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Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States fought from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America. The Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U.S. history. In simple terms, the Union was against slavery whereas the secessionists weren't. -
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It purported to change the federal legal status of more than 3 million enslaved people in the designated areas of the South from "slave" to "free". -
The 13th amendment is proclaimed
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. Link text -
The 14th amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws, and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. Link text -
The 15th amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". Link text -
19th amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex. Most states did not give women the right to vote. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, Link text -
Executive order 9981
Executive Order 9981 was an executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished racial discrimination in the United States Armed Forces and eventually led to the end of segregation in the services. -
Brown v. Board of education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), 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. -
Murder of Emmet Till
Emmet Louis Til was a black boy that was beaten almost to death, shot, and thrown into the river by the two white Bryant brothers. His body was found a few days later, his head was so disfigured that he was hardly recognizable. Emmet's mother asked for an open coffin to show the world what happened. Till's body was so disfigured that the autjorities had problems to authenticate it, that's one of the reasons the brothers were let free. -
Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus
On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. She was arrested but then freed a few days later for a caution. Parks' act of defiance and the Montgomery Bus Boycott became important symbols of the modern Civil Rights Movement. She became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. -
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Little Rock Nine crisis
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 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. -
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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
he Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was one of the most important organizations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a student meeting organized by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in April 1960. SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support SNCC's work in the South, allowing full-time SNCC workers to have a $10 per week salary. -
Attack on Freedom riders' bus
Whites burn a Freedom Riders' bus near Anniston, Alabama. As they attempted to escape, the group is attacked and beaten by men armed with clubs, bricks, iron pipes, and knives.
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years in order to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions. -
James Meredith attends university
James Howard Meredith is a Civil rights movement figure. In 1962, he became the first African-American student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi after the intervention of the federal government. Meredith decided to exercise his constitutional rights and apply to the University of Mississippi. His goal was to put pressure on the Kennedy administration to enforce civil rights for African Americans. -
Police set dogs and use high-pressure water hoses on protesters in Birmingham
In the spring of 1963, activists in Birmingham, Alabama launched one of the most influential campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement:
Over the next months, the peaceful demonstrations would be met with violent attacks using high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs on men, women and children alike. That created some iconic and troubling images of the Civil Rights Movement. It is considered one of the major turning points in the Civil Rights Movement. -
The march on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the March on Washington, or The Great March on Washington, was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and demanded civil and economic rights for African Americans. It took place in Washington, D.C. Thousands of Americans headed to Washington on Tuesday, August 27, 1963. the next day, Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism -
16th Street Baptist Church bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism which occurred at the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on a Sunday. Four members of the Ku Klux Klan planted at least 15 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the front steps of the church. The explosion at the church killed four girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins) and injured 22 others. -
The 24th amendment
The Twenty-fourth Amendment (Amendment XXIV) of the United States Constitution prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. Link text -
James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner murder
In June 1964 in Neshoba County, Mississippi, three civil rights workers were abducted and murdered in an act of racial violence. The victims were Andrew Goodman and Michael "Mickey" Schwerner, and James Chaney. They had been working with the "Freedom Summer" campaign by attempting to register African Americans in the southern states to vote. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended the unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served public accommodations. Powers given to enforce the act were initially weak, but were supplemented during later years. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
In New York City, Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. -
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The Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982, with international chapters operating in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, and in Algeria from 1969 until 1972. At its inception on October 15, 1966, the Black Panther's core practice was its armed citizens' patrols to watch the behavior of police officers and challenge their brutality in Oakland, California. -
Loving vs. Virginia court case
Loving v. Virginia is, just like the 'brown vs. board of Education" case, a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court, which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage. -
"I've been to the Mountaintop" speech
This speech was proclaimed by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 3rd 1968. In this dialogue, King said that he had seen the "promised land" but that "he might not get there with his assembly". This can be seen as some kind of foreshadowing because it was King's last speech since he was assassinated later that same night. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American clergyman and civil rights leader who was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. that evening. -
Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education was a landmark United States Supreme Court case declined on the 20th of April 1971 that dealed with the busing of students to promote integration in public schools. The Court held that the transportation of students by bus was an appropriate remedy for the problem of racial imbalance in schools.
