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Brown v Board of Education
Brown v Board of Education case lasted from Dec 9, 1952 to May 17, 1954. The supreme court ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional. This historic decision helped motivate the civil rights movement, which ultimately led to the abolishment of racial segregation in all public facilities and accommodations. -
White Citizens Council
This was a supremacy group that was founded in the American South and had around 60,000 members throughout the United States. They were mainly against the idea of integration of schools, but also fought against the idea of voter registration and the integration of the public facilities in the US. They were associated with the KKK and used a number of intimidation tactics against civil rights activists and African Americans. -
Brown v Board of Education II
Brown v Board of education II was a case decided in 1955, which helped schools integrate quicker. A year prior, the supreme court had decided segregation in schools was unconstitutional, Brown v Board of education II only quickened the process. -
Lynching of Emmett Till
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African-American boy who recently moved to Mississippi from the North, was lynched in 1955 for offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. He was beaten nearly to death, had his gouged out his eye and was then shot in the head. The men threw him into the river, tied to the 75-pound cotton-gin he carried wrapped in barbed wire. 3 days later, his body was recovered at the bottom of the River. -
Rosa Park Arrest
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a city bus and was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama. Then for eleven-months Americans refused to ride public transportation due to the segregation. Rosa Parks nonviolent refusal triggered the Montgomery bus boycott, eventually the desegregation of city's buses. -
Montgomery bus boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott took place after the Rosa Parks was arrested when she refused to give up her spot on the bus to a white man. Martin Luther King organized rallies to support Rosa Parks and decide to boycott the public buses. The boycott lasted a year when African Americans refused to ride the public buses. The Boycott ended when they reached their goal, a law desegregating public buses. -
Martin Luther King House Bombing
The racist white people were completely against MLK because of their opposition to equal rights for African Americans and civil rights groups. While he was at a meeting discussing bus boycotts, someone planted bombs on his front porch. Fortunately, his wife and 10-week old daughter were left uninjured. Many of the black people were armed ready to attack, but MLK told them to remain calm and to be nonviolent. -
SCLC Founded
The SCLC was founded on January 10, 1957, in Atlanta Georgia, by sixty black ministers and civil rights leaders. Martin Luther King Jr. was chosen as the first president of the SCLC. The SCLC is a nonviolent African American civil rights organization that is dedicated to abolishing segregation and ending deprivation of their privileges and voting rights of black southerners. This organztion played a major role in the student sit-in movement and the Freedom Rides. -
Eisenhower send in Federal Troops
In the fall, Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne Division to escort students around the school. Tensions arose with the desegregation and integration in Southern public schools. In Little Rock, Arkansas, nine black students were to attend an all-white high school but protesting began at the school. Eisenhower decided to respond to the situation by sending Federal Troops to accompany the new students to school. -
Greensboro sit in
A series of nonviolent protests to integrate restaurants. In Greensboro, North Carolina, young African-American students, the Greensboro Four, refused to leave after being denied service so they staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter. The Greensboro Four were influenced by nonviolent protest techniques practiced by Gandhi and went to North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College. Their nonviolent resistant sit-ins soon spread to college towns throughout the South. -
White mob attacks Federal Marshal in Montgomery
This riot occurred when there was a meeting led by MLK and several other leading activists in a church in Montgomery to honor the freedom riders. Many found out about the meeting beforehand and a riot met them there and surrounded the church and there were threats to burn down the church. 600 marshals were sent to defend the church and they did so, keeping the mob out of the church. -
Freedom Rides
The Freedom Riders were black and white civil rights activists who challenged the United States Supreme Court in decisions in court. They rode interstate buses into the segregated southern states to fight against the segregation laws in buses, restaurants, and all public places. Thanks to the Morgan vs Virginia and Boynton vs Virginia decisions, segregated public buses were unconstitutional. -
Albany Georgia "failure"
The Albany Movement was a desegregation and voter’s rights movement that was formed in Albany. Many local black leaders as well as members of SNCC and the NAACP were important in founding it and later MLK and members of the SCLC joined. Many of them disagreed and so there was tension within the movement and because they didn’t achieve many of their goals. -
Bailey v Patterson
This case ended racial segregation of interstate transportation facilities. The case stated that no state can require racial segregation, and it settled extremely well that it is foreclosed as a litigable issue -
MLK goes to a Birmingham jail
Desegregation in Birmingham was difficult because many of the whites did not want to negotiate with the black people. A protest in Birmingham became violent when firefighters used strong pressured hoses on the demonstrators. Many were also arrested including MLK who ignored the warning against demonstrations. While in jail for about a week, he wrote an open letter explaining the reasons behind protests. -
Bombing of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
In Birmingham, Alabama, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a civil rights leader, had his home bombed by the KKK. The 16 stick dynamite damaged his home and the church next door, but no one inside the house was severely injured. He had been a target of the KKK because of protests and boycotts he helped organize and participate in. Even after the bombing, he continued to be in the protest rides the day after. -
Equal Pay Act
The Equal Pay Act was signed by JFK which requires equal pay and work for each sex in the same workplace. Employers became legally obligated to pay men and women equally for performing the same work. This Act amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex. Although the Equal Pay’s Act has not been entirely achieved, by Congressional findings within the text of the proposed Paycheck Fairness Act. -
Assassination of Medgar Evers
