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Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln freed slaves in the Confederacy.
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The 15th Amendment granted blacks the right to vote, including former slaves.
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The U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the racist policy of segregation by legalizing “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites.
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded by a multi-racial group of activists in New York, N.Y. Initially, the group called themselves the National Negro Committee. Founders Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard and William English Walling led the call to renew the struggle for civil and political liberty.
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President Harry Truman executes Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services.
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The U.S. Supreme Court unanimous decision that overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine in public schools.
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Emmett Till was murdered in Money, Mississippi.
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Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery City Bus and was arrested.
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott begins.
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Sixty black pastors and civil rights leaders from several southern states meet in Atlanta, Georgia to coordinate nonviolent protests.
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The Little Rock 9 enter Central High School as federal troops oversee the situation sent by President Eisenhower.
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4 black college students sat at an all-white lunch counter and started a sit-in protest at a Woolworth’s store.
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Freedom riders begin a bus ride through the South to protest segregation.
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James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy sent 5,000 federal troops to contain the violence and riots surrounding the incident.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Birmingham protesting in the “most segregated city in America.”
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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.
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More than 250,000 people, march on Washington to demand immediate passage of the civil rights bill.
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A bomb at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama kills four young girls and injures several other people prior to Sunday services. The bombing fuels angry protests.
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The 24th Amendment abolished the poll tax, which had originally been instituted in 11 southern states. The poll tax made it difficult for blacks to vote.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the premier legislation for Civil Rights into law.
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Black religious leader Malcolm X is assassinated during a rally by members of the Nation of Islam.
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A march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for voting rights begins.
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President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law outlawing literacy tests.
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Huey Newton & Bobby Seale founded the “Black Power” political group known as the Black Panthers.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis.
