-
Brown v Board of Education
Brown v Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark Supreme Court case that helped overturn the "separate but equal" precedent by ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Many Southern cities did not follow this verdict, causing the federal government to step in and use military force to allow black children to go to school, as seen through the Little Rock Nine. The decision helped spark the Civil Rights Movement and was one of the first steps to desegregation. -
White Citizens Counsel
The White Citizens Council was created as a response to Brown v Board of Education. It was a council made up of all whites from the upper and middle class. They used violence and intimidation to socially and economically oppress African Americans. -
Brown v Board of Education II
The second Brown v Board of Education case was another essential step to desegregate. Since many all-white schools still were not integrating, the second Brown v Board decision laid out rules of how the schools need to desegregate, and what the federal government would do if the schools had not desegregated. It was an attempt to get schools to integrate "with all deliberate speed." -
Lynching of Emmett Till
Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy from Chicago when he was visiting family in Money, Missouri. Till was brutally beaten and killed by a white woman's husband and brother who he had allegedly flirted with. His body was so disfigured and his mother requested an open casket to show the public the reality of Jim Crow laws down South and the discrimination blacks faced. The men were found "not-guilty" by an all-white jury causing outrage in black and white communities alike. -
Rosa Parks Arrested
Parks was arrested on December 1st 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. Parks said she did it because "she was tire dof giving in [to segregation and discrimination]" not because of the myth that she was simply "tired." Her arrest helped spark the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and brought courage to the black population in Montgomery. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott is considered the first full-scale demonstration against segregation in the United States. It occurred because of the arrest of Rosa Parks, and the boycott was so successful that the buses were soon integrated. The leader of the bus boycott, Martin Luther King Jr, also emerged as a promising Civil Rights leader because of this successful demonstration. The Bus Boycott ended after more than a year of its start on December 20th of 1956. -
Martin Luther King House Bombing
White segregationists bombed Martin Luther King's house on September 30th in 1956 because of his success in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. After minutes of his house being bombed, King preached to his supporters that he wants them "to love our enemies." Which shows the true, strong character of King and his incapacity for hate and violence. -
Bombing of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
The KKK bombed the home of Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, a civil rights activist. The blast didn't kill anyone in his family, yet everyone was home, instead it destroyed his church next door. White supremacists attempted to murder him four more times in the next seven years. -
Eisenhower sends in Federal troops
After schools were desegregated, the first nine African Americans were supposed to be sent to school in Little Rock, Arkansas, but were prevented by the state police. Eisenhower sends in Federal troops to uphold the constitution and the decision made by Brown v Board of Education and forces the people in Arkansas to let the nine African American kids attend school. -
SNCC Formed
SNCC, or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was formed in April of 1960 by students of Shaw University in North Carolina. It was formed to give younger blacks more of a voice in the movement and soon became a powerful and radical branch of the Civil Rights Movement. -
Greensboro Sit Ins
The Greensboro sit ins started when four college students sat down at the lunch counter in Woolworth's and requested service. When they were refused service the men refused to give up their seats. This incident gained the attention of the media and soon more than 300 people were joining the sit ins, and the movement spread to 55 other cities. The sit ins pushed for the desegregation of lunch counters. The sit ins ended on July 24th 1960. -
Freedom Rides
The Freedom Rides were organized by CORE and they were a group of white and black people that rode on the buses through the South to protest segregated bus terminals. They were often confronted with violence, mobs, and arresting police officers. The rides ended on December 10th, 1961. -
White mob attacks Federal marshals in Montgomery
Inside of a church in Montgomery, Martin Luther King Jr was preaching to around 1000 supporters of the Freedom Rides when a mob of white people surrounded the church. Robert Kennedy sent in the marshals who dispersed the crowd with tear gas. Martial law was then enforced in the city with the National Guard called in to restore order. -
Albany Georgia "Failure"
The Albany movement's goal was to end all forms of racial segregation in the city, they used sit-ins, jail-ins, boycotts and demonstrations to achieve their goals. and it only lasted one year. Many demonstrators were placed in jail and King was called in to help the negotiations. It was a failure the city never upheld their terms. The failed negotiations were King's most prominent failure. -
Bailey v Patterson
The appellants from Jackson, Mississippi, brought their case to the Supreme Court for their right to desegregated interstate and intrastate transport facilities. The court declared that the segregation laws in Mississippi were unconstitutional. -
Kennedy sends in Federal troops
President Kennedy sent in Alabama National Guard troops to end Governor George Wallace's blockade of the University of Alabama. Wallace blockaded the University to prevent two black students, Vivian Malone and James A. Hood, from enrolling in the school. Kennedy sent in the National Guard to enforce the decision from Brown v Board of Education. -
MLK goes to Birmingham Jail
Martin Luther King Jr. was sent to a Birmingham jail on April 16th of 1963. There, he wrote the famous letter "Letter from Birmingham Jail" and it is considered a very persuasive and beautifully written piece of literature. In the letter, King defends the non-violent resistance to racism and argues that people have a right to break up unjust laws with direct action. -
Equal Pay Act
The Equal Pay Act prohibited wage discrimination because of gender if the job calls for similar skill and workload. It was signed into law by John F Kennedy and it was one of the first federal laws in American history to address gender discrimination. -
Assassination of Medgar Evers
Evers was shot by a white supremacist, Byron De La Beckwith, in his driveway outside of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers fought in WWII and participated in the Normandy Invasion, after the war he joined the NAACP and worked to encourage African Americans to vote and join the Civil Rights movement. He was also instrumental in getting evidence and witnesses for the Emmett Till murder case. Beckwith was finally sentenced to life in prison in February of 1994. -
