

    Letter from a Birmingham Jail
    is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism, arguing that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws.
  • March on Washington

    March on Washington
    was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C..Thousands of Americans headed to Washington on Tuesday August 27, 1963. On Wednesday, August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism.
  • 16th Street Baptist Church bombing

    16th Street Baptist Church bombing
    The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963 as an act of white supremacist terrorism. The explosion at the African-American church, which killed four girls, marked a turning point in the United States 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • 24th Amendment

    24th Amendment
    prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax.
  • Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner

    Murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner
    Three American civil rights' workers, James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael "Mickey" Schwerner, were shot at close range on the night of June 21–22, 1964 by members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County's Sheriff Office and the Philadelphia Police Department located in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
  • Civil Rights Act 1964

    Civil Rights Act 1964
    A landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States[4] that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women.
  • Malcolm X assassinated

    Malcolm X assassinated
    An African-American Muslim minister and a human rights activist.
  • Los Angeles Race Riots 1965

    Los Angeles Race Riots 1965
    a race riot that took place in the Watts neighborhoodo f Los Angeles from August 11 to 17, 1965.
  • Voting Rights Act 1965

    Voting Rights Act 1965
    s a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits discrimination in voting.
  • Executive Order 11246

    Executive Order 11246
    signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 24, 1965, established requirements for non-discriminatory practices in hiring and employment on the part of U.S. government contractors.
  • Black Panthers founded

    Black Panthers founded
    a black revolutionary socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982.
  • Loving vs. Virginia

    Loving vs. Virginia
    A landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
  • MLK is assassinated

    MLK is assassinated
    Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader of the African-American civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who became known for his advancement of civil rightsby using civil disobedience. He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39.
  • Civil Rights Act 1968

    Civil Rights Act 1968
    a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin and made it a federal crime to “by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin.
  • Bloody Sunday - January 30, 1972

    Bloody Sunday - January 30, 1972
    an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, in which 26 civil-rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army.
  • Civil Rights Act 1991

    Civil Rights Act 1991
    a United States statute that was passed in response to a series of United States Supreme Court decisions which limited the rights of employees who had sued their employers for discrimination.
  • Los Angeles Race Riots

    Los Angeles Race Riots
    a series of riots, lootings, arsons and civil disturbance that occurred in Los Angeles County, California in 1992, following the acquittal of police officers on trial regarding a videotaped, and widely covered police brutality incident