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Executive Order 9981 signed by President Truman
Executive Order 9981 was an executive order issued on July 26, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. It abolished discrimination "on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin" in the United States Armed Forces. -
Emmett Till Murder
The alleged teasing of white store clerk Carolyn Bryant by the 14 year-old African American Emmett Till led to his brutal murder at the hands of Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, forcing the American public to grapple with the menace of violence in the Jim Crow South. -
Rosa Parks Arrest
Rosa Parks invigorated the struggle for racial equality when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks' arrest on December 1, 1955 launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott by 17,000 black citizens -
Civil Rights Act of 1957 Was Passed
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 9, 1957 -
Little Rock Nine Intervention
President Eisenhower intervened in the Little Rock Nine crisis on September 24, 1957, by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and deploying the 101st Airborne Division to ensure the safety and integration of the nine African American students at Central High School. -
Greensboro Sit-In Protest
The Greensboro sit-in, a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement, began on February 1, 1960, when four Black students from North Carolina AT State University sat at a "whites-only" lunch counter at Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service, sparking a wave of similar protests across the South. -
Medgar Evers Shooting
On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers, a prominent NAACP field secretary and civil rights activist, was assassinated by a sniper in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi, after returning from a meeting, sparking outrage and galvanizing the Civil Rights Movement. -
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls and injuring many others, an act of domestic terrorism by a white supremacist group motivated by racism and support for racial segregation. -
March on Washington / I Have a Dream Speech
I Have a Dream" is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In the speech, King called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, a 1964 campaign in Mississippi, aimed to increase voter registration among African Americans and highlight the systemic barriers to voting, leading to increased awareness of voter discrimination and contributing to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
Malcolm X is murdered
On Feb. 21, 1965, civil rights activist Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death inside Harlem's Audubon Ballroom in New York. Three men identified as members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of murder and imprisoned; all were eventually paroled. -
The Selma Marches / Bloody Sunday
On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, civil rights activists attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery were brutally attacked by police, an event that became a watershed moment in the Civil Rights Movement and led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
Black Panther Party is formed
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who met at Merritt College in Oakland. -
Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling
In the landmark 1967 case Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that state laws banning interracial marriage, known as anti-miscegenation laws, violated the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. -
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated
Shortly after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and mortally wounded as he stood on the second-floor balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. at St. Joseph Hospital.