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Martin Luther King Jr. Is Born
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. -
Malcolm X Is Born
Malcolm X was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history. -
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is an African American Islamic religious movement founded in Detroit, United States, by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad on July 4, 1930. Its stated goals are to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans in the United States and all of humanity. Critics have labeled the organization as being black supremacist[4] and antisemitic. The NOI is tracked as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. -
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Founded in 1942, CORE was one of the "Big Four" civil rights organizations, along with the SCLC, the SNCC, and the NAACP. Its stated mission is "to bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background." -
Warren Court
Earl Warren becomes the 14th Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, and uses his power to push forward civil rights. He presides over many influential cases, including Brown v. BoE, Loving v. Virginia, and Bolling v. Sharpe -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks is arrested on Montgomery, AL after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a public bus. This sets off the chain of events leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
In early January 1957 the leaders behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott assembled in Atlanta, Georgia, and founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC. The SCLC comprised churches and clergy from across the South, and was created to coordinate protests inspired by the success of the bus boycott. -
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 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, who sent federal troops to enforce the Supreme Court Ruling in Brown vs BOE. -
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
The SNCC was one of the most important organizations of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. SNCC played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party over the next few years. SNCC's major contribution was in its field work, organizing voter registration drives all over the South, especially in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. -
Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. They ended on December 10, 1961 -
Letter from Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail is written by Dr. Martin Luther King jr. from a jail cell in Birmingham, AL. The letter defends 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 justice to come through the courts. -
March On Washington DC
The March on Washington DC was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and demanded civil and economic rights for African Americans. On Wednesday, August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech in which he called for an end to racism. -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi, which had historically excluded most blacks from voting. The project also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses, and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid the local black population. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Signed into law by President Johnson, this act outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace and by facilities that served the general public (known as "public accommodations"). -
Selma to Montgomery Marches
The three Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 were part of the voting rights movement underway in Selma, Alabama. By highlighting racial injustice in the South, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, Activists publicized the three protest marches to walk the 54-mile highway from Selma to the Alabama state capital of Montgomery as showing the desire of African-American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Signed into law by president Lyndon Johnson, the act prohibits racial discrimination in voting based on racial and language minorities. It also outlaws literacy tests, and other methods historically used to discriminate. -
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. At its inception on October 15,[4] 1966, the Black Panther Party's core practice was its armed citizens' patrols to monitor the behavior of police officers and challenge police brutality in Oakland, California. -
Thurgood Marshall Joins The Supreme Court
was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best known for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education, a decision that desegregated public schools. President Johnson nominated him to the United States Supreme Court in 1967.
