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The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. The amendment grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War.
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The 15th Amendment, granting African-American men the right to vote, was adopted into the U.S. Constitution in 1870.
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The U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the racist policy of segregation by legalizing “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites.
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The founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
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In its first national demonstration the Ku Klux Klan marches on Washington, D.C.
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President Truman issues an executive order outlawing segregation in the U.S. Military
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The U.S. Supreme Court unanimous decision that overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine in public schools.
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Emmett Till was murdered in Money, Mississippi.
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Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery City Bus and was arrested.
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins.
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The Little Rock 9 enter Central High School as federal troops oversee the situation sent by President Eisenhower.
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4 black college students sat at an all-white lunch counter and started a sit-in protest at a Woolworth’s store.
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Freedom riders begin a bus ride through the South to protest segregation.
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President Kennedy sends federal troops to the University of Mississippi to end riots so that James Meredith, the school's first black student, can attend.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Birmingham protesting in the “most segregated city in America.”
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More than 250,000 people, march on Washington to demand immediate passage of the civil rights bill.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech to hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington, D.C.
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A bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama—a church with a predominantly black congregation that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Four young girls were killed and many other people injured.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the premier legislation for Civil Rights into law.
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A march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for voting rights begins.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law outlawing literacy tests.
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Huey Newton & Bobby Seale founded the “Black Power” political group known as the Black Panthers.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis.
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Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black to be named to the Supreme Court
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President Ronald Reagan signed a bill making the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a federal holiday.
