civil rights timeline

  • Jackie Robinson enters Major League Baseball

    Jackie Robinson enters the major league baseball on April 15th 1947.
  • Executive Order 9981 signed by President Truman

    On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity.
  • Emmett Till is murdered

    Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.
  • Montgomery Bus Boycott

    The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama.
  • Little Rock Nine Intervention

    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.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1957 is passed

    The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 9, 1957.
  • Integration of Ole Miss Riots

    On September 30, 1962, riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school.
  • March on Washington / I Have a Dream Speech

    I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be plain and the crooked places will be made straight, "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."
  • The Birmingham Children’s March

    The Children's Crusade, or Children's March, was a march by over 1,000 school students in Birmingham, Alabama on May 2–3, 1963. Initiated and organized by Rev. James Bevel, the purpose of the march was to walk downtown to talk to the mayor about segregation in their city.
  • 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

    The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a white supremacist terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday, September 15, 1963.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed

    In 1964, Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 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.
  • Freedom Summer

    Freedom Summer, also known as the Freedom Summer Project or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi.
  • The Selma Marches

    The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery.
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed

    The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented ...
  • Black Panther Party is formed

    The Black Panther Party, originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist Black Power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California.