March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the iconic march where Martin Luther King Jr gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. Over 250,000 people met at the Lincoln Memorial to bring awareness to the inequality African Americans still faced a century after their emancipation. It drew lots of mass media and attention to the Civil Rights cause. -
Bombing of a church in Birmingham
At the 16th Baptist Church in Alabama, before the Sunday morning service, a bomb went off destroying the church and killing four young African American girls. The church had a predominantly black congregation and the outrage over this incident helped draw national attention to the struggle for equal rights. -
Assassination of John F Kennedy
JFK was assassinated in downtown Dallas, Texas, as he was riding in a motorcade with the top off of a convertible. He was shot multiple times in the head and neck and governor John Connally, who was riding in another car, was shot in the back. He was sped to the hospital but was declared dead at 1:00 in the afternoon. Lyndon B Johnson, his vice president, took the oath of office in Air Force One at 2:38 pm. -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer was a campaign in the voting season of 1964 to increase the number of black voters in Mississippi. There were over 700, mostly white, volunteers helping to fight against voter intimidation and discrimination at the polls. There was much resistance from the KKK, and members of state and local law enforcement officers. News coverage of the event and the violence that followed brought support to the Civil Rights Movement. -
24th Amendment
The 24th Amendment prohibits federal and state from establishing poll taxes in order for people to vote. It started in the Southern states, where people had enforced poll taxes to prevent blacks from voting. It took two years for the Amendment to be ratified by the states, (proposed on August 27th, 1962, and was ratified on January 23rd, 1964.) -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act was proposed by John F Kennedy, who was president at the time, but he was assassinated before he could sign the act. Lyndon B Johnson signed it into law. The act prohibited discrimination of any person based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. -
Killing of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner
Three members of CORE, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, both white, and James Chaney, black, disappeared on a trip down to Neshoba, Mississippi, and their bodies were found on August 4th. After being thrown in jail when leaving, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, caught and put them into his car, driving them down an unmarked road, and followed by other members of the KKK. The three men were shot and their bodies buried, Price and the other convicted men eventually only spent 6 years in jail. -
Assassination of Malcom X
Malcom X was assassinated on February 21st in the Audubon Ballroom of Washington Heights by Black Muslims while he was addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity. X advocated for the liberation of African Americans by any means necessary, which is why he can be considered more violent than MLK. His Organization of Afro-American Unity advocated for Black Identity and argued that racism was the biggest threat to the African Americans. -
Selma to Montgomery March
The Selma to Montgomery march was a march to protest the violence and discrimination facing black voters who were trying to become registered. They were faced with lots of violence and resistance by white vigilante groups and local authorities. They soon got protection from the national guard, and with the support of Martin Luther King Jr. they raised awareness for the difficulties facing black voters. The march ended on the 21st. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
On August 6th, 1965, President Lyndon B Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 surrounded by Martin Luther King Jr and other influential leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The act prevented people from infringing on the rights of African Americans to vote. The act covered literacy tests and poll taxes, abolishing both, and allowed the US Attorney General to investigate and make sure cities were following the act. -
Black Panthers Formed
The Black Panther Party was formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to protest police brutality against African Americans. They organized armed citizen patrols in Oakland, California, and many other cities in the United States. They eventually disbanded because of deadly shootouts, internal tensions, and FBI efforts to weaken the organization. -
Loving v Virginia
Richard, a white man, married Mildred, a black woman, and it was deemed illegal by the state of Virginia. They took their case to the supreme court and it began in August of 1967, and was decided on June 13th of the same year. They won unanimously; their case ended all laws prohibiting interracial marriage. In the history of the United States, only 9 states never had laws prohibiting interracial marriage at one point. -
Minneapolis Riots
The Minneapolis Race Riots were just one riot in a summer of multiple different race riots around the United States. There was vandalism, arson, and assaults to protest discrimination and inequality of job opportunities and rights for African Americans. It ended three nights after the start. -
Detroit Riots
The 1967 Detroit Race Riot was arguably one of the most bloody and violent riot in American history. After five days it was done, and there were 43 people dead, 342 were injured, 1,400 buildings were burned and/or destroyed, and almost 7,000 troops had to be sent in. Accusations of racial profiling and police brutality in the Virginia Park neighborhood fueled this riot. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, when he and his associates were down to support a Sanitation Workers strike. He gave a speech at the Mason Temple Church the night before. At 6:05 pm he was standing on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel where he was shot in the neck by a sniper's bullet. He died at the age of 39 and his death sparked rioting and looting around the country. -
Assassination of Robert "Bobby" Kennedy
Senator Robert Kennedy won the California presidential primary on June 6th, 1968, and celebrated thereafter in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After delivering a short speech to the crowd, Kennedy was shot by a Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan, rushed to the hospital, and died the day after. Sirhan Sirhan shot him because he believed that Kennedy was responsible for the Palestinian oppression in America. -
SCLC founded
The SCLC, or Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was formed to assist organizations fighting for the full and equal rights of African Americans in American society. It was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. and they operated mainly in the South. They are responsible for multiple anti-discrimination efforts and voter registration efforts (Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965).
