-
This order banned segregation in the Armed Forces. It directed that Black Americans needed to be accepted into job-training programs in defense plants, forbid discrimination by defense contractors, and established a Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). It also established the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services to recommend revisions to military regulations in order to implement this policy.
-
The Supreme Court ruled that separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional, marking a milestone and leading to the end of legalized racial segregation.
-
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine Black students who were enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, a school that had been all-white. Their attendance at the school was a test of Brown v. Board of Education.
-
Daisy Bates, President of Arkansas NAACP, reflecting on the Little Rock Nine: “Neighbors came out and looked. The street was full up and down. Oh, it was beautiful. And the attitude of the children at that moment, the respect they had. I could hear them saying, 'For the first time in my life I truly feel like an American.' I could see it in their faces; somebody cares for me, America cares." -
The Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, which were bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregation in buses. They tried to use “whites-only” restrooms and lunch counters at bus stations in the South. The groups were arrested by police officers and faced violence from white protestors, and drew international attention to the civil rights movement. -
This was an enormous protest march that occurred in August 1963. Approximately 250,000 people drew attention to the inequalities African Americans faced and gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. This was also where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech.
-
Martin Luther King, March on Washington: “I have a dream. That one day this Nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal.” -
After Kennedy's assassination in November, President Lyndon Johnson secure this bill's passage. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. This legislation, which continues to resonate in America, also prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs and strengthened the enforcement of voting rights and the desegregation of schools.
-
-
Unlike many Members of Congress, the participants in the new caucus did not owe their elections to traditional liberal or labor bases of support. Being committed to using the full Constitutional power, statutory authority, and financial resources of the federal government to ensure that African Americans and other marginalized communities in the United States have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream. -
Begun in 1932, the United States Public Health Service's 40-year experiment on 399 black men with syphilis was described by news anchor Harry Reasoner as an experiment that "used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone." -
New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) is the first Black person to campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Chisholm’s bid is unsuccessful. Chisholm, who had been the first Black woman in Congress when she was elected to the House of Representatives in 1968, knows she cannot win the nomination but is running to raise issues she feels are important. She is also the first Black person & the first woman to win delegates for a presidential nomination by a major party. -
John Hope Franklin is the first African American to hold the position of president in the OAH. -
Maynard H. Jackson Jr. was elected as the first Black mayor of Atlanta with nearly 60% of the vote, and the first to be elected in any major southern city. Representing a "seismic shift in political power from Atlanta's white establishment to its growing Black middle class." -
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the case of the University of California Regents v. Bakke that affirmative action can be used as a legal strategy to deal with past discrimination. The decision has historical and legal significance because it declares that race can be one of several determining factors in college admission policies, but it rejects the use of racial quotas.
-
The 1992 Los Angeles riots, sometimes called the 1992 Los Angeles uprising and the Los Angeles Race Riots were a series of riots and civil disturbances that occurred in Los Angeles County in April and May 1992. Unrest began in South Central Los Angeles on April 29, after a jury acquitted four officers of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) charged with using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King. This incident had been videotaped and widely shown in television broadcasts. -
Barack Obama becomes the first and only member of the CBC, and the first and only member of a minority congressional caucus to be elected to the nation’s highest office. President Obama has worked to improve the lives of all Americans, including African Americans, by providing economic and educational opportunities, improving health care coverage, and working to ensure that the criminal justice system is applied fairly to all citizens.
-
