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Creation of the NAACP
The NAACP was created in 1909 by an iterracial group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois, ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans, especially in the wake of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot. -
Scottsboro Boys
The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers accused in Alabama of raping two Whtie American women on a train in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. -
Jackie Robinson Breaks the Color Barrier
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American player in major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
Was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. -
The Murder of Emmitt Till
While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year old Emmett Till, an, African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. The boycott of public buses by blacks in Montgomery began on the day of Parks; court hearing and lasted 381 days. -
The Little Rock 9
The Little Rock Nine was 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 sutdents were intially prevented from entering the racially segreated school by Orval Faubus. -
Ruby Bridges Desegregates Elementary School
Ruby Bridges was the first African-American, 6 year old child to attend an all-white public elementary school in the American South. -
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
An open letter written by Martin Luther King Jr. defending the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justic to come through the courts. Responding to being referred to as an "outsider," King writes, "injustice anywhere iss a threat to justice everywhere." -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
A landmark piece of civil rights legislation in the United States that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. -
Assassination of Malcom X
Malcom X was shot before he was about to deliver a speech about his new organization called the Organization of Afro-American Unity. -
Creation of the Black Panthers
A black political organization. Orignally known as the Black panther Party for Self-Defense. The BPP originated in Oakland, California, by founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. -
Thurgood Marshall Named Supreme Court Justice
President Lyndon johnson apppoints U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. On August 30, after a heated debate, the Senate confimed Marshall's nomination by a vote of 69 to 11. Two days late, he was sworn in by chief Justice Earl Warren, making him the first African American in history to sit on America's highest court. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Shortly after 6 p.m. Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. was shot and mortally wounded as he stood on the second-floor balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. at St. Joseph Hospital. -
Election of Barack Obama
Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected president of the United States over Senator John McCain of Arizona. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to that office. He was subsequently elected to a second term over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
