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Jackie Robinson enters Major League Baseball
In 1947 Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play in the MLB. Jackie Robinson made his debut in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers -
Executive Order 9981 signed by President Truman
Signed by Harry Truman on July 26, 1948. The order mandated desegregation for the U.S. military to ensure equality for all races in the armed service. -
Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Ruling
In this milestone decision, the Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. -
Rosa Parks Arrest
Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman because the woman complained to the bus drivers that the whites seats were filled up. -
Emmett Till is murdered
Emmett Till was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
he Montgomery Bus Boycott was a 381-day protest that took place in Montgomery, Alabama from December 1955 to December 1956. The boycott was a response to racial segregation on the city's buses. It was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement and led to a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. -
Little Rock Nine
A group of nine students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School, the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957 is passed
Dwight Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The law established Africans Americans rights. -
Greensboro Sit-In Protest
An act of nonviolent protest against a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, that began on February 1, 1960. Its success led to a wider sit-in movement, organized primarily by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), that spread throughout the South. -
Integration of Ole Miss Riots
Riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school. -
The Birmingham Children’s March
The Birmingham Children's March also know as The Childrens Crusade was a March by over 1,000 students to downtown to talk to the mayor about segregation. -
George Wallace’s “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”
The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door took place at Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. In a symbolic attempt to keep his inaugural promise of "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" and stop the desegregation of schools -
March on Washington / I Have a Dream Speech
A public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was a 1964 voter registration drive aimed at increasing the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. -
The Selma Marches / Bloody Sunday
The Selma Marches was a total of 3 different Marches that took place in 1965. The Marches took place from a 54 mile highway from Alabama to the capital of Montgomery. All of the tension led to violent attacks and the African Americans being beat down by police.