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Plessy V. Ruling
The ruling had established the "seperate but equal" doctrine. Laws that segregated African Americans were permitted as long as equal facilities were provided for them. -
1939 to 1961
From 1939 to 1961,the NAACP's chief counsel and director of its Legal Defense and Education Fund was the brilliant African American attorney,Thurgoud Marshall.After the war,Marshall focused his efforts on ending segregation in public schools. -
1942
In Chicago in 1942,James Farmer and George Houser founded the Congress of Racial Equality.Core began using sit-ins,a form of protest first used by union workers in the 1930s -
1954
The Surpeme Court decided to combine several cases and issue a general ruling on segregation in schools. One case involved a young Affican American girl named, Linda Brown, who was denied admission to her neighborhood school in Topeka, Kansas, because of her race. She was told to attend an all-black school. With the help of NAACP, her parents sued the school board. -
May 17, 1954
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,Kansas,that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and violated the equal protection clasue of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
December 1,1955
Rosa Parks left her job as a seamstress in Montgomery,Alabama,and boarded a bus to go home.In 1955 buses in Montgomery reserved seats in the front for whites and seats in the rear for African Americans. -
December 5,1955
On the evening of December 5,1955,a meeting was held at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church,where Dr.King was the paster.In the deep,resontant tones and powerful phrases that characterized his speaking style,King encouraged the people to continue their protest. -
1956
A group of 101 southern members of Congress signed the "Southern Manifesto," which denounced the Supreme Court's ruling as "a clear abuse of judcial power" and pledged to use "all lawful means" to reverse the decision. Had no legal standing, the statement encouraged white southerners to defy the Supreme Court. -
1957
After the Montgomery bus by colt demonstrated that nonriolent protest could be successful,African American ministers led by King established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957.The SCLC set out to eliminate segregation from American society and to encourage African Americans to register to vote. -
September 1957
In September 1957,the school board in Little Rock,Arkansas won a court order requring that nine African American students be admitted to Central High,a school with 2,000 white students.Governor,Orval Faubus,ordered troops from Arkansas National Guard to prevent the nine students from entering the school. -
February 1, 1960
Joesph McNeil, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, and Franklin McCain entered the Woolworth's. They purchased school supplies and then sat at the lunch counter and ordered coffee. They were refused service and planned on sitting there until they would get served just like the whites. -
1960
By the mid-1960s, a number of African American leaders were becoming increasingly critical of Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent strategy. They felt it had failed to improve the economic position of African Americans. -
1961
The First Freedom Riders boarded several southbound interstate buses. When the buses arrived in Anniston, Biringham, and Montogomery, Alabama, angry white mobs attacked them. -
1962
Meredith tried to register at the University's admissions office, only to find Ross Barnett, the Governor of Mississippi, blocking his path. Meredith had a court order directing the University to register him, but Governor Barnett stated emphatically, "Never! We will never surrender to the evil and illegal forces to tyranny." -
June 11, 1963
On June 11,1963,Wallace stood in front of the University of Alabama'a admission office to block two African Americans from enrolling.He stayed until federal marshals ordered him to move. -
August 28,1963
On August 28,1963,more than 200,000 demonstrators of all races flocked to the nations capital.The audience heard speeches and sang hymns and songs as they gathered peacefully near the Lincoln Memorial.Dr.King then delievered a powerful speech outlining his dream of freedom and equality for all Americans. -
1964
By 1964, Malcom X had broken with the Black Muslims. Discouraged by scandals involving the Nation of Islam's leader, he went to the Muslim holy city of Makkah in Saudi Arabia. After seeing Muslims from many races worshipping together, he concluded that an intergrated society was possible after all. Malcom X was shot and killed in February 1965, by the Nation of Islam organization. -
Civil Rights Act
President Johnson signed the Civil RIghts Act of 1964 into law. It gave the federal government broad power to prevent racial discrimination in number of areas. -
January 1965
The SCLC and Dr. KIng selected Selma, Alabama, as the focal point for their campaign for voting rights. Although African Americans made only 3 percent of registered voters. -
March 7, 1965
On Sunday March 7, 1965, the march began. While the marchers kneeled in prayer, more than 200 state troopers and deputized citizens rushed the demonstrators. Many were beaten in full view of television cameras. -
1965
In 1965 nearly 70 percent of African Americans lived in big cities. Many had moved from the South to the big cities of the North during the Great Migration of the 1920s and 1940s. There, they often found the same prejudice and discrimination that had played them in the South. -
August 3, 1965
On August 3, 1965, the House of Representatives passed the voting rights bill by a wide margain. The Voting RIghts Act of 1965 authorized the U.S, attorney general to send federal examiners to register qualified voters, by passing local officials who often refused to register African Americans. -
1967
In 1967 President Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, headed by Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois, to study the causes of the urban riots and to make recomindations to prevent them from happening again. -
April 4, 1960
On April 4, 1968 as he stood on his hotel balcony in Memphis, Dr. King was assinated by a sniper. Dr. King's death touched off both national mourning and riots in more than 100 cities, including Washington, D.C. Dr. King's death marked the end or an era in American History. -
Civil Rights Acrt of 1968
On April 11, 1968, in the wake of Dr. Kiing's death, Congress did pass the CIvil Rights Act of 1968. The act contained a fair-housing provision outlawing discrimination in housing sales and rentals and gave the Justice Department authority to bring suits against such discrimination. Although many problems remain to be solved, the achievments of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s dramatically improved the lives of African Americans, creating opportunties that had not existed before.