Civil Rights Interactive Timeline

  • Brown vs Board of Education

    Brown vs Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.
  • Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery. It inspired a mass protest to spread.
  • The Murder of Teenager Emmett Till

    The Murder of Teenager Emmett Till

    Emmett Till was brutally murdered in 1955. She was murdered at 14, for allegedly whistling at a white woman while visiting in Money, Mississippi, with friends. The woman’s husband and his friends kidnapped Till, beat and shot him, and tossed his body into the Tallahatchie River where it was discovered three days later.
  • The Little Rock Nine

    The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school.
    https://www.pbs.org/video/eyes-on-the-prize-fighting-back-little-rock-nine/
  • Temple Bombing

    In the early hours of October 12, 1958, fifty sticks of dynamite exploded in a recessed entranceway at the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, Atlanta's oldest and most prominent synagogue, more commonly known as "the Temple."
  • Greensboro sit in

    Greensboro sit in

    The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South.
  • The Albany Movement

    The Albany Movement was formed in 1961 in Albany, Georgia, as a collaboration between local activists. It became the first major initiative of the civil rights movement to try to desegregate an entire city.
  • Church in Birmingham

    The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a white supremacist terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • Poors People Campaign

    The Poor People's Campaign was a 1968 effort to gain economic justice for poor people in the United States. Participants demanded the government formulate a plan to help redress the employment and housing problems for poor people.
  • Bloody Sunday

    Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, was a massacre on 30 January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in Northern Ireland.