Civil Rights Timeline

By Carly.wemhoff24

  • Brown vs Board of Education

    Brown vs Board of Education
    • A Supreme Court case to end segregation.
    • A 9-0 decision for equal protection under the 14th amendment.
    • After the decision, violence and riots broke out, with some schools closing.

  • Rosa Parks

    Rosa Parks
    • American activist in the civil rights movement
    • Best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. -The United States Congress has honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".

  • Emmett Till

    Emmett Till
    • He was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi
    • Accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store.

  • SCLC

    SCLC
    • The Southern Christian Leadership Conference
      • African-American civil rights organization based in Atlanta, Georgia. SCLC is
    • Closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., who had a large role in the American civil rights movement.

  • Little Rock 9

    Little Rock 9
    • The Little Rock Nine were 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.

  • Greensboro

    Greensboro
    • The Greensboro sit-ins
    • Civil rights protest that started in 1960
    • Young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied services

  • Freedom Riders

    Freedom Riders
    • Groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals

  • March on Washington

    March on Washington
    • March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom brought over 200,000 people to the nation's capitol to protest racial discrimination and show support for civil rights legislation that was pending in Congress

  • Governor George Wallace

    Governor George Wallace
    • Governor George C. Wallace stands in a doorway at the University of Alabama to block two Black students from registering.
    • The standoff continues until President John F. Kennedy sends the National Guard to the campus.

  • Civil Rights Acts of 1964

    Civil Rights Acts of 1964
    • President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, preventing employment discrimination due to race, color, sex, religion or national origin

  • Bloody Sunday

    Bloody Sunday
    • In the Selma to Montgomery March, around 600 civil rights marchers walk to Selma, Alabama to Montgomery—the state’s capital—in protest of Black voter suppression.
    • Local police block and brutally attack them.
    • After successfully fighting in court for their right to march, Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders lead two more marches and finally reach Montgomery on March 25.

  • Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination

    Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination
    • Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee.
    • James Earl Ray is convicted of the murder in 1969.