Medgar Evers was shot by Byron De La Beckwith, a white supremacist, in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Medgar Evers was an African American civil rights leader who worked for the NAACP. He traveled throughout Mississippi promoting the civil rights movement and to recruit members to join encouraging poor African Americans to register to vote and recruiting them into the civil rights movement. Evers was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia with full military honors. -
March on Washington
The March on Washington was organized by many civil rights activists in remembrance and respect for President Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Martin Luther King gave the “I have a dream”, outlined African Americans daily struggles while stressing the importance of continued action and nonviolent protest. At the March on Washington, King was the final speaker at the assembly. His passionate speech is one of the most well-known speeches in history. -
Kennedy sends in Federal Troops
A bomb detonates, killing four young girls, during a Sunday morning church service at Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. President Kennedy sent military riot-control units to stop the violence during the protest in Birmingham. The government tried to preserve order and protection of all citizens, President Kennedy appealed to whites and blacks. -
Bombing of a church in Birmingham
On this day in 1963, a bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls. The government tried to preserve order and protection of all citizens, President Kennedy appealed to whites and blacks. Birmingham had one of the most violent and lawless chapters of the Ku Klux Klan so they insisted that federal intervention was essential -
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy was passing the Texas School Book Depository on November 22, 1963, in an open-top convertible early afternoon. As the president's car turned onto the Dealey Plaza, Kennedy was hit from behind, he slumped towards his untouched wife. Lee Harvey Oswald was recently hired at the Texas School Book Depository, less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater. -
Freedom Summer
CORE and SNCC sponsored this project to increase the number of black people in the Mississippi voting registration. The KKK and local and state authorities carried out violent tactics in order to stop the activists. This resulted in beatings and false arrests, and the murder of 3 people. The civil rights movement mostly consisted of older generations and they wanted to go beyond social change and use nonviolence as a way of life in a faster process. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination illegal. This received lots of disapproval from southern states of the Congress. The Civil Rights Act specified that employment discrimination on the basis of an individual's race, religion, sex, national origin or color was illegal. This law protects employees of a company as well as job applicants. -
24th Amendment
he 24th amendment made poll taxes on federal elections illegal, which weakened the African American population along with poor southern which kept many from voting for elected officials that would work to end discrimination. This amendment helped voting become fair within the Southern states after it passed. -
Killing of Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner
Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were New Yorkers, who joined the Congress of Racial Equality which was actively organizing civil rights. James Chaney also joined CORE, he was a local African American in heavily segregated Mississippi. These 3 civil rights workers were ambushed by the KKK, their bodies were found buried in Neshoba County 44 days after. The disappearance was later known as the “Mississippi Burning” because their burnt-out car was found 3 days after their disappearance. -
Assassination of Malcom X
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot to death by Nation of Islam members while speaking at a rally of his organization in New York City, one week prior to his death his home was firebombed. -
Selma to Montgomery March
These marches were to get voting rights for the African American people in the south. The first march from Selma was also known as “Bloody Sunday” where it caught the attention of many outraged Americans who saw that the demonstrators were tear gassed and severely beaten when they refused to turn away from the troopers at Edmund Pettus Bridge. When MLK saw what happened, he planned another march on March 9, two days later but had to turn away when the troopers were blocking the path again. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The purpose of the Voting Rights Act was to overcome discrimination of colored people faced with voting rights. It was considered one of the most significant pieces of the Civil Rights legislation. This diminished the legal barriers that made exercising their right to vote easier. The Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests, which made voting difficult for African Americans because they didn’t have access to education. -
Formation of the Black Panthers
The Black Panthers were a political organization founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Their original goal was to fight for African Americans against police brutality. They would wear black berets and black leather jackets and organized armed citizen patrols to patrol Oakland and other US cities. Its peak was in 1968 and it had about 2,000 members but later declined due to many internal reasons. -
Loving v Virginia
Two residents of Virginia, an African American woman, Mildred Jeter and her husband, a white man, Richard Loving were married in District of Columbia in 1958. The couple was soon charged because Virginia found their interracial marriages unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. The couple was sentenced to a year of jail by an all-white court when found guilty. -
Minneapolis Riots
Lasted for three days. Restrictive housing covenants prevented minorities from purchasing houses elsewhere in the city, therefore the Northside became known as an area where residents from different backgrounds built relationships or even intermarried. Demonstrators displayed their frustration with discrimination on the Northside, with damages totaling 4.2 million. There is no certainty of what started the rioting. -
Detroit Riots
The Detroit Riots in 1967 were among the most destructive riots in our history. Police officers raided an unlicensed bar in a poor black neighborhood where many civil rights activists conversed. By the end of Sunday, more than 1,000 people were arrested, but the riot continued to spread and intensify. Governor George Romney sent in the state police, but the riot only increased and President Johnson sent in troops. After 5 days the riot ended with 43 casualties and over 7,000 arrests were made. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr was in Memphis, Tennessee to lead a march in support of striking sanitation workers. While staying at the Lorraine Motel, he was outside of a second-floor balcony where he was shot and killed. James Earl Ray was the assassin and plead guilty. -
Assassination of Robert Kennedy
42-year-old presidential candidate and Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Kennedy was shot multiple times by a Palestinian Sirhan from a back exit of the Ambassador Hotel and died one day after. Sirhan Sirhan hid his .22 revolver in a rolled up campaign poster and wounded 5 bystanders before he was taken down by Grier, who accompanied Kenndey.