civil rights movement

  • Tuskegee Institute created

    Tuskegee Institute created

    Tuskegee University is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. The campus is designated as the Tuskegee Institute National Historic Site by the National Park Service. The university was home to scientist George Washington Carver and to World War II's Tuskegee Airmen
  • Plessy v Ferguson

    Plessy v Ferguson

    Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality, a doctrine that came to be known as "separate but equal"
  • NAACP created

    NAACP created

    The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells.
  • 19th Amendment

    19th Amendment

    The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. The first women's suffrage amendment was introduced to Congress in 1878.
  • Executive Order 9981

    Executive Order 9981

    Executive Order 9981 was issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. This executive order abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces
  • Brown v Board of Education

    Brown v Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality.
  • Emmett Till's Death

    Emmett Till's Death

    On August 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.
  • Montgomery Bus Boycot

    Montgomery Bus Boycot

    The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and a social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama.
  • Little Rock 9

    Little Rock 9

    On September 4, 1957 nine African American students arrived at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. They made their way through a crowd shouting obscenities and even throwing objects.
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1957

    The Civil Rights Act of 1957

    The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • SNCC formed

    SNCC formed

    The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s.
  • Greensboro NC Sit-in’s

    Greensboro NC Sit-in’s

    Greensboro sit-in, 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.
  • Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

    Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

    The "Letter from Birmingham Jail", also known as the "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and "The Negro Is Your Brother", is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr
  • March on Washington – “I have a Dream Speech”

    March on Washington – “I have a Dream Speech”

    The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, also known as the March on Washington or The Great March on Washington, was held in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    Civil Rights Act of 1964

    In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing.
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965

    Voting Rights Act of 1965

    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.
  • Black Panthers

    Black Panthers

    The Black Panther Party, originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Black Power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California.
  • Thurgood Marshall appointed to Supreme Court

    Thurgood Marshall appointed to Supreme Court

    On June 13, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated distinguished civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.
  • MLK assasination

    MLK assasination

    Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m.
  • Sonia Sotomayor appointed to Supreme Court

    Sonia Sotomayor appointed to Supreme Court

    She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009 and has served since August 8, 2009. Sotomayor is the first Hispanic and Latina member of the Court.