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Jackie Robinson enters Major League Baseball
Jackie Robinson became the first African American player to enter the Major League Baseball, he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson broke the color barrier of a sport that has been segregated for 50 years. He started first base and made his debut on April 15th. -
Emmett Till is Murdered
He was a 14 year old African American boy, who was accused of offending a white woman at a grocery store by whistling at her. That night two men beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, and shot him then threw his body in the river. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. African Americans refused to ride buses and just a couple days before Rosa Parks was arrested and fined for not giving up her seat to a white man. -
Greensboro Sit-In
It was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when 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 service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. -
Integration of Ole Miss Riots
This was where riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford. Students, locals, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, who was a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate all white schools. -
March on Washington/ I Have a Dream Speech
This was a march that was held in Washington, D.C, that was suppose to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. When around 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his I Have a Dream Speech too all of these peoples to talk about getting their freedoms. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. Also, unequal application of voter registration requirements, segregation in school, employment, and public accommodations. -
Voting Rights of 1965
It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, it aimed to overcome legal barriers that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Ruling
In a unanimous decision, the justices found that Virginia's interracial marriage law violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. However, it was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that struck down laws banning interracial marriage as violations of the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated
He was an American Christian minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. He was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital.
